Freeport students see different world in pictures of Haiti
The lack of elaborate homes and classrooms — or dishwashers, or even spoons — were what stuck out the most to a group of students at Freeport Kindergarten Center on Tuesday during a teacher aide's presentation about her trips to Haiti.
When Becky Ross, an aide at South Buffalo Elementary School, finished her presentation, she asked the students to name some differences between life in the United States and Haiti, based on the pictures they saw during a slide show.
The students quickly pointed out that certain luxuries Americans take for granted aren't available to most Haitians.
"Their houses are different than ours," one child said.
Another one piped up: "They don't have spoons!"
While they don't seem like a luxury here, Ross said the students at mission-run schools in the Haitian village of LaCroix view them as cherished items.
The 3,500 students there didn't have spoons for their lunchtime bowl of rice and beans until Ross took boxes of spoons to the mission last year. She said students at South Buffalo Elementary donated 3,548 spoons for the Haitian children.
Ross, 52, of South Buffalo said she has visited Haiti annually since 2004. She and her husband, Bill, make the trip each year with different church groups in the Pittsburgh area.
While she works as a teacher aide, Ross said she has a degree in medical assisting. So she largely works in the LaCroix mission's medical clinic when she visits. Her trips usually last a little more than a week. She's headed there again at the end of April.
"I just love it there," she said. "I love the people. I love the whole experience.
"It's always a very rewarding experience but a very frustrating one, because there are a lot of things you can't do a whole lot about."
Ross showed the kindergarten students pictures of markets in Port-au-Prince and from the mission schools and homes in LaCroix, which sits about 65 miles north of the capital.
Many of the pictures featured scenes of abject poverty, but not in an appalling way. The children and adults seen in the pictures wear smiles and look genuinely cheerful.
Ross showed the students various pieces of Haitian art, such as a bowl she said was crafted from the fender of a car, rocks painted as fruit and a wooden carving of a woman playing a drum.
"I like the fruit made from rocks," said Justin Johnston, 6, of Buffalo Township.
Classmate Ella Crytzer, 5, of Freeport said she liked a picture Ross showed of one of the newer homes built in LaCroix.
Ross said the home that Ella fancied is about as big as the gym in the kindergarten center but is divided inside into smaller dwellings for several families.
Todd O'Shell, the district's spokesman, said students from South Buffalo Elementary and the kindergarten center had been donating supplies and money for Ross to give to the Haitians during her trips, even prior to the Jan. 12 earthquake that ravaged the country.
The South Buffalo Elementary students have been donating for the past four years and the kindergarten students started this year.
