In Rebecca Crosby's Words
How We Began
I saw him sitting under the large mapou tree in front of the house where we stayed. He sat with an open book and made notes with a pencil in his notebook. It was a late morning in February 1999. I was a member of a team of volunteers, and we were working at the Hospital Albert Schweitzer in Deschapelles, Haiti. This was my first mission trip, and my first trip to a developing country. There were three women and six men. The women were charged with making privacy curtains for the hospital’s examination rooms. We brought a sewing machine and lots of fabric and spent our days inside hospital housing sewing as fast as we could. Yet I couldn’t keep my mind off him. There he was sitting under the shade studying.
We were told by the hospital work team coordinator, that we were not to give money to the begging Haitians, and to beware of children who ask for money, because parents use the children to beg for them. We were told that many times the children do not tell the truth, so don’t believe what they tell you. Keeping all these warnings in mind, I decided to take a break and see what the young man was studying.
He was happy to see me
And I am sure his place of study under this large tree in front of our house was not coincidental. Nonetheless, my curiosity was peaked; I wanted desperately to interact with the people and not simply sit in a house and sew all week. I approached the young man and sat next to him looking at the math workbook on his lap. I asked him, “Why aren’t you in school?” After all, it was around 11 am on a weekday. Fortunately for both of us, he spoke English fairly well. Through our conversation, I began to learn about the lack of educational opportunities in Haiti; that education is not free. I learned how parents pay for their children’s tuition, books, uniforms and exam fees, and how one child’s tuition could be almost 1/3 of the family’s annual income. He shared with me how his father abandoned his mother when he was young, leaving her with six children, and how difficult it was for her to provide for them. She was not well, he said, because she suffers from a ‘case of the nerves.’
Sitting with him under the shade of this enormous tree, I learned his name was Roshnaider Oltin, and he was 19 years old and in the 9th grade. Earlier in the year, he was able to go to school through a US sponsor, but the money had stopped coming. The schoolmaster sent him home and told him not to come back. Since then, he was trying to keep up with the lesson plans on his own. He was in hopes of finding another sponsor. Curious, I asked him how much it cost to go to school, and he answered $150.00 a year. (Tuition since then has more than doubled, yet the Haitian currency is worth less than ½ of what it was in 1999). I wanted to help Oltin, but I knew I would be breaking the rules, so I said good bye and went back to sewing curtains, but I couldn’t get him off my mind.
Over the next few days, I saw him again and again under the tree. I liked him and looked forward to our visits. I knew in my heart he was telling the truth, and so I told him I would pay for him to go to school. I was excited, and he was thrilled. I knew I couldn’t simply give him cash, so I found the US doctor working in the hospital who had helped with his last sponsor, and he agreed to receive my money and give it to Oltin in monthly installments. In the early years, I corresponded with the doctor through snail mail and received news of Oltin’s progress. This arrangement continued with 4 different doctors over a 4-year period, and then Oltin graduated from high school, and he wrote and asked me to come and see him again, and I did.
I was amazed how he had grown as a person
How his self-esteem had blossomed, how proud he was to be one of the few to have completed high school (only 15% of the Haitians do). He introduced me to his family and friends, and they greeted me with open arms and kisses. Unlike the first trip, this second trip brought me in closer contact with the Haitian people outside the hospital compound. I felt overwhelmed by their poverty and need, and I couldn’t imagine parents being able to pay for their children’s tuition, let alone food and housing. I was humbled by the experience that week.
Sitting on the airplane waiting for departure, I reflected on my trip as I looked out over Port-au-Prince. What an absolute disaster, I thought, and this was seven years before the earthquake. I was glad and proud that I had helped Oltin, but he was one youth, I thought, not even a drop in the bucket, one youth, that would hardly make a difference in this country of 10 million. Feeling that it was all so hopeless, I began to quietly cry in my seat. I decided I would never return to the island again, because the problems were too enormous and overwhelming. Yet as quickly as that resolve was made, another option entered my mind like an awakening, an idea came to me in its completion. The idea was to create a scholarship granting organization that would help many students, like Oltin, go to school; to use a Haitian board to select the students and run the organization; to create a legal non-profit business here at home to receive donations through family, friends and churches. My mood changed from sadness and defeat to excitement with a surge of hope. “Yes, I can do this.” I said to myself. I went home and shared the news of my trip and my epiphany with my husband, Ted, keeping him up late in the evening. Fortunately, Ted was on board with the idea, because I was determined and it would be impossible for me to do it alone. That was 15 years ago. Since then, we have grown from 32 to over 500 students, from just a high school program, to an elementary, secondary, technical and university program. We have university and technical school graduates who are employed and working in Haiti as professionals. And our friend Oltin is now a doctor.
We never know where our journey in life will take us if we follow our heart.
I never imagined that my curiosity about a young man studying under a mapou tree would change my life forever and open new opportunities to help a struggling country. I didn’t know that I could receive such joy and fulfillment from the work that we do. I am not saying it is easy work, because it is not, but it is rewarding and it fills me with a sense of purpose and a great love for humanity, not just for Haitians, but all of humanity, especially the most vulnerable in this world. In working closely with the Haitian people, I see life at its most basic and essential, their laughter and joy is so simple – they find delight in the smallest of things, incidents and occasions that we tend to take for granted. They have taught me to see again with new eyes. They persevere in the hardest of situations and carry themselves with such dignity and grace. They have an amazing sense of humor that baffles me; I always wonder how they can smile and be cheerful with such overwhelming problems. I admire them greatly, and have learned from them the capacity of the human spirit to endure. Seeing and understanding these human traits and characteristics in the Haitian people has helped me to see them more clearly in other vulnerable people around the world.
Four years ago, Ted and I took a huge leap of faith, and bought some land in Haiti. On this land, we built an Education Center that we opened on January 22, 2017. The Center is our permanent home for our work in Haiti. The modern facility houses the offices for our 9 staff members, provides 3 large classrooms for tutoring and education seminars, as well as a robust literacy program for adults. The Center also includes a computer lab to help students with math, science and languages. This Center is helping to improve the quality of education in the region.
For us, the work in education in Haiti is similar to the parable of the sower in the Gospel of Matthew. The seeds are like the children – they all have the potential to be thriving human beings. Yet many are cast on rocky ground with not much soil – they have no proper nutrition, limited health care, unsanitary living conditions, unclean water, and even though the parents love them very much, it is difficult to provide for them and almost impossible to support their education. Many of them wither away from the harshness of life. Others are cast out among the thorns and grow up living in terrible situations in the inner cities, where life is hard and dangers abound, yet they take the chance to try to find some kind of job. Some will make it among the thorns, but it is not easy. Others will find their way, and with good health and adequate food, they will be lucky enough to go to school and continue past the 6th grade (only 25% of the children do), and go on through high school and even join the 2% that make it to a university. With a degree, they have the possibility to get a better job, (not the hard labor jobs that pay 60 cents an hour, if they are lucky), but a job that could support their families, a job that could break the disastrous chain of poverty that plagues 95% of the country. By providing scholarships for hundreds of students and supporting their education with this new Center, our hope is that we will help to build the good foundation that all parents want for their children that the government cannot provide. We strongly believe that education is critical to nation building. How can you build a nation when more than half of the population is illiterate and uneducated?
The Rev. Rebecca Crosby
Co-Founder of the Crosby Fund for Haitian Education, Inc.
Executive Director