When the trees are painted white...

The first year we lived in Haiti, I remember being so baffled when the students came around with their broom-turned-paintbrush the week before graduation, dousing the trees in some kind of homemade orange peel mixture.  

But through the years, the annual celebratory painting of the trees has not only stopped being something I scoff, but has become a sign I truly welcome.  

We're wearing our happiness on our sleeves, painting it on our palms.

There is this superstition in Haiti (that might just be a subconscious concern in others) that the year's happiness is limited.

There is only so much happiness to be had in a year.  So you want to save it up, doll it out accordingly, not waste it.

For example, if your sister is pregnant, and going to have a baby in 2013, you don't want to plan your wedding for 2013.  You don't want to suck up a portion of her possible happiness, resulting in perhaps a miscarriage or dangerous labor or a birth defect.  If there is a new baby coming in 2013, everyone saves up their happiness for that event, and holds out on other happiness for future years.

This is part of why December weddings are so popular in Haiti...everyone saves up and uses a whole year's worth of happiness on their weddings before the year ends so that there is new happiness to use those first few months of marriage.

I wonder if there is happiness roll-over if you don't fit it all in?

I don't know.

Anyway, this deeply rooted superstition is just a very subtle part of how people think through their days and schedules, and only when pressed have I had friends admit to the superstition.  

But painted trees?  That means a happy day is coming.  Everyone's been saving...16 of the students, for four years.  They've been saving up, and now the trees have been painted...the time is coming...it's graduation.

I admit my own graduation from university didn't feel like this huge accomplishment.  We were newly-weds.  We were heading for the mission-field.  All our thoughts and concerns and hopes were for the future.    Ever since I was a little girl, I knew that 5 of that $10 dollars I'd been given for my birthday was going towards college.  My parents graduated from college.  I would, too.  

But that was a different world.

You're an orphan.  An earthquake survivor.  The son of a mother who sells beans and rice and makes about a dollar a day.  An outcast for your faith.  Homeless.  You live in a country where only 60% of kids get any time in any classroom at ALL.

It is the hope of EVERY parent that their child might go to school.  Every child I have ever met says they want to be a doctor when they grow up.  Or Jackie Chan, actually, but that's beside the point.

Even two and three-year olds are heading off for class, if possible, because the frequent reality is that mom and dad can't sign their names, much less teach little ones their ABC's.  Everyone wants an education for their children. 

But it is the reality of very few.

So to think about university?  THINK AGAIN.

And here we have SIXTEEN such men, and they did it.  

It may have taken them until they were 20...25...35 to find enough money to finish high school.  But they did.  And the $500 USD annual tuition at EBS seemed utterly impossible.  It WAS impossible, for most.  But they did it.  And four years seemed like an impossibility.

But, Gras a Dieu, by the Grace of God, these 16, they did it.

And all their happiness, all their families' happiness, all their wives and churches and children's groups and Sunday School classes and aunts and uncles happiness...It's all been saved up for May 17th, 2013.

And our trees prove it...

To God be the Glory for these precious men of His,

for the miracles He is doing in their lives...

and through them.

***

Uncle Don, power washing the men's dorm roof, helping the students make the place bel.

Heads up: we're having some major internet problems--like, the internet guy came yesterday, climbed our tower, took everything down, and took it all home with him....it might be a while.  Thanks for your patience!