Pwofesè - Teacher
Animatè - Activist
Sa Robert di, kreyòl ak angle.
I'm happy to welcome everyone who is interested in having a littleb it of information about my work as a teacher in the Matènwa Cmmunity School for Development.
My name is Wobe Kajis.
I was born in a section called Two Lwi.
It's in the Eighth Section of Pwentaraket, which is situated in the arrondisment
of Lagonav.
I was born in 1977.
My mother's name was Santelia Ariz.
She was a market woman.
My father's name was Saint-Louis Dieu Kajis.
He was a farmer.
My mother never went to high school.
But she knew how to read and write in the kreyòl language.
My father had a sixth grade education, and he had a huge aptitude for
the schooling that he was able to receive.
He was very smart.
His learning didn't stop with school.
He was always doing research to deepen his knowledge.
In the year 1994, I took a chance to go to the United States, in a boat,
on account of the situation in Haiti at that time.
Not only that, I had huge economic problems because my mother had been
sick for several years.
She was paralyzed from her waist all the way to her feet. My parents had
been separated since long before that, and so, my father already had another
wife that he was responsible for. Because of that, he didn't take care
of us any more.
Since the time I was in the fifth grade, I didn't have anyone to help
me stay in school. The only way that I would have a chance, was to show
that I was smart when I was able to go to school. That was how I found
a teacher who was willing to give me advice about things that would enable
me to keep going to school. That teacher's name was Jean Marie Dorvilien.
I had another cousin, a cousin of my mother's who was the director of
the Methodist School in Portebonè. His name was Iris Frisnel. He
allowed me to go to fifth and sixth grades without paying.
But the problem of not being able to eat and other problems, too, still
existed for me. I would walk six hours that is, six hours every day, during
those two years, to walk to and from school.
In spite of all the economic difficulties I had, I maintained my dignity
and my prestige, in front of other people. I never asked my family, not
my mother, not my father's family for help. Even if they had the means
and the willingness to help me.Because my parents raised me with certain
strong principles about respecting ourselves.
At one time I was fishing so I could get ahead for myself. But I always
thought that that type of work was not going to help me achieve my dreams.
And for that reason I kept going to school
despite the wide range of problems that I had.
But finally that became too hard. And in my first year of high school,
I had no choice but to quit school and try the boat. I spent three months
at the base in Guantanamo, but when I saw that, I saw that there was nothing
that would work out for getting me into the United States, and so I signed
up to be on the police force, and to return to Haiti to serve my country.
I had come to imagine that this wasn't going to be very interesting for
me after the experience I had already had with the unrest in Haiti, with
the tonton macoutes and the rural police. I still preferred to return
to Haiti,and so I went to immigration and signed the papers to return
to my country.
I returned on the thirteenth of October and President Aristide returned
from exile on the fifteenth of October.
But the thing that is really ironic, for me: when I returned to Haiti,
I found that partisans of the de facto government had plotted against
my father and taken him away along with a cousin of my mother's whose
name was Silfa Gil. Both of them were Aristide supporters, and so we never
knew
where they took them since that time right up until now.
My mother was still sick.
I went back to school. To a high school called I.M. near TiPalmis.
I had always liked helping people, even though I still didn't know what
advantage that could have,
because my mother was a person who always wanted to help people however
she possibly could
In that sense, she was a very good person.
I spent six months helping a pastor whose name was Abner with a little
school that he was doing for free for several children who were unable
to go to school. I was a volunteer, but that wasn't so good for me because
I still needed to pay for my own school.
I was able to find some family a relative on my mother side who was the
director of the Wesselyn School in Ti Palmis. I used to cut his hair for
him and he would want to pay me, and I really didn't want to take money
from him and that's how we became great friends. He invited me to sleep
at his house, eat with him and help him correct his students' homework.
That was how he was able to see the abilities that I had. That was interesting.
He decided to let me take the third and fourth grade classes for him because
he was teaching the fifth and sixth grade classes as well. The class that
he had given me, it belonged to a teacher whose name was Wilbens. Wilbens
had left him in charge of his classes while he tried to see if he could
find a better life in the Dominican Republic. But that was done in secret.
Nobody knew.
After doing that for a month, the teacher for that class never came back
and I became the official teacher for that class. I spent two years teaching
in that school. Eventually I decided to leave
because they didn't pay us often They already owed me several months pay
that I knew I would never see.
So I wrote a letter to a Nazarene school who had a director whose name
was Edlèn George. It turned out that in all the letters he had
received, it was my letter and one from a friend of mine a friend who
had worked in the same school as me once before, who also turned out to
be qualified.
That man's name was Nixon Kamil, and we went to work in that school together.
I worked for 4 years in that school.
Things were working out better for me, but they still weren't great. But
I was willing and I respected my work. The director of that school was
a member of AAPLAG, an organization that wanted him to find a person who
could lead literacy workshops in LaPalmis, which was where I was living.
But the search for that position was very involved. They checked out a
lot of people for that position. And finally, after they had discussed
all their options, the director saw how I could handle a position like
that. He chose me and so I went to the training so that I could become
a workshop leader.
However, it was while I was in that training, my mother died and they
wrote me a letter
to let me know.
It was at that training where I met several of the collegues with whom
I work now at the Matenwa Community School. Those colleagues are Vana,
Abner, and Benaja. After the training I went back to the literacy center
where I spent three years working as a workshop leader in that program.
While I was working many different groups of people came to visit. Groups
like Limyelavi, Rotary, Transformational Travel, and other groups, too.
That was how I met Chris Low, who along with Vana, made a video of me
in my classroom as an example of an exceptional teacher in that program
at that time. And even right now, that video is still there at the Matenwa
Community school, so that any person who is interested can go and see
it.
That's how Chris Low got interested in having me work at the Matenwa school
to help out with first and second grades. And that's how it's come about
that for the last three years I have been working as a teacher in the
Matenwa Community school.
My objectives…
They are to keep looking for methods and techniques that can help me in
my work as a teacher.
I'll collaborate with any individual or association who is interested
in helping adults learn to read and write.
That's why I wrote a song whose lyrics say
"Ladies and gentlemen, let's get to work on literacy."
And if you want to hear that song, you can find it in the Rotary literacy
materials, or you can learn it directly from me. Listen
to it now.
I want to participate in any activities that can help people develop themselves.
Thank you.
Robert Cajuste
People • Food/Agriculture • Education • Human Rights• Art/Culture