The Village Classroom

“we become walking video screens and living newspapers, the only channels that can take people out of the censored limits of their homelands.” -Written by Pico Iyer in Why We Travel

As soon as my feet touched down on the battered soil I knew that this place was unlike any other I had visited through all of my travels. I had landed in Haiti for the first time and I instantly knew why it was labeled as “one of the poorest nations in the world”. The air was smog-filled and the roads were stricken with dust picked up by the vehicles that sparsely passed by. I carefully began walking being extra mindful of the plethora of animals that crawled around the soil. I walked for a couple of minutes and suddenly encountered a little village that consisted of only four huts that appeared to be falling apart before my eyes. As I continued my trek across this sad and desolate place, I heard a small voice coming from ahead.

“What is ‘google’?” the small voice questioned.

I was startled at first because it seemed weird to me that someone didn’t know what this popular search engine was. I stuttered for a moment and then it occurred to me that this young Haitian boy was curious about the name plastered in colorful lowercase letters across my tee shirt.

I pondered for a few minutes about how to answer this question. To me, it seemed so simple and not even thought worthy. But, to this small boy and presumably his entire village my shirt read some sort of a foreign concept.

“It is a search engine on a computer, where you type in any question or word and millions of answers instantly appear,” I stated quite matter-of-factly.

In my moments of pondering the one small boy I was talking to unexpectedly multiplied into a crowd of about ten adults and children all standing around waiting to hear about this great phenomenon.

Their faces went from curious to excited then awe stricken with each word that poured out of my mouth. I told them of all the wonders of the World Wide Web. I explained how one could access writing, film, and television with the click of a keyboard. I told the stories of the people who became world famous simply because they uploaded a video online. As I told the stories, I could see these boys and girls, and men and women become inspired and excited. They suddenly wanted to bring change to their home. They wanted to make this phenomenon a reality in their own lives and those of their posterity.

It amazed me that a trip intended to bring about simple good will to a poor nation was instantly transformed into an eye opening experience for the people I encountered. That tiny village was made into a classroom of sorts and the young village people became the inspired students of a foreign traveler.