Had a minor scare last night which will be slightly unimpressive to you guys. As I lay awake around midnight, trying to decide if it was above or below 90 in our room, barely able to stand it with my oscillating fan 36 inches from my face…..the power goes off in the hotel. See, your reaction is probably a snicker and a shrug as you sit in your 70 degree house of comfort. For me, I was about at the end of the rope. I can take alot of things, but being hot at night is tough. I had heard that the power could go off for hours at a time, but about the time I started really worrying, 10 minutes had passed and the fan began oscillating (I love to say that word) again.
Today was a relatively laid back day. We set up a Vacation Bible School for the students. Haiti is so different than the states. While we have to pencil in VBS on our refrigerator calendars or in our iCalendar app months in advance…we mentioned VBS to a few of the villagers the day before. Not having any idea of how many kids would show up, we hoped for 30 and planned for 60. When we arrived at 9 AM, the classroom was already full. All in all, we had 82 participants. The culture here is a daily culture. What they eat, what they do for the day is planned on a daily basis. They have routines around cooking and cleaning but outside of that it’s just day to day. As we walk or drive through the towns and villages, we see small groups of people sitting on.porches and yards just talking, socializing and even singing.
The kids are several years behind ours in motor skills. They usually have trouble with holding pencils, writing and cutting. However, we did a pretty creative craft and many of the kids, thanks to the school have advanced to the point where they were self sufficient.
Jennifer and Lulu who came here from.Taiwan brought many samples of food that we passed out for the kids to sample. With my fish allergy, I didn’t try any as the food included fish cookies!? I guess fish is abundant in Taiwan….the last kind of cookie I would want is a fish cookie…and the kids were in agreement. There were many other foods like pineapple cake and sugar coated nuts that they loved.
After VBS, Ella and I walked through many trails into the “jungle” to deliver a care package to one of the students. Some sponsors send packages and Trezo delivers them and takes pics to send back to sponsors. It was eye-opening as we walked along the trails to see the many small huts and shacks, people washing clothes and bathing in the creek and drying them laid out in the bushes. It also gave us a sense of the day to day life again. They walk hundreds of yards, multiple times a day for fresh water. In their spare time, they sit around much like old men at the barbershop or Waffle House in the states.
We got back to the school, finished painting a bit, then rode to a beautiful Western-style hotel in Jacmel abiut 15 minutes away by motorcycle…we are becoming much more comfortable on the motorcycle taxis, which means I have fewer visions of my helmet less head bouncing off the pavement as we fictitiously crash.
We ate at the restaurant at this hotel. On the way, we got Petrol which was interesting. The pumps are guarded by Security with pistol-gripped pump shotguns and the “cashier” pumps your gas and gives you change out of a backpack.
At the restaurant, Ella had an awesome pasta dishes with melted cheese that was sizzling when served…she gobbled it down. I opted for the ham and cheese club sandwich and just prayed that it would resemble ham in some way. Thankfully, it could have come from Cracker Barrel it was so good.
Three more nights to go. Ella is really doing well. Kay has been here many times and continues to marvel at how well Ella adapts to different environments and cultural differences. Kay said it is a pretty rare trait. For instance, I was missing Ella for about 10 minutes today and I found her surrounded by girls from.the school going through their pictures and learning their names. These were the older girls,,,probably 14 to 16.
Three more nights to go….
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