Thanksgiving In Haiti

While everyone was at home enjoying a nice thanksgiving meal with family and friends and lots of good food............We were too. We had a frozen turkey reserved at one of the grocery stores in Port-au-Prince. Yes we reserved it, we thought it might be one of the only butterballs in the country. Although I wasnt able to walk down the street to my aunts house, see my cousins and be with my family like we normally do, here we have our own little family. We were joined by Barak, a priest, a visitor Sr. Jean who has been with us for three weeks. Also it wasnt my moms appetizers, and my aunts cooking and desserts, but we had a good Americanized Thanksgiving. We had a turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, gravy, and I made my moms pumpkin bars!  The food at thanksgiving time is really a plus, and something I missed, but we celebrated and right outside our gates were people who didnt have enough to have even one meal.
                I didnt get to come home to be with my family, see all my friends, go shopping with my mom at 4am for nothing but to watch all the crazy mommies fight over a toy, have pumpkin creamer in my coffee, and watch National Lampoons Christmas Vacation the family favorite.  It was a year for change for even my family who went to the other side of the family for thanksgiving (I believe for the first time in all that I have been alive). Although I missed them, I got to skype them, hear what they said they were thankful for at dinner, and hear their voices.
        

This is our dinner table. Laurie took the picture, but she was there too.

 Pre-dinner table.










                                                                                                    I got the honor to carve the turkey...

Thanksgiving day started by going to visit the schools. We have had a visitor here, Sr. Jean. and she has never seen the schools. Being conscious of the meaning of the day, waking up here made it 100x more obvious that I and so many others have so much to be thankful for.
We went to watch the flag raising and then go to the school across the river to see the progress of the project! My favorite part of the flag raising is when they have to pray. They are supposed to be closing their eyes, but when there are white people there, this makes it ten times more challenging for them. I got a few pictures of this precious moment, and was appropriate for Thanksgiving day.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

                                                        

We then went across the river where kids who are too small to cross the river go to school. There is also a little girl who has been at the school for three years. She has been in the preschool because she has a developmental disability, here there is no means to help children like her.  Here is a few pictures of her, with the smile that says she is so full of life.

On Friday, we went to Jean Rabel. A place were other RJM sisters live, and our friend Guardyne who was here with us for a month. These three days were a little vacation for us. We were able to relax, have some fun, and see a new part of Haiti. We went to the market that is really hard to describe. There is tons of people selling items for hair, bedding, clothes, fresh cut meat, rice and , fruits and veggies. If you need something, that is where you go. The streets are full people, who are walking, tons of women selling, few people buying and as one of the sisters said " if you need to talk to someone, you will find them at the market" On market day, thats the place to be. We also went to the "beach" which was full of big rocks and garbage. We were able to find an area with sand, but we were weary to go in and just stuck our feet in and found shells.


Jen said, lets take a picture together.
Then she said lets pretend I am pushing you
 in (the running water filled with garbage and
who knows what else)....

                                               



This donkey was just standing while his owner was talking. Im sure he was planing his escape.

 This boy was following us through the whole market. Carrying his chair on his head, then when we parted him, he decided to carry it above his head. He didnt talk to us, just following the white people.

This is us at dinner, again Laurie took the picture... We ate our dinner in about 20 minutes, but after we shared stories for maybe an hour or more each night. Mostly told by Sr. Nazareth who is Spanish who combines English Kreyol and Spanish in her stories. She doesnt try to be funny, but the stories she tells are priceless a lot to do with the word choices and integration of multiple languages. She told us about how they were robbed and the money ended up in the latrine, and about a woman who had something wrong with her breasts and they were past her knees.

 

Also you can see in the picture there is no door behind me. Where they live, they have no doors, its all open air. Their showers and toilets are under their big roof or overhang, and has walls, but it is still in the open air.Being there did result in a few bug bites, but they live closer to the people, and has a welcoming  refreshing feel.

It took 4 hours to get there, driving through the mountains there is not a shell station to stop at to use the bathroom.... So the side of the mountain was the only choice. Here is a picture of Laurie that Jen took when I was using the facilities because there might have been Haitians across the mountain with a clear view of what I was doing...

                                This little girl and I were playing, she fell and scraped her hand
                                    and this is the expression she had as she was standing up....

  The beach we were at, along with some fisherman boats that I thought were so cool!

I went to a meeting with Jen and ended up playing with the kids.....

                                    This is how the little ones line up to go to class in the morning.

                                                               And a little toddler butt....

Life in Haiti

             Before coming to Haiti I couldnt have prepared myself for what daily life was like at Kay Jezi Mari. I didnt factor in the man that wakes us up at 5 am most monday mornings who is  “preaching” but just sounds like he is screaming with a preset song on a keyboard in the background. I also didnt factor in that there might be cold weather here.... since we dont have heated water, that means a cold body and freezing water when you want to be wearing a sweatshirt. Other factors are being sure the dogs are properly taken care of (they are the princes of the house, worse than my dad spoils his dogs), also realizing first thing in the morning you have to be prepared to possibly greet a group of people waiting for something, usually money, skyping my family when they are all together knowing they are all having a great time, and also realizing that you may be stopped from what you are doing to go help and do something else. This being said, every day here is completely different.

            It has been a while since I have updated this (which my mother has reminded me of), and during the past few weeks, we have been incredibly busy with things around the house, projects, and we have worked with a lot of visitors coming through Gros-Morne.

           A few weeks ago I decided that I wanted to go back to Pendus, where I was for my immersion week. It wasnt there for 24hrs when Jen and Barak showed up...It was the day Sandy started to effect us. They came to get me, due to weather conditions, or as one lady said “ the whites have come to save you”. They came to get me, but we had about 5 days of constant rain which made things here very interesting.  The constant downpour impacted everything. The rivers rose a lot, so the kids didnt have school, people couldnt get to and from the market, there was mud everywhere, and even after the rain was finished for four days, traveling was difficult. There were also a few deaths near us, the river current was too strong and took the lives of those people. During this time, kreyol teacher also couldnt get to us, the road he uses was wiped out by the river.... I wasnt really upset that we didnt have class.....however, the rain was a burden to a lot of peoples daily life.

            After that week of rain, we had a visitor (Nick) here working on a project for a pre-k class the sisters support. The class is across the river, and the floor of the school is mud. Nick helped us begin the process to build a platform for the children. Previously they were in mud, especially when it rained, it wasnt an ideal situation for learning. So we did a lot of preparations for that, and it is in the process of being finished.

            There was a man here who is a puppeteer, and went to the grade school, and performed for the kids. They along with the teachers, really enjoyed it.

            We went to the market with our cook, to experience that. It was such a cool day. We were running around to the stands, getting what we need, but mostly experiencing what a lot of women do every day. I also took a few pictures....

            More recently we had a medical group come in, who has been doing mobil clinics for the past week. This was really awesome. Not only because we got to do something we dont normally get to do, they saw almost 100 people a day. Ideally it is set up so that the community gathers the sickest people to be seen, and the doctors do what they can to treat there, or they refer them to the hospital. However in a few situations, we werent seeing extremely sick people, but a lot of people with a headache, stomach pain, back, and leg pain. All resulting, from dehydration, a lot of strenuous work, and malnutrition, most everyone seen got vitamins, tums and ibuprofen. However there were cases of kids with hernias, a woman had no idea she was pregnant, a woman with a bad infection due to diabetes, one very very sick child, skin problems, worms, and eye problems. 

A little boy who was gnawing on his crackers.

For those of you who dont know my obsession with elderly people, I have one. I have seen some of the most heartwarming elderly.people....of course I asked them if I could take their picture. I aslo had Jen helped me, because I was stalking this lady for so long, I couldnt bare to ask her for another picture. Jen of course did it, and she got the best shot of this woman..... I cried. Of course she made fun of me, but I make fun of her when she cries at pictures of bulldogs....

This woman continuously talked to me, although I couldn't understand her 80% of the time. We were in her town a second day, and she brought me some limes and kissed me alot... Im not really sure why....but she was so cute.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was the most beautiful woman. I was so obsessed, and the joy on her face brought tears to my eyes.

I just loved her and her hat....

These are just other pictures I have taken of kids, scenery and places we have gone.

 

The cutest little boy singing to himself....

walking across the river.

In Port-au-Prince.

This was during the storm, a street became a river.

A little boy wanted to take a picture of us...this is what we felt was appropriate at the time.

She was sitting in the back of a classroom.

All the boys took off their shirt to play soccer.

we handed out toothbrushes.

then they showed us how to use them...

enjoying lunch at school.

Just a good picture of Jen that a little boy took.

A girl with special needs carrying rocks.

The photos dont do the scenery justice.

 Jen and I still take motos whenever we can, eat a lot of avocados, do a lot of singing, read Harry Potter in my bed, attempt to make dinner with no microwave or a stove with variation of flame other than high. We take out cameras everywhere with us. Jen puts up with me, but I put up with her. We are like the sister neither one of us has ever had... Most importantly we are enjoying are time here. We talk a lot about the realization that we are living in Haiti, and that its not really a dream. I wake up in the morning, and have to remind myself sometimes of the poem by Pedro Arrupe....

 Nothing is more practical than
finding God, than
falling in Love
in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love,
and it will decide everything.

being challenged to remember things everyday is really a blessing,  but waking up healthy and ready to face the day to live among the Haitians here in Haiti is an even greater blessing.  I feel is if I am learning more from them, then they are from me.

Jen also updated her blog about all the visitors we had, and shes a really great writer, its worth reading her blog.