2nd Haiti Trip – Vol. VI

I arrived in Haiti last Tuesday.  There isn’t any way to describe how the days progress and what pops up in front of us that we see is something that NEEDS done!  I will give just a brief description of some of the things getting done at the house and then a detail from a day.

Bill hurt his back just before I arrived by riding in the back of the pick-up so someone else could be more comfortable inside.  He has been avoiding going very far till it improves so we have been unable to go to the mountains.  It has also been a time of trying to get some things done on the house.  The gardeners have been clearing the rubble to make places to plant vegetables.  We had them plant several papaya and banana plants which grow within a year.

The plumbers finished the fixtures inside the house and are working on piping outside so we can water the garden when it is in.  The electricians have most of the receptacles in and we had electricity for the first time on Friday.  However, it is seldom on very long. Last night it came on about 1 am and went off at 6 am.  I doubt if we have it again today but we’ll see.  Thanks to the Mennonite compound next door, we have water most of the time as when they run their generator or the electricity is on, we can fill our storage tanks on the roof and have water until we use it all or the power comes back on.  It is SUCH a blessing to be able to jump in the shower and cool off.

Here is my diary from the last couple of days. Sorry it is so long, but I don’t have time to edit it.  I just want to give you a taste of our lives here.

Friday morning in Haiti.  The last few days have been spent at the house except for all the trips to town to pick up the girls, get supplies, and take them back.

Sunrise from the roof where we sleep

Bill and I are sleeping on the roof.  Heavenly!  The stars overhead, a lovely breeze blowing after a hot day, and the sunrise over the mountains at 5 am.  So another day in Haiti begins.

We get up and head to the mission to pick up the girls who live behind it with a family.  We stop at the mission to check and see if their electricity is on so we can use the internet.  Usually not.  Some American visitors are there and we have had some lovely visits with them.  We also enjoy a glass of juice from their breakfast buffet.

Market in Fonds-Parisien

We go behind to Mr. Morel’s house where the girls are.  They are usually ready around seven.  Most days we head to the market to buy the food supplies we need for the day.  That always takes an hour as everyone wants to charge the “blancs” way too much and the girls haggle and argue to get it reasonable.  If we overpaid once, it would just about be all over.  Today, Jesse went to get a 10′ piece of plastic pipe that should have been fairly cheap and they asked for $40 American dollars!  No go!

Bill has been spending the days trying to find time to rest his hurt back but in reality he spends it trying to get gardeners, plumbers, and electricians to understand what needs done and to do it right, a nearly impossible task!  Though the gardeners we have hired from the mountains have done an amazing job of picking up and moving the rocks so we have some places to plant, getting them to plant things where we want is another story.  We hope to get several banana and papaya trees planted today, in a row, alternating trees.  We’ll see how it goes!

Our cleared back yard with garden beds ready

We are feeding anywhere between 12 – 20 people each meal.  The workers have not had breakfast when they get here.  The gardeners are staying the whole week before going back to the mountains on Saturday so they need something to eat, too.  And cooking is an ordeal!!!

Just making pancakes and eggs for everyone took two hours as some people had to go to town to pick up the banana trees before the pancakes were ready.  More workmen kept showing up.  Then the camp stove we were cooking on ran out of fuel before we were done cooking.  And so it goes……….

I’ve been trying to communicate having meals on time as it is so hard to plan anything but that is about impossible.  The first night I was here, we didn’t get back from PAP till 6 pm.  Then the girls started cooking and it was nearly nine before we ate.  I’ve cooked a couple of time but to get a pot of water boiling on their charcoal stoves takes time.  The chickens have been very tough so it’s been hard to enjoy them.  But I keep trying to speed things up.  I like to see my food at night.  We did manage to eat by 6:30 pm last night but it is nearly dark.  We are on the same time zone as MO but so far east of there, daylight starts much earlier and ends earlier, too.

I gave them my “speechifying” about the trash in the yard yesterday.  I had about 3-4 of the girls and another young man who spend time here picking up trash.  I asked them what they thought Jesus thought about trash.  “No good” they said.  Correct!  So I talked to them about how I had a passion for having our own place here with NO TRASH (manmade, that is).  When you ask them to pick up trash, they immediately start picking up the dead leaves and organic matter that is laying around.  Those things will break down someday and be dirt which is scarce!  We want the man made trash picked up and it’s everywhere.  Within these walls, though, and someday in front of our front wall, I want it clean.  We’ll see how it goes.

There are two farmers from the mountains here today that Bill is trying to talk with about the situation in the mountains but he keeps having to leave to supervise the gardeners and plumbers.  It is so hard to communicate getting things done properly!

Frida & Laura from PAP show up.  They spend the night.

SATURDAY: Up early.  We have Frida & Laura at the market in Fonds by 6 am but they can’t find everything they want.  So off we go to Croix des Bouquets.  What an experience.  I turned on the video on my camera and just walked around.  Hope I got the angle right.  I’m feeling really funny about sticking my camera in people’s faces so I was trying to be discreet.  The filth the people are sitting in seliing food, the croding, trucks squeezing through as people grab their “store” and move it back to make room.  Unbelievable.

Frida and Laura spent $50 on the food for one nice meal for many.   Scrawny live chickens are $6 each!  We took them back to the house, then headed back to HCM to pick up the girls and visit the Americans one more time.  They gave us three mosquito nets!  Wonderful people.  We really liked them.

Back to the house.  Frida, Laura, and some of the girls cook for four hours!  We finally eat about one.  In the meantime, the gardeners finish planting the banana trees.  They get ready to leave for their mountain home.  We give the old man the two cans of powdered Enfamil and try to explain to him how to mix it for the baby in the mountains whose mother has no milk.  We could not find a baby bottle anywhere, even at the mission hospital!

The electricians and plumber are finally nearly finished in the bathrooms so I clean ours so I can show the girls what I want done on Monday.  Things are too hectic today and it’s already too hot.

After lunch, Bill and I visit with Frida and Laura, trying to figure out some prices for the meal.  We spend so much on food and we need to get a budget.  We talked with them through Jolius about how Haitians eat.  They’ve been eating in the lap of luxury here!   They said most Haitians eat something like spaghetti or eggs for breakfast and rice and beans at noon or one.  Most of them don’t really eat supper thought hopefully they can afford a mango or banana or something.  Only two meals a day, if that.  We’re going to start eating lighter with only one major meal and try to keep track of the money better.  It just goes at the markets!!

An elderly lady from the poor village next door came to see us seeking some help.  She and her husband had ten children, all grown now.  Two of them live with her along with five of her grandchildren.  Her husband died 7 months ago.  She is trying to feed the children but it is hard.

Washing Polymene’s feet

Bill had Nono bring out a basin of water to soak her feet.  Then he washed them.  I scrubbed her broken filthy toe nails and then rubbed her feet.  There seemed to be a depression on her foot about 1/2 inch wide and I asked her if it was sore.  She said, yes.  The rats bite her at night!!!  Nono gave her a pedicure.  I took her picture and showed her on the camera, the 1st one of her life!  What an afternoon for her!

We gave her some rice and beans to cook for her family tonight and told her we would come and see her house later this afternoon.  She says her husband bought some land to build them a new house before he died so her family would probably be a great one to build a house for.

We took Laura, Frida, and her children to Fonds to catch a tap tap to PAP and got caught in a funeral possession!  Took forever.  Finally dropped them off and came back to the house.

We walked over to the village next door to visit the woman’s home.  Children of all ages came out of the woodwork so to speak only there wasn’t any wood work, only mud or concrete huts with metal or thatched roofs.  I doubt if many of them had seen a camera before.  They were so excited about seeing their pictures on the screen after I took them.

We walked to the back of the village to where the woman lived with her grandchildren and children.  Not much of a house.  But I asked if I could look inside.  The front room was nearly bare but the dirt floor was swept clean.  Such a life as this woman has lived, raising ten children and now some of her grandchildren.  Our interpreter told us that the children of this village did not go to school.   Bless their hearts.

Our gardener, his family, and village home

We also visited the homes of two of the men who are working helping the plumber put in pipes in the yard and working to level out the rocks and mess in the yard.  They make about $30/week and work hard!!!  I hadn’t realized that they were from next door!  So now we have met their families and we’re talking about adopting the village and seeing what could be done there.  SO MUCH TO DO and we have to leave in nine days!

Back at the house, it finally starts to rain after no rain for three weeks.  And this is the rainy season!  It was lovely.  It stops and an hour later, the roof is dry enough to put our mats down and go to sleep.  Not much of a breeze tonight.

Thank you for keeping us in your prayers.  We hope to go back to the mountains next week before we head home May 18th.  So much to do and so little time.  May God bless you all!