Sad Days

Where to begin, it’s been a few days…  Saturday was pretty uneventful except for dinner. Right outside of the orphanage there is a “night club” called the Stop Over, it’s also a restaurant. On the weekends we can hear them blasting their music ALL night. So we went there for dinner because we have been giving our cook Saturdays off. She literally spends ALL day every day in the kitchen cooking for us. Has breakfast ready at 7, lunch at 12 and dinner at 530. Breakfast is always either pancakes and peanut butter and bananas or eggs, skillet cooked viena sausages (so gross), REALLY good breakfast potatoes, peanut butter, bread, bananas or rice pudding, peanut butter, bread and bananas or baked oatmeal, peanut butter, bread and bananas. Lunch is always either spaghetti with bread or tuna and peanut butter or random meats and peanut butter. Dinner usually consists of almost always, fried plantains, rice, red sauce, pickleys (chopped up onions and peppers soaked in vinegar, SO good) and some sort of fried meat. Pretty much no healthy meal…and pretty sure I won’t be eating peanut butter or bananas for a LONG time after this trip. All that to say; we ate at the Stop Over on Saturday and had, meat, fried plantains, pickleys, and French fries. Oh so healthy.

So Sunday we had our normal 3 hour long church service in Creole. And then we went to visit some people who have been working with the clean water for Haiti mission. They are going back to the states for a bit to figure out what their next mission in life is. So we drove to this other mission where they were spending their last week. Kendall and I rode in the back of the truck so we could get sun and it was amazing! Besides being uncomfortable and can’t imagine all the dust I inhaled, but I needed my sun time. This place was so beautiful. It was about an hour away, but such a difference. The land was so lush. Around Montrouis most natural resources are depleted, the land is pretty bare. But where we went, Borrell, they seemed to have clean looking water and vegetation everywhere. It was a nice change of scenery. The facilities at this mission were really nice as well. They were almost finished building a dorm that could house up to 200 people, missionaries, and underneath a new cafeteria and kitchen. They run a Haitian school of around 400 kids. They have two houses for full time missionaries, the teachers and their families. They are in the process of trying to start a school for the missionaries children, there are about ten of them. I wish I had a picture of the merry go round on their play ground! The base was a circle that spins like normal, but then they had little chairs welded onto the surface. So there were four chairs which the kids could sit in and be spun. It was SO weird! But resourceful I suppose.
Nothing really eventful happened the next couple days, just school and normal life around Canaan; then yesterday happened. About an hour before dinner Kendall and I walked down the road to exchange our sprite bottles and get new ones. Their sodas come in half liter glass bottles, which they always reuse. Every place I have been has crates full of soda bottles, when the crate is filled with empty bottles they take them back to be reused. Quite resourceful, we could learn a thing or two from these people. So when you buy the first bottle its usually 25 goude, which is just over 50 cents in America. Then when you return the bottle the next soda only costs you 17 goude. So you save money and recycle. Anyways that tangent to get to my point…
So we walked down to get sprites and on the way up Kendall wanted to take me to the village just outside of Canaan. I had never seen or been into this village, but it is where most of the children that play just outside of Canaan are from. Kendall and Caroline know most of these children and have been to their house before.  So she took me to this village and I finally got to see how these people really truly live. It is bad. We stepped into this “house” a concrete room with cement floor, no more than 30 square feet, if even. There was a plastic shelf as you walked in with their dishes and silver, and random odd and ends. There were two beds, lifted off the ground. It looked like they slept on and under the beds. Then in between the beds a sheet laid out where I assume someone else slept. This room housed a mother, father and four children. One was just a baby 4 months old. They had a stack of plastic chairs. Immediately as we stepped in the house, the father stood up from his chair and got another chair and offered them to us. So we sat, as they stood. That’s how they all are. When a white person comes anywhere near they treat you with such respect and are SO nice. We couldn’t converse much because, well I speak zero Creole and Kendall just knows the basics right now. We sat and played with the baby for a bit and then said our goodbyes. It was rough finally seeing the inside of one of their homes. You can hear about it, but being there is so much different. The little boy from that house then took us to where many of the other children were. There were about 10 kids and they literally just CLING to you. I don’t know exactly what they think of us, or why they are so in love with us Blancs, but it’s very odd. I have never seen these children in my life and they just wouldn’t let go; grabbing onto your hands and arms, almost fighting to give you a hug, hanging all over you. We said hello to some of the women around. One of them quickly got her baby dressed and handed him to Kendall. Saying he was hungry. She said his mother was sick and could not breast feed him and they had no food. But there was absolutely nothing we could do. It’s hard because yes, all I wanted to do was give them money or food, but it just doesn’t work like that.  Once you give them anything then they expect it and it becomes an issue. The baby looked healthy and was actually pretty chubby. It definitely would have been different if he looked physically malnourished. But any chance they have for maybe some food or money, they will take. So these children stay clinging to us and walk all the way with us to the Canaan property line, I almost couldn’t get them to let me go. It was such an overwhelming feeling. Most of them did not have shoes; one of the boys about 5 years old was grasping onto us and was completely naked. A few girls just in their underwear and a few that were pretty much clothed. Still, describing this does no justice. It was a very sad day.

Most families live off of less than 2 US dollars a day…to feed their WHOLE family. Yes things are cheap here for me as an American, but for what little money they make, things are insanely expensive for them. They have almost completely depleted their resources here in Haiti and most everything has to be imported which means things are much more expensive. These people are farming the same way they were 400 years ago. There are not many places in the world that have not developed with the passing years. Here they have not been taught any differently and it has caused for terrible farming land and almost total deforestation. All the mountains in pictures I have taken used to be filled with trees. Now nothing is left. The only reason we have trees here at Canaan is because when they first started building, they planted the trees. I have seen pictures of when this place was first started there was not a tree in sight. Now it is so shaded, we really don’t get any sun. If you are down at the ocean and look up, you can spot Canaan, it really is the only place covered.

Tomorrow we are going to the beach; it will be good to clear my head. Things have been tense around here and the days have been hard. I hope next week can bring some joy to our lives here at Canaan.