Long Days...

Wednesday:

Things have been pretty rough around here today. If you ever thought politics in America were bad…nothing compares.  Their elections have pretty much been ongoing for about a year now. They were scheduled last February but because of the earthquake postponed until November. I don’t know all the detail I have read up on some of it.

                “Due to the January 2010 earthquake, election was originally been indefinitely postponed;^[6] although November 28 was then decided as the date to hold the Presidential and legislative elections. Following the earthquake, there were concerns of instability in the country, and the election came amid international pressure over instability in the country.^[7] The election was termed in the media as a "seismic" one. This would be the third democratic election in Haitian history.”

On Tuesday, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti warned employees that the security situation could deteriorate Wednesday and they should make preparations.

So they announced that the first round results would be today. No one knew at what time, but just sometime today. So we have pretty much been on lock down around here. I mean nothing is bad in the town we are in, but we definitely cannot travel ANYWHERE. Not for a while! A couple of us were supposed to go to the chiropractor this afternoon , which at that time no results had been announced. But Pastor Henry said if we went we should be prepared to maybe have to spend the night there. No thank you!!! I received an email from the travel embassy that I signed up for when I came over here saying how unsafe it was to travel today and throughout the coming week. All the banks and most businesses closed early today so they could go home and be safe. There has been rioting in the town of Port and a few other cities. We are lucky to live in the country and there is really nothing near us. It just means we can’t travel anywhere. The airlines even shut down.

Thursday:

The voting results came down to three candidates. There were a lot of issues deciding whether it would come down to three or two. They announced the three, and spent all night making the decision, which was announced this morning, that only two would be in the final running. It’s really a lot of randomness. I am not sure what “rules” or “laws” they are following, if any. But apparently the two candidates left make the majority of the people happy. So last I heard the rioting has not been so bad. I believe businesses opened back up and things are sort of settled. Then Monday another issue hits. The current president was scheduled to step down Feb. 7^th. However the second round of voting will not be done until March 20^th and those results are not scheduled to come out until April 16^th. So they still have a long way to go before another president is appointed.  The “laws” that I have heard are, the current president can stay up to 3 months longer because his inauguration took longer than expected in 2006, (not sure of that full story). However if he steps down on Monday, the next highest ranking person in office would take his place for no less than 45 days and no more than 96, something ridiculous like that. Everyone’s guess is that the current President will stay; which is going to make a whole lot of people unhappy. Apparently they hate him so much that when he does finally step down, he will have to leave the country or probably be killed.

On top of the current president and trying to get a new one, we have “Baby Doc” who was President in the 80s and was exiled out of the country. He decided to come back on January 16^th, which caused riots and chaos. He was arrested the following day, facing possible charges for embezzlement. On January 18^th he was charged with corruption and will be held before a judge in Port-au-Prince for trial. So amongst his return there is also another former hated president trying to get in the country. It just goes on and on. Just so thankful I am nowhere near Port. We are settled in quite Canaan.

Well besides all this political drama, I got to see new things yesterday.   We went for a walk through a local village. I have driven past a lot of the homes and people, but never walked past to really see how they live. First of all they rarely EVER see white people and just stare you down. It’s very awkward… They yell BLANC, BLANC, which means white. Everyone is very nice and all say hello. It is really hard to communicate when you don’t speak their language. I wish I could send mental pictures…but it still wouldn’t sink in, it’s not the same as being here. Most of the people were barefoot, not many clothes, bathing in buckets, a trail of about 12 people were walking down the mountain to get water. One boy came charging down the road on a donkey, which was pretty hilarious. We walked past where they have market. It really is like a farmers market in the states, just a lot more sketch… There was this beautiful mural for a Kindergarten class, and then I looked inside. It was a stone wall and a door, through the door was the classroom. It all outdoors, small benches and a roof made of branches from palm trees, sort of hut-like. Not what I expected to see behind the beautiful painting. But that is how they are down here. The streets are so colorful with signs and paintings. The inside is the sad part. We walked through this village and it took us to the main street of Montrouis, from there we could walk back up to Canaan. On our way we stopped at another Orphanage just down the road. There were a lot more babies and most of them were very sick. One boy had cerebral palsy, he was four and SO tiny. Another boy had swelling in his brain, his head was sooo huge. We are lucky to have been able to save most of the children that come through Canaan and have the funding to make sure they are taken care of. I am not very familiar with this other orphanage, but I know it is run by a doctor so I assume they are pretty well taken care of as well. That’s probably why they have worse case children than us. So on our walk back up the hill to Canaan, we met with the regular children that hang out just outside of our land. The one’s who don’t have shoes and barely have clothes. We talked with them for a while, thankfully Kendall knows some Creole. On our way up Elise was driving through, so we got in the back of the truck. The kids asked if they could ride along. I REALLY wish at this point I had a camera. There were about 5 little boys and they all hopped in the back of the truck. We drove them up the hill just where our property starts, it was maybe a 30 second ride, but the faces of those children were PRICELESS. The happiest I have seen a kid! A 30 second ride in the back of a pick-up truck made their day! It was a good ending for me to yet another shocking day…

Joy can be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.

- Leo Tolstoy

Hopeful

The older kids are back to school this week. After a week off their brains seem to have shut down lol. We were pretty much all the same in school though so I understand. It is good to finally have them back! One of the girls doesn’t even know how many times she has taken this one math test; she has failed it so many times. So I gave her a couple practice tests and I am hoping she will pass tomorrow! I am hoping some how my efforts will pay off. I sit in a little room where they all come and ask for help…it has been a little overwhelming these past two days, because they are all so behind and all need help. I have 8 kids at a time needing separate attention. That has been a struggle. I sent a few back to class and told them I would come get them….but since I still don’t have all the names and faces memorized that didn’t work out too well!
We have one of the few Mamba clinics in the area. It is a program to feed malnourished children. It costs 90$ to sponsor one child. They feed them a peanut butter like substance that has all the nutrients they need. One of the girls is here for a year helping with Mamba. Every Tuesday people bring their children to the clinic. They weigh them and measure them and according to a chart see if they are eligible for the program. Some kids are malnourished but not bad enough to fit into the program and have to be turned away. It costs them nothing to get the food. They come every Tuesday for regular weigh-ins to see the progress of the child. Today they had a one year old who weighed 8 pounds….I have yet to see pictures, but I cannot even imagine! It takes a lot to sit down in that clinic every Tuesday and be brought these tiny babies. Some that will never make it through. Caroline does an amazing job being so heartfelt to all the children and parents. It’s not easy seeing it and it’s not easy to have to turn some of them away. They are hoping to be able to open another clinic about an hour away and run it on Wednesdays.
The one day I did spend some time in the Mamaba clinic, I also got to see the actual Clinic for sick people in general. It shocked me…You walk in and there is a tiny room with a curtain dividing it in half; a cot in each half. So a room just big enough for two cots and a divider, and that is where they see all the patients. Then the next room over is the pharmacy. Just shelves of medications in absolutely no order, just piled up everywhere. How they find things I have no clue! They are working on building a new clinic that they have set to open April 4^th. It has five different rooms and is MUCH bigger. Recently a clinic has opened up on the mountain as well, but before people would walk up to SIX hours to come to this clinic at Canaan. Imagine being sick and having to walk 6 hours?! I went down to the clinic around 8 am and there were at least 30-40 people in line. One doctor, two rooms and a line full of people ALL day; a serious tough job. Please pray that we can get this new clinic up and running! There are so many projects here that just never seem to get finished. Either they run out of money, or don’t have enough people. It was a huge step for them to set a date for opening, so hopefully they can make it happen! Also pray for this little one year old child...he has a LONG way to go!

Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,--'Wait and hope'.

New Day

Another day full of new things...
Saturday, the ONLY day of sleeping in...I couldn't sleep past 7. :( Naomi made blueberry muffins which started the early morning out great! We all planned on going into town today, so around 1030 we left for St. Marc. It's about 30 min up the road, where they go to the deli mart (grocery store).
This town was crazy busy. Most of the people in the town have motorcycles. So amongst the regular cars, big Mack trucks and tap-taps (taxi) there are bikes everywhere. All this traffic and no driving rules makes for an interesting experience! Cars are literally centimeters from each other, but somehow always seem to squeeze by. This town is busy and filthy. A lot different from the town Canaan is in. We stop at a store to get some keys made but the guy tries to charge us too much so we left for the deli mart. This "grocery store" consists of four aisles. Items differ each day just depending upon what comes in stock. Half the items are American and half I have never seen before. Everything is priced in Haitian dollars. But the money we use is goude. I still have not figured it all out. I do know one American dollar equals 40 goude. But the Haitian dollar throws it all off. I basically shopped having NO clue what my total bill was going to be in the end. Like a bag of chips was 23 Haitian $ and I still have no clue how much American that is. Either way I ended up spending just over 13 American $. We then went to the restaurant upstairs that had burgers, deli sandwiches and pizza. We all ordered deli sandwiches. Still have no idea what I actually ordered. But I got bread, ham, cheese, mayo and ketchup....not a fan. The ketchup thing totally threw it off. But I paid four dollars for it so I ate it!
Side note... All these places have security guards at the door with a massive gun. Just hangin out...
After lunch we went back to the deli mart to get ice cream which was amazing!
I guess I can't really describe the way I felt in his town. It was SO crowded and so dirty and so poverty stricken. Just sitting in the car waiting for the keys to be made we were eating our ice cream and a lady and her child asked us for money for food. How awful did I feel... She just stood there and stared at us.
The town sort of reminded me of a much poorer version of china town. Little booths set up all down the streets. One place selling tires and right next to it a booth selling phone chargers, the next clothes. It was all very strange. Oh and a tap-tap by the way is their version of a taxi. It's a small truck railings up the sides and they cram as many people as possible in the back. I'm not really sure how the thing even goes. It is jam packed with people! And they will run behind it and jump on to catch these things. Anyways the reason it's called tap-tap is because you tap on the side or hood of truck when you want it to stop. I am sure I will ride in one of these before I leave...should be an interesting experience.
The poverty of these people still shocks me every day. The way they live, their one bedroom "houses" dirt floors and 6 people or more piled in there. I saw a small child maybe 5 or 6 bathing in a plastic tub not much bigger than a kitchen sink. Another kid around 8 or so walking on the side of the road with no shoes and no clothes.
I am so thankful every night for my bed here and my soft sheets and the rug beside my bed. And most definitely my mosquito net! Last Saturday I spent on the beach and this Saturday in a crazy town. I can only imagine what's to come...

There are things you do because they feel right and they make no sense and they may make no money and it may be the real reason we are here, to love each other and to eat each other’s cooking and say it was good.

  -Real Reason- storypeople.com

 

Blessings

Well for the past two days I haven't been able to teach. This week has been a trying one with the older children. There have been major issues in the school with discipline and the older children. They don't have much respect for authority. I know every child has their battle with respect. But things seem to be worse here. I definitely was not the greatest kid at home, but when I went to school j just knew I had to obey the rules and be respectful. But here there is no separation. Their principal sleeps in a building right next to them. Half of their mentors are missionaries that come and go from week to week. Some teachers are Haitian some are American. The list goes on with the difficulties. Apparently this is he best and most organized the school has ever been and that is only because of the principal miss Teri who has only been here since august.  Before her there wasn't much order. So all this to say the school has come a long way by still has many struggles. This week sister Gladys decided to try and teach the older children a lesson. We are on day two and I'm not sure they quite get it yet...
Each class has a supervisor who is there to answer questions and give you tests and sign off on your work. Clearly they have taken this role for granted. Monday the decision was made to give the principal and the supervisor of the older children the rest of the week off. The children were not told anything. They showed up Tuesday morning and no one was there. Of course they took this opportunity to goof off and mouth off to a few of us in charge of other classes. This resulted in their classroom being locked and they were not able to do any work. Which in their head was great, they had a day off. Today they didn't even dress for school or show up for chapel. My guess is that at this point the majority of them truly don't get it. There were a select few that were angry and some cried. And it sucks for those select few because they are being punished as a whole. We were instructed not to help them with work and not to answer any questions. So it's been a hard couple of days. There is not much I can do or say. I just pray they can get through this and learn respect. All kids take things for granted, all people take things for granted. I am no exception from this. But being here has taught me so much. Their true test will be when they leave this orphanage, then they will see how good they had it. Most of them will not make the connection until they step foot outside of his place. But i do hope they come to realize it sooner.
I hope that we all can take a look at our lives and realize how great we have it. To have hot water and electricity. What I would give for some air conditioning lol. We are blessed with such simple things in America. Besides air-conditioning I think I miss ice the most! A glass of ice cold water would be amazing. Television, ice cream, cell phone, carpet, washing machine, being able to hop in my car and go anywhere....just a few things I used to be blessed with on a daily basis that I no longer have. In chapel this morning we were asked to think if our daily blessings, our special blessings that don't happen so often, and blessings we can share with others. And we were challenged to thank someone today for a blessing in our life. So I want to thank my parents for all the simple things and more they were able to provide me with and also giving me this opportunity to come to Haiti. Because without their support I would not be here.  And I challenge you all to thank someone in your life for the blessings that surround you.

There's no disaster that can't become a blessing, and no blessing that can't become a disaster.

Yesterday was a pretty tough day. School has not been getting any easier. The problem is they are paying a Haitian man to teach some math, I think two or three times a week.  There may be a couple ways to do math, but the way he is teaching them is so different and it is making things MUCH harder.  They are taught one way in their books and he teaches a completely different way and then I try to figure out which one they know…it is all together not a great process.  They are still trying to get to know me and trust me so they are pretty much non verbal. I can’t figure out what they actually know and what they don’t; If they are understanding me or completely lost. These kids just keep failing their math tests over and over and just not getting it. I really need strength to find ways to help them learn. I need for them to trust me and be able to ask for my help. I spent almost 3 hours on 4 problems with one girl yesterday. She is extremely far behind and I’m not even sure how she made it this far. She doesn’t know her multiplication tables or division. She is almost 18 and almost finished with the rest of curriculum. So it is my sole duty to get her through math in these next two months. Please pray.
Chibelson finally returned yesterday. He is the baby my friend Kendall took back with her to the states to get surgery. When she brought him back on January  7^th he had to go straight back to his father. He was here on a temporary orphan basis. His mother died a couple months after he was born and his father doesn’t have the money to take care of him. The main goal was to get him here for good, but the paperwork was just a headache. It took almost 2 weeks before he could come back. Which meant this baby went from almost dying, then was taken to the states for two months,  had two different surgeries but all the while being spoiled and living a normal childhood, brought back to Haiti and had to spend two weeks back with his father, who could barely feed him.  They tried to bring him back a week ago because they said they just couldn’t take care of him, but Canaan could not take him without the proper papers. So God only knows what that baby has gone through these past two weeks. But he is here now safe and happy! While we were sitting and waiting for Pastor Henry to get everything worked out so Chibelson could stay, a mother and daughter came up with these twin babies. They just cried and cried because they were starving. They spoke with Pastor Henry, but I literally have NO idea what it was about, I really need to learn this language! The older lady just started crying and they were going back and forth…in the end she left with the two babies still starving….it broke my heart.

Always something new

Each day opens my eyes to new things. Living at Canaan is pretty much luxury in Haiti. We are kind of living in a bubble. These kids have so much more than most. They work really hard and it is so great to see kids use their imagination rather than just being posted up in front of the television...
They are all very good at soccer! They play on the concrete basketball court and when they fall they bounce right back up. Some have tennis shoes and some wear crocs by they still play just fine. It would be great to see them play on grass! Today some of the boys were playing marbles in the dirt and just having a great time. Kendall said they will dig holes and play mancala with rocks. One of the boys even came up with this contraption today. A rope tied and wrapped around a stick inside a soda bottle and a small fan blade on top of the stick. And when u pull the rope fast it makes the blade spin and fly.    I have seen plastic toys like that before. But he just totally made this up. Soooo smart. 
We walked down the road just outside of Canaan property today and it's a whole different world. There were about ten kids kicking a ball around on a concrete slab. The little girls run up and introduce themselves. Its very hard to communicate for me because i have not learned any of their language yet. None of them had shoes. The boys only wore shirts most of them oversized just enough to come below their bottom. No pants and no underwear. One of the girls she looked maybe 3 was only wearing underwear and no clothes. They rub their bellies and say "grangou" which means hungry. But we have no food for them. 
Kendall said one of he boys invited her and Carolyn to his house one day, so they went. Just one small room and five children. He tried very hard to make the place nice for them and got them chairs to sit on. He asked if they wanted water but they said no thank you, since he water isn't really safe to drink. He then ran outside and down the road and came back with water he had gone to the little market to buy. It's so sad they have nothing but they take great pride in the few things they have and will do so much to make us happy.

One of the missionaries who is here for two months brought a gift from his neighbor. His neighbors daughter who is 7 years old called to meet with him before he left. She met him and handed him her piggy bank and said "here is my life savings I want you to give it to the kids in Haiti" she had 162.50$ and she sent it all here for he kids. Too precious!

Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Willing is not enough; we must do.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

A VERY long week

I have been here almost a week now. It feels like it has been at least a month. 
Saturday I got to sleep in until about 9 which was nice, but it’s really hard to sleep past 7 here, there is always so much going on. On Saturdays we normally make our own breakfast to give our cook a morning off, but she cooked for us this Sat. We walked down the road to a local market and bought some cokes. A half liter for fewer than 50 cents and it was cold! Later in the evening they threw a little birthday party for one of the boys Kawen.  They don’t know his actually birth date so they just made one up. They blew up balloons and had cake and sang him some songs.
Saturday evening was definitely the hardest one to sleep through. Kendall wasn’t kidding about the dogs. There are around 20 puppies that I have counted and 20 plus adult dogs. There are two different packs and they fight ALL the time. Well all through the night. They sleep during the day and are absolutely annoying all night long. But also on Saturdays right down the hill there is a “club” and the music never stopped. I woke up at 430 in the morning and it was still going strong.
I would like to add that I really don’t think I have ever had so many mosquito bites in my entire life! I would love to take a bath in Benadryl, it hurts!
Sunday we have breakfast an hour later, at 8 AM and then Sunday school until 930ish and then church until noon.  Then the rest of the day is free. 
We have been hiking everyday around 4 and Sundays was the hardest yet! It is so beautiful though which helps with the pain :o). 

There has been talk of this little girl in town that is sick and today they brought her to the clinic.  She is 3 months old and looks very malnourished.  It looks as though she has a cleft foot. But the problem she came here for was that she has no anus. She pees and poops out of her vagina. And every time she poops she also vomits.  One of the missionaries who is here for 2 months is getting all of the information and we have taken pictures to send to a doctor he knows back home.  The mother is 21 and does not really have a home. She can barely feed herself which is greatly affecting the child who is breast feeding. Please pray for this little girl. We are trying to work out a way for her to get help in America to get her better.  I don’t think it is too serious there are just no specialists around here that can help with this operation.  I am fairly certain they can fix this problem, but it is only one amongst many that she will face in her lifetime.  The mother is bringing her back on Thursday and hopefully by then we will have some answers.

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little - do what you can.  ~Sydney Smith