The first thing on all of our minds this morning was that it was our Rachael's birthday and we were apart for the first time in 22 years. We were blessed to spend some time with her a few weekends ago. And we were able to Facetime her and Quinton for a few minutes at the end of this day which was sweet! (Even though city power had gone off here in Haiti and there was a huge storm blowing through!)
We were up and ready to find out if a ride had worked out for us to head down the hill to purchase some much needed items. One being our own hot spot. Our landlord has some, but it's not the greatest and will not allow for Chris' video streaming staff conference each week. The ride didn't work out. A vehicle one too many were broken down. Alas, it is Haiti. We're just grateful for leads to follow.
I love how when we leave our place walking towards the BHM and round the corner to the straight away and look down over the hill we can see a young Haitian girl yelling up to us from an unfinished rooftop, "blan! blahn!" - like blond without the "nd". It means "white". And that's what we are. We wave and smile and yell back, "bonjou" or "bonswa" meaning good morning or afternoon. I don't really like when we pass middle school boys and they chant, "money, money" because that's what they think we are. Because some people after the earthquake came in thinking they could help and actually have only hurt the situation just by passing out stuff and then disappearing. This is one way helping hurts.
We got a Skype text from Athena at the ETS school where Brynna will be going with a call for "HELP?". They are in the process of moving and the beds needed disassembling and the Haitians that were helping couldn't get the screws to come out. They didn't seem to know how to use the power tools correctly they had available. Also, they were just packing dishes in trash bags not realizing that they would break. They needed a couple Americans to help supervise. Brynna still needed to complete registration and Chris could use their wi-fi. So, we walked down to hop on our first public tap-tap. It went a LOT too fast for my liking, but I was just grateful for the breeze and to take a load off my feet as we were crammed in the very back seat. The tap-tap was the size of a small mini-van. We had at least 17 people in it. We made it to our stop and then had about a 15 minute walk down to the school through the village streets.
We made it to the school and had forgotten to bring Brynna's paperwork that she needed for registration since we had hurried out to offer help. But, we jumped in and tried to help the best we could. They fed us a hot lunch (spaghetti) which we were very grateful for. We told them we could come back tomorrow afternoon and finish up a few things and get Brynna registered in full. (It's Haiti. I'm not sure how long it's going to take to actually get anything done in "full").
On the way back up the hill to our tap-tap spot we ran across Nataleen on the road and she was making a delivery. I could only dream of taking another bite of that delicious pate' some day soon... like TOMORROW! We bought three cold "cocas" from her for less than $2.00 US. Drank half and saved the other half for dinner.
Caught another tap-tap back up the hill to the BHM where we stopped in to check on the status of our order. There was a funeral going on at the chapel. This was the second funeral I had seen since we got here.
It began to pour the rain. We ran to find cover. That was something we didn't bring... umberellas! We have one poncho and guess who got to wear it?! Yep - me! I wore Chris' backpack on my front and mine on the back. I looked like a pregnant hunchback something or another. Chris took a picture. I'm too embarrassed to show it. It was fun. Mark came down the road and had us follow him to their home to get shelter until there was a break in the downpour. When we walked in to their house their dog went CRAZY happy! He was almost clapping his hands as he danced around the living room with excitement that we were there. His name is "Chester" and I will eventually grab a photo of him, too. He's a sweetie. Reminds me of Charlie Roo and Baby Blue all mixed into one and times'd by 5!
The rain let up and our order wasn't back from the store yet. So, we headed back to the apartment. In. The. Wet. Leftover. Dingy. Dirty. Streets. We passed two of the male gender who were relieving themselves upstream from what we were walking in. If there's one thing you can specifically and practically pray for it's that those germs would not be transferred in our apartment. That we would somehow be protected from them. We wash, and wash and take every precaution we can, but it's simply a dirty place.
Back to last night - Mark and Melanie had us make a list for their "shoppers". We asked for: a mop and broom, Pine-Sol, Carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, spaghetti noodles and sauce, salsa, Kraft Mac & Cheese, peanut butter, butter, rice, mangos, apples, cucumbers, canned green beans, corn chips, raisin bread, butter and ranch dressing, The peanut butter was $16 US!! When you send the shoppers to the market to purchase things, they don't use the same thought process as we use in America... like if something is on sale or if the use by date is expired or if there's bugs crawling in the bag.
Monday night we cooked our first meal - fried potatoes with onion. Mark and Melanie had given us all our ingredients. By the time our order was so graciously delivered to our apartment, they were almost ready to eat. So, we were able to make Brynna a happy girl by serving them with Ranch dressing! She's spoiled, I tell ya. No, not at all. She's a trooper. She's been in it to win it. No complaints have we heard.
After dinner Chris devoured a mango. The only words we heard were, "delicious!" It took a while to wash up from dinner and then we played a game of trains before bed. In order to wash the dishes we have to wash them first with dishwashing detergent and then rinse them in bleach water. It's SO hard not to rinse them under the faucet! But, the faucet water is NOT for drinking or rinsing dishes. It could contain little things our bodies don't need exposed to.
We went to sleep with the power out and the storm a raging, but we had much to thank The Lord for. We were able to actually see the face of our birthday girl for a few minutes and got a mop and broom and cabinet full of food! The wind was blowing so hard, I just knew something would crash through one of the front windows. But, we were also thankful that we don't sleep near the front windows.
So, long day, huh? And doesn't seem like we accomplished much. But, it's Haiti. And it takes a long time to do ANYthing here. There's no fast anything. Even the fast food at the BHM is very slow. Ask anyone who's ever been on a "a door to hope" trip with us. It's just a process. Everything's a process...
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