Sunday

Sunday morning, I woke up way too early. My tummy was rumbling in a way that insisted I spend more time than usually necessary in the bathroom. This started at 4 or 5 am and I was not able to go back to sleep. I decided that it probably wasn't a good idea to go sit in a hot church for 2 or 3 hours later that morning, so elected to stay home. Cal and I made some breakfast - hoping it would all stay in me, and then Cal got ready for church while I rested and watched tv shows on my laptop.

By the time he came home, close to noon, I hadn't made any more trips to the bathroom and thought it might be nice to go outside at least once during the day. Before lunch, we decided to go for a moto ride to his father's garden in Acul Jeannot to see the baby calf our (by our I mean the family's) cow gave birth to last week. This is a big deal. In Haiti, a cow is called a "Kane Bank" or bank account. You can gain more "interest" by raising a cow and it's even better when you get a calf! A big asset for most Haitians.

Acul Jeannot is a section of Haut Limbe which is probably a 30 or 40 minute walk from our house. Every morning, Cal's dad walks to his garden to work and to check on the cow. By moto, the trip is 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the amount of rain we have had.

The house Cal's dad grew up in.

Before we went to the garden, we drove a bit further so that Cal could show me the house where his dad grew up. His grandparents are no longer living, but the house is still there unoccupied. Along the way, we passed many people making the 40 minute walk home from church in the midday sun. I'm so thankful we have a moto!

it's a boy!

After looking at the house, we backtracked to the garden, and saw the cow and calf! He was pretty cute.

We started on our way back home and along the way we met 2 young boys walking with machetes. I immediately saw blood dripping from one of the boys knees that was wrapped with a dirty cloth bandage. The boys had been in their garden cutting wood for charcoal and were walking home. The boy had cut his knee with the machete. Cal asked if they would be going to the hospital and the boy replied that his mom did not have the money. We decided to drive him with us to the clinic and sent someone else to get his mom.

We called one of the nurses to meet us at the clinic and they were able to stitch up the boy and clean the wound. I can't imagine what kind of infection he would have gotten had we had not passed by him. As Cal says, "God sent us there today". I kinda have to agree.

Pause and a rest

Sorry for my absence! it's been busy around here. On Wednesday we finished hosting a group from the Breton church for 10 days and I'm working on catching up on all the stuff I neglected while they were here!

It was a good group and we did a lot (even if they may not think that!). The biggest accomplishment was doing a huge chunk of sorting, organizing and pitching a bunch of medical supplies in the depot! Thanks to the rubbermaid bins they brought, we now have the majority of the supplies safely stored in containers that prevent any rat or mouse from entering!! The cockroaches may still squeeze their way in, but oh well! This is a huge burden lifted and we even have a written inventory of all the supplies we have now! Thanks everyone for your help!

After dropping of the group, I've taken it pretty easy for a few days, catching up on sleep and taking some time to relax. Yesterday we took of to the beach by motorcycle with our friends the Hamiltons. 4 on one moto, 3 on the other! We were quite the attraction on the trip. It's normal to see 3 + Haitians on a motorcycle here - not so normal to 3 + Canadians. We enjoyed the beautiful ocean, ate some great fish with plantain and all got nice and rosy from the sun!

In just over 2 weeks, the next group arrives, with 4 more coming after that before the first week of June! Please pray for good health for Cal and I. We both were fighting colds when the last group was here which takes a lot of energy out of us. We want to be able to give our best when we are hosting!

That kinda day

Today is a good day. Yesterday was not.

Yesterday just didn't have a hope. You know it's not going to be good when it starts raining the night before, continues all night and all day. If it was just the rain, I probably would have been ok. I decided to stay home and work instead of slopping through mud and tiny rivers to get to the university. That was going well, until we learned that we had no running water. Turns out, some hooligans in the community decided to break a bunch of the water pipes for the community water system. There are deeper issues at play with this, but in the mean time, the majority of the community does not have access to running water. Turns out the ridiculous amount of rain was a good thing as we were able to fill every bucket, basin and bowl we own with rain water to get us through the next couple of days.

I kept working at home, but eventually the batteries died and we were left without power. There has been a shortage of gas and diesel for the past week so we only had enough to run the generator for a little bit in the evening. Suddenly being. home, sitting in the dark without power or running water didn't sound so appealing. I decided to get out and take refuge over at some Canadian friends' house at the university. A cup of tea, a funny movie and friends can do wonders. By supper time, I was ready to come home.

Today I woke up to sunshine, EDH (electricity) and the news that gas and diesel were available again! Funny what these simple things can do to change your attitude. I got up, ate, showered (which approximately 10 cupfuls of water) and went to work! I feel great! Nice that it lines up with Valentines Day.

Life in Haiti has a lot of bad days and a lot of good days. Somehow the bad days have much more power over my attitude. It's easy to fall into a trap of frustration, anger, self-pity and sadness. When those days come too close together, it's not good and its easy to lose perspective of the big picture. If you focus too much on details in Haiti - you will go crazy!

So today, I'm choosing to be joyful and celebrate Valentines Day with those I love. Cal and I will go "out" to dinner at the little resto down the street for your choice of spaghetti with chicken or hotdogs (I know you are jealous) and after if its not raining, to a party where Cal's brothers are playing.

Yep, today is a good day.

We're Back!

Back in Haiti! This past Saturday we returned from the DR after a lovely holiday in which we spent a couple of days in Santiago with good friend Tammi and then a week in Puerto Plata at a resort with my parents. It was great to see my parents and enjoy a week relaxing and eating way too much! We had a number of cloudy/rainy days, but the last few days were glorious. While my parents and I enjoyed the sun, Cal got his fill of soccer on the 5 or 6 dedicated soccer channels on tv - his heaven!

I always look forward to getting away from Haiti for awhile - to enjoy some of the conveniences of life that I used to take for granted - electricity, hot water, cheese, smooth roads, reliable transportation, reliable internet, ice cream (the list could go on). But I also find by the end of my breaks, I'm ready to come back to Haut Limbe - to speak Creole, to see my family and friends here, to climb the mountain behind our house (much needed now so I can fit back into my pants!) and enjoy the slow paced life again. I know that in no time the cultural frustrations will come back again, but after a little break, I'm ready to face them again. I've come back with more energy (even though Cal and I both didn't sleep well in the DR) and a drive to get back to work and ready for the groups that are coming.

I also got my computer back! It had crashed in December, so I sent it back to Canada to get it repaired. Turns out I needed a new hard drive and nothing could be recovered - boo! But, it's repaired now and I also was smart enough to get an external hard drive as well for back up!

Cal's mom just had cataract surgery yesterday in Cap Haitian. Everything went well, and she'll be going for a check up today again. Please pray that the surgery helps with her vision which has been deteriorating a lot in the past year, keeping her from her favourite pass time - sewing! She had a cataract removed from her other eye a year ago, but the recovery was very slow.

I'll try to be more regular at posting again now with my computer back!

Are you a Christian at 4 am

I don't think I am.

One of the "charming" things about life in Haiti is that there are no rules/laws about noise or noise pollution. If there are, they are certainly not enforced. So this means that at any given time (when we have electricity) people can blare their music from their massive speakers in front of their house, even if its the middle of the night. Or someone can drive through town advertising something or playing music blaring from their car. Or someone dog(s) can bark incessantly in the middle of the night for what seems like hours. Someone can have a house party, starting at 11 pm ending at 4 am (remember houses don't have glass windows). All of this can happen and no one can or will say a word.

This week, there has been some noise in my life - at 4 am. It seems there is a kind hearted gentleman in the community who sees it as his duty to sing hymns into a megaphone throughout the town at 4 am to call everyone to prayer. I guess he's been doing this for a long time, but i just started hearing him this week. And of course, no one will say anything about him disrupting people's sleep, because if you do, you must not be a Christian as you are not getting up to go an pray at church. A few choice words run through my head at this time, I'm definitely not a Christian then.

You see, every Monday to Friday morning, at about 4, around 60 people gather at the church to sing and pray. Talk about devotion. My mother-in-law is one of them. Most days, she gets up, before dawn, with now alarm clock or electricity and goes to church before she starts her day. We were discussing this the other day and she told me, "I must go to church in the morning to give thanks because God has done so much for us."

Huh? That made me feel like the most ungrateful person ever! By North American standards, she has led and still leads a hard life, but yet she feels driven to get up each morning to give thanks before she starts her day.

Yeah, I don't think I'm a Christian 24 hours a day yet - I have a long way to go.

Lord help me to be thankful in all circumstances and give you the glory for all.

Two years plus two days

I was intending to write something on Thursday, but I just couldn't seem to get my thoughts together to write. It's really hard to know what to say. Two years have passed since 300,000 people died in one night in a country of 9 million. Two years have passed since 2/3 of a city was destroyed. Two years have passed since 1 million set up "temporary" shelters to sleep - they are still there.

I am no expert. Especially since I don't live near Port au Prince nor  have I been there in the last year and a half. It's so hard to know what to say when people ask if there is any progress. How do you define progress in a country that was so devastated before a 7.0 earthquake shook it? I don't know.

What I do know, is what I've witnessed here in my little community of Haut Limbe. Since the earthquake, I have seen:

• 2,000 patients treated (for free) in the weeks following January 12, 2010 at Eben-ezer Clinic. Some were victims of the earthquake, some had migrated back home to the country, some just hadn't been able to afford treatment until that time.
• The in-patient facility "finished" 2 days before we received our first cholera patient. Since then, we have treated nearly 4,000 cholera patients.
• Probably over 100 Canadians and Americans have visited to either train and give assistance in the clinic, volunteer and work on construction and organization projects, run an art camp, and build relationships with this community.
• A new solar panel and inverter system was installed at the clinic decreasing our dependency on the diesel generator and EDH (state power).
• Nearly 100 elderly people receive a meal every Sunday before church and a food package each month because of a Canadian church's generosity.

Progress and change are slow, but it is happening. In a country as complex as Haiti, we can't expect fast change. 

Here is what I wrote on this day two years ago.

Bon Ane! Happy New Year

Oh how the time flies by!!

We are already well into January – hard to believe. Let me give you an update of what has been going on.

We had a nice, quiet Christmas here. On Christmas Eve, Ben and Shauna came over for a “Canadian” Christmas dinner. With help, I was able to prepare and fry the chicken Haitian style. Shauna brought boxed scalloped potatos and Stovetop stuffing from Canada. Added a precious can of sweet corn to the mix, and voila – Christmas dinner! It was very good and I probably overindulged on the potatoes and stuffing!

On Christmas Day, we had Cal's family over for a little celebration. We had bought a goat a few days before, so his mom came over with it and we prepared it and some fried plantain. Cake for dessert and it was a hit!

We were able to get to the beach a couple of times with Ben and Shauna and enjoyed some sun – I kinda forget what the sun looks like. It's been cloudy and rainy since last Wednesday!

Just after Christmas, we discovered that Cal had shingles – boo! Luckily we caught it early on and it started to clear up shortly after he started taking the medications. We are thankful that it looks like he won't have any lasting symptoms.

On December 30, our group from Wetaskiwin arrived, finally! The plane was due to arrive from Miami at 10 am, it didn't end up coming until 4 pm because the plane they were supposed to take had a crack in the windshield, so they had to wait for the Ft. Lauderdale plane to return from Haiti. It was a LONG day at the Cap airport. Cal and I had been dropped off at 9 am, so we didn't have an easy way to get into town to pass the time, plus we were never really sure when the plane was going to arrive, so we just stayed put. Luckily, there is a little restaurant nearby, so we found some food.

The group had a good time here. We started out easy – went to the beach on New Years Eve day. Everyone got to try some fresh coconut water and lobster! New Years Day, church started at 6 am and afterwards we gathered at the University to eat some traditional Independence Day pumpkin soup. Haitians eat pumpkin soup every January 1, to mark their freedom from slavery. While slaves, the French never allowed them to eat the soup as it was seen as too rich or refined for the slaves. So, once they received independence, Haitians have eaten the soup.

The rest of the week was spent at the clinic – doing some amazing cleaning and organizing in the depot (thanks to the large rubbermaids they brought) as well as constructing a little building that will be used to clean and treat stinky abscesses and wounds.

Unfortunately, the rain came on Wednesday, so it put a bit of a damper on activities. But, we were able to have a couple of Creole classes and be treated to a little concert by a couple of mens singing groups.

We got the group off to the airport on Friday am and had a nice relaxing weekend, catching up on sleep and relaxation.

I'll be back to work full force in the next couple of weeks, lining up things for the coming months. Please pray for patience for me as our internet connection has been lousy lately, and I'm working on a computer I'm not familiar with that doesn't allow me to compose and read emails offline. It's really frustrating. I was able to send my old computer back to Canada with the group and am hoping it can be fixed in time for my parents to bring with them when we meet them in Puerto Plata at the end of January.

Blessings on you as you begin 2012!