Summer 2007

Hi again!  I apologize that it’s been awhile since I updated.  The combination of life, work, and rain have gotten in the way of blogging and emailing.  By the time I’m posting this (it has been a couple days since I’ve had internet), I have two short days before my time here is over.  Things here have continued to be amazingly rich, challenging, and enjoyable.  Not wanting to leave without taking some time to reflect and sharing with you all some of what has been going on, I collected a few experiences from the past couple weeks.  Hope you enjoy.

For those of you who are still reading along and want to know how you can pray, here are a few requests I wrote a few days ago, which may still apply by the time you read this and may not:

• That God would use the time this last week to help me get to know and minister to the two boys who have been spending some time at the guest house each night. I helped one write an email to a friend in the states, and since then we have spent some time each night trying to teach each other about our respective languages.
• That I would trust God in knowing how to handle the situations with people who have already asked for stuff or probably will before I leave. I was struck by reading Matthew 5:42 which says, “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.” I need courage in not sugar coating that and actually acting on it, but I also find myself wanting guidance in knowing how to give responsibly and in the right way.
• That God would take the decision of how to spend the rest of the summer out of my hands and direct me where He wants me. We have decided not to move forward with our plans to start the project in southern Haiti in August, which I believe is a wise decision. This raises the question of what I will do after returning to PA for a wedding and some time with the family. My mind is racing with ways to fill it up, but I have a sense that God might have something big in mind and I need help in waiting to hear what that is.

Thanks for keeping up!  I’m looking forward to seeing or talking with you guys soon!

Michael

I could and should write a whole essay about what it’s like to be the only white person here, but without something larger prepared I just had to share a tidbit from today. 

Today I made a kid cry. 

I’ve seen kids shy away and cuddle up to their parents when they see the color of my skin, but this kid was screaming, wailing, and running away in absolute terror.  I apologized to the rest of the older kids who served as this little dude’s protection, but even as I passed he was still crying.  I have to admit the rest of us got a kick out of it.  Interestingly enough, several minutes later I was greeted by a little one who had the complete opposite reaction.  Her mom brought her down to the road to see the blan, and all she wanted to do was touch my hand that I held out for her.  Ahh, being the blan.

Sunday we crossed the river to catch a service that marked the last day of a week-long revival at a little church.  We had been hearing the music late into the nights all week, and we made it over to see the grand finale.  Judging by the sound that reached the guest house, I was picturing a pretty big church.  However, it was a little one room building with a tin roof supported by 2×4’s.  Half the walls were mud, half were palm fronds, and the floor was the dirt.  I discovered that it was the generator, two really big speakers, and the voices of the people that accounted for the ability to project such sound across the river. 

They were celebrating the birthday of the church, and several Haitian pastors who now live in Florida were there to encourage them.  Lots of singing, praising, and celebrating a witch doctor who accepted Christ this week.  As I have become accustomed to, when the pastor asks if there are any visitors, I got a lot of looks from people waiting for me to go to the front and introduce myself.  This time, however, Christophe didn’t accompany me to the front.  I thought patting him on the back on my way up would signal him to come up, but when I made it to the front he was still sitting in the back.  I was slightly relieved when the pastor, a guy who lives in Florida, greeted me in English.  However, he followed this by saying “you know Creole, right?” and handing me the mic.  I did my best to explain where I came from, why I was here, and how I have been learning a lot about water and life.  After saying a word of encouragement in English, I handed over the mic and expected it to be translated, but I guess the pastor wasn’t in translating mode and kind of left me hanging, but oh well.

Sunday afternoon Christophe took me to a kindergarten graduation.  He had been invited by the director, and apparently it was the place to be.   There were probably 300+ people packed into a large 1-room school.   Being the blan, I was escorted to a seat near the front despite the fact that we arrived really late.  Later I traded places with a lady standing along the wall, a decision which I’m glad I made but which I began to regret once we started approaching the 4-hour mark.  The whole production was extremely disorganized and way too long, but what made it all worth it was watching the final act of the “cultural” portion of the presentation.  This consisted of about 20 kindergartners dressed in colorful outfits doing the bachata in a line.  A few had amazing hip-bumps while many were lucky to do a little hop and change directions every once in awhile.  A lady standing close to me caught me dancing in place and tried to explain something about dancing the Haitian compa.  I didn’t want to argue with her, but I know what side of the island the dance really came from.

Sony and Madame Evelyn aren’t getting along, which forced me to redo the schedule so that they never have to go to the same place.  Since many of the recent trips have been long ones, this means that I alternated who would come with me in the Land Cruiser.  Madame Evelyn days have tended to be the fun ones - I am the only English speaker in the group, which forces me to do things like speak Spanish (always fun), play with kids to keep them occupied while Madame Evelyn does surveys (always fun too), and conduct qualitative interviews in Creole (always an adventure - basically I just ask the questions, understand part of what was said, and play the tape later to Sony so that we can transcribe and I can understand what was really going on).

On one of the Madame Evelyn days, we got stuck in a huge afternoon rainstorm.  After one of Madame Evelyn’s many friends invited us in for lunch, Madame Evelyn went off to find someone to interview.  In the mean time the driver waited with me while I played soccer with some boys in a little alley. 

Then it started pouring.  We didn’t know where to find Madame Evelyn, so we returned to the meeting place for the end of the day.  We were early, however, so only one of our interviewers was there. 

There was a big river between us and home.  The size and speed of the river grows by the minute in a rainstorm, which made the driver really concerned.  He decided we had to get the Land Cruiser on the other side of the river before we were forced to stay there for the night.

So I found myself with two Creole-speaking males separated by a big rushing river from the 3 females on our team for the day.  Apparently the driver’s plan was just to wait for things to clear up.  Pretty much everyone in our group had a cell phone, but somehow everyone only seemed to have the phone numbers of the people on the same side of the river as them.  Judging by the reactions of all the other Haitians, waiting it out appeared to be the only thing to do.  We watched the tap-taps (pickup trucks with Haitians in the back) accumulate on both sides of the river, and none of the drivers or people in the tap-taps seemed to think it was a good idea to try to cross.  After at least 45 minutes of waiting, things started to let up and a few brave guys got out and made it across the river. 

At this point our driver called one of the clinic directors to call another guy at the clinic to call Madame Evelyn to explain where we were.  After a bit without hearing anything back, I recommended that we send someone over to the other side to tell the ladies where we were.  The other two guys didn’t seem all that anxious to do anything.  It took me awhile to convince Bichener, the 18-year old interviewer to cross the river with me. 

So after a lot of convincing, I prepared for my second river crossing experience in Haiti.  This time there were no motos to get to the other side but a whole new set of challenges, not the least of which was the large crowd of Haitians that was standing at either side contemplating if and how to get across and laughing at the blan getting ready to go.  This time Bichener and I opted to leave all of our clothing, shoes, etc. in the car except for t-shirts and boxers.  We took lessons from those who had gone before about where to cross.  Just as we reached a dry spot halfway across, we saw the ladies being dropped off by the river.  Bichener seemed to think our job was over because apparently they had gotten the message about where we were.  I continued the rest of the way and met them at the river bank.  I helped two of them back across while Madame Evelyn opted to pay a guy a few cents to carry her on his shoulders to the other side.  This proved to be the biggest challenge of the day, although driving the rest of the way on rainy, muddy roads was no piece of cake.

Some times when things go wrong you just have to laugh.  Today (well, by the time you’re reading this, last Tuesday) it seemed like everything that could have gone wrong did, but by the end of it all I was kind of enjoying everything in some strange way.  So I thought I would recount some of today’s events.  Perhaps it will give you an appreciation for the things we take for granted in the states.  If nothing else, hopefully you’ll get some good laughs because that’s mostly what I was doing by the end of the day.

Monday night I had fallen asleep on the couch after a pretty frustrating day, and I barely made it up in time for our morning meeting.  All I wanted was for things to go smoothly today. 

I embarked with a team of four for Port-de-Paix, a city which is about a 1 hour drive.  Well, on our way there, the Haitian police stopped our car.  They were pulling over all of the cars that passed through.  No problem, because our driver reached over and got the registration papers from the glove compartment.

Well, apparently the papers had expired, and having a Kentucky license plate in the middle of Haiti didn’t help our case.  Sony claimed that if they didn’t resolve the issue they would arrest us and “put us all in jail.”  He likes to tell stories, so I’m not positive what really would have happened.  Nonetheless waiting to see if the Haitian police would let us pass was not the way we had planned to start the day.  No problem, because we paid the $15 to get the papers renewed and continued on our way.

To put the rest of the day’s challenges in context, we need to rewind a bit.  During the first week, we realized that we would need more surveys when we sorted the pages and found that we were missing at least 100 copies of one page.  No problem, because Daniele could send some more via DHL when she returned to Atlanta.

Well, we underestimated the number of copies that were missing, so we ran out of surveys much earlier than anticipated.  No problem, because Daniele was sending them right away and I could print out copies of the one missing page until then.

Well, eventually the printer got low on ink.  I knew that when we ran out of ink we would be sunk because the only hope to get the right kind of ink cartridge is to have someone bring it from the US.  There are no copy or printing places nearby, and by this point we’re going through almost 40 pages of the 13-page survey per day, so writing them out by hand wasn’t really an option either.  No problem, because I shifted to the draft setting so that we should be able to stretch out the ink, and because the surveys had arrived in Port-au-Prince so it shouldn’t be too difficult to get them here.

Well, there were some unforeseen difficulties with sending the package of surveys from Port-au-Prince to Port-de-Paix.  It is now Tuesday and the package that had arrived in Port-au-Prince in Friday had not made it again. I knew that the ink cartridge was getting a little tired of running on fumes for the past week.  No problem, because we could stop at a photocopy place while we were in Port-de-Paix to make copies of the missing page.

Well, I returned to find that we were nearly out of the other pages of the survey.  All of them.  In the blur of the morning, I wasn’t really thinking about tomorrow (and it was the second day I had been told that the surveys would be there for me to pick up).  So now I had to print a bunch more copies than the nightly average for the past week.  No problem, because I would just spend most of the nightly generator time printing and hope the ink holds up.

Well, there were actually some other important business items that needed my attention first.  The organization I’m involved with is trying to figure out our schedule for the second half of the summer and make some pretty important decisions that will affect our long-term direction.  No problem, because I could just use some of the limited number of phone minutes I had been saving to make an important call like this.

Well, the phone cut out due to a light drizzle outside.  No problem, because we could just shift to Skype since there still seemed to be a good internet connection.

Well, the drizzle turned to a downpour and the internet went down.  No problem, because we had already covered a lot of the key issues and I could use my CDC-sponsored emergency satellite phone to call back for a minute to end the conversation.  After donning my poncho and putting a plastic bag around the phone, I braved the storm to get a satellite connection.

Well, I think lightning struck somewhere on the hill we’re on.  I just know that I didn’t have time to think about counting the number of seconds between the lightning and thunder to figure out how far the storm was.  So the call was quick, but no problem, because now I could get printing. 

To diverge a bit, this blog and emails have been my major means of communication with family and friends, and to a certain extent, one of my major means of communication with people who speak English.  I was just starting to feel some of the effects of being alone for this long.  No problem, because some of you chose today to send emails and I was excited to read them all.

Well, when I sat back down at the computer, I realized I had opened my email but hadn’t downloaded any of them in my rush to make a call for which I was already late.  So now without the internet connection, I couldn’t read any of the emails that I was looking forward to.

To return to the survey saga, now I had to figure out how to get all of the necessary copies on extremely low ink.  And now we were also low on paper.  No problem, because I had already figured out that I only had to print about half of the pages.  I could salvage the rest by rooting through old surveys.  The surveys done with people not in the program only had writing on about half of the pages, so I could find some blank pages by finding the non-program surveys (which, of course, had to be found among the big pile in my room).

Well, the printer chose to act up during the middle of my master paper-and-ink-saving plan.  By this time, I was laughing out loud and some of the things it was doing.  No problem, I could just rearrange what it had spat out and print each individual page.

Well, I printed the necessary pages and salvaged the rest.  The task for the night was complete.  No problem, because it was time for an overdue shower and then bed.

Well, the water wasn’t working.  I could have just stood outside for a few minutes to get washed off, but I didn’t really have the energy to do that.  No problem, because I could probably fall asleep regardless of how much sweat had accumulated.

Well, by God’s grace, the internet came back for a few minutes before the generator went off, which was long enough to download emails.  So I ended the day laughing about it all and reading over emails. 

So, not exactly no problems.  Well, at least there are lots of laughs now.