Haiti: August 4
“we live not in a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of SOUND MIND”
2 Timothy 1:7
aug 4 2002
we spent the day at the clinic today. saw tons of people. pastor boulle’s wife came in for an exam. doc said it would be 5-7 days before she had the baby. one of our interpreters was embarrassed and concerned about being present for the exam. he told me “in ayiti pastors can not…” he never really said, but we assured him she would be covered and he would see nothing. i told him to just close his eyes and interpret, he laughed. there seems to be a modesty here. it is somewhat different than we imagine. i mean, if they have to “go” they just go. men find a corner somewhere and women lift their dress discreetly and go. i have seen this only once. there is no choice. there are no public restrooms and many homes do not have much more than a whole in the floor. we are very fortunate at the guest house. and at the orphanage well, the girls are not so fortunate but they will have an outhouse before we leave.
a young girl was at our clinic with chronic eye infections. there was not much doc could do. she will go blind unless she sees a specialist. that will not happen here. one of the orphan girls did not lose her baby teeth, and has her grown up teeth.
after dinner we left for the mountains to do silent street drama and show the jesus video. that was interesting. we did not get to do the drama. a storm was coming so it got dark quickly. we did get the film started and people came from everywhere! and so did the rain very soon into it. the team was told to go into a nearby “church”. turns out we were in an uncontrolled area and the situation was more dangerous than we realized at that time. we had asked a woman if we could take a picture of her and her baby. she said yes so we did. she had other kids with her so we took several pictures. the kids like having their picture taken, especially with a digital camera so they can see the pictures. some did not like this and said a few things not so nice to our team leader.
we went into the church and all the female team members were sent into the pastors house attached. we had no clue what was actually going on. we just thought he wanted us out of the wonderfully cold storm. doc and 3 other male team members went with us. we actually had fun singing and playing with the pastors children.
(it was a tiny 3 room cinder (sp?) block house. everything is local made brick and cement in haiti. no wood. the pastors wife was very gracious in opening her home to us crazy people.)
the team leader got us back on our bus (think very old and rickety school bus here). we were blocked in. people just park in the middle of the street here. then the battery died and there was nothing we could do but sit there. we could hear the young men who had been bathing in the rain speaking towards us. one said we do this because you take pictures. they were yelling and banging on our bus. i never felt scared, but it was alarming. our team leader said that even though we asked and the picture was not of them, the saw the flash and did not like what we were doing. it was unnerving and a reminder to be more careful.
we got to play with the girls this morning. they love my hair. there is always one petting me. they love our cameras as well. a team member handed them his and let them take a few pictures. they really like the video camera too. we have on video them singing to us the very first day. it is so sweet!
lots of work getting done. the orphanage got electricity today. the girls were fascinated. they will also have a swingset when we leave.
we are holding on to humor and silliness each night to keep us upbeat. we hung docs clothing from the chandalier. he was amused. tomorrow we will go to the mountains for medical clinic. should be interesting.
December 17 2005 08:22 pm | Ramblings
December 17th, 2005 at 9:02 pm
Wow.
I haven’t done any sort of outreach work in years.
You just made me miss it.
December 17th, 2005 at 9:02 pm
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December 17th, 2005 at 9:04 pm
i would LOVE to go again! i was inspired to post my journal b/c of reading someone’s blog describing a visit to haiti.
thanks for stopping by