Haiti Day 3: M-ap pase yon bob tan!

The rooster woke me up at 3am this morning. Luckily, I fell back asleep and didn’t get up until Christine woke me up 15 minutes before we had to be upstairs for morning devotion. When I opened my eyes, I realize that my body was incredibly stiff. I was paying for the fun off-roading experience up and down the mountain from yesterday. A bunch of new bruises appeared this morning too. Oh well. No scrapes, no scars, no proof…right???

It was a beautiful morning this morning. Not a cloud in the bright blue sky. It was nice to start the day on such a happy note. For breakfast, we had fresh pineapple and banana pancakes with some funky fruit jelly. I freaked a little when Pastor told me it was grapefruit. I’m not supposed to eat grapefruit because it negatively interacts with my thyroid medicine, but he assured me that Haitian grapefruit is different than American grapefruit. He must have been right because I’ve been OK all day.

Most of the morning and early afternoon was spent at our hotel. Teenagers from all over the town came over and met on the roof for a Youth conference. I recognized many of them from yesterday, including a 17-year-old girl named Natalie who had taught me some phrases in Creole and French the day before. I am starting to get good at the language. The title of this blog means “I am having a good time.” I also learned “Sa se koupe dwat” which means “That’s finger lick’in good” and “Neg sa-ap anuye-m” which means “That guy is bugging me to death!” At the conference, there was some praise and worship time, Bucky and Tom shared some scripture and gave a message while Pastor translated, then Pastor and some of the Haitian teenagers spoke. We passed out a huge meal of rice and beans, chicken and a pasta salad when it was all through and mingled with the kids for a while.

Later in the afternoon, the team piled into a tap tap (which I finally figured out why is it called that…when you are ready to go, you tap the top or side of the truck twice to let the driver know you are ready), and headed over to the church for soccer practice. The big soccer tournament that we are playing in is tomorrow. When we got there, there was probably 100 people or more already watching a soccer match. The church sponsors some local kids, both Christian and nonChristians, who have a soccer team. New River donated their uniforms last year. The match was pretty intense. I’m not sure who ended up winning. I went inside the church to hang out with some of the littler kids. One of the locals brought us some fresh sugar cane which was waaaaay cool to eat. It isn’t as sweet as I thought it would be, and I got some pretty awesome pictures of me spitting out the stalks after chewing on them.

After soccer practice (of the lack there of…yes, everyone is going to come watch us make fools of ourselves on the soccer field…should be an experience), we went back to the hotel to talk about the plan for children’s church tomorrow as a storm was rolling in from over the mountains The lightening and thunder was pretty fierce even though it never rained. For kids’ service tomorrow, we are in charge. Kimmie and Lori have put together a great plan. We will be doing the story of the Good Samaritan and putting on a skit. I get to be one of the thieves with David and Donna…we all get to beat up Tom. After a quick practice and waiting for the lightening to subside, Pastor took us to the most expensive hotel in Jacmel for dinner. The hotel was beautiful and some of the homes we passed on the way there were incredibly large and well-kept. Again, it was all in the old French style. When we walked in, we were shocked to see a large table of Asian people. They looked almost as strange as our table full of white people. Pastor told me that they were most likely from Taiwan and that the government there has special projects they do in Haiti. He said these projects almost always never benefit the Haitian people and are very beneficial for the Taiwanese. It makes me sad to see these rich people with their lavish houses and big foreign projects enjoying their meals when if they would walk 500 feet down the road, there are families of people huddle under a thatch-roofed hut gathered around a candle for light eating moldy plantains.

For dinner, I had some sort of fish and fried plantains (bananas) for my meal. The fish was good, but a little salty. I also got to talk with Pastor about the state of education at Haiti. He said that only 30% of the country is literate. There is no public school system. People must pay for their kids to go to school and as you know, people don’t have a lot of money in Haiti. Pastor said that the rich keep raising schooling prices to cut out the poor and only keep the opportunities that education brings for themselves. It is really sad how corrupt everything is here. Pastor also shared with me how he envisions building a school where all of the poor kids can come regardless of what they can pay. I told him that the day he opens his school, I will come and teach in it.

After dinner we walked the grounds of the hotel. It was situated on a cliff overlooking a small bay off of the Ocean. I walked down a few flights of steps etched into the side of the cliff to get a better view of the scenery. Everything around us in the distance was pitch black, but it was beautiful to see the lingering lightening illuminating the mountains across the bay and the cliffs and sea below. I sat on the edges of a wall thinking how I wish I could have captured that picture in a painting at that moment….that is until a rather larger and scary looking spider jilted me from my contentedness. On the way back up the stairs, Christine found a mini hermit crab that pinched her. I also saw a freakishly large hissing cockroach. I would have gotten a picture; but I decided to run instead in case it decided to eat me for dinner.

Other than the creepy crawlies, I am having such an amazing time here. Haiti truly is a beautiful country full of beautiful and joyful people despite the hardships they face on a daily basis. Tomorrow is going to be a looooooooooooooon day with kids church, regular church service in the morning and then the soccer tournament followed by another Youth festival in the afternoon evening. Pray that I would continue to build relationships with the kids and people here and not let exhaustion or body soreness get to me.

For now, it is time go get some sleep…

Baybay, Mezanmi (bye bye, friends)