Journals from Haiti

We had a nice, quiet afternoon during which I read, wrote, and slept. Around 3:00 we left for an afternoon Christian fellowship. It was in English, probably created largely by and for Americans living in Haiti. The building was the only one I’d seen with notably American construction. I was surprised to see so many “blan”s (literally “white;” a term for foreigners) in one place.

A while later we had ham and cheese sandwiches for dinner. After three smallish halves I was still hungry. There were a few left, so when someone offered I had one more. When there were two halves left and David said someone needed to eat them so they wouldn’t be left sitting out, Pat reminded us that Jovite and Alain hadn’t eaten yet. Needless to say I felt horrible, and I took it as a lesson against greed. We’d been well provided for throughout the trip, but we were still in a third world country and I needed, more than ever, to put others first.

We walked to a restaurant called La Kay (the house) to get ice cream. On the way out, David told Alain what a great job he had done that morning. He humbly thanked him, giving glory to God and not himself.

The street scene was intriguingly different at night when you could not tell whether passersby were looking at you. A pack of small, non-threatening dogs began to follow us and we joked about smuggling them home in our luggage.

I woke up, got ready, read the Bible and prayed, and then went downstairs for coffee. Pat was in the kitchen making waffles and we started talking about what I wanted to do with my life. I said I was thinking about art, mission work, or journalism but was still figuring out what God wanted for me. She said the mission field needs more artists and writers (:D). When Abby came down, the two of them discussed the medical field. Abby is on her way to becoming an EMT.

Pat invited us to go ahead and eat since the men were sleeping in. She called to Jovite through the window and he joined us. Alain and the other men came later. I decided to add “manba” (peanut butter) to my waffles as Jovite and Alain did. The Haitians seem to like it a lot.

When it was time we headed out on foot to a Haitian Christian church not far from Pat’s house. I love walking the streets here and experiencing everything so much closer than I do inside a vehicle.

They had several styles of worship music, beginning with traditional hymns in French. Then a group of young men sang a cappella, a group of both men and women sang what sounded like modern worship in Creole, and another group finished with upbeat Creole hymns. Even without understanding more than a few words, I could see and hear their passion as they offered wholehearted praise to God. Alain, who I did not know until now was a pastor, gave the sermon in French. A few other men spoke and prayed.

We walked to a hotel for lunch. It was a large, old, exquisite building that looked to have a lot of history behind it. We ordered lunch, walked around the lush, tropical gardens that surrounded the hotel, then sat and talked while drinking our beverages and waiting for the food. Most of us ordered beef and vegetable shishkebabs, but I got shrimp and Abby chose steak. There was rice with bean sauce and french fries for everyone to share. The food was very good.

When we got back to Pat’s house, Jovite noticed a big streak of red paint on my arm that had smeared enough to look a bit like a sunburn. He pointed to it and asked, “solèy?” (sun), and then we both said “paint” at the same time as he realized what it was.

We had a particularly scrumptious dinner of lasagna, which is made a little differently here because they can’t get all of the ingredients, and also beets, corn, salad with tomatoes and carrots from Enosh’s gardens, and pineapple upside-down cake.

Jovite ate with us, and Alain came in as we were finishing. There was just enough lasagna left for him. When he saw my arm, he looked concerned and said something I didn’t understand, even though it was probably English. I told him it was paint.

After dinner and dishes I managed to get mostly cleaned up and then went downstairs where my team members were. I read and journaled for a while, and then the men decided it was movie night, so we watched “The High and the Mighty,” a movie from probably the fifties, and had popcorn. I tried to stay awake but was rather unsuccessful.

I went to bed a little while after the movie ended, but I don’t think I slept deeply until the early morning hours when it was perhaps quieter and cooler.

We finally left around ten o’clock. It was very crowded and the drive to LaBruyere took a particularly long time. Twice we lost the corrugated tin that we had tied to the back of the truck and had to stop and fix it. We stopped in a village near the clinic to pick up Valery, a Haitian boy who was coming to help. He is 18 but looks younger to me. We all squished into the back of the truck.

Abby and I were led to the upstairs storeroom of the clinic to paint the window frame and bars. Tony, one of the Haitian construction workers, came and finished the job. Clark told him not to take our work away but we agreed that he was better at it.

After we finished, we went outside to help paint roof panels with a lovely shade of red that is still streaked over the clothes I wore. Valery helped, and we mostly painted in silence because of our language barrier. I felt that I should have tried harder to communicate - he spoke some English, and even saying things he didn’t entirely understand might have been better than nothing.

We just about finished before the paint ran out, and then we leaned against the truck and watched the men work. A crowd of little Haitian boys came over, looking at me and inching closer until they surrounded the place where I stood. Some of them touched my skin and giggled; some of them spoke in Creole that I mostly didn’t understand. The boy who had asked for a photo wanted another, and I got one of them all together.

The boy pointed to David and asked, “ou papa?” (your father?). I replied “non” (no) and he pointed to Abby and asked, “ou sè?” (your sister?). I replied “non” and said she was my friend, “zanmi.” He asked some of my team members’ names and the kids repeated them. He asked, “ki lan je ou?” which I later discovered means “how old are you?” but at the time all I could say was “m’ pa konprann” (I don’t understand).

They found some kind of chalk on the ground and used it to write arithmetic problems on the hood of the truck for me to solve. It was neat that we could all understand this because like Cady Heron says in the movie “Mean Girls,” math is “the same in every language.”

I forgot to mention Alain, the Haitian young man who lives upstairs. He speaks perfect English with a thick Creole accent and seems to be skilled at many things.

We got ready and went downstairs for a breakfast of fresh grapefruit halves, toast with butter/peanut butter/jam, and scrambled eggs with cheese and onions. Ron asked Jovite how to say water - “dlo” - and he had to repeat it several times as we attempted to duplicate his pronunciation.

Pat gave Abby and me supplies for painting at the clinic, and David stayed behind to go to the gardens with Enoch (he works with a program called Hope Seeds that builds gardens in Haiti, and David had brought seeds to help out).

While slathering my body with sunscreen against the tropical sun, I noticed more mosquito bites on my toes. I had even slept with DEET on this time!

Abby and I sat in our room reading and journaling for a while as we waited for the men. Once Alain walked by and asked what we were doing in there. We said we were waiting for the men to be ready, and he said, “Why are you waiting in your room?” Apparently it was very funny. After mentioning it to Pat later, I understood that while Americans value privacy and personal space, Haitians usually like to be together.

Back in Cap Haitien, Pat invited Abby and me to come to the store with her. On the way we passed a group of boys closer to our ages, and one said, “Hey! Girl!” and asked me to take his picture. He thanked me in English, and I thanked him in Creole - “mesi.”

At the store, we all bought Haitian coffee, and I bought some baking chocolate also. On the way out we passed a security guard with black leather combat boots and a big gun.

When we got back I read and rested a little, then we heard that the internet was back. I had typed a very long email the day before, which I was unable to send, so I sent a considerably shorter but still rather long update to my family, realizing I should have let Abby go first if I was going to take so long because her dad was anxious to hear from her.

We had a wonderful dinner of chicken legs in some kind of sauce, rice and beans (a common dish in Haiti), beets, salad with tomatoes, and brownies after. We saved some food for Jovite, and his grateful smile was priceless.

After journaling and a nice nap, I wandered downstairs where everyone else had gathered. They talked for a while and then we had a Bible study about the difference between the world Jesus died for - its people - and the world we are commanded not to love - its system or way of thinking. We discussed the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.

Ron mentioned that being asked to go in front of the church and speak about our trip involved pride and recognition, but it was also a good way to encourage other people to get involved. I told about how I’d had to go up alone and had been preoccupied with concern for my appearance, but had realized it wasn’t about me, it was about God. Pat said it had hurt her feelings to realize that things like that are a form of pride, and I think I knew what she meant.

We had tea/hot chocolate and more dessert - we are very well-fed here - and Ron concluded with Ecclesiastes 12:13 - “…Fear God and keep His commandments, For this is the whole duty of man.”

The clinic, one of the area’s most advanced facilities, was a concrete building painted green and white. It had a few rooms and, unlike most of the nearby houses, running water. Most or all of the medical supplies were stored on shelves in a single room about the size of a small bedroom. A few people waited inside, and many more on benches outside. At least there was an overhang that gave them shade.

At first there was not much for Abby and me to do while the men nailed up boards, but after a while we sacked up corn (courtesy of the U.N., who I’d learn more about later). We even got to saw a few boards, and later Abby filed while I swept.

During times when we just waited outside without much to do, I watched people, especially the small children who had gathered nearby. I didn’t know if they would want me to photograph them, but after a while one little boy motioned to me to take his picture, so I did.

For lunch we had peanut butter and jelly and sandwiches, some kind of lime sandwich cookies with Spanish packaging, and sodas in glass bottles. I would see a variety of interesting labels, since supplies seem to come from all different places to get here.

Apparently the skeeters found a way around the net - I woke up with a cluster of bites on my forehead and a few on my arm and knee. Perhaps they stuck their pointy noses through the holes.

As I sat on my bed reading the Bible, I could hear the quiet, beautiful voice of a little boy singing outside the window. The very sounds of daily life are so different here. I went to the kitchen and poured myself a mug of coffee, then went to join the men on the deck. Soon we all headed back downstairs for breakfast - blueberry pancakes, square slices of some kind of meat, bananas, and fresh grapefruit juice.

Today we made our first trip to the clinic at LaBruyere. We were to help put a roof on what would be the new immunization room. I think it was at least an hour’s drive over a route that I later found out was about 12 miles.

By now I had a pretty good idea of what the city looked like - at a glance, anyway. Now I would see the rough countryside. Most of the houses were small shacks made of cinderblocks. They had corrugated metal roofs or no roofs at all, and curtains for doors. The words of William Wilburforce kept coming back to me as I thought of my own home: “How can we live in houses like these while others live in boxes?”

I believe I was sent here, and after seeing what little I have seen so far, I know I have to do something. Where does one begin? There is so much need, so much corruption, but so much potential. I must remind myself again and again that I can’t fix this on my own. I can’t save the world. All I have to do is whatever God asks of me, which is just one little piece of a much greater picture that only He sees.

I’m sure people told me that nothing could prepare me for a trip like this. It was true, of course, but somewhere inside the shock of so many new sights, I felt comfortable. Maybe I was just too exhausted to let everything sink in just yet, but I sensed that I could stay a while. From the start I was drawn to this place and these people.

We had our first Haitian meal at Pat and her husband Clark’s house - a nice salad and pasta with some kind of meat sauce that I decided to trust was beef. I don’t usually eat red meat, but in Haiti I figured I’d eat what I was served, glad that it wasn’t dog or cat (I must admit I’d heard enough stories to be at least a little worried about eating some cute, furry animal - I’m not entirely vegetarian but I don’t eat pets, either). The meal was very good.

Afterward Abby and I got to meet Pat’s two dogs, ironically named Ginger and Mango. We journaled while the men began discussing work on a house for Jovite, Pat’s young neighbor who would soon be married. The crows outside the window sounded like parrots or monkeys.

A man named Lucien came with various arts and crafts to sell, and I bought a small painting. At dinner we got to meet Jovite and another friend, Enoch. Ron joked about our names - my first name, Noelle, and Jovite’s last name, Noel, are pronounced about the same. Then of course Enoch sang just a snippet of “The First Noel” and got everyone started.

We met on the deck for a devotional and Allan spoke about listening to God’s promptings - we are only responsible for the light that we have. When we respond to it with obedience, more is given to us. When we do not, some is taken away. This explains why we sometimes feel distant from God. Obedience is central to our faith.

My first Haitian shower was rather interesting. Air-temperature water pours from a small pipe protruding out of the wall, which isn’t bad because it’s hot here anyway. But you must conserve water and be very careful not to swallow any because there are disease-causing parasites in it.

I pondered later that God seemed to have prepared me for this trip in many small ways long before I ever thought of going. I had recently developed a particular liking for a lot of tropical foods like bananas, peanut butter, and coconut (not to mention I already liked coffee and chocolate). And I always thought it would be cool to have a canopy over my bed, I just hadn’t thought of it being a mosquito net. Perhaps these are trivial examples, but there would be others.