Monday the 7th we got up early and went to the market nearby. Lots of veggies and fruits laid out on tarps that they are selling. Also some other things like piles of clothes and hair accessories. There was soap that supposedly they are well known for and the soap is called a miracle stain remover. So I hope to get that as I was looking for lestoil and had not found it yet in the states so this might be better and definitely less expensive. There were sacks of spices as well. There was fish laid out and also chicken. The couple we stay at, she bought some chicken and we watched the guy cut it up and put it in a bag for her. Thankfully, he cut the head off! LOL!
After market we went to the church and started painting. It is old barnwood type of wood, rough and a few places the termites destroyed so it just crumbles when you try to paint it. We are painting it cream. It is a dear little church though, and I never saw such a small church. Could pass for "the little country church in the wildwood" except there is no wildwood here! We got most of the inside done in a few hours. A person would go by with the roller and paint all the slatted wood and then the paint brushers would go by and fill in the cracks and crevices. We weren't at it long until we had a whole bunch of helpers! I caught onto it soon that whenever there's a missionary at the church, the little children from all around come to see what is happening and then they want to help! Only, they really got in the way and you try so hard not to get paint all over your clothes and the concrete floor but when you can't even turn around without bumping a child...well...it's just not convenient! I kept saying to my self, "Jesus would say 'suffer the little children to come unto Me and forbid them not.' " But when we breaked for lunch and came back, not many came back to join us so I was grateful for that. Of course they had all wanted to help and kept stealing our brushes and paint if you only laid them down for 5 seconds! We got most of the inside done but then we ran out of paint. So we had to stop. The benches and window sills will be done another day as well as the outside of the building.
In the evening we did a doll craft with the girls. I think I will try it with the shelter girls when I get home. It's a cute yarn doll made out of used empty water bottles. You wrap yarn around the bottle for the clothes and put on some lace to make it look like a skirt. Then you are supposed to put on a wooden spoon head decorated with hair for the head but we are going to make clay heads for them. So they got the yarn put on MOnday night. The next time we work on them is Thursday night, we hope to finish them then.
Tuesday the 8th......we woke up at 7:30AM & went into town, actually crossed the border into Haiti as the one volunteer was taking her parents to the IFM base for their flight back. We hung around the base for awhile and then we toured the clinic. Made me thankful for our US hospitals! Seems like I would be able to work in a clinic/hospital like they have here and I would want someone smarter than me to work on me if I was sick! LOL! I'm sure they have a good doctor, it's just that the appearances of the hospital are very crude and simple. They have 54,000 files of people and that is all manually filed! Imagine! Someone commented that they need a computer and the guy in charge of the files chuckled and pointing to his head he said, "No my computer is right here!" They just have simple desks for a nurse's station and it really looks like someone having fun playing doctor! We toured the cholera tents and there were maybe 6 or so patients. They used to have all the rooms full as well as people lined in the hallways. They explained to us how it saps all the hydration a person has if they are not treated in time and they can die fast. They showed us the beds/cots and they had a hole cut out of the middle. That was because the people with cholera cannot control their diarrhea and they just put a bucket under each bed.
There was a line of people waiting to be seen by a doc. They sit on benches just waiting.
We also toured the orphanage which is really just a home with 6 children. One is handicapped and in a wheelchair. Her family has alot of children and didn't have the resources to care for her but they still love her and come visit her. There was a 7 month old baby that is being adopted by one of the volunteers. She is adorable. There were at least 2 little boys I saw there that were adorable as well. Why are black babies so much cuter than white ones? Well I guess there not, it's just that we don't see them as much so they are just more fun to look at since they are new to us!
We also toured a work site where they are building a house. And, we ate at the IFM base. A Haitian lady cooked us lunch and it was VERY good! It was rice with some kind of meat gravy kind of thing with beans. So tasty I wanted to eat more but got full fast. I am not drinking enough....I miss my ice cold water and the water at the mission was ice cold so I couldn't get done drinking that! If I thought I would lose weight on this trip.....ummm....that is a joke because I have gotten less picky of food over the years and everything so far was good so I ate alot.
When we headed back to the border to come "home" we had an interesting time. The road nearing the border is a narrow and bumpy (alot of their roads are paved then stones then paved then stones, etc.) and it winds by a huge body of water, a lake. They keep having to redo it (pile more stones on) because it keeps going underwater. They have a problem that the lake keeps coming higher and higher and covering things, they don't know why. Anyway so we wind around and pass everyone who is going slower than we want to go and honk our horn to let them know we are here! We finally made to the border and then we were stuck there for awhile. There were piles of trucks and all jam packed there and waiting for approval to be let through. None of it making any sense how they let these trucks block all the others and have a royal road block. Seriously, it's pathetic management. Then when they finally let some of the trucks go, you would still have to wait as all these other vehicles came 3 abreast just barreling on through, and some with literally only 3 hairs width in between them and the other vehicles! I would not be brave enough to steer like that!
Now we are back and getting ready for church tonight. Guess we will carry the benches outside for church as the inside stinks like paint.
Oh, and everyone but me climbed up on the roof from a long long ladder and they plan on sleeping there tonight. Not me! I would love to be up there but I hate ladders so badly!
Oh, and I ate some crab meat. They were doing crabs while we watched and they begged me to eat some so I did. Fresh crabs. Not too bad. I would eat them again if they are fresh like that.
Feb. 9, Today we painted the whole outside of the church. We painted it Dominican style! You put kerosene in your paint and make it really soupy so that is splatters and runs all over the place when you paint! It stretches it that way! You save yourself money! The inside we were able to paint regular but Pastor Kiko wanted the outside done Dominican style. They rent the building and would like a new building eventually so that was some of the reason for being sloppy I guess. The landlord does not pay for the paint. Oh, and if there are outlets or wiring for the lights, you just paint under and around them and who cares if you get paint on them!
I forgot to mention in yesterday's email that they also grow sugarcane as a crop. We went by a pickup load of sugarcane and the guys handed a stalk over to us to eat. Reminded me of when I was in Panama we got to try some when we visited a sugarcane farm.
We painted til lunch time then came home and ate lunch and then made heads for a craft we had started with the girls Monday night. They have girl's night Monday and Thursday nights. Remember the yarn dolls I talked about before? An empty water bottle that you wrap yarn around? Well you are supposed to put a wooden spoon in them for the head but we didn't have any so we made clay heads out of homemade playdough and baked them. Then we drew faces on them and put a clear coating on them. Next we made yarn wigs and glued them on the heads. We made 23 of them. So it took most of the afternoon. Then time for shower and off to the church to do the craft. The girls loved them! Sadly though, a few of the heads broke and some extra girls came too that weren't with us the first night and that caused us to not have enough heads. So some girls have a headless doll! It was chaotic. I want to do this craft with my girls in at the shelter. I am thankful for the order the staff keeps in there because these girls here are everywhere. I mean everywhere and they get loud and if you are trying to hand things up they all want to mob you to make sure they get something. For me it was a challenge also because they would come up to me and say something in rapid Spanish and I didn't pick up enough of words to understand what they were saying.
That pretty much sums up the day. Tomorrow we will paint the church benches and the windows and doors. I don't know what we will do the rest of the day but I'm sure we will do something fun. We just got done playing a game of Skip-bo and got so silly that we quit and came to bed. So we are making memories.
No comments:
Post a Comment