Rain Rain
I am so mad right now because my camera got really wet and stopped working. I really hope it will eventually be ok and start functioning again...Gosh.
Today, we met people from a Nebraskan congregation that works with HTF (Haitian Children Foundation), which is one of the partner organizations for CLM. Lots of new people: Rwan(the pastor), Lori, Al (Lori's husband and a dentist), Mincy(Rwen's cousin), Lauren, Alex, De Bo (HTF staff who was able to make everyone smile and laugh), Maya, and more. They had a bus rented and we rode with them for a while. It was very nice to have air conditioning. Again, we had to get on to a boat, which is really a log carved inside so that people can crouch inside. This congregation from Lincoln, Nebraska, gave CLM $12,000 and wanted to see what CLM was doing with the money and also wanted to bring back some stories to gather even more support. The people that came were really interested in improving the lives of the Haitian people, and the funds didn't seem to be conditional on the religious affiliation. They were working with various organizations within Haiti. For example, tomorrow, they were planning to visit a deaf school, and Al, the dentist, was planning to provide dental care for the students there. He was expecting to pull out some teeth, he said, and I have a feeling that this was not his first time doing such things. Some of the people in the group had already traveled to Tanzania and Uganda in similar missionary trips. They had also built a well in Sudan, although they cannot physically go there for obvious political reasons. I don't know. I witnessed the power of churches in grassroots fundraising. Church is a truly important and powerful organization, in which resources can be mobilized for doing good. Considering how religious Haitians are themselves, it is wonderful to see that diverse people could work together and come together under a same religion, be it Catholicism or Protestantism. It was a moment in which I had to ponder my religious views a bit.
Mincy had a professional camera and was taking photos of the children and the CLM families we visited. Kids loved it. They were looking at their own images in the camera, laughing and giggling the whole time. Kids are kids. I just love watching them smile.
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At lunch, we ate in a restaurant called Las Vegas. The food was great. Too much food. We invited three brothers to join with us (although they joined when we were almost done with the meat, so they only got to eat the rice and some friend platens). These three were living with their mother's father in law. They are from the same mother, but from different fathers. They were able to go to school, but they also had to work in the afternoon. They seemed to be pretty much on their own. I gave them some apple gummys and the biggest one smiled at me and said thank you in English. I really love kids like them. He even wanted to take a picture with me. Lori said she will send it to me so I will be waiting for the picture.
Kendra and I.
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June 7-8
Weekend in Port Au Prince
(I will update this later with this weekend’s activity with Kendra’s family)
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June 9
Guitar Jam Session
So right now, we are playing guitars. Well, Gauthier and Ebert were playing before and now Samira is trying to learn it from Ebert. I met bunch of new people today. I think this is one of the most enjoyable things to do when you are working in a NGO like this. You constantly meet new people who are good and amazing. Anyway, this morning, we were picked up from Kendra's aunt's house and met Gauthier, Samira, Amy, and David. Amy has been working with Fonkoze for a year, and she is now leaving, and Samira is now going to replace her. They are in charge of interacting with donors and reporting back to them about how their donations were used. There was a more formal and cool sounding name to this position, but I forgot. But this seems like a really cool job. They are both older than us, yet they look so young that I thought they were the same age as I am. They are both probably in their late 20s. Samira has been working with the Citigroup for years, and she had also worked with the entertainment industry, living in LA, interacting with some celebrities like Mel Gibson and Denzel Washington and such. Amy was in education and taught high school before, but she is now changing her career. She said she wants to go to get MBA. These are pretty amazing kids. Samira had been in Ghana before, and Amy, too, is well-traveled. They are also very outgoing and much more sociable. I feel like they have really good social skills, perhaps because they have been working in real jobs for years now. Anyways, I finally met Gauthier. He is a sweet guy. I can't tell how old he is but he has two college aged children who are now in Miami. I think he lived in the US initially, but then he moved to Haiti with his kids when the kids were 7 or something like that. Since then, they have been living in Haiti as Gauthier has been working for Fonkoze.
Anyways, Gauthier had prepared many many mangoes for us. (I am pretty sure he and others just got mangoes out of the tree they have in this house). Afterwards, Amy wanted to go see the famous waterfalls here. So we, the foreigners, all went to see the famous waterfall that is supposed to be holy. 50,000 people come to visit this waterfall in July 16th. I heard about this Indian guy who really wanted to get this one job. He wasn't able to get it for years, but after he made the visit to the falls, he was able to get it. (probs because he wanted it so much). After that, he visits the fall every year.
Sodo means "bucket of water". There are mud and little streams everywhere. We did go. And wow, what a fall. It was beautiful. We had walk across the fall in order to see the full view. Amy paid 100 gourds for all of us, and they still wanted more at the end for baby stepping us in the water, but I didn't have any change. I felt slightly bad.
After that, we headed off to a place we were going to visit. It was a long ride. David was in the back of the truck with all the other guys. After an hour ride, his butt was killing him, so he came in. On the ride back, even though it was raining, Amy volunteered cheerfully to ride in the back of the truck. She had a pancho and all. She was prepared for the one last wild ride. She was soaked at the end, though.
We tried to visit two women in the field. One was gone, so we were only able to see the house and the children. Their hair reddish brown—a sign of malnourishment-- they were looking at us. Amy explained how the roofs mark the economic status of the people. Although to our eyes, all these houses look poor, some can afford the tin roofs, and others can't. This particular woman is staying in a storage place her sister lent her because she does not have anywhere to go. At least they had wood walls. Some houses are built with mud. I don't know how they stand when it rains hard.
The second woman we visited greeted us so warmly. You can see that she is happy to see us. She proudly also built a beautiful cage for her new assets, goats. It was nice. She looked optimistic, and I think it is such optimism and hope that the program brings to the women and their family, and it is that transformation that makes such hard work possible for many people.
Trying to visit our last woman, the car was stuck in the mud. Everyone had to get off and push. It still didn't work. Some villagers came out to help us. We were rocking the car, digging the mud, putting stones, and oh gosh, it was a labor indeed. It finally got out. I feel like every day is filled with such events. A day will never go by without something out of the ordinary. This is how these case managers live their lives. Stuck in mud, flat tire, a woman get pregnant, her child get pregnant because she is not in school (and they say anything can happen when they are not in school), someone's goat has a swollen leg-- these are the things that they deal with, the things that these women have to pull through themselves.
When I tell David that I am 20, he says that I am just a baby. People are surprised that I am only 20. Amy is 28. Samira, 25 going 26. David 25. I asked Gauthier how old he was. He answers 18 and smiles. Ebert says he is an old guy. I wonder how old they really are. Gauthier maybe in his 40s, Ebert maybe in his early 30s. I guess I am young. To them, Kendra and I look like teenagers. I do feel that way, too. I feel like there is something different about people who have been working. They have a set of social skills and also a kind of maturity I like.
They were talking about love and purpose when I came out from the shower. I missed most of the purpose argument, but love, I was able to listen. Gauthier and Amy both believed that "love" exists and that it lasts forever. Love does not expire, Gauthier said. Samira does not believe that. She thinks love change, mutate, diminish, etc. Amy said that love is love and it does not change. You just put it aside if necessary, but it is still there and it is still love. Samira is more skeptical. She thinks when one love is over, people still move on, and when they do that, the previous love is changed or gone. I was just listening to their intense conversation. I asked Amy if love can happen more than once. She says she doesn't know.
