Haiti Trip, Part 4

Saturday

Saturday morning we had the same routine – getting ready, breakfast, and van-ride to the orphanage – with the exception of it taking us a bit longer to get ready to go up for breakfast with one more child to care for. We’re learning! Kaylen gets dressed, sometimes even pours her own cereal and milk herself, brushes her teeth, ties her shoes, gets in the van and buckles her seatbelt herself, so we learning how long it takes to get two very dependent children ready. Also, we found out that Elijah likes cheerios, so putting some out for him on the shelf kept him occupied while we were getting Josephine and ourselves ready. Josephine did display for us the infamous nasty, runny, blowout diapers we’d heard about so many times – twice – once when she woke up in the morning, and again at breakfast!

I didn’t do a very good job of journaling about the things we did each day, like I’d wanted to, but at some point – either Friday afternoon or Saturday morning, several of us women had a meeting with the older girls. We had a Haitian American (the sister of the doctor I spoke about Friday), help translate. The meeting was basically to get some opinions from the girls on what they like/dislike about the orphanage. It was hard at first to get information out of them – even though we tried to make it as non-threatening as possible – no men or nannies or orphanage staff there – although they opened up more a bit further into the meeting, as we rephrased our questions. We asked them questions like, what’s their favorite thing about their rooms, about the food, about school, in general about being at the orphanage, and also asked what they didn’t like or would like to see done differently.

When asked what they like about the orphanage (the general question before we got more specific), their response was something like “everything.” When asked what they didn’t like, they said “nothing.” Most of them said they liked all their nannies, but then when asked one-at-a-time, several had a common nanny that they said was their favorite, but only one child had a least favorite. I think the worst comment I heard was that several of the girls don’t like eating corn, which I think they have frequently. Some of the things they were excitedly saying they wanted, were to have flowers painted on their bedroom walls again, to have more books to read to learn English, to have more math and science books to learn from, etc. I think just about their favorite thing is school. It was really eye-opening to see how much they love school, and they love learning. They even expressed very well their knowledge that learning provides them with more opportunities for their future. How mature is that, that they can realize this at such a young age!

It just amazed me how appreciative these girls are of their lives at the orphanage. We Americans go there, seeing how little they have, but they see it so much differently. You see, most of the older girls have lived a good part of their lives outside of the orphanage, and seen much worse, had so much less. It’s a stark contrast to children in America, and reminded me of how much we take advantage of in our lives.

I worked some Saturday morning on doing more organizing of the children’s measurement data, and getting the remainder of them typed into the laptop spreadsheet. Since Dr. Marie was gone for the weekend visiting her family that lives in Haiti, there wasn’t much else do to with the health assessments, so I helped outside with some of the painting. There was more than enough painting to be that week! The current painting being done was on the bunk beds that were being built for the girls' rooms – bright red. I think in addition to the beds that had been separated from each other, there were some new ones built as well. I made the mistake of getting paint all over my hands – you know how you put your hand under a spoon so it doesn’t drip on the floor? I did that with my paintbrush, and boy is oil paint sticky! And it doesn’t wash off with water – only turpentine/paint thinner. I did find where they’d been keeping the paint thinner (so it was out of the children’s hands/sights/minds), and then washed the remaining pink coloring off my hands in water. I told Jock, Kaylen would have loved to see my pink hands right then!

When the painters had caught up with the bunk-bed-builders, it was nearing lunchtime. I went out to the veranda to sit down and rest. My traveler’s guts had continued that morning, and by then, I wasn’t feeling too well. Someone convinced me to go into the office (which was air-conditioned), and rest for a while. There were a few others doing the same, at which point, Linda asked if we wanted to go back to the hotel. I didn’t want to – I wanted to be at the orphanage helping, but I knew I wasn’t going to be much help, and since a few others were going (they weren’t making a special trip just for me), I agreed. Pierre summoned Jock to get me my hotel key – and because I was crying (I cry when I get sick). Someone shared a Levaquin with me, and when I got back to the hotel, I slept the rest of the afternoon (minus the welcomed interruption when the maid brought back the laundry we’d left to be done for us that morning – which by the way was quite cheap and very handy – we did it three times while we were there, and helped with us not having to bring quite so many clothes for the trip.)

Jock returned to the hotel that evening after his hard day’s work (I think he was finishing the tile-trim in the room he’d tiled the day before), with Elijah and Josephine with him – to my delight. He took a quick shower while I rested and played with them, before heading up for supper. Dinner that night was a small pepperoni pizza, creole goat, another enormous plate of rice that came after the goat was gone, and a fruit plate for dessert. The goat was delicious - the only thing I can compare it to is a very tender beef roast. After dinner, instead of devotions, some of the travelers shared their reflections on the trip, as they were leaving the next morning.