Bondye beni ou : Haiti - Day 2

The title here is Creole for God bless you. Developing an ear for another language was quite difficult to me. I could pick out a word here and there, but often times it was spoken so quickly I couldn't catch most of it. As the week progressed I became a little more adapt to learning how to communicate despite the language barrier. As a whole I would say this was the hardest part about the trip- the inability to communicate or comprehend what was being said around you.

Journal Entry : Day 2

Sunday morning I awake sometime around 4:00 A.M. and it is still dark. Lying there I realize falling back asleep would be unlikely. So I decided to just lay there with my thoughts as the sun starts to creep up around 5:15. At this point, you begin to hear the chime of a rooster or two taking turns informing you that it is morning. This became an everyday occurrence, one that wasn't to bad to get used to. The other sound that you would here were dogs barking at each other from time to time throughout the nights and in the mornings; this to me definitely became a nuisance and for sure one thing I won't miss in Haiti.

At about 5:30 A.M. the house is shaken by the sound of the loudest rooster crow you could imagine. It was absolutely deafening as well as alarming to say the least. Come to find out it was one of the men from the other team that was there with us. His name was Stanley and he is one of the biggest characters you will ever meet. Many of the men from the other team have been on mission trips together and this actually became a tradition that Stanley would do. To describe Stanley he is probably in his late 50's, standing at about 6'1", and weighing in at about 330 lbs. Much like many of the other guys, he was always quick-witted and in good spirits. Later come to find out his infamous rooster call scared not only the people on the team that weren't prepared for it, but also all the Haitian workers at the GBC House. They were terrified and were banging on the Doug's door trying to understand what happened.

Well, I decided to stay in bed since breakfast was still about two hours away despite being fully awake after that occurrence. Around 6:30 I got up to take a shower for the first time in Haiti. Initially, I was somewhat nervous about it because you can't drink the water or get it in your mouth. So water over there is a precious resource and we had to be conservative when it came to showers. We had to take "army" showers which isn't as bad as I thought it would be. Basically, you just douse yourself with water getting wet and then you turn the water off. They you lather up and turn the water back on to rinse off. It wasn't too bad except that the water was pretty cold and there wasn't hardly any pressure out of the shower head.

When every meal was was prepared and ready to be served the cook would ring a bell informing us it was ready. So a little after 7:00 we hear the bell for the first time and breakfast was served. In the kitchen/dining room there is a built in A/C unit that doesn't put out much air but does keep that room cooler in the house than any other place. Breakfast this morning was really good. The best part to me was the fresh squeezed cherry juice. I'm not even that big a fan of cherries but when I get back to the States I will hunt me down something that is remotely close to that. So today's agenda was to go to church in the morning and in the evening. Half the team- Lance, Mike, Stanley, Jerry, Ernie, and Bill went to Pastor Milot's church where Pastor Bill from our team would preach that morning. The other half- Doug, Alison, Monique, Jennie, Jason, and myself went to Pastor Alexis church where we would be doing VBS that week.

So we hop in our "tap tap" along with a translator named Clifford as well as a body guard named Pucci. After about a 30 minute drive we make our way down a narrow dirt road with trees and cacti flowing from the sides of the vehicle. Finally we arrive to the church and pull up to what was left of probably a two story building. All that was there were some ruined side walls off to the side and some columns supporting a second story floor that was now a ceiling to a place of worship. The ceiling did provide some shade over the congregation of about 40 or so that were there, but other than that this was an outdoor church. The service had already started when we got there and the church was already singing songs. The members sat on these small 1"X6" benches that looked like they were in desperate need for an upgrade. They wrangled up some plastic patio chairs for us somewhere and sat them up at the front of the church. As the service progressed I found it quite fascinating but also quite perplexing to watch. The small crowd was very energetic belting their voice for their "papa". But the perplexing part was I had no clue what they were singing about. Their enthusiasm really made me want to sing with them but was unable, instead I just clapped along with them. The service was quite long but luckily the translator did interpret the message for us when Pastor Alexis spoke.

Upon the conclusion of the service we shook a few hands and departed back towards the house. Along the way this is when I noticed the ridiculous amount of fruit trees that this country had. There were mango, banana, coconut, papaya, lime, and ginnups. I'm sure there are more than that, but that was all the types I saw on this trip. As we arrived at the house, our core group decided to play some cards for a little while, maybe 30 minutes or so. We then decided to start working on planning some VBS material for the next couple of hours. It took some time but for the most part we settled on the stories and crafts that we would be doing with the kids for that week. Before we knew it, we heard the dinner bell at 4:00. Yep, only two meals a day, this was going to be interesting. Dinner was good from what I recall and we had an hour before everyone was going to leave to go to Pastor Milot's church for an evening service.

Ginnups

This church was much nicer than the one we attended in the morning. It was equipped with a very large industrious sized tent with maybe 20 benches or so. It also had power to it so it was well lit and had a sound system with a couple of mics, an electric guitar, and a keyboard hooked in. The worship was loud and energetic and it lasted for quite a while. Then Pastor Milot got up to give his message in which Emmanuel translated for us. The message started out well with a principle message of, "Do not be afraid, God is there". After that it veered and curved all over the place, but that initial point spoke to me for sure. So after it was over we went back to the house. It was our first time in the "tap tap" at night. Overall it was more peaceful, most likely because of less traffic and less honking of horns.

Riding back it was the first time I saw something that reminded me of home - the moon. It looked just like it did in Georgia. It gave me a small amount of joy and satisfaction. It also made me miss home for just a second. We made it back safely and had a debriefing time with the entire group to share about our day. After that we had a baked cake waiting for us in the kitchen. It was definitely a sweet surprise. So after that it was off to bed on another humid night, tomorrow we would start VBS.

Until tomorrow...Day 3....Mesi (Thank you)