Roomies!

Just wanted to introduce you to the lovely ladies I share a room and loo with:

Abby and a puppy -- "It's so FLUFFY!"

Abby is from Jacksonville, Florida and teaches English to the Hope Village Kids and Mommies. She also works with the ladies at *3**Cords (see new link at right), and is developing a Young Life program here at MOH.

Clockwise from top left: Star, KL, Megan, Blaire

Star is from Witchita, Kansas and is part of the team who takes care of and leads the groups of North Americans who come to work here for a week or two at a time.
Blaire is from North Carolina and also helps with the groups.
Megan is from Toronto and is a Nurse who is finishing up her Master's in Community Health. She's been writing the curriculum for the MOH Community Health program while she's been here. Sadly she leaves on the 22nd of March.

Those are the girls I live with!
:)

DUSTEEE

It's amazing what you can find when you venture out of this dry and dusty area here in Titanyen.
Saturday morning I went to church with the Hope Village Kids and Rachel and Abby. To be quite honest, it wasn't the best service. There was a kind of unnatural feeling of chaos in the place. Usually the worship, while often seeming chaotic, is actually beautifully covered in a sense of joy and the praises are sweet and overflowing with the Holy Spirit - living water in action: singing, dancing, clapping, shouts of praise. But last Saturday felt somehow dry.
Maybe it was just me. Maybe I was in a stuck or dry place.
Anyhow, after church we walked up for lunch and then a group of North Americans on a team were heading into the mountains to a place called Saut Deau. There is a waterfall there and teams are often taken up to enjoy the place.
When I was invited to join I turned the offer down - I was feeling tired and maybe stuck in that dry place mentally - but one of my roommates persisted (Megan is a gift to me!) and I decided to go with them.
It was about an hour's ride in the back of a canter truck (picture a cube truck or small U-haul with a screen door on the back... for air flow) up into the mountains. UP in to the mountains.
Did I mention how dry and dusty it is here?
After about 15 minutes I tied a towel around my face to shield me from the dust. I was sitting at the very back of the truck so that I could keep an eye on the horizon and try to prevent motion sickness. The result was a fine coating of Haitian dust on every exposed area. Even the inside of my sunglasses needed to be wiped off every 20 minutes or so in order to see anything.
But see things I did. Though the road remained dry and dusty, the landscape began to change. Lush growth covers much of the mountain areas. Farmers are working successful crops. Small villages and towns were active with children playing, women chatting together or doing laundry, men walking around town or working on projects at their homes. There were big shade trees, fields of sugar cane, cattle and horses here and there.
The air changed too.
And when we got out of the truck and paid our $1 and walked down some stairs to behold a hidden waterfall... Well, despite my coating of dust, I didn't feel so dry anymore.
It's easy to think of this land as desolate and barren and desperate and dry. But it wasn't always and this waterfall in Saut Deau is, I think, a glimmer of what this land used to be. It reminded me as well of the hope in God's promise of restoration. Restoration of dry and dusty and barren and desolate lands, okay, but of our desperate souls even more so.

Lush Mountain Vista



Maria's Dusty Braids...
It was a beautiful walk up around and along the water.



Old Lady Hair & a Beautiful Waterfall



Covered up on the way back to MOH... lesson learned :)

 Blessings from a dry and dusty and lush and lovely land!

Two Weeks In

It's been a very interesting two weeks, and I've got many, many things to share, many, many thoughts to express, many, many gifts and blessings to appreciate and praise God for. (Many, many is something my nephew says and it's not strange to hear the Kreyol equivalent around here: "Anpil, anpil"). But there is a risk of boring a few of you (you know who you are) with a long post, so I'll be brief-ish and save the rest for another day :)

The other afternoon I came up to Rachel's (the director of the orphanage and my supervisor) apartment to find her re-wrapping the arm of one of the Hope Village girls. The girl had been riding one of those wiggly car things (like they have at Chapters in the children's' section - you sit on them and wiggle to make them go - those things are super cool and can turn on a dime!). This girl had been riding where she shouldn't have - down a sloped sidewalk that ended in stairs. The result of the ride was a broken bone in her arm. That was last week. This day Rachel was wrapping her arm up because the girl had decided the cast was inconvenient and had taken it off (the way a cast works here is a bit different, it's more like a splint and not so permanent). The girl was annoyed that she was being restricted by this contraption again, but she submitted to Rachel's care.

As soon as Rachel finished this task, another couple of Hope Village kids arrived with an issue that required a cold compress. That taken care of, another boy arrived with complaints of sores on his hands (I found out that he gets infections that often result in sores on his skin - he doesn't have HIV, they wonder about some kind of poorly treated infection from before he came to the orphanage as a toddler because he always gets these sores). He was crying about the intended treatment (to prick the blisters on the sores) and I found myself overwhelmed by this picture of 6 kids standing around the boy and Rachel, encouraging him to listen to her, to mind her. This picture of family, with Rachel mothering the little group and all their bumps and bruises, brought me to tears.

This is a big place and there are literally thousands of people who come through the gates every day. Teams, usually from North America, arrive every Wednesday and Saturday to do all kinds of construction, medical and evangelistic work on the campus and in the surrounding communities. There are many, many Haitian workers who come to the campus to work - there are a lot of projects on the site (the building of the new two-storey guest house, a giant warehouse, the expansion of the clinic into a hospital with an E.R.) - and there are many other indigenous workers at other locations nearby (a project to build houses in a nearby town, for example). There is a LOT of activity here every single day. That's not even including all the church activities on the weekends and some week nights... OR the thousands of children who attend the school on the property (they added afternoon school after the earthquake to accommodate all the children from the tent communities in the surrounding area - families who left Port-Au-Prince).

And in the middle of it all sits Hope Village. Home to 62 children and 24 caretakers for these children. That's many, many.

So to make a family here, I've decided, is a crazy thing. To think that you could come together and provide for the needs of these children in the middle of all this - is nuts.

Unless God is in it.
And He is.

Oh boy, is He in it.

Another Post Already? Naw, mostly pics :)

Handiwork in the library - dig the bright colours:

 

This is the building in Hope Village where I’m living (that window below the arrow is beside my bed... I realize in retrospect that the arrow is too small... oops):

Last weekend at the beach:

It's quite beautiful here... 

Thanks for your patience!

I'm all set for using the Internet now! It took some finagling... not really, just some time...

This week I've been studying Creole and doing different things around campus while waiting for my Creole teacher to be arranged. I think we have someone lined up and I should start intensive lessons Monday - looking forward to it and praying that God will open up my brain in amazing ways!

In the meantime, I've helped out at some English classes with one of my roommates, another intern, Abby. She works with the Hope Village children and adults (Haitian men and women who work there with the orphans) to teach them English.
I also did some painting in the children's library getting shelves and tables ready for them to use the space.
Today I spent some time down at 3 Cords - an initiative started here for people who have had prosthetics fitted at the lab here at MOH - where Haitian women are employed hand-making head bands, hair clips, jewelry, purses and shoulder bags that are for sale here on campus. Very cool stuff and totally cute. All of the workers at 3 Cords have had some sort of amputation and now have full time jobs! A bunch of sewing machines have been donated so that should aid in their production of these goods.

I'm getting to know more people and what goes on here but have yet to do any Art Therapy sessions. I'll wait until March to start working with Haitian children, but I may have an opportunity to work with some North American children and families starting in the next weeks. A number of children and parents from Canada and the US were here when the earthquake hit last year and so I've offered support if desired. I'll meet with one family in the next week or so about what their needs might be and if I can help.

I've begun to build some sweet friendships and treasure these getting-to-know-each-other days.
I'll find some good pics to post this week... lots to see!

Bon Swa, Ya'll!