Little Girl Friends

I must admit I was pretty distracted on our village tour the first day by the following of little girls who accumulated as we went.  I think it started because I was trying to practice my Creole and asked one of the girls who was eyeing me as I was walking past her family’s hut what her name was.  (She was also darling and reminded me of a friend I have in Iowa City, Leara.)  Her name was Islan, and although I’m normally terrible with names, that one stuck.  I said “Au Revoir Islan” as I was walking away, and I think that was the spark that ignited our fast friendship.  She started walking with me, then a few of her friends follow suite; and soon they all started helping me learn Creole by pointing at things we’d pass and trying to teach me the word.  Some words were easy, like sheep is ‘mouton,’ and cow is ‘bef.’ The best for them though was teaching me the harder words, as they really got a kick out of my mispronunciations—sometimes giving them giggling fits that lasted minutes.  They also really enjoyed touching and commenting on my hair (if I’d known more Creole I would have told them something like “oh, girls, this ain’t nothing compared to my little sister’s locks”).  I really fell in love with them though when they started holding my hands as we walked (especially grabbing my hand to stabilize me whenever the road was steep or especially rocky.)  At some points on the walk, Islan (14), and her 13 year old best friend would be on either side of me holding both my hands; and then Manize, the most precious 7 year old I’ve ever seen, would just hold onto the back of my shirt, or even put her little hand on my hip as we walked, I guess so she could be physically linked into our little group too.  Towards the end of our walk Manize told me she loved me (in Creole of course, but luckily one of the other village kids that joined the group knew enough English to translate).  Amazingly I knew an appropriate-ish response in Creole: ‘Eh ou mem tu’ I said, meaning something like ‘and you also.’  Islan and co. were definitely the highlight of my first day in Haiti. 

Days One & Two

It’s hard to even start typing this blog because I already have done so much in the past two days that I feel like I’ve been here a week at least.  I think a bullet point list of activities will cover it best right now:

Day 1

• Arrive in Port au Prince Airport at 8:10 am yesterday, breeze through customs, and get into a tap tap with Chris, and Elain (I cannot be held accountable for spellings of any names in this or any future blogs) who is one of Chris’ good Haitian friends.
• Visit Elain’s family to see their new house, his adorable wife and young children.  The 3 year old has had a rash for a while and Elain wanted Chris to take a look at it.

• Head to the home of some of Chris’s American friends who live here doing medical work (and raise their 8 children, 4 biological, 4 adopted), to pick up some medical supplies from a storage unit they let CHI use.
• Pick up Rigan on the way, a former employee of CHI who is still very interested in working on Community Health Worker programs in different communities.  His English is incredible.

• Arrive at the house (they had two beautiful mastiffs) and spend the next hour or two sorting through medicines to bring back to Mission Matana.
• Take the tap tap back through Port-au-Prince up to Arcahaie and arrive at Mission Matana.

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• Meet Liz and Abbey, the two other Americans who will be here the whole time I am. More on them later.
• Go walking for several hours around the nearby villages for a full tour of the latrines which are still being constructed; the river, canal system, and dam; the decrepit road which needs major work to be functional for vehicles; and crop irrigation system.
• Best part of the walk for me was the little girlfriends I made—I think they deserve their own post though—soon to follow.
• Home to dinner at the mission (lots of great stories of the happenings from the last month told to us by Liz and Abbey), then a skype conference call with a fellow CHI’er, and then to bed.  (Oh, I did end up having to pack back up and switch rooms with Chris around 9 pm because we discovered my door did not lock.  Well it locked, but the door frame could very easily be pulled off the wall, definitely not leaving the room secure.)

Day 2

• First moto ride (of my life).  As nervous as I was, it was not only super fun, but I felt pretty safe.  And, as weird as it sounds, sitting between Santho, (my translator, creole teacher, and good friend after today) and the moto driver, not holding on to anything (and yes, sorry parents, no helmet) I felt really secure.  I also heard that moto drivers are extra careful when they are transporting “blan,” and I definitely experienced this to be true today.
• The trip was so I could go into town to exchange money, buy a phone sim card, and get some internet card minutes—and also get over the hurdle of my nervousness to leave the mission without Chris or the girls.  Santho and I were fairly successful on these errands, and I am just so glad to have gotten to know him, had him with me, and very excited that he will be my translator and companion doing the water surveys in the coming weeks.
• Next, Chris, the girls, Santho, and I went into the village to visit with Peterson, who is now going to be running the Gadyen Dlo program.  He was awesome.  And, he drove us around in his tap tap the rest of the day.
• We went into Debak to visit a hospital to make connections there for Abbey and the next time there is a CHI clinic team down here.
• Then, onto the coast road, Route 1, and went to Kaliko, the resort. We went there so Chris could introduce us to the manager, a Canadian former Olympic wrestler, who invited us to stop by anytime during our stay.  We also wanted to talk to him about real estate around Arcahaie because we’ve come to the conclusion that getting CHI it’s own “office” type of space may be slightly more productive to our projects and causes than always staying at the Mission.  We’ll see what happens and I’ll explain more about this at some point.
• Next, we head home, after stopping by a former clinic patient on our way.  Most memorable for me was meeting the patient’s brother, who was a 50 something year old Haitian who had lived in the US for 25 years.  He ended up telling us about his 19 children, “some with white women, some with black, some in Haiti, some in Florida, some in Minnesota.”  Oh, and that he’d be into the clinic next month for his hernia.
• Then home for more beans and rice, and a nice early night so we can get up early to see off Chris L

It’s the Journey

The most stressful part of most trips for me seems to be the preparation (i.e. making travel arrangements, organizing my life enough to leave it for a period of time, arranging care for my animals, packing, etc.).  And, I think that is why I got sick this weekend.  Although, I do think the exposure to germs I got sitting in a hospital waiting room on Friday—to get my rabies titers checked (to see if I have immunity following the vaccinations I received last year before India), definitely didn’t help my stressed out immune system.  Anyway, I’m happy to report that right now, my main lingering symptoms are nasal drainage and sinus pressure. 

               One of my favorite concepts I learned about in undergrad (in communication studies) was about how our society’s dominating focus on the “destination” results in the loss of some of the most important life experiences, because we aren’t able to actually be mentally present enough in the moment to have them.  Well, for some strange reason, I think traveling in my state of mental fatigue due to my cold actually forced me to focus on the journey more than the destination.  I was so sick and medicated, all I could do was focus on the exact moment I was in—and it was unexpectantly enjoyable.

               Despite the fact our flight out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa was delayed 2 hours, and resulted in us missing our flight in Chicago (we were so close to making it we literally watched the plane back away from the terminal); and, then not getting into our hotel in Ft. Lauderdale until 11:45 pm (we had to get up at 3:30 am for our flight to Port-Au-Prince); I actually was in a state of calm elation, that has only recently died down a bit.

               The final leg of our journey this morning, literally a trip into a completely different world, started when we were boarding our flight to Port-Au-Prince.  I’ve never seen such blatant racial profiling, or any full-fledged person and belonging searches for that matter going on IN THE GATE.  (Not at the gate, I mean in the little tunnel bridge you walk down that connects you to the plane.)  Not that the situation in P-A-P was much better… Though, I think there is no need for me to go into greater detail than saying that I have never gotten through customs with such speed or ease.

This is one of the beautiful views from the plane as we begin our decent into P-A-P airport.

               As I write this post I am sitting in my room of the next 5 weeks.  Behind me, up into the mountains, I hear a few dogs barking intermittently and the comforting songs of insects; much like the sounds you might hear on a summer night in the Iowa country side.  However, to my immediate left, I hear as clearly as if there were no wall separating us at all, the non-stop singing and chanting of the other ‘Mission Matana’ residents.  It’s 11 pm, and I’m just starting to realize how completely my life has transformed in the past 19 hours I’ve been awake.

               I have much more I need to write, but need my sleep much more.  The picture I’ll leave you with is the view from my bedroom door right before I walked down to dinner tonight.  You have to look at the picture as a whole, a bit down the hill and at the horizon line, but that’s the ocean, and Anse-a-Galets (the island in cove).  I can’t wait for tomorrow—and for this incredible journey to continue…