Day 10 & 11 (9/24 – 25)

Saturday – Well, I finally finished all of the staff interviews today. It’s amazing, most of these people who are fortunate enough to have a rental house or a damaged but livable house, not only have a spouse and 2 or 3 kids but also 5 or 6 additional relatives living with them – many of them orphaned or widowed. Not bad for 2 bedrooms and a ½ bath. I’ll start site visits and evaluations next week.  - Yikes!!! - Just had a bolt of lightning land in our back yard! Thought the thunder would blow out the windows. Welcome to the tropics. Where was I? Oh yeah. Site visits. Most of the sites are in a 20 or 30 mile radius around Petionville. However, a couple of them are remote. One is clear up in St. Marcs – about 120 km northwest. That will be a day trip and I’ll get to make a stop in Thomas, where my October team from Sacramento will be working. I haven’t been up there since February and am anxious to see how much progress has been made and what my team will be working on. It will also allow me to have all the necessary materials on site when they arrive.

I’m looking forward to another Haitian church service tomorrow. It makes me smile to think about it.

Sunday – I’m still smiling. It’s inspiring to sit in church, surrounded by people who so enthusiastically and unashamedly demonstrate their faith. Their singing takes the roof right off of the sanctuary. A side note to my musician friends – the Haitians don’t seem to use the usual 4-1 cadence for Amen. They use 7-1. It takes a little getting used to. I have asked if it would be permissible to take some video during service and have been told it’s OK. So – I will try to do that next week. However, I still haven’t figured out how to get it uploaded to my website. But, I’m working on it..

After church Tom, John, Sarah (my ex-patriot office mates) and I grabbed a driver and went out  for pizza- a little slice of home. Then it was back to work. We had a team returning from La Tremblay. After we got the team settled, Sarah took me shopping. We went to a used clothing – I’m trying to think of a descriptive noun to adequately describe this place and coming up with a blank – mall. Apparently, after the earthquake, used clothing flowed into Haiti by the boatload. Unfortunately there was no system in place to distribute the clothes – they sat in containers in the port for over a year. Finally, in an effort to make room they gave these clothes in bulk to individuals to sell. This “store” is essentially a vacant lot that has been covered in tin and tarps and is a rabbit warren of individual racks of clothing set up in a co-op fashion. It’s a bizarre bazar. I ended up buying a pretty nice shirt for 150 gourde – about $3.75. All in all it was a very relaxing day.