Days 71 & 72 (11/24 - 25)

Thanksgiving Thursday – Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful day with family and friends. Thanksgiving in Haiti is a non-event. We “blans” (creole for foreigners) had to create our own holiday. We started by giving the Haitian staff the day off. Then we packed our backpacks and headed up to the Hotel Karibe – a very nice hotel not too far from the Guest House with the intention of spending the day and night. However, this being Haiti, we ran into a problem. The confirmation they gave us for the rooms was only confirmation that they had received our request for the reservations and they were full. So – we decided to spend the day around the pool and watch some football on the flat screen at the pool side bar. However, this being Haiti, they didn’t get Fox network. So – we had to settle for updates on ESPN. But, it still was a nice, relaxing day and a kind of a going away celebration for John, who will end his 7 month tour and go home to his family next week. He will be missed.

Since there wasn’t any turkey dinner on the Karibe menu we decided we might as well go down to Hangs, a local sports bar that has good hamburgers and might have the football games on their big screen. Success!! Not only did they have the game on - when we walked in the owner said “We have special Thanksgiving dinner for you.” We had turkey, dressing (no gravy L), vegetables and pumpkin pie. Not as good as Mom used to make, but not at all bad considering where we were. We then headed back to the Guest House and our own beds – full of turkey but missing our families.

Friday – Today started with no breakfast. We had forgotten that we had told the staff we wouldn’t be back until the afternoon.  Claire made us some coffee and we had enough residual turkey left in us from last night that we didn’t suffer. We decided to take advantage of the lull in team activity and do some clean-up and reorganization. Our office was the first priority. We moved some things out; put things away in cupboards; moved some furniture; cleaned and then went shopping. Not exactly Black Friday, thank Heavens. But we did see some Christmas decorations. We bought a table and 4 chairs to put in the little kitchen area and now have a break/conference room. In the process I also scored a new chair. Up until now, my chair was whatever was left over and often ended up being a folding chair.

The next order of business was reorganizing the tools and supplies. With as many as 5 teams out in the field at one time, you can imagine how many cots, water jugs, wheelbarrows, generators, shovels, hand tools, etc., etc. that we have – as well as tarps, medical supplies, clothes, school supplies and toys that teams leave with us to distribute. Things get stuffed into the cabinets in the carport, our office back porch and John’s room. So – time to clean the closets. We worked until dark, had dinner and went back at it for a couple of more hours. We actually got most of it done, but it was too dark to see in the cabinets – so I’ll get on that part in the morning. We have 4 teams coming in tomorrow, so I’d like to get it done before they start arriving.