Days 118 – 120 (2/11 – 13)

Saturday – Just two teams this morning – one to the airport and one to Arcahie. Then the rest of the day ended up being totally unscheduled. Tom and I originally had planned to do our site visits to Petit Guave, Fond Deaux and Mellier, already postponed from earlier in the week, but Pastor Paul said at our meeting yesterday that he wanted to go with us and couldn’t go until next Thursday. Nothing down here seems to happen when you want it to. So – Tom and I decided to do a triage on our team cots. These things really take a beating. Maybe it’s because they are rated for 225 lbs. and some of our team members exceed that. Anyhow – we found ½ dozen that were broken. By stealing parts from some and putting them on others we can probably get a few more miles (or pounds) out of 3 or 4 of them. But, we needed to get some nuts and bolts to complete the repairs. Having been through this exercise before, I knew where we could find the hardware. However, when we got to the store - it was closed. Not open on Saturdays or Sundays. We checked 3 or 4 more hardware stores – all closed. You better hope nothing important breaks on a weekend in Haiti.

Sarah had a bridal shower for her friend Jenn Saturday afternoon at the UMCOR house in Paco. About 5:00 pm she called and said that she and Jenn and Lauren were going to the Oloffson Hotel for dinner and would we like to join them. So – Tom, Mario and I got cleaned up and grabbed the D-Max and headed for the Oloffson. Mario drove and that’s a whole new thrill ride that I’ll have to tell you about some other time. The Oloffson is a Port-au-Prince landmark hotel that was built in the late 1800s. Because it is a wooden structure it came through the earthquake virtually unscathed. It is the centerpiece of a book called “The Comedians” written by Graham Greene about the Baby Doc regime. It was a beautiful old hotel and the food was very good. All in all, a nice ending to an otherwise frustrating day

Sunday – Today was another one of those unusual no team days. We had breakfast and then went to church on the Frere campus. After church everyone kind of went their own way for the day. I caught up on some correspondence in the office and then found a comfortable spot to sit and read – I think I actually fell asleep at one point. Dinner Sunday night, as always, was Bongu spaghetti (Tom’s favorite). It’s always very good, but I still followed my no seconds rule. If I didn’t, none of my clothes would fit.

Monday – No teams in or out again this morning. It will be a good day to prepare for the rest of the week, which is going to be filled with more teams, meetings and site visits. We do have one team returning from Mellier this afternoon.