Monday, July 30, 2012

Small successes

Family movie night was a big hit on Saturday. We borrow a friend's projector and sound system and played cartoon movies in French. The kids had a blast!
Getting set up for movie night!

I took some pictures of Missionary Flight International's Port-au-Prince headquarters. Here is where we go to pick up our care packages and mail. Thanks again to everyone for supporting us with with these special nuggets of home!
Main gate

Carl is across the field at the pickup window, waiting to get our generator!


Monday and Tuesday here in Haiti are a national holiday: The Carnival of Flowers. We would not really notice this since we are outside of the main city area, except that DJ "Wood Mix" has set up shop right across from our house, and he played music (a mix of Creole and American rap with an occasional Bob Marley song) last night until 4 in the morning! He is setting up again right now, we are really hoping that this is only because of the Carnival and that a regular dance club has not moved in right across from us! 

We had a rental car for couple days and were able to run errands and see a bit more of Haiti and Port-au-Prince. We rented the car to help with a food pickup, but the containers are stuck in port and the food pickup has been delayed. Here are some of the (mostly in focus) pictures I took as we drove around. I compiled more of them into a little video but I wasn't able to load it on the blog, sorry! I will put it on our Facebook page. 

I hope everyone has a great week!






Sunday, July 22, 2012

Some good news, some not so good news, and one Dumb American story!

The past few days have been very full!

Good News: We met with people from the Mission of Hope and we are going to visit their facility on Tuesday. They are affiliated with Love a Child and are going to try to help us get more food for the kids at Good Rest. We are also trying to set up more meetings and to coordinate with other organizations that have more resources than we do. Everyone that we have met here is really friendly and helpful, it is an amazing sense of community to meet people who have the same life calling as us and who have great advice for us.

This morning we got to go to a "missionary" church here in Port-au-Prince with songs that we know and lots of neat people to meet.

Yesterday we got a ride to a local restaurant and got to order our first chicken nuggets on the island! Yay!
Epi d'Or
... is Haitian style Subway, plus they have crepe sandwiches! Yum!

Tonight we are invited to have dinner with the missionaries down the street, Josh and Amanda. They have a two year old daughter and Amelia is excited to have someone to play with.

Thank you to Joel, April, and Jessica, to Josh and Amanda, to Marie, to Esther King, and to all of the people from Mission of Hope. You have given us rides around town and advice that is priceless. You are all amazing!

Not so Good News: Since Robert left, family dinners have not been nearly as organized. The people living at Good Rest are very resistant to change, even the small changes that we propose seem to threaten them and their way of life. We need wisdom to know which issues are the most important to push for change, and which ones are just cultural differences. I refuse to allow kids to go hungry, so I hope that we are able to keep the family dinners going this whole week and that the setback was just temporary.

We discovered a voodoo center just across our street and a short ways down. We have been hearing them drumming, chanting, and screaming from about 11pm -3am for the past few nights. A couple nights ago, at midnight, a pig met its end and the squealing was loud and disturbing. It is hard to sleep when this is going on, I lie awake nervous and a little freaked out!

The local voodoo center.
Today the doors were closed, hopefully they won't open and we can get some sleep tonight.

Amelia is still not feeling well. She had a fever for three days then threw up last night. I hope this is just a virus like the nurse said yesterday and that she will soon feel much better. Poor baby.

In spite of all of this, we still feel the joy of knowing that we are doing something that is making a difference and is not for our own gain. It is an incredible feeling!

Dumb American story: We have been running our generator more the last couple days, something we had rarely done before because of the cost of gas. However, with Amelia's fever we have to have a fan on her to cool her down. Last night around 8:30pm, we were ready for bed. It was hot and was our third night in a row without electricity. Darkness falls quickly here, and it was windy last night, with thunderstorms lighting up the sky to the south of us. We decided to all sleep out on our porch. We had 2 mosquito nets, 3 mattresses, and 8 pillows set up on the porch. A knock on our gate! Who could it be? We were nervous, but when we went to the gate it was our landlord with his friend who is a handyman. Apparently when we hooked our generator up to our house, it worked in such a way that it sent electrical current out into the neighborhood and several neighbors had gotten shocked! They fixed our power setup and were kind enough not to say anything about the mess of bedding in the way of the power box that they needed to get to. We apologized. How embarrassing! I really hope we didn't shock any of the voodoo people. So much for keeping a low profile in the neighborhood!

It is a good thing to be a light in darkness,
 it is not so good if you are accidentally zapping your neighbors!

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Family Dinner



Here are some pictures of our third successful family dinner! 

Waiting for the food to be ready

Ding Ding! Come and get it!

Yum!
Today when CJ and I arrived, Clarence waddled up and raised his arms to be held. He stayed close to us for the rest of our visit and even tried to follow us home. It was so hard to leave him and the rest of the little ones: Clara who fell asleep in my arms after dinner, Gina who sat across from me at dinner and made cute faces the whole time, Masonji, Alan, and many many more sweet kids. We love them all!


Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Home Sweet Home

Family dinner went well today but I didn't get a chance to take pictures, I was busy finding missing sleeping children under trees and feeding some of the little ones. I hope it is OK if I temporarily switch to a new topic for today's post. For those of you wondering why I am bombarding you with new posts, we have electricity again!!! YAY!

Home Sweet Home


We live in a modest 1 bedroom house right off of Lila Voix (or Lilavoix?) Street in Croix des Bouquets. Dust constantly blows into our yard from the street, even though we are protected by 6 foot walls and a huge metal gate. Our house is made totally of concrete and the windows are either decorative iron bars or concrete slats. We are surrounded by grey walls, grey ceilings, and dusty floors that leave our feet grey. We only have running water in our shower, so we wash our dishes and clothes (not together!) in the shower at night. We don't have any hot water, but we don't miss that at all.


Our neighbors closest to us have regular domestic disturbances that get really loud. Since it is oppressively hot here they usually choose to get into fights late at night when they have the energy. We don't understand their words but have made a game of filling in our own imaginary words to their Creole arguments. We imagine a Romeo and Juliet type situation, hopefully this has a happier ending. It is actually pretty fun, though considering our total lack of other entertainment our fun-meter may be a little off.

Our backyard, complete with an outdoor toilet, electrical wire running to the next house, and  clotheslines. Bonus points if you can spot the two lizards!
Our landlords live right behind us. We only get our part time electricity because they have connected our house to theirs via an extension cord. Last night we noticed that the entire neighborhood had power, but we did not. In our broken Creole and their broken English, we discovered that they aren't going to plug our electricity in unless we give them the water from our water tank. This is the tank that we bought and pump water into with our water pump, using our (borrowed) generator and our gas. Carl hopped the fence into their yard and got into a little disagreement in which no one knew what the other person was saying, but he ended it by plugging us into their house and hopping back over. I have been terribly nervous that they will now come steal all of our things or worse. We already know that they have been sneaking into our yard, turning on our water line and draining our water tank at night. They have not fixed our power, have not fixed any of the sinks in our house, and I am pretty sure they are constantly spying on us.
Our wishing well, mostly we just wish that it would fill up so that we could have more water!

The switch may say ON/OFF, but it lies!!!
I have been trying to focus on the little things, like the unique hand carved door leading to our living room. The tiles all over our house are not quite symmetrical and drive me crazy, but I can face a certain wall and feel that my OCD is satiated. I love our mango tree out front, I hope we get to eat some of its fruit next spring. The kids love sleeping on the gated in front porch. Little things, maybe, but little things can add up to us finding peace in this third world country where nothing is solid or organized. 
Isn't this a cool door?

Today when Robert (the director of Children's Heritage Foundation) got here he had a lengthy chat with our landlord and demanded that our power and sinks be fixed immediately. The landlord seemed pretty embarrassed to be called out and promised to have a plumber and an electrician tomorrow to finish fixing our house. I sure hope that happens, it would be really nice to have a working sink and enough power to plug in our laptops, a tv, and a fan at the same time! A girl can dream :)

Our daily bread

It is not a quick trip to the local grocery store when we want to buy food here. This morning I took my three kids up to our local street vendors to buy bread for the orphanage, thank you to Jenni for the donation, I will use it buy food for the Good Rest kids! It is a hot and dusty walk, motorcycles and box trucks whizzing by so closely that we could reach out and touch someone, and not in a good way!

Our street: Lilavoix
Once we get to the little ladies selling fruit, candies, bread, and sometimes eggs or chicken, we buy two packages of bread. The bread is soft and delicious, but does not save well in this heat, you have to eat it the day you buy it. There were no eggs or chicken this morning, maybe tomorrow! Local children come crowding in, calling out, "Blan! Blan!" Some follow that up with smiles, others with rude comments that need no translation. My kids bear it well, mostly ignoring the attention. When I asked our bread lady if I could take her picture, she was happy to say yes, and the lady next to her selling plantains also wanted her picture taken!


Where we buy our bread every morning.
She is a fun character, she always has a smile for us.
We made it back home safely! I am going to make peanut butter sandwiches for my kids then we will head over to Good Rest. Carl has been over there and dealing with a situation since 8:15 this morning. We are excited to see Robert Lewison today, I hope his flight went well and that he arrived safely. I will try to take pictures of our second "family dinner" night tonight, we are looking forward to it!

Monday, July 16, 2012

Difficult conversations

Clarence and Clara in the room they share with 3 other kids.

Meet two of the youngest Good Rest children, Clarence and Clara. We have heard different stories of how they got to Good Rest. The first story we heard is that their mom came to Good Rest and delivered them on site after the earthquake then abandoned them. The next story we heard is that they were already about 6 months old and the mom dropped them here after the earthquake to live with their older sister. One girl here says that she has recently seen the mom and she lives in the local village but never visits. They have no birth certificates, their files have no records. They especially worry us because they are listless, they do not play with the other small children and in two and a half weeks I have never seen either of them smile.

Today Carl and I packed up our three kids and were at Good Rest by 7am. We waited to see what kind of breakfast the kids would get. They got none. Clarence cannot walk well. Carl carried him the whole long walk from the orphanage to the main road where we can catch a Tap-Tap. We took Clara and Clarence to a nearby clinic run by American missionaries. Getting 5 small kids into the back of a Tap-Tap is not easy! We bought some bread from the street. Clara and Clarence ate 3 large rolls each, they probably wouldn't have stopped eating.

The Haitian doctor that we met was not very encouraging. They are both malnourished. Clarence had been tested a month ago and two types of parasites were found in him. His treatment was not followed up on. They also are both anemic and gassy, their stomachs are bloated. Clara's hair is turning orange from lack of nutrition.

Carl and I played with them, fed them, and gave them soda. We got vitamins from the clinic and more bread from the street. When we returned to Good Rest we gave all the little kids a piece of bread and vitamins. They need so much more. Please pray that we will know how to have difficult conversations with people like the cook on site and some of the older kids. Please pray that we can help find more food so that the little kids at Good Rest get their needs met. Please pray that we can help all of the little ones who are spending their days hungry, who are going to sleep hungry. Thank you.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Care package!

Today we took Emmet to the airport. Emmet works for Children's Heritage and has been on site at Good Rest for over six months. He built great relationships with the kids and helped us get our bearings these last two weeks. He will be greatly missed!

Since we were in Port-au-Prince, we stopped by MFI (Missionary Flights International) to get our mail. We had a care package arrive! Thank you Niki Martin! The Bisquick, beef jerky, battery powered fan, and other things were much needed! Woohoo!

This evening we walked over to Good Rest to spend time with the kids. We try to be on site at least in the mornings and evenings. We were surprised to see that they had spliced cable from a neighbor and hooked it up to watch tv. Haitian tv is really not appropriate for kids. This is a small example of some of the big changes that we need to figure out how to enact. We are excited that the director of Children's Heritage is coming next week to talk with us. Please pray that we will have guidance on how to effectively make changes that benefit the little kids on site. So far we have been observing and trying to learn as much as we can about the multifaceted issues that Good Rest is struggling with. We need wisdom to know how to proceed!

On a positive note, the little kids at Good Rest are sweet and love our kids. Amelia has so many friends that she is never alone. CJ enjoys chasing chickens and playing marbles with the boys, and Trenton is serious about improving his soccer skills!

Amelia and Daphne
I posted onto our Facebook page a short video of what our daily life looks like right now. It is VASTLY different from our normal California summer routine, but much more fulfilling!

Thursday, July 5, 2012


On our way to our new house!

Whew! We made it through the last few days! Saturday – Tuesday were pretty rough. When we moved in we had no water, power, chairs, or ways to cook. We ate peanut butter sandwiches made from peanut butter we brought and bread we bought in the streets. We showered and drank (filtered) from a hose leading up directly from our well. We rigged an extension cord to our landlords house behind us to connect to the city electricity. We only brought 3 small fans for the kids, hoping we could buy a fan for us adults here. $100 was the price quoted to us at a street vendor, yikes! Four nights in Haiti without a fan was four nights too many! Monday we got our pump to work so we could fill the water tank on top of our house. The toilet leaks terribly so we still have to flush with a bucket! We felt like rock stars when we figured out how to buy coal from the neighborhood shop and we used a couple cinder blocks to build a fire pit to heat water and make a packet of broccoli rice that we had brought. Yum!!!

She is watching the guys working to connect a pump to our well.

We had a lot of cleaning to do, thankfully I had a great helper!

Carl starting a fire under the mango tree so we could make rice.

Still our only source of running water, the shower has become where we wash all our clothes, dishes, and, of course, our sweaty selves!

This is all the food we brought with us, I hope it lasts! ps. How do you like our state of the art fridge? If you can't find it, that's because it's hiding in the cooler!

They love sleeping under the mosquito net and out on the front porch, it is gated in and the coolest spot in our house!

Yesterday our lives took a big turn for the better! We were picked up by an American nurse named Marie who knows the area. Trenton split his chin playing at Good Rest so first she took us to a nearby clinic run by an American woman named April. Trenton got his chin glued back together and we got to know a little bit more about the medical situation so we can take care of the Good Rest kids when they get sick. Next Marie took us to a grocery store where we paid about $7 for a box of Frosted Flakes. Food is REALLY expensive here, actually many things are really expensive. We were able to get a few essentials such as eggs, rice, hotdogs, butter, and a suspicious looking bottle of sugar cane rum that was cheaper than all the other purchases but disgusting! If you come to visit us it will definitely be a BYOB type of a party J 


Despite the label, once we picked off the moldy parts these were excellent hot dog buns!
Marie also helped us fill up a propane tank and haggle with three different street vendors until we finally were able to buy chairs. The biggest news of all: we got a FAN! When we got home, we were so happy to find out that the old stove we found in storage at Good Rest actually works! No more fire pits in our front yard to try to boil water!!! I almost cried, I was so happy! Today Carl hopped on a Tap-Tap by himself and went down into the town center and returned with a portable internet card! Pretty impressive!

Here we are at Good Rest, if we look a little shiny that is not photoshopped, it is HOT here :)
OK, enough about us and on to why we are here! We are getting to know the kids at Good Rest and learning their stories. Things are very complicated here. The relationships between local pastors, NGOs, American workers, and people in need are all very intricate and tangled. We want to be able to help the kids the right way and so we are going to meet later this week with the local pastor who has church here at Good Rest. He is also the local prosecuting attorney so he is a good person to know! His wife and Marie have been buying beans for the Good Rest kids, the rest of the food is picked up once a month from a local wholesaler. I’m so glad the kids have a system for getting some food, I hope we can make contacts and help get more food for them. They have a garden area but it is completely overgrown with weeds. There is so much to do, so many ways to help make their lives a little better. We are so grateful for all of the people who have helped us get settled in and made our transition easier. We miss all of our friends and family back home. Love to all!