Day 21

We woke up early to go to Yveline’s nursing school Carrefour. We were surprised how long it took us to get there. We were wayyyyy tired, and were surprised that she can do this every day. We asked the students to pay their fees because we want to go to Yveline’s graduation but they won’t hold it if people don’t pay their fees. We spent a while visiting with some of Jeans friends since he has a house right near the nursing school. Amy bought a giant avocado. We then took a taptap with Jean to go to his friend’s house to buy some trees to plant at the orphanage. Amy and I got 12 trees. 8 mango trees and 4 Qennepp trees. Qennepps are a little fruit with a green peel that is slimy on the inside with a big pit and come in a bunch. Both kinds of trees are big so they will provide a lot of shade for the orphanage. Amy and I carried all 12 trees (they are babies so they are pretty tiny though) back to the orphanage on a taptap like true Haitians. We put the trees in the boys side of the container to keep them out of the sun until the next day when we’d have some of the boys plant them. It was a REAL hot day and we didn’t really eat or drink much so we decided to go get some food at that place we discovered by the internet café. It was really nice to sit and enjoy our cold cokes. One Haitian man told us he was happy to see people taking a minute to relax and enjoy his country and not just be on the run all the time. Ketianne also told us that she likes us when we relax and spend time with them instead of working all the time. I think spending time with other people is very important to people in Haiti. Amy and I would rather be sitting around “getting nothing done” if “getting nothing done” means building relationships with people. So anyway, as we were sitting waiting for the food we ordered we saw a white guy walk out of the internet café so as always, Amy and I yelled “hey blan!” and he came over to say hello. His name is Kyle and he moved here because he loves Haiti and does construction projects. He stays with his Haitian friend Mario who was with him. Right now he is building a church in the mountains. He told us about a place in Leogane where we can get delicious French fries so we were pretty excited about that. We were also really impressed because he has a new truck with air conditioning. I’m saving his number just in case I ever need a ride somewhere far away.. Haha! But for real, he gave us a ride to the church so we could re-take pictures of the roof for Pastor Kelly because we took the wrong ones before. (don’t worry Sherman, we didn’t die!) Kyle and Mario then drove us back to the orphanage where he gave all the girls lollipops so they fell instantly in love.

We went to visit the boys orphanage when it started to rain really hard! All the little boys were running around naked in the rain and it was funny. It’s something I think a lot of American kids miss out on. Haha! Amy and I were only there for like an hour and boy are those kids CRAZY! They were running around like little monkeys, bouncing off the walls, doing handstands and cartwheels, beating each other up and climbing all over us. WHEW! One little boy smashed his finger in the door and got a HUGE cut which was bleeding quite a bit. One Band-Aid could not keep it from bleeding. I held him because he was so tiny and seemed so sad. He didn’t cry but I could tell he was holding back tears. He was about 4 years old. I asked one of the workers to get him a new Band-Aid because he was dripping blood on the floor and she went and got some hand sanitizer and a new Band-Aid. I let her do her thing and SQUIRT HAND SANITIZER on his cut to wash it out. OW!! He still didn’t cry but I almost did. I cry if I get that stuff on a paper cut. Those boys sure are tough. It was starting to get dark so as soon as the rain eased off a bit we went home.

We went into our container where we tried to turn the air on but it was barely blowing out any air. We were scared it was broken. Haiti power was on so we decided to turn the pump on to fill the water tank. However, it was spurting out barely any water. We turned it off and were getting nervous that the pump AND the air conditioning were broken. We finally figured out that the problem was the Haiti power. We had talked with Kyle earlier about how the amount of power fluctuates. It must have been running too low to make anything other than the lights work. Glad both things aren’t broken!!

We hung out with the girls for a while in their house. I prayed in English and Andrise prayed in Creole which was nice. We got Amy’s video camera out to show the girls some video’s we took of the VBS in Jacmel to see if they knew any of the songs to teach us. We ended up showing them all the video’s we had and they LOVED it. It was really touching when it got to the video’s we took of the orphanage in La Gonave of the kids singing. The girls all started to sing along and it made us teary-eyed to hear kids from our orphanage singing along with kids from a different orphanage across the country.

It was getting late and Amy and I had to get up early to tell the boys where to plant the trees the next day. We also had to figure out WHERE we thought they should go. So we said good night to the girls and went to our container. We couldn’t just let the boys plant the trees wherever because there may be more buildings going into the property later. Amy and I had to look at the plans for the orphanage grounds and chose a spot where they wouldn’t get in the way. Then we went to sleep.

Becca