Worship, play, and little buddies.

Church on Sunday. This week, the church that met on our campus before the quake was meeting again for the first time since the quake. It's called Port-au-Prince Fellowship, and it's led by a missionary but has a much higher percentage of Haitians attending than the house church we'd been to before. The house was packed! It was really amazing. The worship style is live (vs. the DVD we used at the house church) and is very long- probably over an hour of deep, intimate worship on Sunday. Perhaps that's not normal, because there wasn't a sermon, but I loved it- my soul has been longing for that.

"Animal" and Steve, the director of Quisqueya. Remember when Ben posted about going to change money in the market with the crazy-haired friend of John? Turns out he's the pastor of this church! It's a part of Haitian culture that you really dress up for church, and having a good outfit and neat hair are really important. Someone told us that this pastor has crazy hair on purpose, to push back against the idea that you have to look good to come to church. I love it:) He does have a very thick Boston accent, and it was so cool to hear it.

Prosthetics and spray paint. There were a few of Ben's pics from his trip to the hospital with the prosthetics guy Jason that I wanted to post, including this one. The prosthetics come in a light color, so Jason just spray paints them one of several shades of brown to match the recipient's skin tone.

Little buddy at the tent hospital Ben visited.

Handsome husband and another little buddy at tent hospital. When kids see the camera, they REALLY want their picture taken, and they always want to see the image on the little screen.

On Sunday night, I really wanted to watch the Oscars. Call me shallow, but I really like the speeches, and the dresses, and the suspense of waiting for the winners. I asked around, but couldn't find anybody with a TV. So instead, Ben and I were sitting outside at sunset, when all of a sudden all the children of our Haitian workers who currently are staying on campus came over and started playing with us. It was an incredibly sweet little hour- far better than the Oscars:)

Ben and this little man played on the makeshift tetherball.

The kids at play

Trampoline was a big hit! It was tiny, and also mostly broken, so it was probably technically not very safe... but they absolutely loved it. I held their little hands to pull them high up in between bounces. I said the phrase "just one!" about a hundred times because they all wanted to jump at once.

Probably shouldn't be playing on this..... but they really loved pretending to lift weights:)

Jumping!

Dirty little shoes. Did I mention the leaves are falling here? Apparently our 80's weather is the trees' cue that it's the depths of winter:)

This little friend was in a terrible mood and was very mopey. A little love was in order.

Larisa

The scene

The two littlest girls, Sarah (in the red shirt) and Larisa (in the pink) found these tiny chairs somewhere, and also somehow produced very dirty little baby dolls to sit in them.

Sarah

Sarah and her baby. I wish she could have better.

Another development- the Army's rolling out. They started packing up this week and have completely deconstructed the huge tents on our soccer field in the last few days. We're excited to have some space back but very unsure about what their departure means for us as a campus. Pray about this if you have a moment.

Boys will be boys:) When the tents started coming down, the boys (including one very special 26-year-old boy in the white here) reclaimed their soccer field at lunch time.

A Quincy spotting! Remember our little friend with the broken femur who was so critically ill right after the quake? He came out of traction a week or so ago and was sitting around with a hard cast. Now he's up and moving! Praise God!

Katie

Getting Haiti Back on Its Feet: Jason

The best part of having not evacuated from Port-au-Prince after the earthquake on January 12th is that I have been able to meet and see in action some of the most remarkable people in these last two months. I think I have done a good job telling our story and a decent job of telling the story of what is happening in PAP, but I would admit I have not done a good job telling the stories of these men and women. I am just a teacher, but these people are saving lives. With all the free time I have, I would like to tell their stories. Here is one.

I do not know how to fix Haiti. I have heard a lot of the ideas and I have some myself, but I'm unsure if they will work. The long-term needs are so big and systemic. Some are pretty obvious- housing and education. One other makes sense only if you have walked through a PAP hospital in the last two months: the need for prosthetics. If the world does not want tens of thousands of 1-legged beggars in Haiti, then we're going to need lots of prosthetic legs. Enter Jason.

Jason is on his third trip here.  He works with a group called No Boundaries that provides limbs for amputee victims. We have hundreds, maybe thousands, of aid orgs in Haiti, but of everyone I have talked to, Jason and No Boundaries are the only ones doing prostheses. I bribed Jason with a Cuban cigar and made plans to tag along on Sunday when he went to a hospital to measure amputee patients for limbs.

2 hours. 1 Hospital. 8 people to measure. Neat.

The first two measurements were relatively uneventful. I mean, as uneventful as measuring someone's left leg so you can make a replica of the right is. And, as uneventful as doing it in a camping tent because the hospital is full can be. Okay, so it was still pretty eventful.

The third measurement, however, was an emotional kick in the gut. Ruben, age 4, was missing one leg. He sat quietly in the tent he shared with six other patients, coloring on his mattress. Jason and his interpreter talked to the mother, and then Jason squatted to start examining Ruben's stump.

 

Ruben was pretty good-natured until they started looking at his wound. The wounds have to heal correctly for the prosthetic to fit, so Jason had to get pretty personal with this kid. Little buddy didn't like that.

 

 

I need to be real. After watching Ruben getting measured, I really started to ache for the kid. He was the youngest person in his hospital tent. He cried when anyone touched his wound. It was necessary to pull his shorts down to measure then full length of his good leg. So this 4 year old is standing in front of roughly 15 people, all strangers but his mother, naked from the waist down. It was tough. I wanted to cry for him. When Jason and his translator were done, we walked to another tent. Jason's translator, Alf, said, "It is hard, working with the kids. So sad." I know Alf to be a very energetic and eager young man who wants to help his country and his people. He has worked everywhere that the Quisqueya Crisis Relief Center has sent teams. When Alf says something is hard and sad, he says so with more knowledge and experience than I can put into words or that you could imagine.

Jason and Alf went into the next tent. It was too crowded for one more, so I walked around outside. I was secretly thankful for some time not staring at a scarred piece of flesh that ended where a thigh or shin should have been. I thought about Quincy, the 5-year-old nephew of one of our cafeteria workers who we treated the night of the quake and was in traction for a femur fracture for a few weeks. This could have been him if he had not received adequate care.

It was very difficult to look around this hospital. They are doing they best they can, but its just not at a standard that should be acceptable.

Chicken and roosters roamed the grounds. Rocks created tension to hold the tents up. Tent support ropes doubled as clothes lines. Some might see a quaint resourcefulness in this. I see poverty. However, there are people like Jason and organizations like No Boundaries that are doing their best to get Haiti back on their feet. Jason will be working for a few more weeks to measure, make and fit people with prosthetic legs I hope to have more images as they occur.

Here are some of their videos.

B

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart. — Mohandas Gandhi

Yesterday our students presented science projects where they found alternate re-uses for water bottles as they learned about trash, recycling, and building materials.

Elias and his group made a rocket ship.

I really love these 7th through 11th graders, and I have barely known them two months! This is one of those "first year teacher lessons" I am learning- you become very attached. On Friday night B and I had Tony, fellow teacher, over for dinner- well, technically, for homemade salsa and guacamole (our first Haitian experiment with Tex-Mex staples!). We decided it should count as a Staff Meeting, or, at the very least, an Interdepartmental Mixer, because we did have the entire English, Math, and History departments represented. :)

Another reason it should count for some kind of staff development or inservice- all we did was talk about school. Specifically, the kids. We just love them- we worry about them, we're rooting for them, we're pained when their work is way below their potential, we jump for joy when they're excited and passionate about our subjects. It's emotionally exhausting!

I think this is magnified for me for a few reasons. One, I'm a first year teacher. In the children's ministry where I've worked for more than ten years now in Dallas, my first group - of VBS kids, of 5th grade girls at summer camp, of 6th grade retreat kids- has always been special. Second, there's the obvious- the quake. Third, I think the small size of our current student body makes us more parental, more one-on-one, more relational, more concerned about each student. I have 24 kids- total- in 7th-11th grade. I eat lunch with them, I spend the study hall hour with them, I wait with them for their parents to arrive after school, I play cards with them.

There are huge blessings of having such a small group. For instance, I actually have time to individually meet with every student following a test to review their grade. I am about to assign an essay, and I know I can individually meet with all 24 kids after both their first and second drafts. When I have group discussions with each grade level, it's just me and 5 or so kids- such a tiny group makes for rich, personal, active discussions of literature and all manner of life topics. With so few kids, I've just gotten so close to them, in such a short amount of time, especially since I'm the only female teacher working with the junior high and high school girls.

All this to say- I love teaching, and I love these kids. Did my high school teachers feel this way about us? I had no idea.

Katie

PS I've gotten my appetite for reading back. Working on Three Cups of Tea, Forgotten God, and a nice fat backlog of TIME mags. Perfect for a rainy, chilly (can it be?!) Port-au-Prince Saturday.

Drum Suite

These last two days it feels like the climate has done a hard 90 degree turn to Seattle-like cloudiness and gloom. According to weather.com it is 72 degrees right now. This is not what I signed up for! Where is my constant sunshine, humidity, and persistant sweating despite sitting in the shade with a fan blowing?

The reality is that it has been a very rainy few days. Not the monsoons that everyone expects during the rainy season, but a slow drip and a constant mist. The ground has gone from very hard, dusty and stinky to soft, muddy and stink in just a few days. I have to admit, this is my first experience with a rainy season, so I do not know what to expect other than what I have been told-rain coming down in sheets and torrents. So all that to say, is that it is going to get worse.

I have a terrible struggle with the rain because I like it. I always have. I like cool rainy days in the fall, I like spring showers, I like thunderstorms in the summer. I like sipping tea and reading when it is raining during the day. I like falling asleep to the percussion of rain drops at night. In Dallas, that is fine. But here it means that I like something that is making another person's life hell.

I loved falling asleep to the rain last night. I listened to the sounds the rain was making on different objects and tried to figure out what it was hitting. There was the familiar flat slap it makes on concrete. The hollow metal sound of the rain on our tin roof and the very bass like tap-tap on the broad leaves of the trees outside. I really had a great night's sleep, but just before I dozed off I realized: while this Drum Suite was lulling me to sleep, it was the sound of a cold muddy night to anyone in a tent city.

It meant that the ground outside their tent would be muddy, which would get tracked into their tent no matter how careful they were. It meant that if their tent wasn't waterproof, they would be wet, and cold. I hate having taken the slightest plesure in something that could be such a curse to someone else.
I wondered this morning- what other things do I really like that are a curse to someone else?
 
Katie is always telling me about who is a terrible corporate offender, or why ceritan foods are unfair. I never paid attention because it wasn't tangible. I would roll my eyes, ignore what she said, or even try and argue against it. But this morning as I walked on Delmas 75, I realized that this was something too great to ignore. I believe it is part of God sanctifying me to have awareness and compassion for things I do that bring pain to others.
 
Before, those ideas did not have a smell, an image, or a sound. I don't know if I can feel the same any more.
 
Ben

It rained again last night. And the night before. Pouring, soaking rain. So loud it woke me up. All I could think about were these kids from the tent city we met last weekend...

 

Sleeping wet again.

Pray for every Haitian who still suffers. These little girls kept wanting to touch Anna's hair and her arms. They were mystified!

 

On Sunday, Ben and I (and Anna, our visiting friend) went back to church for the first time since the quake. These photos were taken from the back of the Heaths' home, where we have church. There's a ravine behind the home with a huge community built onto the hillside.

 Just destroyed. Carol says the worst thing about being in her home during the quake was not the shaking she personally experienced, but the cracking sound she heard through her window of these homes being destroyed and sliding down the hill. She says with each aftershock there is more cracking.

Here on campus we have a great new development- the Haitian school has finally started! We have our Haitian Quisqueya employees whose homes were destroyed living on campus still (though some have left). There are probably 20 kids in those families, and we've been wanting to start some sort of schooling for them. Pastor Cange, a local leader who has been tending to the spiritual needs of these families, found these ladies to teach, and they started last Monday.

The school is very limited. They meet on our campus, in a shady corner. No classroom. Cute little chairs, a whiteboard, three teachers, all meeting together. They sing a lot of songs, and from what I can tell they are learning some French (there's a particularly cute song about learning to count in French that I am also benefiting from!). I imagine it was muddy in that corner today. It's only for the children of our working who are living here on campus, and it's only temporary. I'm torn- it's not much, a very modest setup. However, they are occupied, and learning, and active, and being loved- a lot better than sitting on the porch all day.

They dress up for school. These are certainly nicer clothes than I usually see them in. I think that's very tender- their parents put them in their good clothes for this little school.

 

World Maths Day at Quisqueya. Students from all over the world logged on to play these math games against each other. Our kids enjoyed it- here is Melody playing two kids from Canada and one from Saudi Arabia!

Stephanie playing in between card games. It makes me so happy when they get to do "normal"things like this.

Speaking of the school, shout out to Mrs. Crowe's students and the Student Council at the Shelton school in Dallas, and the Caruso family in Norman, OK! They held fundraisers for Quisqueya. You guys should know that you're allowing kids to stay at our school by helping with scholarships- as you can imagine, most families' sources of income were seriously disrupted as businesses collapsed along with everything else in the quake. Blessings on you!

For the first time since we've been here, it's raining in daylight hours right now. Off to give a vocabulary quiz and lecture on writing a persuasive essay:)