The Haitian Life

Bonjour from Haiti

Well, we are a day away from our one-month mark.  Even in Haiti, time seems to fly by.  It took a few weeks of adaptation, but Paul and I really feel like we’re hitting our stride here.  So today’s blog update will hopefully give you a little more insight into our conditions here.

We live in a two-room house that sits on top of the Mission House where short-term teams stay.  There is another two-room house for the Mission Haiti director and her husband right next to ours.  We share a beautiful balcony that overlooks our yard of the compound.   Also in our yard stays one of the Haitian staff members, his wife and two kids.  The Mulders (the other missionary family moving from the states) will also be living in a single-family home in our yard.  The other yard on the compound is the orphanage, home to 9 children along with three house-parents.   Most of them have pretty miraculous stories, but that may be for a different time. Thus far, communal living hasn’t bothered me in the least.  The youth kids from the community spend a lot of time just hanging out in the yard, playing checkers, kicking the soccer ball around, that sort of thing.

We have no running water.  Our water has to be pumped from a well that is on the edge of the compound.  Boy is that work!  It takes about 60 pumps to fill a 5-gallon bucket.  We use an outhouse and laundry is done by hand.   Last week I did laundry for four hours and made my hands bleed!  We’re seriously considering hiring laundry out next time!

Electricity is very hit or miss.  For the last week, electricity has been fairly nonexistent.  Which normally doesn’t bother me until you try to sleep in 86° heat plus humidity.  Then, a fan would be a welcomed friend! There has been a stand off between the villages and the people, the people demanding lower electricity costs and the villages demanding people pay there electricity bill.  Yesterday, we were shopping in the nearest large town Les Cayes and a demonstration broke out, people filling the streets, waving tree branches and yelling for electricity.  Apparently that little demonstration solved something, at least for a while because right now electricity is on, this is the first time that electricity has been on during the day in over a week! 

For food, a sweet Haitian lady who cooks for the orphanage provides our lunch for us, and then we are on our own for supper and breakfast.  Paul tries to be as creative as he can be with what he has.  And I’m there for moral support, no different than in the states.  I struggled with an appetite for the first few weeks of being here, but now it’s made its way back.  I think my body just went into shock not knowing what to do without a constant influx of gummies, chocolate, and anything sugar saturated!

The creole is coming along for me.  I try to pick up as much as I can practice when I can.  Paul’s always been a good resource for me.  I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to move somewhere where neither spouse knew the language.  I can get the majority of the message I need across, like how much bread I need to buy, etc.  But that’s not to say I don’t make plenty of mistakes.  My first week here, my intention was to say “we can TEACH the Haitians” but instead I misspoke saying “we can BUY the Haitians.”  Those moments make for good stories.

So, that’s a slight insight into our life here.  More of the blanks will be filled in in the coming months.  Today we await our next short term team from Sioux Falls, SD.  It’s an entirely adult team, which will be an interesting change.  But I ask that you please pray as tomorrow we head up the mountain to camp up there for four days.  The village we will be visiting is said to be one of the darkest in Haiti, a lot of voodoo and witchcraft up there.  Last trip to this village included a visit from two devil worshippers.  So...yeah... that’s were we’re going!  Pray for safety, but most importantly that the light of Christ invades he village, expelling all that is evil.

Check out the pictures below, I made them small since there are a lot of them, but you can click on them to enlarge them and scan through that way.

Again, we love you all.  Thank you for your prayers and support.