Finishing the Haiti Story

Ok so I've been halfway lazy and halfway overwhelmed with finishing up the Haiti story. However, I have one or two faithful readers who have requested that I do so. So here we go...

Later in the afternoon in Doko, some of us ladies on the team had been passing around a little baby who had been brought to the church by someone in the village. Little babies getting passed around is not a surprise, but what was a surprise was when we found out his mother had dropped him off with another woman around 4 am, and had not been back since. As far as we knew, this little baby boy had not eaten all day, and he was definitely hungry. As soon as we discovered this, everyone standing within earshot looked at me. By then, most of the team knew that I had offered to feed the infants at the hospital, but had been turned away due to cultural obstacles. (Culture aside, I told Lisa that, had I had difficulty nursing my own daughter, I couldn't imagine how weird it would be if someone who didn't speak english showed up to my hospital room offering to feed her for me.)

We had no bottle except what I had been pumping in to, and I hadn't brought the top because I didn't think I would need it. So we improvised, taking a ziploc bag with my pumped milk, we poked a pinhole in it and fed away! I'm sure we were breaking a million rules by U.S. health standards, but in Haiti it didn't matter. What mattered was this 2 to 3-month-old baby hadn't eaten all day, and we could do something about it. 

Many of the Haitians, who had been hanging out at the church, smiled and laughed as they watched several of us tending to the baby. Me and Cherie, another woman on the team, both had the joy of being peed on by the little guy. We decided to engineer a makeshift diaper out of the yellow cloth you can see in the background. The cloth, coincidentally was someone's super-absorbent towel they had brought on the trip -- whoops.

We successfully filled this sweet baby, and he quickly fell asleep. We passed him around some more before someone located his aunt, who could nurse him until the mother returned. I want to make a point of saying that Haitian mothers are very attentive to their babies, and this was an unusual situation.

While there was still daylight, there was one thing that I really wanted to do before leaving Doko. When I was in elementary school living in the village Dimsisi, in Papua New Guinea, the kids taught me how to weave a "ball" out of palm tree leaves. I wanted to teach some of the people in Doko how to make it. Unlike my village in PNG, there were no young (short) palm trees in Doko, so someone needed to climb a palm tree to cut down palm frond. This quickly got everyone's interest, and someone was located who could complete the task.

A group of about 40 people took off down the trail to watch as a guy climbed a palm tree to get us a palm frond. Carrying a small axe, he climbed a 40 to 50-foot palm tree that was growing out of the incline of a mountain.

After hacking down a frond, the group made the short trek back to the church, where I would begin my attempt to teach them how to make the ball. I hadn't anticipated so many students--probably 50 or 60 people surrounded me and Kate, who would translate my directions.

It got somewhat comical as I tried to teach Kate, who then had to not only understand my directions, but also translate them to the crowd that was anxiously waiting.

We were quickly losing daylight, and the crowd erupted with laughter as different people held up their projects, tangled messes, jokingly asking if their's looked right. Haitians love to laugh, and they're not afraid to laugh at themselves. Soon, everyone was laughing, and many people gave up. However, I was able to teach Kate, who successfully taught two or three others how to weave a ball.

It was so cool to think about how I brought an art from one incredibly remote village in Papua New Guinea to another incredibly remote village on the other side of the world.

After our arts and crafts time third-world-style, everyone shuffled inside the church building for another out-of-this-world worship service.

At 10 pm we repeated the night before by setting up our sleeping pallets by moonlight and flashlight while 60+ people stood around us watching. Kate and I traded our sad blankets for bigger one to share, and we both slept like babies.

In the morning we packed up and headed off down the mountain to repeat the hike backwards. I had been worried about the trip back, and although my ankles were hurting, the hike felt so much shorter than I expected.

At the end of the 8-hour hike, we were picked up by our bus, and made the dusty 1 1/2-hour ride back to Jeremie.








We arrived at the hotel covered in a thick layer of sweat and dust.

Before I took a shower, Kate took a picture of my hair caked in dirt. By the way, my hair is not blonde, that's dirt!

The next day the group split up, and some of us went to one orphanage, and the rest went to another. To get to the orphanage I went to, we had to take a 30-minute motorcycle taxi ride. We hopped on, two passengers and one driver per motorcycle, and took off through the city.

Once we were out of the city, we were once again blasted with dust. By the end, our faces looked like we powdered them!



In the morning we packed up and were on the bus by 5 am, ready to head back to Port Au Prince. We seemed to pick up more people every time we stopped, and what took us 8 hours the first time, ended up around 13 hours by the time we reached the hotel in Port Au Prince.

Cramped from the long ride, hungry, thirsty, and filthy, our showers and dinner never tasted so good. 

So I've done my best to share the summary of my trip, but in all honesty, I feel like I would never succeed in putting everything into words. 

The final thought I want to share is that somehow only the important things seemed to exist on this trip. I didn't have cell service for most of the time, I didn't check my e-mail, I didn't care that I pretty much had a bad hair week and a half, or that I wasn't wearing makeup. On a selfish level, I felt free. But on another level, that freedom allowed me to focus on how I could be used by God on this trip, and to actually see Him at work through me and others. When I got back to the U.S. I spent several days trying to figure out how I could mirror that freedom while living my life in the U.S. with a husband, a daughter, a job, a cell phone, e-mail, and everything else that comes with our society. I failed at determining an answer, but feel certain that, with enough trips to Haiti, I will find it.

If anyone would like to know more about the family who led the Haiti trip I was on, or are interested in going on a trip to Haiti visit: www.full-life-haiti.blogspot.com.