Friday, August 24, 2007

Wow, today was full of so much stuff I just can’t stand it. I got up feeling better today than I did l did when I went to bed, even though I did not have a very restful sleep. I told someone something last night that I was really afraid to tell him because I knew it was going to disappoint him and I do not like to do that, and since I could not see his reaction I can only imagine it to be as bad as I thought. Moving on, I spent the first 2 hours with the children just sitting at the playground hanging out and then some of us went to St. Louis to take food supplies to the mission. While I was at the mission I got the chance to sit in on one of Erin’s music classes. It was interesting to see her trying to teach a music class with an interpreter. She claims to be able to do it herself, but is afraid that when they ask a question she would not be able to explain the answer in terms they would understand. After her class was over I spent some time with one of the interpreters, Jocelyn, just chatting about this and that, getting to know him a little better. They are all really nice guys and very intelligent. It makes me wonder what Americans would be like if, like these guys, we utilized the much vaster amount of resources we have to learn. I went to the baby orphanage for a while today to spend some time holding some of the babies and chatting with Erin, who was there with one of the boys from Heavens waiting room who likes to play with the babies’ toys. It is amazing how quickly Haitian children fall asleep when they are being held and how entertaining it is for them to just be held. On the way home from St. Louis, we got into a little bit of a disagreement and almost a fight with another driver. Apparently, one of the rules of the road is that if you want to pass someone you must honk so that they know you are approaching. Well, a car behind us did not do that and we moved left to avoid a pothole while he was next to us causing him and us to fish tale a little. He did not like this at all and stopped right in front of us and he and his passenger got out and started shouting. No one got out of our car though; Roland simply explained that Sony (the driver) did not see him because he did not honk. Understandable since Sony is driving a dump truck. Finally getting back to the Orphanage, after lunch Roland and I took the children swimming. We spent about an hour there and it was really funny because most of the little buys immediately took all their clothes off to swim. The “beach” was littered with so much trash it made me really sad. There was even a pig tied up right next to where we were at. I’m sure as most of you would expect with a group this size a few of the 8-11 year old boys got in trouble for dunking and being inappropriate. After swimming I spent some more time just hanging with Roland and the kids. Today we got my computer out and played some music that they like so I could hear them sing along. I found out what a difference in taste we have. I have over 900 songs on my computer and they liked about 6 of them. Oh well. At this point I was getting tired, so I laid down on one of the swings and took a little nap. And of course, I had a child lying on my stomach sleeping as well. Roland got me up at about 4 and told me we were going to the dock to get our stuff off the boat that had come in. When we got down to the dock, I was amazed at how many people were there. I would say close to 200 people just standing and waiting to see their stuff and waiting to have room to bring whatever vehicle they have in to load it up. We waited until about 5:15 to back one of our trucks in and start loading up. While the driver was backing the truck up, he clipped the side of someone’s store and shifted the whole little kiosk like 6 feet. It really wasn’t that big of a deal, one because only like a 10 inch piece of wood got broken off, and two we easily put the kiosk back where it was. As it turns out, there are not supposed to be shops in that particular location because, not only is it the port for the boats, it is also the bus station, so there is a lot of traffic. Our first truck got loaded up with I’d say like 20 wheelchairs for the mission. Once we had all those loaded we brought in the second truck and all the fun began. In this truck went 5 big palates of meal replacement drinks and powered substances. It would not have been so bad if the guy driving the loaded had known what he was doing. First problem was that instead of just dropping the gate and loading them from the back, he took off one of the walls and loaded them from the side. Ok, I can almost be ok with that except that he did not push them all the way in, so we could not put the way back on. So now we have got 5 palates that are stacked to high to begin with, and a truck missing one of its walls. Still, it would have been ok, but once again the loader pushed too hard against one of the palates and knocked the top two layers of product off the truck. As we were picking the product up some other Haitians came over, and I was like, cool they are going to help. WRONG, what did they do? Stand by and constantly ask for handouts. All I kept saying was no and I seriously though I was going to get jumped. So we finally have everything on the truck the only way it was going to go on after all this mess and I decided to ride in the back with it so that I could monitor the palates. Good thing for that, because we were about 10 minutes into our trip when the top half of two of the palates quickly began to slide like it was toppling. Quickly as I could, I banged on the top of the truck to get them to stop. Once out of harm’s way, we called Wesley and he brought the other truck and two more guys to help us get this load home. We moved about 60 boxes to the smaller truck and one of the other guys and me sat in the back of the big truck the rest of the way home. The place that we stopped to wait for Wesley and load up the rescue truck was this little town square typesetting, and there was a Christian revival going on. There were bands, a few speakers, and about 150 people dressed in their Sunday best and praising the Lord. It was really neat to get to see that. Finally back to the orphanage and with no product loss, AMAZING. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that while we were at the dock it started rained and then it rained again when we were loading up the rescue truck. We opted to just cover up the product and unload it in the morning since we did not get back until almost 8. After a day like that I decided to shower and retire to my thoughts. Have a great day/night/both. Peace.