A little redundant

Up until tonight I was feeling very bittersweet about leaving. And then suddenly...

I now understand why the Brits call getting sacked being made redundant. 

I totally get that now. 

I have never felt more obsoleted in my life. 

It was like the family meeting where you invite crazy aunt Ethel, even though you a) expect her to not contribute and 2) don't consider any crazy dang thing she says even if she does.

I'm not going to lie.

It hurt a little bit.

I think there's nothing I like less in this life than to be completely invalidated without even a kiss on the cheek. I think that sums up most of my year here. 

I will say a few prayers to get my ego in check and hopefully get a good night's sleep and be too busy with hurricane clean up to think about it any more. 

Disapointment

I've never been one of those people that can hide my emotions. I wear my heart on my sleeve, I wear my disappointment on my face and in the slump of my shoulders, and if I'm angry, well, look out! I've got dagger eyes for sure!


I know this is not ideal. I know that this is something that by my age, you'd expect me to have learned a thing or two about at least disguising my feelings for the sake of argument, but I have not. 


And I don't think living in Haiti is going to benefit me any in developing that ability. 


I feel like I could live in Haiti for another 100 years and I won't get any better at it. 


And yes, I know that disappointments are all about perspective, and that I am in control of how I react to issues in my life. I've read all the books, taken all the workshops, I even do yoga and meditation/prayer every day to keep my balance. 


Yet, here I am, long in the face yet again. 


I keep setting myself up for failure because I keep counting on others. I should know better, right? 


The Psalmist reminds us not to put our faith in princes, or man, for there is no salvation there. 


But isn't part of growing in the community about putting some trust in your fellow man? 


Maybe I am reading things out of context because a. I am not so awesome that I can do everything and 2. occasionally I am not capable of doing everything for myself and I MUST ask others to help. 


So, God please grant me the patience to see the lessons these occasions offer, instead of the disappointments. And please help me to disguise my disappointment when I fail at seeing the lessons offered. Amen

Felling Crazy, Lazy Saturday Afternoons

So, I decided to stay in my jammies today. It was going to be a day of leisure. My intern is back after a 2 week break so I threw on a sports bra under my jammie tank and headed out to open the school. I got the office open, handed out vitamins, opened up the school, passed out the arts and crafts, the balls, the jump ropes, basketball, and the giant parachute and was going to head back up to my room for some coffee and a good book. 


Of course the best laid plans.


So next thing you know, I'm visiting with our Poured-Out guests who are shortly going to be headed to the airport. We chat for a bit and I get a good laugh because Carlee, the beautiful, lithe, laid-back leader of the group, poured herself a coffee, embelished with a little cinnamon that turned out to be Cayenne pepper! 


By the time I get back to my room, I'm covered in skeeter bites (I didn't spray because I wasn't planning on staying out there) and I'm a little sunburned (again, I didn't spray because I wasn't planning...well, you know that line already) and sweaty as all get out. 


I sit down, crack open my hard boiled egg, and take a sip of my coffee. 


Karma is a bitch.


And she had my name on her list. 


This is why you never laugh at the misfortunes of others!


I apparently filled my cup with hot water, creamer, and sugar, and skipped the part where you stir in the spoonful of coffee crystals. 


It was like drinking hot melted ice cream! Blek!


So, then I had to go relieve a crisis in the gazebo as the children put on their socks and gym shoes. 6 1/2 days a week they wear flip flops, but on Saturday mornings, they were gym shoes with socks. (Thanks again going out to New Baltimore, Michigan Parks and Rec and Rebecca Strobel for getting us all those awesome sneakers!) But of our 20 little miscreants only about 2 can tie their own shoes, so down I go to cries of "Miss Michele!" "please help me!" "I can't tie this stupid thing".


First we do the over/under. Then we make a tree. Then the rabbit runs around the tree..."Like this?" Yes, yes, yes, just like that.


So, we got 20 little pairs of feet into 20 little pairs of socks and sneakers and off to class to do their arts and crafts. 


Then the rest of the teachers showed up for pay day. So then I have to go and make sure they all play nice while our director is out. 


Okay, I'm heading back up to read and relax. 


Wait, the power went out, I have to go start both generators. 


Well, I can see I'm not going to relax today. I might as well start the inventory. We need to get next year's supplies order before the crew comes down the end of July. 


So I plant myself in the third classroom and begin the arduous task of counting pencils, crayons, markers, construction paper, bottles of tacky glue, glue sticks, glitter, etc. 


Somehow, I let the entire morning slip away. And still I haven't eaten any more than my egg. And whatever happened to my coffee?


So I make my way back to my room and grab the cup of iced coffee chilling in the fridge. Hmmm, seems I made decaf. What was I thinking? 


Then a Skype with the boss. We have a situation to take care of. We have to make arrangements for one of our girls to go stay with family for a while. She has some behavioral issues and we aren't really equipped to deal with that. I mean, I'm pretty awesome and have a wealth of experiences, but there are just some things I am not trained to deal with. 


We have a team pow-wow. The family exchange is going down around 4 pm. 


Well, I'm surely not going to get any kind of down-time before then.


Back to the classroom. Back to the inventory. 


By now some of the "red shirts", my 1st graders, are board. The movie has ended, (Beethoven) and the babies laid down for their naps, and they want to know if I will do yoga class with them. So I find a stopping point, we all grab mats, and off to the preschool classroom we go. 


If you ever want to find out what you are made of, try teaching a yoga class to 10 6, 7, and 8 year olds, with 1 or 2 9 and 10 year olds in the mix. They fight over mats, they fight over mat space, they fight over who gets to put their mat by mine. Then they start stealing my mat, they climb on me, they climb under me. They think it's really funny to poke my "booty" when we do downward facing dog. 


You want to find your zen? Try doing fish pose with a six year old sliding in under you, or hanging from your neck as you do Lord of the Dance!


I truly have transcended. I never lost my cool. I never fell over. I never gave up. I just kept reminding them that people who do yoga don't fight over mats, we share our space. We love one another. We encourage one another. And, le sigh, I applaud myself for how strong I am for being able to do awkward airplane with one child on my back, one on my leg, and one straddling my neck while one crawl under me to pepper my face with kisses. 


So, after all that, we had to deal with our separating child. She handled the transition with more dignity and grace than I could have hoped for. After a year of her anti-social behaviors and aggressiveness and abhorrence of PDAs, she gave me a long hug, and a big kiss and told me she loved me. I will grieve over her absence, but some children just aren't cut out for this kind of situation. 


After that I needed to let a little lose. The van is running and I have no intention of staying in if I don't have to. I invited the interns to head out for dinner and the pool at the good ole Visa Lodge (I'd prefer the hotel Montana, but there is no way in Haiti I'm trying to drive that van up the mountain ever again!). I invited one of our young men, Emmanuel Gedeon. He is one of our best students, and he earned all high marks on his exams. 


It was a good evening. I ate waaaayyyy too much. Drank too little. And then we swam! 


Manno was lucky enough to have met a woman in the pool that had just spent the day teaching her two Haitian escorts how to swim, and offered a few lessons to him. After about an hour in the pool, he was executing a novice breast stroke that was really impressive. Of course, he lost his rhythm and inhaled a bit of water, which scared him a bit. So then he sat guard on the stairs. The fun part about the Visa Lodge pool is that the stairs are evenly spaced at about 5 inches in rise, till the last step, which drops about 2 feet, leaving you in water about 5 1/2 feet deep, and that's the shallow end! 


We swam for a while, til we were pretty knocked out, and headed home for showers. 


That's about it for me. Church tomorrow and then we are thinking we might sneak back over to the pool. 


Our Jacmel trip got sidelined. But we're headed to Calico Beach up the coast. I'm so excited! I can't wait to swim in the ocean. Been living on an island for an entire year and have only swam in the ocean 2 times so far! 


TTFN!

How much is Too Much?

One of the hardest parts of this job is knowing how much to give, and when to pull back. One could make themselves crazy down here trying to do what is best in every situation. It's like living in a moth bitten tent in the rainy season. You have to decide which holes to patch and which holes to leave. And you have to rearrange the furniture so the rain doesn't come in on the really important stuff. 


There are so many places that our tent needs to be patched up. You can't possibly fix all the holes. So, let's say we leave one, and tuck a bucket under it to collect rain water. That's well and fine, but if you don't watch out, that bucket overflows and now you've ruined the rugs! So you have to keep shuffling buckets and moving the furniture around. But nobody else is helping. So as fast as you can move buckets around, patches bust and more holes are letting in water. 


So now you are simultaneously, and independently, attempting to sew up holes, move buckets, rearrange furniture, and trying to keep the most precious of your possessions from getting destroyed by the ever onslaught of the masses of rain that just keeps pouring, and pouring and pouring in. Eventually you just want to go lay down on the bed and wait for the mudslide to carry you down hill. 


Surrender is inevitable. 


Yeah, it's that kind of Monday. 

Positive and Constructive Criticism and Sportsmanship

One of our biggest challenges in our school is the demand for perfection. Whether it is part of the Haitian school system's way of teaching, or it is part of the Haitian culture, I'm not sure, but our students become apoplectic if they make the littlest of mistakes. And to make it worse, our teachers, even after 8 long months of trying to model positive reinforcements, still have a tendency to bemoan errors. If a preschool student writes a 5 instead of a 2 the teacher pounces and sternly tells the student they did it wrong. Then the students starts to cry and covers their head and throws themselves on the ground and that's the end of that lesson for this student! 


Another challenge is teaching sportsmanship. Here's an example: 


   Saturday is our PE day. We were doing relay rages using these "wands" that hold plastic balls. A few students hold out hula hoops for the racers to climb thru, tag the PE teacher, and race back to their team. I go thru the whole thing and explain that their are no individual winners, that the whole team must finish, and that even if one person is slow, another person might be fast enough to make up for it. Ready, set, go! I have them lined up littlest to biggest. Our two littlest runners head out. They cheat, as our kids always do, and one of them heads across the team line. At that moment, our other littlest one realizes defeat and throws themselves to the ground. I can't even get her to cross the team line to tag her next team member. The game is over. I repeat the ready, set, go! so our second runners in line can take off and again, the one that didn't make it back first throws himself to the ground and acts to have a seizure, flopping around and screaming. I can't even console him in the slightest!


I am beside myself with ways to help them around these issues. In the short term, we have ceased all competitive games for the little ones and instead are doing activities were they all win! I feel like such a leftie! 


God forbid we ever try to do a "student of the week" idea!


If you have any hints, tips, web links for ideas on how to work around this, please forward them to my email! Thanks!

The Crazy That is Haiti

So, tonight we (me and Laura Beth), well, mostly me, hired a taxi recommended by my friends, to take us to a jazz concert up in Petionville. First off, understand that nothing in Haiti works the way it is described. So, I am assured this "taxi driver" speaks "beautiful English", 1st lie...secondly, he drives a brand new Mercedes. I've seen less bondo on a Roseville Saturday night Gratiot cruisers special! And thirdly, I was told he charges $500 HTG ($40 gourde to a US dollar so about $12.50) each way. I call the guy, he doesn't speak 2 words of English. He shows up, he wants $100 dollars to drive us 4.5 miles and back. We finally try to negotiate a ride there, figuring, well, we are a couple of cute American girls, we have to be able to find a ride home, and he comes down to $25 to drop us off...


So we politely decline his services and apologize, "desole, we misunderstood your fees." And decide to stay home and drink rum and Coke and play rummy. Then one of the guys tells us he can get us a moto, the guy across the street will take us. We negotiate a price, $80 HTD ($8 HTD to $1 USD, so 10 bucks) to get us there and back and off we go, in sandals and capris and no helmets, 3 on a bike...I would so never approve of this for anyone I loved in the states, but I haven't been out since New Years Eve!


Off we go, teying not to breathe in the funk that is our driver's eau du naturale, and keeping our eyes mostly closed to avoid the Pink Eye that is nearly inevitable from traveling around the streets of Delmas. He takes us up some of the worst roads. I nearly fall off several times. I think my kidneys are just about to revolt. We get about 3/4 of the way to the club when his moto breaks down. It just stops. I don't know what happened because he only speaks money in English. He flags down a couple of other moto drivers to arrange to get us to the club. Now, realize that he barely understood where to take us. He checks on the registration of the two bikes that showed up and approves us to go on the one. I check the price, which was silly, because we really had very few options at this point, and off we go. 


Well, I'm really so glad we went! I got to see my friends for the briefest moment before they left. But meanwhile, I met this awesome jazz club owner from Seattle. He is coming to visit the mission on Monday. Also, the older guy that has been pursuing me was there. I tried to set him straight again that I am only in him on a platonic level. He insisted on introducing me to his family, :( - who turned out to be great people. Laura Beth got to meet this awesomely delicious French guy. We were about to call our moto driver to come fetch us when Richard insisted on having his friend drive us home. Turns out the friend is a missionary Dentist. I'm going to have him visit the mission and possibly donate some much needed dental care to the kids! 

Happy New Year!

Well, they say new year, new start. So far it's just more of the same. I know we are all battle weary from having all the kids off of school and trying to direct meaningful activities for them is getting tiresome. Also, it seems that the holiday break has stirred up a lot of discontent amongst our young adults. Hopefully some of this will abate when our little ones return to regular English lessons tomorrow. 


I'm looking forward to the start of the new term. Hopefully our teachers will get on board with the idea of showing up on time and being prepared for the day's lessons. It is my heartfelt prayer that some of these people start to be a little more conscientious about their work ethic. I try to lead by example, but when you are the only one trying to improve these things, it is an uphill battle with no oars! (sorry for the mixed metaphor, but it succinctly describes my sitch!)

Calamitous Saturday Morning

It's not a full moon, so I'm not sure where the bad juju came from, but we've had quite the morning. A few of the kids have some odd bacteria or virus or another. It causes blister-like lesions in close proximity to their noses and often inside their noses. The first one with these symptoms was put on Amoxicilline and it seemed to respond to it. Then two more kids presented with symptoms so on the antibiotic they went. Now this morning the first one has all of her symptoms again. Guessing it must be viral and not bacterial, but waiting to hear from the doctor. 

Things to be thankful for

Every day brings new challenges, and often new reasons to want to go home. I am resolved to see this through. I am certain I was called here for a reason. Whether it is about helping with the growth of these children, or just to help with my own personal growth, or maybe both, I do not know. What is certain is that I am not the same person I was 4 months ago. 


In many ways I am become more cautious and reserved and in other ways I am letting go of that caution and reservation. I am hoping to achieve a higher level of enlightenment either way. 


One of the most difficult things to do is to practice what you preach. Even to practice what you believe. To say you believe in something is one thing. To actually have the conviction to live it is not an easy life. 

Things to Ponder

I have been having a lot of difficulties in addressing many of the staff issues here at the mission. Both with employees and with some of the older young men and young ladies that help out here while they complete their education. It seems like some things we Americans take for granted is the ability to discern cause and affect. It seems that often times I think I have achieved acceptance of some principle of hygiene or preventive maintenance when all of a sudden, it becomes a challenge once again. I feel like I am constantly reinventing the wheel. I sometimes get to the point where I want to throw my hands up in the air and take the next flight home. 

Life in Haiti

So, I've lost over 30 pounds since I've been here. How you may ask? Mostly because it's so dang hot here I sweat and sweat and sweat. But fear not, it isn't water weight that I've lost. Maybe at first it was. But I'm up to 4 quarts of drinking water a day, some days more. So I know it's actual fat loss. I'mt having a hard time keeping XL shorts up. I have to cinch my belts so tight I look like Jethro (I'd say Ellie May, but I have a ways to go before I'm that cute!) Also, I hardly ever get to finish a full meal when I eat with the kids. Which is okay by me. The cook dishes out humongous portions of red beans and rice with vegetables. And the bowls of spaghetti? Faggedaboudit! I usually get a few bites in and the boys have finished their food and are looking for me to share!

Welcome Home!

So, I arrived back home with little issue. My boy child dropped me at the airport in the wee early hours. I bawled my eyes out. I can't believe what a fine young man he's turning into. None of my worst fears have been realized. A quick coffee and muffin for breakfast started my trip. I ate in a lovely little wine shoppe/bistro in Miami airport. it felt truly decadent to be drinking a cab/sauv at 10:30 in the morning, but what the heck, life is too dang short!

I had to share theairport with Martelly, the current president of Haiti. It's no lie when they teas my Hatin son and call him "ti Martelly". He literally looks loke a 9 year old version
 of the man himself.

So, bad news first: not four hours after arriving back at my second home, some little bastard reached thru the half-opened window of our van and snatched my blackberry from my hands. I don't even want to discuss it. I should not have let my guard down. I was way too chill feeling all secure with my comforts here in this third-world country. Lesson learned the hard way usually stays longer.

On a more positive note, finally drove! At first I offered to park the van so the fellow I was with could head in to the store. Otherwise we may have been waiting all day to park. But when he came out he insited i keep going. I didn't do any great lengthy traversing, but i did get o demonstrate my confidence and abilities. It may sound silly, but confidence is a big part o driving down here.

Anyhow,  wanted to get this up before I fall unconscious. I'm so tired I can't see straigh!t