Snow day in Haiti??

Yesterday morning I had this great plan to sleep in late. At 6:30 I woke up to the sound of a really strong wind blowing things around on the porch outside my room. I quicly got up and took inside anything that would possibly be thrown off the porch by the wind. The rain was also coming down quite strong and so I had to run around and close all the window slats so the rain wouldn't pour in. By the time all this was done I was too wide awake to go back to bed. So I sat and watched the wind and rain for a while. This is really unusual weather for this time of year.
I had made plans with one of the teachers from school to go downtown and shop, but knowing Haitians and their dislike of rain I knew that she would not want to go in the rain. So there I was stuck at home watching the rain fall. It felt like a snow day, it was cold out and it wasn't a good idea to go out without a car. Speaking of my car, I called the garage yesterday to see if my car was ready. They informed me that the mechanic did not come to work today because of the rain, so it really was like a snow day!
So I spent the morning in my pjs watching movies and drinking coffee. Then I walked over to Karen's for a bit to drink some Hot Chocolate in true snow day fashion. After that I started to feel a bit stir crazy. I walked around the house in circles, watched 4 episodes of TV in a row, and read for several hours!! I need to get out of the house today! Thankfully today the sun is out and although it's not hot out, I have taken my socks off!
Today we are having our staff party with the guys who live and work at the school. Tonight there is a Christmas Eve service at the English speaking church across the road from my house and then I've been invited to a Christmas Eve party. It should be a lot more exciting than yesterday!

Holidays...

Monday morning I went into work with the plans to organize and clean up the office, a job that I always want to do but never find the time or energy to do. After a few hours of cleaning I got a call from the guy who is helping me get all my proper paperwork for living and working in Haiti. He had a bit of time and wanted to go downtown with me to get my picture taken for my Haitian drivers license. I said no problem and downtown we went. When we arrived at the office they wouldn't let me enter. I was quiet confused so I asked what the problem was. Apparently I wasn't dressed appropriately and would have to return the next day with more appropriate clothing! I know that Haitians are quite particular about what you wear and it is quite specific to where you are going. So I asked what would be appropriate clothing for such an occasion as getting your picture taken for your driver's license. Since we were taking a motorcyle (my car is back in the shop again) I said that it would be difficult for me to wear a dress or skirt. It turns out that as long as I was wearing a skirt or pants and a shirt that covered my shoulders I was okay. So back I went the next day with jeans and a t-shirt, the best part is that in the picture you can only see my face:)

At school we have a carport (basically a concrete overhang) that Randy is convinced is unsafe and needs to come down ASAP. On Monday before I left the school Randy was showing some guys our carport and getting an estimate for how much it would cost to tear it down. When I returned 2 hours later I saw the carport in many pieces on the ground. I was amazed at how fast it came down. The guys who live at the school and Randy were standing around staring at it. I asked what happened and they told me that they stood on top of it and jumped up and down at the same time and it collapsed. I didn't believe it! There's no way it was that unstable. But they kept on insisting and since I didn't see anyone else around I started to fall for this story. Then the truth finally came out. A huge bulldozer had come by in the time that I was gone and knocked the whole thing down with only a few hits. A short while later the same machine came back and cleaned up the mess. What a powerful machine! In only a few hours the entire yard looked different. Now starts the fun of putting down a new concrete floor.

Programme Noël

Sunday afternoon we had our Christmas program/award ceremony/parent-teacher interviews all rolled into one. The classes had been practicing their songs/skits/poems since the beginning of December so we were eager to see them present all their hard work. In typical Haitian style we started 30 minutes late to a half full audience and by the time the program was finished almost all the seats were filled. The whole event went well, and it was wonderful to celebrate the birth of Christ with our students and their families.

Samuel and I presented awards to the first place student in each class and one student from each class who put forth great effort this past term.

This is the junior kindergarten class, they are the youngest class but their performance was one of the best.

This is the class for students with learning disabilities. They did a GREAT job!

This is Grade 5, they organized part of the program themselves.

I tend to avoid the spotlight but felt it was necessary to wish the students and their families a blessed Christmas and Happy New Year.

Picture Day

Here are "the guys" posing for the camera!

We finally organized a picture of all the staff at Adoration Christian School. We're a pretty good-looking staff wouldn't you say??

Back row: Samuel, Cadeau, Alix, Alyn, Max, Randy, Samuel, Evenz, Asselhomme, Guerdson

Front now: Me, Magdalyne, Ketia, Molina, Manman Manise, Karen, Marline, Node

Thursday was our last day of school. Today the teachers were given a day to work on report cards, I spent the day editing the report cards and trying to get caught up on some work. Sunday we will have a Christmas program, awards ceremony and parent-teacher interviews. The students have been busy preparing their song/skits for the program, I'm looking forward to seeing what they have prepared.

Monday our holidays officially begin. I'll probably go in to work from time to time to get caught up on some work, but mostly I'll try to relax. I've been invited to a party on Christmas Eve and another one on Christmas day. After that I'm going to spend several days in the countryside with my friends Leslie and Diego. I'm looking forward to getting out of the city for a few days. Not sure how I'll survive without the internet...

White Christmas??

We may have our own sort of white Christmas here in Haiti. In the north you have snow, here in the south we have dust, and lots of it. The dry season has officially started which of course means no rain, or at least very little rain. The good news is that it cools of considerably at night and it's very lovely for sleeping. The down side is that it becomes very dry and very dusty. You could (and probably should) dust and mop your floors every day. It doesn't matter how many times a day I wash my feet they are black on the bottom in no time. The amount of dust we breathe in daily is just not good.
Speaking of snow. I brought some Christmas music here and listen to it at school and at home. I am noticing for the first time how many Christmas songs mention snow and cool weather. Intersting, since Christmas is the celebration of Christ's birth and he was born in a warm climate...
Many ex-pats living in Haiti find this time of year hard and miss snow, cold temperatures, hot chocolate, sledding and all those other aspects of the winter season that we associate with Christmas. I personally don't feel sad at all. I began to dislike winter more and more each year to the point where I don't think I like it at all. I love the temperatures here no matter how hot they become. Sometimes I think I may have been born in the wrong country all together. I must admit that I check the temperature in Toronto as often as I can and have a little chuckle all to myself. I love the idea of a hot Christmas.

Welcoming Carle to the world!

One of our teachers and his wife had a baby boy this past weekend. We rejoice with them as they welcome a new little one into this world. His name is Carle Jean Pierre and Karen and I had the priviledge of meeting him this week.

He doesn't appear to be too thrilled to meet us, but we were thrilled to meet him.

The hardest part...

There are lots of things about Haiti that I find difficult but what I find to be the most difficult is the constant requests for help. When I am on the street or in a parking lot random people shout "Blan, give me one dollar." When I park my car, someone will "watch" it for me, or "wash" it for me and expect me to pay them for the service regardless if I asked them to or not. All day long people stop by the school with requests. They ask if we have a spot in our school for their child, if we could pay for their child to go to another school, or pay their rent, or buy them shoes or help them start a business. When there is a medical or dental clinic, there are always people with legitimate needs being turned away. One day a father of one our students came to speak to me, when we were done speaking he asked for money to take public transport home. On the days there isn't medical clinics people ask me to diognose them and give them some medicine. We've even asked more than once if we would take soemone's child and adopt them. I'm not a doctor, we have limited space at our school, and we dont' have unlimited resources. Everyone has a story, most of them are hard, many of them tug at my heart and often I feel my eyes filling with tears as they share their stories with me. Some stories are not true, and many are exagerated for dramatic effect; you can't trust every sob story that you hear. However, it is undeniable that life in Haiti is hard. I know that giving out money to everyone who stops by the school is not a solution, it's not sustainable and it's putting a band aid on a huge wound. I also know that by providing free and quality education we are helping many families in a way that will last a long time into the future. But it doesn't stop my heart from breaking when I hear the stories and I often wish we could do more.

My basketball team won!!! Before you get too excited... we won by default because the other team didn't show up. We played anyways with whichever girls were around and we lost to them, but thankfully it doesn't count!!
Yesterday, we didn't have any school as the teachers requested a day to write their exams. I was so looking forward to a quiet uninterrupted day to get a PILE of work done. When I got to school Randy announced that he was going downtown to visit a school that I have wanted to visit for some time now. He invited me along and I couldn't resist. We read in the newspaper last week that this school was closing its doors due to lack of funding. This school called C.E.S. is also a place for assessments for students with special needs and a training centre for teachers who work with students with special needs. We were sad to hear that they were closing their doors and went to speak to them about their situation. We were warmly welcomed when we arrived and the director quickly assured us that they were not shutting their doors for good as the article indicated but rather they ran out of money for this fiscal year and therefore were shut down for the month of December but will re-open in January. We were relieved to hear this and although they were not currently functioning they allowed me to tour the facilities and see how their programs are set up. While we were downdown we also visited another school for special needs students that we sponsor a few a students at. It was great to see that there are programs like these for students with special needs. Granted there are not enough programs like this and there needs to be more but it was encouraging to see these schools in action. On the way home, Randy gave me a tour of downtown. I love downtown, it's so full of activity and action all the time. There are people everywhere selling stuff and going about their business. It's even more fun on the back of a motorcycle, you feel more a part of the action. Unfortunately, my car is fixed and I can pick it up tomorrow. Back to boring life with a car!

Wow the internet is working...

A senior kindergarten student hard at work!

Maia the superchild is almost writing already!

The beautiful newly painted lines

We have some donated jerseys so we are able to use them in the tournament.

Apparently I do have one picture of myself and my sisters from when they visited

Basketball tournament

Anyone who knows me well knows how much I LOVE sports (just kidding, this couldn't be further from the truth). Randy has set up a basketball tournament at the school for the secondary students as well as for people in the community. Over 75 people signed up to play. I tried to escape joining a team but Randy said it would be a great bonding experience with the students, blah, blah, blah... as usual I did as I was told:) Last Tuesday was my first game. Now admitedly I know very little about sports and I have precious little talent when it comes to playing, however, I apparently know ALOT more than the girls on my team. I don't think they have ever played basketball before. They didn't appear to know what to do when they received the ball. I did a lot of running around the court but they rarely passed the ball so my running was in vain. The team we played had one good player, so their strategy was to always pass the ball to her. Needless to say the other team won, 4 - 0. I have decided that during the Christmas break my team will meet every morning at 5 am to practice for our games in the new year. Do you think the girls will show up?? (just kidding!!)
The guys take the tournament very seriously. They are quite dramatic when they don't agree with a call the ref has made and sometimes they put on quite the show. I enjoy watching their games more for the drama than the actual playing although they do play quite well. The tournament goes until the end of January so I'll keep you up to date on how my team is doing.

Walking

Things I noticed on my walk home from church today:
1. a guy wearing bowling shoes
2. a woman going pee on the sidewalk
3. your nose starts to burn when you breath in dust for any length of time
4. Haitians like to make comments/ask questions when you walk by eg. "Are you lost?" "Can I give you a ride home?" "Look at the beautiful white woman".
5. the UN have an ambulance complete with an ambulance siren and a UN escort
6. it's the dry season and when it doesn't rain for a long time it becomes VERY dusty!
Haitians generally think you are crazy if you walk anywhere if you have the means to pay for a taptap or a motor taxi. I just smiled and let them think what they want. It's probably not far from the truth.

Haiti by foot

My car is still getting fixed so I've been carless for a bit now. Unfortunately so are Randy and Karen. Thankfully they were able to borrow their neighbour's trucks for a bit, so we've been carpooling to work everyday. However, on weekends I'm back to being carless. I have a variety of people who live close and can give me a ride so I usually do okay. Today, though, I decided to walk instead. There is a Christian International School not too far from me and they were having a fundraiser Bazaar. I walked over to my friend's house to get a ride with her and then walked home afterwards. It's different seeing Haiti by foot. You notice a lot more because you're going so much slower. I saw a few interesting shops that I'd like to check out some day. A few people tried to start conversations with me. I just said hello and kept walking quickly by. The bazaar was fun. I had my nails painted, bought a Creole book and some nice cards. It was good to see some people I hadn't seen for a while. I'm slowly making connections and starting to feel like I know a few people. Tonight there is a "Night of Arts" at the same school which I am looking forward to.

Time flies by...

My sisters have left and taken all their great pictures with them. I took very few pictures when they were here because I was planning on uploading all their pictures before they left. However, they both have Sony cameras and their memory cards didn't work with my computer and they forgot their camera cords. Hopefully they remember to send me one or two (hint, hint). Since they left things have not slowed down at all. It's been busy, busy, busy.
Wednesday I had an interesting experience. One of our staff member's sister is quite ill. She's been ill for quite some time and last week she had to be hosptitalized. We've been visiting her regularly at the hospital and on Monday the doctor said that she needed to have three pints of blood. I agreed to go and give blood for her. It was quite the experience. We spent over one hour at the hospital waiting for them to figure out what exactly we had to do. Finally they took a sample of her blood and sent us downtown to the Red Cross. When we finally found Red Cross it went relatively quickly. We brought five people which was good because only three people were able to give. When we went to leave they told us they could only give us 2 pints of blood and we'd have to come back the next day for the last one because the hospital that she was in didn't have a place to keep the blood refridgerated. The whole experience taught me that I need to leave the school more often and see the rest of Haiti. I've lived here in total one year and three months and I still feel like a tourist staring at everything and fascinated by all the sites and sounds. I think every once in a while I should tag along with Randy and see what life is like outside the walls of our school. As for the girl in hospital, she's started to look better each time we see her, we pray that she will regain strength with time and return to good health.

Two eventful days...

Well, my first weekend completely carless in Haiti has been quite eventful. My car is in the "shop" until an undetermined time. Randy and Karen's personal car has been in the garage for a long time and the car they were borrowing is now also in the shop. So we are officially without a car. Thankfully Dr. Ed has a visitor staying with him right now and so he's been taking him around town and we've tagged along. On Friday we headed up to Baptist Mission. When we arrived at Ed's house he asked which of his two trucks we preferred to drive in, I choose the white truck because it was airconditioning and we wouldn't have to sit in the cage in the back. He said okay and just as we were about to leave he mentioned that the white truck tends to overheat from time to time so we'd have to stop occasionally to add water to the radiator. We took the back way up the mountain which is always an adventure, lots of loose gravel and the possibility of washed out roads. We were about 3/4 up the mountain when the truck decided that it needed a good long drink. Steam was billowing out the front. We stopped, gave it a chance to cool down and then tried to add some water, the little leak that was in the radiator from before has increased dramatically in size. We managed to continue and made it up the rest of the way having to stop a few more times. The stopping wasn't really the problem, the problem was all the concerned onlookers who were determined to help us out. Lots of unsolicited advice was given and one man even took the water jug and started to fill up the radiator for us. We managed to fight off all the helpful onlookers and had a great time at Fort Jacques and Baptist Mission. The way home was smooth until we were almost home, we were back in PAP when the truck decided it was done for the day. Of course we were on a busy and narrow road so we successfully blocked traffic. We waited for a little while to allow the truck to cool off and then started once again and we were able to make it home.
Saturday we tagged along to the beach. This time we took the other truck:) We had a great day, relaxing, swimming and eating great Haitian food. After lunch we decided to go snorkeling. We paid a guy to take us out in this boat to check out a nearby reef. Once we were all in the water, Chris (Ed's visitor) mentioned that there was a jelly fish in the water near him. I freaked out and jumped into the boat. I had never seen a jelly fish in my life but promised the others that I'd be on the look up for them. Shortly after I saw 3 jellyfish in a row. Two kids were in the water and one of them took the fish out of the water and passed it to the guy in the boat, the guy pulled the tentacles off and told me that jelly fish don't hurt at all and proved it to me by rubbing the fish over his arm. This didn't convince us at all and in fact we all got out of the water except for Chris. After a while Chris got bored being in the water by himself and got into the boat as well. So much for snorkeling.
Sunday we were able to walk to church since there is a church right across the road from my house. The rest of the day we relaxed and took it easy. I can't believe my sister's are leaving tomorrow. The week had gone so fast.

Guest Blogger: Amy!

Kim is too tired from entertaining her sisters so I (Amy) have taken over blogging duties for today.
Today was another beautiful, hot Haitian day and we woke up bright and early to have breakfast and head to the school. I can't believe I'm getting up so early when I'm on vacation but apparently school starts really early here and if we don't get up early and go with Kim to the school we'd be stuck here till Kim finishes her work. So we dutifully follow our older sister to school : ) Well, that and there's lots to explore and we didn't want to miss out. This morning, Ysmaille picked Gwen and I up at 8:30 and drove us to the house that he is building and then from there we went to where he is living now. We met his cousins and his uncle and some other random friends. We could have met many more but the morning was getting on and we were getting a bit tired. He took us back to the school where we helped one of the classes do a craft and then we had lunch--rice and beans with vegetable sauce--it was yummy.
After lunch, Kim, Gwen, Karen, Maia and I went together to do some shopping. We first went to a store called Haitian Creations where women sew bags and purses out of scrap material--much of it uphostery remnants. After buying a couple of bags we then went on to the metalsmith's village which consists of scores of metalwork shops where they repurpose oil drums by hammering the metal out into elaborate designs of birds, fish, trees, people etc. Most are decorative wall hangings but some are made into mirrors, bowls and even napkin holders. Walking in you can hear the sound of drums on metal and you can see how they make them by cutting out templates and then forming the raised design with hammers and other metal working tools. We had fun looking through the shops at all the designs. In the end, we ended up buying several wall decor items and a couple of mirrors and some candle holders.
This evening for dinner, some of the guys who work at the school came for dinner. We played some cards and had a delicious meal of chili and bread.
It was a great day but it will be nice to shower and wash all the dirt and dust off our skin and out of our hair.
Not sure what the rest of our trip will hold for us but I'm sure it will be just as adventurous.
On a side note--Kim's car is still not working properly but it will hopefully be looked at and fixed tomorrow.

Sister Time

My sisters arrived safely yesterday, only a tiny bit late. So who's ever heard of a container and box embargo? Apparently there's an embargo on any kind of box or container during the Christmas season. In the Detriot airport my sisters discovered that they couldn't take the two containers that I had so carefully packed and left behind for them to bring. Thankfully one of the AA employees was kind enough to explain that they could buy two large duffle bags instead and transfer all my stuff into them. So somewhere in the detriot airport are two brand new containers that I was looking forward to using for storage.
Last night my sisters settled in and we caught up on a few things. This morning I woke them up bright and early and we headed off to school. Of course I put them right to work. Gwen helped sort all our newly donated school supplies and Amy typed up some work for me. After school we were all ready to head up to the Baptist Mission for some lunch and then to Fort Jacques to check out the view. Unfortunately just outside of Petionville my car decided to give us some problems. I pressed on the gas but it wouldn't go any faster than 20 km/h. This road is twisty and turny and a bit scary on the best of days as trucks go flying by and although the car was still moving I didn't relish the idea of blocking traffic for miles seeing as it's almost impossible to pass on this road. So unfortunately we had to turn back. We had lunch at Epidor instead and spent some time relaxing at home.

Sponsorship program

A good friend of mine wrote me recently and asked about how our school sponsorship program works. I figured it was such a great question that I'd answer it on my blog in case anyone else had the same question. Here's how it works. Our school starts at Junior Kindergarten and ends at Grade 5. The government will not enable us to have Grade 6 until we are registered with them, which we are in the process of doing. Grade 6 is the first year that students must write a government exam and therefore all schools who administer this exam must be registered. I believe I mentioned that our school is entirely free for all our students. In addition, they are provided with all necessary textbooks on loan, two uniform shirts, breakfast and lunch each day. Though our partnership with Dr. Ed who runs a clinic at our school we are also able to supply them with medical attention if necessary. After students graduate from our school we continue to support them by sending them to a nearby Christian School. Our goal is to financially support our students until they graduate from secondary school. In order to suport them financially our goal is to find a sponsor for each student. The majority of our students currently have a sponsor in Canada, but we still have a significant group of students who do not yet have a sponsor. If you are at all interested in taking on this responsibility, check out CDIA's website (listed on the side of this blog) to find out more information. The students who we sponsor after grade 5 are required to come once a week to clean the school and must attend Friday night Bible Study. This teaches them responsibility and allows us to keep in touch with them and see them on a regular basis. They often stop by at other times as well to chat with us, keeping us informed of what is going on in their lives. Because they all attended our school in the past, we know them all fairly well and enjoy staying in touch with them and hearing about their lives.

Refreshed and ready for some family time

I'm back from the spiritual retreat and feeling pretty refreshed, which is a good thing because my sisters are coming Monday! The retreat was great. It was a time of fellowship, time spent in prayer and time learning more about prayer. We had sessions in the morning and the afternoons were free for sleeping, swimming, chatting or quiet alone time. Whatever you felt you needed to be refreshed and rejuvenated.
As mentioned, my sisters are coming on Monday. I'm pretty excited about them coming. Although Gwen has been here before, neither of her visits were while I was here and Amy has never been to Haiti before. I hope to sneak out of school a bit early to show them around Port-au-Prince and spend some quality time with them. We plan to go to Les Cayes on the weekend to visit the child that my sister Gwen has been sponsoring through the organization Compassion for quite a long time. I've never been to Les Cayes and look forward to seeing a new part of Haiti.

Ayiti

One of the great things about having a team here is that they take pictures that you never think to take. Here are some of my favourites.

Back to normal, whatever normal is...

The team has left and it's back to normal life once again. Monday I had a workshop with all the teachers. The topic was classroom managment. I created an outline for what I would like to discuss and the teachers took it from there. It was an opportunity for teachers to share various strategies they use in their classrooms. I shared a few strategies that I used when I was teaching in Canada but mostly I just listened to their ideas and moderated the discussion from time to time. (we have some teachers who LOVE to share!!!)
Today is a holiday so I'm trying to get caught up on a few things that I let slack while hanging out with the team. Tomorrow I am off to a Spiritual Retreat that the CRC organization organizes each year. This year it will take place at Wahoo Bay and the theme is prayer. I'm looking forward to spending some time in prayer and fellowship with other believers and perhaps spending some time at the beach!