NEW BLOG

Hello all. I am headed back to Haiti soon and I wanted to let you know that I will be blogging with my friend Becca. We have set up a new blog for the both of us to use. The website is http://amyandbecca.blogspot.com/ Thanks for your continued support!

Pictures

Things are going really well in Haiti. Lots of progress being made! I tried to post pictures but it will not work :(

The Alien Will of God

I just read this blog post today and I thought I would share. I often find thinking some of the things mentioned in this post...about Haiti and my involvement there. Clearly I'm not comparing my time in Haiti to these peoples long term, full time mission. But I do ask myself quite often...what am I doing? I don't even know anything about anything? Someone smarter, older, stronger should be doing this. Someone who is a nurse, who has been trained, who speaks Kreyol, who knows more should be doing this. For some reason beyond me God wants me to be involved. So I will. Will I question myself constantly? Probably. God has used me in ways I never thought possible. There is no way that anything I "have done" would have been done without God leading the whole way.

Going to school...

This is the face of a girl who EXTREMELY excited to be going to school. Salvacienne along with 7 other girls weren't going to school because they didn't have socks, shoes, and hair ties. In Haiti these things are required. There were 12 or so total girls who weren't in school for various parts missing. For some it was simply barrettes. I wish I had a video tape of the joy Salvacienne had when we gave her her shoes, socks, go-go's, & barettes. She literally screeched & was jumping up & down with joy! That moment made anything I have ever done in Haiti feel worth it. I really felt like I accomplished something :) It was pure magic!

Let me give you a little glimpse into finding everything we needed for the girls. The hair things were the easy part. We got those immediately with no problem. For the shoes & socks though we had to put in some serious work. We didn't have access to the car so we rode the tap tap. The tap tap stops at the edge of Leogane so we had to walk to the middle of town for the Market. Here is a great point to tell you that the Kreyol word for walk is mache and the kreyol word for market is mache. So we mached to the mache. Before going we traced all the girls feet. We found a shoe store just outside the mache. That was good for us because we had to come back twice to exchange sizes. If we had bought them in the Mache the vendor might not be there again. It took a long time and a lot of searching but we found shoes for everyone. Thanks to Pam Roberts & Chris Codelli who sent money for the kids we could pay for the shoes!(The other half of the money they sent payed for the beach day!) Then the real work began. In Haiti they have these crazy ruffely socks. They were actually pretty hard to find. We only got 4 of those then 8 smaller ruffle socks.

(You'll notice these socks are on white legs...more explanation of that later!)

White girls

If you're white, and you are in Haiti its kind of like you are a celebrity. I didn't really recognize this till this trip. It was made quite apparent to me when my lovely skinny tall white friend Rebecca came. Before she came my interactions were limited to the orphanage and the people in the area. I really just thought they were friendly & could tell I wasn't at home. Then we got out a little more. We had to go to doctors in Carrefour and all through Leogane to find socks & shoes for the little girls. Men were falling in love left & right. It was funny at first. At a car wash we went to a man asked for Beccas number and our translator gave the man his number. About 10 minutes after leaving he called and professed his love through our translator. Hillarious. Then we went to the market & like I wrote before some man told me he loved me & asked me to kiss him. Others said I love you baby. On a different trip to the market one guy kept telling becca he loved her. It was crazy. Then this past week we met a fellow named Pooshon. He spoke a little english and was chatting Becca up. Becca informed me that this guy was an attractive guy. SO my mischievous self decided I needed a picture of them together. He seemed really nice. We got his phone number. Now don't think for one minute that we were really setting anything up. We aren't that dumb :) Anyway we talked to him a little on the phone. The conversations consisted of hi, how are you and thats about it. Then! Pooshon really fell hard and sent Becca txts that started with Darling and Baby and told of his burning love for her. I told him "too much too soon. Girls don't like when you just meet them then send txts like that" He replied he did not understand. I said, "You don't know Becca. You aren't in love with her" to which he replied word for word "I feel love her. Don't thinks the negativity about me amy"

Anywho! The point of me telling you all this is that Becca & I came to realize a sad thing. We white girls don't know if anyone really likes us for us. They just like the color of our skin and/or whatever they think that means. I'm not just talking about boy girl relationships. I'm married so I hope I'm not having any of those :) haha. Anyway its saddening. You want people to like you for you. Not what you can give them.

I'm just going to keep trucking. Show the people I interact with as much of me as I can and try to build real relationships. I know as long as I am in Haiti I will have interactions like this. I know that I will get charged extra, be loved by some, and hated by others all because of what I look like. I love Haiti/ Ayiti for everything it is and for everything it is not. I take the bad and the good.

Bodies

I don't really know how to approach this post. While Becca and I were driving back from church last Sunday we saw a large group of people gathered around the road. As we got closer I saw a strange something in the middle of the road. I started saying, "What is that? What is that?" Because I was driving I was lucky I didn't see to much. There was a dead man laying in the road with no arms and no legs. Apparently there had been a car accident. We drove a little farther and then there was a pile of 4 or so more. As soon as I caught a tiny glimpse I put up my hand so I wouldn't see anymore. Becca was sitting in the front seat with Rodriguez on her lap. She thought very quickly & covered his eyes before he saw anything. Unfortunately because I said "What is that?" both times Becca got a really good look at everything. She described what she saw as "Human roadkill" I'm so happy I didn't see all of that, and so sad Becca had to. She was very upset & cried for a long time after. We also had 4 older boys Tou Tou, Emmanuel, Kenzy, and Enel with us. The didn't react at all. Neither did the people in the streets. They all had blank faces. I wonder if they are desensitized after all the death they saw last year. It would make sense as a defense mechanism for them. Then yesterday when we were leaving Haiti driving through Carrefour we saw a large group of people a UN truck unloading soldiers, then we looked out our window and saw another body. We aren't sure what happened there, but there was a lot of blood...and the same blank faces all around.

I'm not sharing this with you to be gruesome. I'm sharing so you know what is happening in other places. Maybe some of those people could have lived had they gotten care quickly. Those people were someones family. Can you imagine if your father or brother was killed and was laying on a street bleeding with no care? No one to even cover their body after they had passed? Those two events gave me a huge reality check. Haiti needs so much help. The earthquake wasn't the beginning of the need and it certainly isn't the end. We live in the overly developed, overly everything world. We need to share our resources. We are sooo close to Haiti but its like we live a world away...

Becca and i landed safely in the united states. We keep speaking creole to everyone. Ill update more when i get home