French or Creole so I only understood "esprit de dieu," "guarantie," "ressurecion," and "transformacion." Then again, what more do you need from a sermon?
It was fun to try to figure out what was happening during the service. They had the songs projected on to a screen, so we could sing along and roughly know what we were singing. At one point, about 40 people got up and lined the front of the church and down the center aisle so they could shake hands with the pastor and the elders (men and women) and we rightfully concluded that these were new members. My least favorite part of the service? That
we showed up late and were seated as a column of white folks in folding chairs down the aisle. My most favorite part? Taking Communion with my Haitian brothers and sisters. They passed the elements as we do in our traditional ceremony, but they stood as the received the elements. I loved the respect they showed. Funniest part? The time for recognizing visitors.
The pastor said several times, "visitors? visitors?" and looked right at us, but none of us spoke enough French to say anything. Finally one of the elders stepped up to the mic and welcomed us in English, which made everybody chuckle.
After lunch, we went to see the gravesite (see previous post) and had lunch at a resort. It was very strange to come to Haiti and minister to some of the poorest people in the world and then have lunch at a beachside resort, but I'll save my righteous indignation for another time. It was an odd lunch, that took so long i actually fell asleep sitting up in my chair waiting for my food! The funniest part of lunch was that most of the meals were in the twelve to twenty dollar range, but they didn't have anything that I ordered. "we're out of shrimp, we're out of salad..." so I eventually gave up and ordered a hot dog and fries. It was only five dollars, so I figured it must be a small portion and i ordered two. when it came, he brought me two plates - with two hot dogs each! Can you imagine my face when the waiter set down four hot dogs in front of me? Hee hee hee... [ and no, I didn't eat it all...]
When we got home from the afternoon adventure, we tackled one heck of a job. Each team that comes bring medical supplies, and generally leaves the excess here. Sadly, it appeared that several teams (is seven considered "several"?) left and just left duffel bags full of supplies on the floor. Under Karren's (or Kareem's, if you prefer) careful supervision, we pulled all the expired meds from the shelves, and restocked from what was in the bags on the floor. We sorted surgical stuff to go to the Dominican Republic on Wednesday with the heart patients (more about that later), packed first-aid kits to leave at each of the orphanages we go to this week, and even alphabetized the antibiotics. It was nasty, dirty work, as everything here is filthy.
May i digress here just for a moment? Everything here is filthy. The air smells of smoke all the time. As we drive along the road, we see piles of burning trash literally next to stalls where people are selling food. There are swarms of flies on everything in the markets, but Ashton tells us that if it doesn't have flies, you don't want it, because there's something wrong and even the flies don't want it.
The roads are horrible. In my own experience, going to my grandmother's, you drive on the highway until you turn off onto the four-lane, until you turn onto the two-lane, until you get to the dirt road that takes you to the house. Not so here. You go on and off paved rows seemingly randomly, and most of the roads aren't paved. There are pot holes everywhere and the tap tap is constantly weaving around to avoid the worst of it, but you can't avoid it all. It's a bumpy ride no matter where you're going and dirty, dirty, dirty ... road dust, smoke, and general filth. And then in the guest house, cleaning out old teams' stuff that was covered in filth and sometimes roaches, we just got dirtier. My teeth felt dirty. I stood in the shower (with no water pressure) and cried. I don't know if I'll ever be clean again. My hair is so nasty, I may have to shave my head and start over.
Here's a picture. Courtney said, "you will try to show pictures to your friends when you get home, and I don't know how, but the photographs suck the humanity out of the situation. She's right, but I'll still try.
No comments:
Post a Comment