Today was a very good day: Kay TIM-BR MART is painted; white, pink, blue and one green room for the house mother. Once a little bit of plumbing is done, the girls (not the boys, a slight change in plans) will be moving into their new house. The boys will stay put.
To be sure, there was a surge of pride and a wave of relief at not having to hold another paint brush. Then Karen walked in, looked around, thrilled and said sweetly: “Can you paint the doors?” Of course we can. Tomorrow.
As usual, there was all sorts of things going on:
– Sunday means Church with all the HATS children and many from the community. Joyful singing and clapping filled the air as did wishes of ‘Happy Birthday’ for one of the teachers–in English, French and Creole. Falling asleep to the sounds of singing in the distance (mustn’t forget the cows, frogs, crickets and constantly crowing roosters) has been a shared experience for us each night. Plus the community wanted to hear from the ‘Visitors’. So we told them our thoughts about our visit here.
– More Cholera vaccine was dispensed.
– Corey kindly donated a soccer ball to the family next door–throwing it over the fence–and they were very, very grateful, this was after about 20 minutes of ‘Crefranglish’. We think they had a book at hand to try to speak to us in English.
– Jon, not feeling well at all, was a good sport and held his own in a game of football and catch. Fingers crossed he feels better in the morning.
– Brian presented probably the best gift you could give any Haitian man working with concrete: a Makita GAS-powered concrete saw. This will come in mighty handy when they begin to dismantle the earthquake damaged third floor of Karen’s home.
Cherie still works her ‘granma magic’ and puts the youngest ones to sleep mere moments after she picks them up. Corey is spending copious amounts of time with the kids and surprising himself at how easy the connection is to make with them (they don’t give you the choice, really). Brian continues to be the jack-of-all-things HATS, wending his way through a myriad of repairs of this, that and the next thing. Jon will likely hopefully be up for football in a big way tomorrow. Guaranteed Vladimy, JJ and Moise will come looking for him.
And me? Well, I just keep listening for things to type on the blog, painting, spending time with the kids hoping to make my mark somehow with them.
Last day is tomorrow. 🙁 “Can someone hand me some kleenex, please…”
Good night. Thanks for following our journey.
~Aimee
