Oh Haiti! Ayiti! Land of beauty!
What an honour for the opportunity
To see your land with its different shapes
From your highest mountains to sea scapes.
Your mountain tips so spectacular and serene
Elsewhere, has there ever been more beauty seen
From cloud level hills to the valleys below
To your fertile soil where the rice paddies grow.
Always a pleasure to return to spend time with Mama Karen and her children.
This water tower was built after the earthquake. It holds four 1,000 gallon containers on the roof. These were formerly on the roof of the office building that also included Karen and Luc’s bedrooms, but after the earthquake and damage to that building it was considered unsafe to have that much weight on that roof. An electric pump keeps these four large tanks as full as necessary.
A great new experience for us visitors to mix in with a Senior Class. Lots of lots of welcoming smiles, and their pride of their school could readily be felt.
Of course, each of our eight members brought two plastic bins of varied materials for HATS School and Compound, and distribution around the region. A multitude of thanks to all those persons who so helpfully supplied us with these things to bring to Haiti.
It’s somewhat diffficult to fully describe those ‘feelings of giving’ when we had prepared about three dozen portions of rice, beans, cornmeal and cooking oil. Also so difficult to describe those smiles of appreciation and thanks given back from the ‘receivers’.
Some senior students after another school day are bringing home some precious food for parents and siblings.
Emma and Alycia found a vacant corner in another building to prepare a surprise birthday cake for Karen and Todd (whose birthdays are the same day).
Lots of different types of work and help to do, here it is tidying up and storing some left over construction materials
Each morning before classes begin, all students assemble for the singing of their National Anthem. And, possibly among these students will be those who will be great contributors to their Nation – fulfilling the aspirations of their ancestors of 1804 when Haiti won their revolution from the slavery years, and became the first black Nation with their own constitution.
Don
