Election Thoughts

Last night Haitian officials announced the results last week's presidential election. The three frontrunners are Mirlande Manigat (a Sorbonne-educated law professor and former senator, who would be the first female Haitian president), Jude Celestin (a businessman; the candidate of the current, very corrupt, administration; I haven't found a single person who actually supports him, so how he came out in second place is highly suspect), and Michelle Martelly (a very popular Haitian musician whose platform is almost entirely based on the popularity of his music). 3 guesses which one I'd like to see win? Ah, yes, the one who actually has an education and more than a vague shred of political experience. It's encouraging that in the first round she
(Manigat) was in the lead by 100%.

Sunday School

Note to self: when Haitians unexpectedly invite you to an event they are in any way involved with leading, you will probably be put on the spot for a speech/prayer/activity/something so THINK FAST.

So yesterday, Sunday, the older girls invited me to come back to the church with them in the afternoon. They said that they help lead a little kids sunday school class, and they thought I might like to come play with kids. Awesome! I was super-excited for several reason. 1. It's taken a lot longer to establish relationships with the older girls, so I was encouraged to see them reaching out to me. 2 I really like playing with kids. 3. I jump at any chance to get outside the orphanage walls and walk around.

Everything was going great, I was really enjoying watching the girls work together to wrangle a group of forty 8-15-year old kids into some semblance of order. The class met in an open area on the top floor of the church with an incredible view of the whole Port-au-Prince bay shining in the warm yellow light before sunset. The kids sang worship songs, memorized a bible verse, and were just starting to sing some more when Stephanie plops down beside me and says, "Okay, so what game are you going to play with the kids?"

My train of thought - First: "I should have seen this coming", then - "Duck duck goose! Wait, no, that's a terrible idea, there are way too many kids, and I don't know either 'duck' or 'goose' in Creole. Why can't I think of any other games???" After scrambling for a minute I remembered that Simon Says had recently been a huge hit in my English classes (thank you Katie times a gazillion). I quickly explained the game to Stephanie so she could help me explain it to the kids. She didn't understand what "Simon says" meant, so I said, "It's just a name, it could be Stephanie says, or Cecelia says, it doesn't matter." At that her eyes lit up with undertsanding and she proceeded to explain that the game we were going to play is called "Cecelia Di", explained the rules, and handed me a microphone. What followed was the most energetic and competitive game of Simon Says I have ever seen. So even though it was not remotely related to their bible verse for the day or anything like that, I'm going to go ahead and call it a success. And they invited me to come back again next week; which I plan to do, armed with an activity prepared in advance this time!

Our christmas tree beats your christmas tree...

...Why? Does your Christmas tree have balloons on it? Or a penguin? Umm...didn't think so.

 

So the weather is beautiful here, with temperatures in the 80's every day and usually a nice breeze. This makes it a little hard to remember that it's winter and snowing back home. It's also strange to be singing advent carols at church and making plans for Christmas celebrations in this weather!

 

Last night I was up on the roof after dark and discovered to my delight that people put up Christmas lights in Haiti too! I guess I had assumed that was an American/European thing, but nope, even in third world slums people hang up a variety of spazzy, blinking, colorful lights at Christmas. (How exactly this relates to the birth of Christ, I have yet to figure out.) Also the girls have told me that people set off fireworks all over the city at midnight on both Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, so I'm super-excited for that.

 

Today the girls dug up a fake Christmas tree, from who knows where. This thing has definitely seen better days. It's like the Charlie Brown christmas tree. But, undaunted, we raided the craft shelves in the library for everything and anything that was red or green or remotely ornament-like. Several packets of water balloons were blown up and hung on the branches as ornaments. Larger balloons were placed strategically to disguise structural problems and make it stand up straight. We made red and green paper chains. Red and gold tinsel appeared. Someone collected a bunch of beanie-babies and artfully arranged them around the bottom, except for the penguin who holds a place of honor nestled among the lower branches. The whole time the girls sang Haitian christmas songs (which are way more lively than English ones), and when they declared the tree finished they started a rousing chorus of "Oh Christmas Tree" in French. Except they had the usual problem of not remembering any of the words after "oh christmas tree", but they just made up some verses of their own. Guess some things are pretty consistent in any language. :p 

 

I don't think I have ever had more fun decorating a tree (and I LOVE decorating christmas trees). I'm gonna go ahead and claim that we have the best Christmas tree outside of Swizterland this year (gotta give credit to the Swiss, they take their christmas trees very seriously).

 

Tomorrow I think I'm gonna try to make an angel for the top. Wish me luck!

 

Thanksgiving

I wasn't expecting to get any kind of Thanksgiving celebration in Haiti, since - surprise surprise - Haiti does not celebrate this American holiday. So it was a lovely shock when Dr. Bernard dropped by the orphanage on Wednesday and said, "Oh, by the way, you're coming up to my house for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow." As it turned out there were some mechanical failures in the kitchen, which postponed the dinner until Friday night, but it happened eventually. And the food was amazing, we had everything; turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, green beans, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, even pumpkin pie. I ate a ridiculous amount of food and was very happy. And an added bonus, Dr. Bernard graciously invited us to stay for the weekend, so I've gotten a much needed break. His house is up in the mountains above Port-au-Prince, so it's much cooler (I've been wearing a sweater and scarf all weekend!), and also much quieter. I've been spending time reading, playing with the babies and toddlers at the infant's orphanage next door, and sitting on the roof looking out at the amazing view, just being quiet and still. It's been a pretty stressful past three weeks, but I didn't realize how worn out I was until I got the chance to rest. So thank God for knowing what I need better than I do. And for letting me rest in a place where I can spend my whole day just holding babies if I want to. :p
Life is good.

Love, Cecelia

Psalms and Miracles

Sometimes it seems to me as though there is just one cause for fear after another here in Haiti. There is still a threat of cholera making its way into Port-au-Prince. Our streets have been disturbed by gunfire in broad daylight right outside our doors. And this week, for me at least, has been dominated by fear and anxiety over the approach of Hurricane Tomas.

Yet in the midst of all this there is God. First thing every morning, and last thing every night, I read from the Book of Hours; a beautiful devotion of prayer and praise centered on the Psalms, which has been prayed continuously throughout church history. Last night as I prayed desperately for the safety of this city, for the beautiful children in our school who live in the tent city on top of the hill, utterly at the mercy of the approaching storm, I read these two psalms in the evening prayers. 

Psalm 144  (paraphrased)
Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle;
my rock and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and he in whom I take refuge, who subdues the peoples under him.
...
Bow thy heavens, O Lord, and come down! Stretch forth thy hand from on high, rescue me and deliver me from the many waters.

Psalm 121
I lift up my eyes to the hills. From whence does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved, he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not smite you by day, nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.
The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and for evermore.

Despite all these assurances, I fully expected to spend most of today cowering on the inside of the building so I wouldn't have to watch 100 mile per hour winds rip my neighbors' houses to shreds. Instead this whole city experienced a miracle. It rained, but only gently. Instead of tearing winds, there were playful breezes all day. The sky was overcast, but never dark with thunder or lightning. At 3pm it was perfectly calm outside. I called my mom and she listened to me in disbelief, telling me that the hurricane was a huge angry storm covering Haiti on the radar map. It was as if God had mercy on this ravaged city and covered it with his hands while the storm passed over. As it started to get dark, Jamie and I sat in the library, staring out the window trying to make sense of what was (and wasn't) happening, and Jamie just said "This is miraculous". And he was right. I wasn't going to make sense of it, because it doesn't make sense, and yet I saw it happen with my own eyes.
As we sat there and marveled, Jamie grabbed a bible off the shelf and we started paging through the Psalms, looking for we weren't quite sure what, and we found Psalm 46.

God is your refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change, thought the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved; God will help her right early.
The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts.
The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
Behold the words of the Lord, how he has wrought desolations in the earth.
He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear, he burns the chariots with fire!
"Be still, and know that I am God. I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth!"
The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

To all of you who prayed for our safety: know without a doubt that your prayers were heard and answered! Maye we never cease praising the God who can do this.

Love, Cecelia

A different part of the city

My mom is visiting! Well, technically, right now I'm visiting my mom. She is working at Kay St. Germaine, a treatment centre for kids with disabilities. It's been really interesting to live on the opposite side of the city for a few days, and notice how different it is. The most noticeable difference is that it's quiet here. In Bolosse, where I live, it is always noisy. The noise starts at 5:30 in the morning when it starts getting light. A steady stream of people with empty buckets and other water containers treks down the hill, and people carrying full buckets on their heads coming back up. Street vendors play music from their radios if they stay in one place, or shout out their wares if they're walking. The water vendor's truck has a horn that sounds vaguely like an ice-cream truck, but plays the titanic theme song. And the sound of motorcycles blaring their horns as they round the corner is constant from sunrise to long after sunset. Basically there are a ridiculous amount of people crammed into a relatively tiny space, and it is impossible that our neighborhood would be anything other than noisy. The one or two nights that the streets have been dead quiet at night were because there were gunshots and a gang in the area, so instead of being peaceful, the quiet was just eerie.

In contrast, Kay St. Germaine is on the opposite side of the city, tucked between the sprawling compound of the UN forces (from our porch you can see the flags of the Israeli and Italian regiments across the street), and the US Embassy. On the weekend when there are no kids at the center, there aren't many people around. We're surrounded by warehouses and lots of green space, actually, and it's hard to believe I'm still in the same city. It's been a really nice change of pace (and volume) and it's been fun to meet all of the people my mom has been working with, including a canadian nun, an argentinian physical therapist, an irish occupational therapist, and bunches of other interesting people.

The big topic of discussion here this weekend has been the cholera outbreak in St. Marks, and what's going to happen if it reaches Port-au-Prince. I spent my afternoon of internet access on the WHO (World Health Organization) website researching cholera treatment and prevention, so I have all the information I can gather, and I've been relieved to discover that cholera is a completely treatable illness. The reason it is so fatal is that it moves incredibly quickly, so if you aren't diagnosed and treated quickly (the treatment is simply rehydration, combined with simple antibiotics for more severe cases) the dehydration can cause death in a matter of hours. Thankfully there has been a rapid and fairly comprehensive response to the outbreak, and it will hopefully be contained soon.  Please know that you don't need to worry about me. Cholera spreads through contaminated water, and we have a very good water filtration system within our orphanage. If I still manage to become sick somehow, we have a large stockpile of oral rehydration salts that were left by some medical teams a few months ago, which I will be force-feeding to anyone who shows so much as a hint of cholera symptoms during the next few weeks.

Keep Haiti, and especially the town of St. Marks, in your prayers.

Love, Cecelia

More pictures

This little boy is from the infants orphanage up at Dr. Bernard's house. He was very suspicious of my camera and what I was doing pointing it at him. 

Until I showed him the picture, and then he was all smiles.

In the centre of the city, as you're driving along,  you suddenly pop out of slums and tent cities and pitted streets onto a grand boulevard lined with columns and statues and monuments. It's like a little piece of a grand european city was plopped down in the middle of crazy disorganized Port-au-Prince. But now the palace is in ruins, same as it was the day after the earthquake, and is a little bit of a symbol for how little has really been rebuilt since January. 

Some pictures, because I am visiting mom and have internet.

This is me with Christie, the daughter of one of our laundresses. 

As promised, pictures of baby chickens. They're quite a bit bigger now, and just getting into the sort of ugly half-grown stage. 

And this is the view from our roof. One of these days I'll remember to bring my camera up to catch the sunset. 

Bieber Fever

Dear friends and family, it is with a heavy heart that I relate this terrible news. After a mere three weeks in Haiti, I've cracked. I now like music by Justin Bieber.

I didn't go down without a fight, mind you. When I first got here and the kids asked me if I liked songs by Justin Bieber I said no, because a) I didn't actually recognize any of his songs, and b) I felt like I shouldn't be liking them on principle, kind of like Miley Cyrus. I don't think they believed me. Then when they borrowed my ipod and were looking through the music, they came to me and asked where the Justin Bieber music was, thinking they just couldn't find it, and I said I didn't have any. They asked why, I said I didn't like Justin Bieber, they looked at me like I had just said I enjoy drowning puppies in my spare time.

Since then, I have listened to a LOT of his music. Actually, I've listened to just 3 of his songs approximately 12 billion times. There is always music playing from the computers in the library, and it's quite an interesting mix of Miley Cyrus, Beyonce, 50 Cent, SouljaBoy, Kanye, Justin Bieber, Christian Worship Music, Enrique Iglesias, and the dreaded High School Musical soundtracks. When I first got here I was highly amused by the transitions between wildly different genres, and kept cracking up at the ridiculousness of trying to have a serious conversation with Jamie while songs that I associate with Paces are playing. But after a few days I stopped noticing. And after a few more days I started catching myself singing Miley songs while I was painting classrooms. A few more days and I started debating whether it would be wrong to delete my least favorite High School Musical songs from the library computers so I wouldn't have to hear them anymore. And then yesterday I was singing along, realized that I actually liked the song, realized it was a Justin Bieber song, realized I still liked the song, and just gave up. In my defense, when you've been subjected to "Kiss Me Through the Phone" on repeat several nights in a row, just about anything sounds good.

Also, this strange mash-up of teen music, r&b, rap, and american worship music isn't just unique to the kids here. Lots of times when I pay attention to the music that's playing on the street or in the houses around us, I hear pretty much the same thing (minus the Enrique, I think that's just us).

Playing Librarian

On Tuesday, Marsha and I began to organize all the books in the orphanage library. There are a lot of books, and whatever organization they were originally in has been rearranged and shifted out of recognition, so there really wasn't any kind of order at all, which drove me crazy. So I was more than happy to start by taking all the books off the shelves (and wiping down each one with a dust-rag while I was at it). We started by separating the French and English books into two sections, which took most of yesterday. Then today I got the English side sorted into basic categories, and arranged all the childrens books in a rough order from easiest to hardest, and tried to sort all the educational books by subject. The French side was a bit harder to organize, because neither Marsha nor I know French. This makes figuring out the content of the books a little difficult, and we didn't get much farther than "Well, this looks one has numbers on the front, we'll put it in the math pile. This one has pictures, it goes in the kids pile..." After school was done for the day one of our girls came in and helped us out by translating the titles of the teaching materials for us, and sorting the novels by reading level.

We came across several French books that had naked women on the cover. We decided those were probably not appropriate for a Christian school's library, but I can't help wondering if somebody was just really careless when choosing the books to send, or if French people just don't bat an eyelash over naked women and it didn't occur to someone that it would be considered inappropriate here.

Some other rather strange features of our collection are a sort of homeopathic cookbook, the 2003 report on infections diseases published by the American Pediatrics association, and my personal favorite, a book in French that I think roughly translates to "A Name to Live By" which tells you all about your personality based on your name. In addition to a lot of complicated graphs and charts that I didn't bother decipthering with the French/English dictionary, I discovered that my color is Blue, my vegetable is Carrot, my animal is the Squirrel, and my electrical resonance is 34,000 v/s. Who knew? Apparently I also share these characteristics with people named Edith and Marguerite.

Despite the oddballs, there are a lot of really good books here, and I found a lot of old friends that I am eager to reread. I've already finished The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle and The Wind in the Willows; up next are Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The kids here don't like reading very much, and can't figure out why I do. I think I wouldn't like reading much either if the only books I had to read were in my second or third language. I haven't found a single book written in Creole in our library, which is really sad, but I suppose there isn't exactly a market for Creole publishing. I've also been steaming through the books I brought with me - so far I've read The New Friars, Simple Spirituality, and I'm half done with The Good News about Injustice - all of them really good,  thought-provoking, and incredibly relevant to my experiences here. I'll probably write more of my thoughts about those here when I've had time to think about them a little bit.

First day of School

Today was the first day of school, and it was just about as chaotic as I expected. After breakfast I sat in the courtyard and watched as students trickled in; some with parents in tow, some being towed by parents, and some confidently on their own. With the preschool kids, it was pretty much like any first day of school. Some kids impatiently dismissed their anxious parent, others had to be pried out of their parents' arms, screaming and flailing. Mark and Marsha and I spent the first hour or so helping the two Pre-K teachers to calm down all the crying kids. (At one point, all but 2 of the 16  three and four year olds were wailing, those two just rolled their eyes, put their heads down on their desks and went to sleep.) The principal even came in with a bag of candy and each kid got a lollipop, which I thought was a great idea, but somehow they managed to cry around those too. Eventually they all wore themselves out though, and realized that mommy was not being mean and hiding on the other side of the classroom door.

I went up to check on the 3rd floor classrooms, and discovered that no classes were actually being held. Apparently the high school teachers are all part-time, and teach at several different schools. So they spend the first few days going to each school and trying to figure out a schedule. This would sort of explain why our school secretary told me that there would be lots more kids  in class next week, because lots of parents don' bother sending their kids for the first week of school.

Back on the first floor, the preK and Kindergarten kids were having recess, which for the preK kids involved sulking at the fact that mom or dad still hadn't come to rescue them, and for the Kindergarteners (who dealt with all that crying stuff last year and are so over it) this involved using us blans (white people) as a jungle gym. When they saw me, they all disassociated from the pile they were in - it turned out Mark was underneath the pile holding two of the sulking three-year olds - and flying over to pile on me. I told them I only speak a tiny bit of Creole, but that didn't stop them from peppering me with questions. One of the questions I managed to pick out, strangely enough, was "Do you eat goat? (Ou mange cabrit?)"  and I replied yes simply because I had understood the question. (Technically I'm not sure if I've ever eaten goat, the meat here tends to be mystery meat and we usually just don't ask). This prompted a hundred questions about what other things I eat..."Mange pul (chicken)? Mange bef (beef)?" and lots of other foods I didn't know the words for, so I just said yes to everything, and then said that I eat little children and chased them all around the courtyard some more. Considering my generally pathetic levels of Creole language skills, I considered this to be a highly successful conversation.

Schools in Haiti, and Toddlers as a substitute for the gym

(Written October 2nd)

We have had much cooler weather the past few days. As in, I have actually been able to wear pants without overheating. Once I even thought I should wear a long-sleeved shirt, but that lasted for 10 minute and then I was too hot. I'm not sure if this is "fall" weather, or simply a cold spell that will vanish in a few days.

The big news here is that school starts on Monday, This means that things will be calmer, because I will have a little more free time during the day while the kids are in school. It will also mean things are crazier because we will have 150-200 extra kids in our building every monday-friday. I have been learning lots of things about running a school in Haiti. Rule #1, abandon the idea that it will be run like an American school. Rule #2, try not to panic when, on the Thursday before school starts, the principal still doesn't know whether or not there will be a twelfth grade, which classes are assigned to which classrooms, whether arrangements have been made to have the generator on during the day so the classrooms have light, whether another pre-K teacher needs to be hired to handle the 36 three-year-olds who are registered in our youngest classes, and the list goes on.

Luckily, I am not personally responsible for anything to do with the school, so I just get to observe the chaos (well, it seems like chaos to me, I'm well aware that all the Haitians find it perfectly normal) and get comfortable with it. Given that just a week ago there was still doubt as to whether the school would even be open this year, I suppose we're in pretty good shape. And I am kind of ridiculously excited about all the 3, 4, and 5-year olds who will soon take over our courtyard. Part of the reason our school has SO many kids registered for kindergarten and pre-k is because we have those classes outside in the courtyard instead of inside the building. Most Haitians are still very afraid, understandably, of buildings collapsing. Parents don't want their small children (who can't run fast enough to escape a building) inside a classroom.

Friday and most of Saturday I went with the kids to Dr. Bernard's house up in the mountains above Port-au-Prince. It was really nice to be out of the city for a bit; to see trees, breathe clean air, and just relax. In addition to Dr. B's house, there is also the Bethel Guest House, which provides housing to short-term mission teams, as well as New Life Link, another orphanage for kids age 1-5ish. So as you may expect, every moment that I wasn't eating, sleeping, or swimming, I was holding at least two kids. Holding one is simply impossible, they know that you have two perfectly good arms, and get mad if you don't use both of them. And if you try to get out of it by standing up, they drag a chair next to you, and then push you until you sit down and two or three more can climb up onto your lap. So I spent the weekend quite literally covered in babies. It was great, except I felt like I needed more arms. And the arms I do have are really reall tired. Apparently I need to work out more, but I'll just have to substitute toddlers for weights. Marsha and I discussed sewing a sort of apron/vest with child-sized pockets for our next visit. So many wonderful kids, I wish I could describe them all! I think I spent the most time holding the two-month old twins just to give them some time outside of their crib. I know that the orphanage cribs are practical, they're made of rebar and are both indestructable and inescapable, but when I look at them all I see are cages and it breaks my heart to see all the babies just lying there, some quiet, some crying, all of them just staring listlessly. Again, I have never wished so desperately for more arms! But finally coaxing a smile out of a solemn big-eyed baby after 45 minutes of determined tickling and teasing and kissing and cooing...there just aren't words.

Lastly, I'm sorry I haven't been able to reply to all the emails you've sent me! Please know that even though I don't always have time (or internet) to respond to them, it is so so good to hear from you, and it does more than you know to encourage me.

Love, Cecelia

WE HAVE BABY CHICKENS!!!

(september 27th)

Yes, eight of them, and they are super-adorable.
Previously, the only three animals here were the cat in the pantry, and one hen and one rooster who live in the yard of the boys' house. The hen has ben nesting for quite a while, and Marsha and I had given up on anything hatching, and were talking about taking the eggs away so she could try again. And then today we found eight little fuzzballs with beaks tumbling after proud mama hen around the courtyard. Seven are black and one is brown, and they really are ridiculously cute. No one else here seems to be as excited though; the boys mostly seemed to think I was crazy for following them around and taking pictures. They may be right, but I don't care, I will never pass up an opportunity to appreciate baby animals. I'll put up pictures when I can.
 

Hair

What a week.
First, I should explain why am so slow in posting. We have been without power for most of every day since I got here. And with no power, there is no internet. And when there is internet, 50 people are trying to share it. So, that is that. I will probably have much more time to post when the kids start school again, in a week, so don't worry, you'll get to hear everything eventually.

You're probably wondering about the title of this post. Well, hair is a good way go through my first day here.

• In the morning, I was pleased to find that it isn't actually that hard to wash my hair by scooping water from the five-gallon bucket in our shower with a plastic bowl. Sometimes water comes out of the faucet, sometimes not, so we keep two big buckets filled for when it doesn't.  I was worried that my hair would be totally unmanageable here, and almost cut it really short, but I chickened out. And I'm glad I kept it longish, because...
• Haitian people, children especially, are fascinated by my hair. I was told that people here would "love my hair". I was not expecting to be stared at and constantly petted. The girls here at the orphanage have been brushing, braiding, and otherwise arranging my hair since about three hours after I got here. I end up with a lot of princess Leia buns, as well as some interesting braids. 
• We walked up the hill to the tent city that is just a few hundred yards from our building, to bring people clothes Mark and Marsha collected from their church. As we walked back, Mark stopped to talk to someone he knew, and the small posse of 3, 4, and 5-year olds following us paused for a moment, and then sent their bravest member forward to touch my shirt before scampering back. He looked very pleased with myself, and when I turned around and smiled he came up, grabbed my hand, and motioned the rest of his little band to come closer. I bent down to ask his name, and suddenly found myself sitting on the ground, covered with eight kids who were each marveling at a handful of my hair. I vigorously employed the two creole phrases I had learned by that point, "How are you?" and "What's your name?", and I pretty quickly caught on that the word for hair is "cheve". 
• Later that afternoon, I was up on the roof or the orphanage. I will post pictures when the internet is more reliable, but for now trust me that the mountains and the ocean are beautiful. It's incredibly hard to take in the sight of the whole city laid out over the valley and harbor, so I've been mostly looking down into the courtyards and alleys that are right below our walls. There are chickens everywhere, the occasional really cute goat, the dogs that all look alike, every once in a while a cat, doves, and one pig. Also, a lot of people. But there's one tiny yard in particular that is always bursting with kids. The first day they saw me watching them, they all turned to wave and shout 'bel cheve', pretty hair, at me. At some point I plan to go meet them and inform them that my name is actually Cecelia, but for now, bel cheve will work. Every time they see me on the roof they yell and wave, and one boy always holds up something for me to see - first a chicken, then a cat, then his baby brother. It always makes me think of the part in the Lion King where they hold up baby Simba.
• Lastly, I started to learn the girls names the first night, and was confused in the morning to find that not only had they changed their clothes (i was expecting that one), but their hair as well. The girls are constantly braiding and rebraiding their hair, it seems like they each have it a new way every three days or so. They haven't tried to put cornrows in my hair yet, but I think that's probably inevitable. Sometimes they braid each others' hair, but a lot of them do it themselves, which boggles my mind, as I can't even braid my own ponytail without getting really confused, much less braid zig-zag patterns into my head with no mirror. 

That's all for now. I have to get to bed so I'm ready for my 6am wake-up call, courtesy of the beautiful, blazing Haitian sun.

Love, Cecelia

Here safe and sound

After quite a bit of traveling, and not a lot of sleep (darn swatties, keeping me up all night), I am safely landed at the orphanage. All our connections went without a hitch, and now I am settling in and trying to learn a lot of names. This morning everyone is wearing different clothes and I am nearly back to square one. oh well, I'll get there. I promise I will write lots more about everything, but for now, I just wanted to let you all know I am here and happy.

Best surprise so far: I can see the ocean from my room, and it's beautiful. The view from the roof is even better, and the sunset is incredible.

Errands

I fly to Haiti on September 16th! And between now and then I have a thousand and one small errands, a visit to Delaware, and visit to Norfolk, and finally a trip to Philly where I will fly out from.  But I suspect the time will fly by and I'll be on the plane before I know it.