Time to go

It's my last week in Haiti, so of course, it's been jam-packed with craziness. Katelyn, my replacement, arrived on Monday. She’s amazing and we’ve been having a lot of fun together as I show her the ropes around here. The girls will be in very good hands when I leave, and that makes it a little bit easier for me to go. We’ve been tiring her out with lots of adventures, including the fun of tracking down her missing suitcase in the Port-au-Prince airport. We’ve taken several short hikes up the mountain with some of the kids. On the first one I managed to lose Nate. Turns out he just stopped to explore a cave and then broke his sandal so he took a while to catch up. I threatened to implement a buddy system. Then on the way back down the people at the front of the group stopped at a friend’s house to wait for everyone else to catch up. All the kids arrived and we were just waiting for Nate and Katelyn. 10 minutes later I was really starting to worry, and sent one of the boys up the hill to look for them. Then Nate appeared, running up the hill from the direction of the orphanage. I had several questions, including “How did you get down past us without me noticing?” “What have you done with Katelyn????” and “Where are your shoes?”. Turns out he’d given away the sandals Renick lent him to a little old lady walking barefoot down the gravel road, and then a motorcycle driver offered them a ride down the hill, but Nate forgot the words for ‘right’ and ‘left’ so they took a very roundabout way back to the orphanage and didn’t pass us. Eventually we all made it back, I got Nate and Renick new sandals out of the closet, and we all got mangoes. So it all turned out okay.

Yesterday we went to explore a park Nate and I discovered a while ago and have been wanting to go back to. We figured we would probably have to climb through a broken part of the fence or something, but instead it was really easy. We just gave our IDs to the guards, and they gave us park passes. A very nice manager told us that he couldn’t let us in the upper part of the park because there was heavy construction going on and it was dangerous, but we were welcome to explore the lower part. Which is what we wanted to do anyways. So we had lots of fun climbing in and around half-finished buildings and fountains and swimming pools, chasing after huge lizards, hunting for mangoes (it's mango season, and they are everywhere and delicious and huge) and of course, taking silly pictures. Although that was mostly me.

It kind of felt like we were on an Indiana Jones set.

Angel Cecelia? Or something like that. This building was designed like a greek temple on the outside, and had goats sleeping on the roof, so we referred to it all day as 'The Goat Temple'.

Nate climbed down a storm drain to rescue a chick

Banana leaves make geat hiding places, except for the feet. (No giant crickets this time Mom!)

This is (or would be if it had water) an enormous swimming pool, with a swim-up bar, and a water slide.

In other adventures, we’re trying to organize a building project with a tiny local church up the hill. There’s a team of college students coming next week from Boston, and they’ve raised money to help this church repair their building. So we’ve been meeting with the pastors to hammer out a plan and budget. It has been an adventure in Haitian planning, and has stretched our patience at times, but has also been a lot of fun. We originally sat down with one pastor and asked him to list and prioritize the needs of the church. Then we got an idea of how much money we had, and how many people were coming to help, and went back to the same pastor to ask him to provide a budget and plan for building a new metal roof, new chalkboards and benches, and installing new lights and fans. On Monday the three pastors arrived beaming with plans for a completely new two-story building. Oh Haiti. So we had a long meeting explaining that we have nowhere near that amount of money to spend, talked over more ideas for the project and explained that we want to hire two Haitian workers to direct the team. Yesterday evening they came back again with a realistic budget, but they hadn’t included the two Haitian workers, so we had to go through all that again. Luckily one of our older boys sat down with us to help translate. Throughout this last meeting it became more and more apparent the youngest associate pastor was hitting on me. I was a little slow to pick up on this, as usual. I tried to distract him by introducing Katelyn, and then the head pastor asked what denomination she was, so we were trying to explain Calvary Chapel, which prompted Mano and the two older pastors to get into an exuberant theological debate. Katelyn was worried she’d offended someone, but I assured her that this was normal, and they were thoroughly enjoying themselves. (A few months ago I attended a baptism service at their church, during which the Pastor Emmanuel and several people in the congregation had a 30-minute debate on the finer theological points of baptism in the middle of the sermon). The young pastor took this opportunity to ask for my email and phone number, and left me with a letter that could be interpreted as a marriage proposal. The theological debate was about to wrap up and Nate opened his mouth to launch into goodbyes, when Mano got a twinkle in his eye and interjected, “So Cecelia over here is Catholic…”, and that started a lecture on how all Christians are members of one church, Mano jumped up and ducked out of the room to avoid Nate smacking him and to burst out laughing, and I just laughed and thanked the elder pastors for being so supportive of my Catholocism, tried unsuccessfully to convince the younger pastor that he did not need a picture of me on his cell phone, and started the round of goodbyes that would eventually get the pastors out the door. All just a typical business meeting in Haiti, sorta. Maybe minus the almost marriage proposal.

Even though I know I’ll be home in two days (!!!) I can’t quite wrap my head around it. I am quite happy and settled here, and although I am SO excited to see everyone and have a wonderful summer planned, I do not want to leave here. At all. I think this just about every night as I sit on the roof, enjoying the breeze and watching the sun set into the Caribbean while eating a giant fresh mango. I am also worried that it’s going to be very difficult for me to jump back into busy American life. As I put it to a friend this week, “I am very very happy living life at Haitian speed. Which is 10 times slower than psychotic hamster on drugs American speed”. Amusing, but also true. Life just goes a little slower here, people value time much differently, and I like it this way. It’s one of the many things I’ll be trying to hold on to as I come back to the states.