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| The female staff house, where we spent most of today out of the rain. |
It’s Sunday already, and my first time at a Creole Christian
worship service. The Canaan church is a squat concrete building painted powder
blue. The tin roof, coupled with short windows covered in mosquito wire, heats
up the building like a convection oven. With no power during the day, the metal
fans were lifeless and taunting on their wall mounts. I fanned myself with
cardstock as we sang for an hour, repeating lines of gospel translated into
Creole to different drum rhythms and pats of tambourines, and listened to
Pastor Joelle’s sermon for another hour—the longest I’ve ever been in a church
service. Breakfast had upset my stomach, so it felt even longer.
I had difficulty enjoying the new experience. The service
was in Creole, and I caught snatches of the sermon when the Creole resembled
French. One of the older Canaan girls was translating on and off, but I was too
far away to catch what she was saying over Pastor Joelle’s bellowing voice as
he paced back and forth behind the pulpit, his bible held high. This, like the
singing, was very repetitive and met with generous rounds of “Meci, saviour!” and “Hallelujah, amen!” with upturned palms.
Half way through the service, a baby from the front pew
started pulling on my skirt, so I pulled her on my lap and bounced her until
she squirmed free and crawled to another woman in the row behind me. It melted
my heart.
Again today, the clinic is closed. The three other staff
women and I planned to go to St. Marc after church, but the tap taps (trucks you “tap” on the back
of to catch a ride somewhere, like a public bus or open-air taxi) don’t run late Sunday afternoon and
Pastor Joelle forbade us from leaving, in case we might be stranded. Since,
I’ve had a lazy day that’s only made me a little homesick.
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| The sky was dreary and looked on the brink of a storm all day. |
I tried interacting with some of the kids, but my duties as
a clinic worker separate me from their chores and summer reading school
schedules. Jessica, 13, took my arm and chatted with me in French and, without
luck, tried to teach me “Leave me alone!” in Creole. I couldn’t quite nail down
the syllables to repeat them correctly to her. Rosalie, 7, taught me “pays boire” and “za” (spelling?), to describe in Creole a “skinny tree” rooted
outside the cafeteria door.
I relieved one of the young girls of a baby she was
carrying, a 16-month-old with saucer-sized, exploratory brown eyes, as she
wiped down the cafeteria tables. The baby just stared at me, putting tiny,
endearing fingerprints on my eyeglass lenses. Anyways, they’re constantly smudged and slipping down my
nose as I perspire.
I’ve read for hours today and have a headache. There’s no
happy medium for my eyes—reading in either squinting sun or mosquito/ dog-inhabited
shade. Our house is dark, but we burn candles to keep out mosquitoes and gnats.
Wearing glasses here has also it difficult in the sun because I can’t wear
sunglasses AND see. If I were to do this again, I would definitely have brought
a couple pairs of contact lenses and risked getting eye infections. Wearing
glasses (and toting my flashy Canon camera) makes me stick out even more and
feel pangs of guilt for owning these luxuries.
Our toilet is broken. We spend the afternoon waiting for
Pastor Joelle to come help us with a repair, but turns out we’ll have to
manually flush with a bucket of water and the occasional cup of bleach to
prevent gagging episodes. That’s another thing taking adjustment – scarce water
for bathing and flushing and other hygiene rituals that often seem so mindless
back in the states, but are regarded as wasteful and luxurious here.
We missed lunch since we had originally planned to eat in
St. Marc. To tide us over until dinner, I went with the women to make a
sandwich in the kitchen, where thousands of flies were diving leisurely around
the entrance. I had never been in the kitchen other than to put my dishes away,
but we were met with the fierce stink of rotting food. Since the generator has
been broken, the kitchen’s fridge and freezers have not had power. I almost
went into an episode of dry heaving when I opened the fridge door to spaghetti
sauce rimmed with a thick sponge of mold and the reek of decay. We tried the
cupboards, and a very tubby rat ran screeching up the wall into a hole in the
ceiling. Appalled, but not yet
totally having lost my appetite, we found some instant rice to snack on. The
moment we poured the package into the pan, out dropped about a hundred tiny
black squirming insects.
That’s when my appetite completely left me.
Needless to say, the meals are usually simple but flavorful.
Other than some expected digestion issues, I have enjoyed everything that’s
been prepared—usually varieties of pasta and rice with beans for protein. We
ended up being called down for an early dinner around 4 pm, and my stomach is already
grumbling as the sun goes down. Being hungry often is something I hope I’ll
adjust to soon. It’s not pleasant, but here it’s a necessity. Food is expensive
and not available to everyone.
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| Black expresso, Haitian style (minus the scoops of raw sugar I've seen the older men and women drink!) |
The most exciting thing that has happened today is the thunder
and rain, plus my cup of morning black coffee. Rain means the week will be cooler, and the past few days we’ve had
dark clouds… without the storm. But now, it’s a pleasant downpour. I’m glad I
took my laundry off the line in the garden before it was soaked. It’s calming
to hear the steady pings of rain on the tin roof of our house, and the earthy
green smells it flushes into my bunk.
Tomorrow my duties at the clinic resume. I just want today to end...
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