Creole worship and a rainy Sunday

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.

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.

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...

Between mountains and sea: first day of clinic work

The view of the ocean from the hill above Montrouis. The clinic is just downhill to the left.

The scraggy dogs sleep all day under limping mimosas, but at night howl and moan and rustle past my bedroom window until sunrise. My day began at 6 am. I woke up covered in sweat, sun and stagnant heat but I slept peacefully through most of the night, with the occasional interruption from barking dogs.

The scrawny dogs that live at the bottom of the Canaan
hillside are constantly battling over territory with the
Canaan pastor's guard dogs.

After a breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes smothered in Medika Mamba (Creole for "peanut butter medicine"), the enriched peanut butter used to treat malnutrition. It's not much of a Haitian breakfast, but the peanut butter is a staple here, where Canaan houses 60+ orphaned children. 

Today was my first experience at the community clinic. The new building still needs a tremendous amount of construction and electrical wiring, but it’s functioning well. Three nurses and a doctor staff the clinic during the week, as well as several receptionists and “floaters” who take vitals staff the clinic and help with patient consults. Remembering names has never been my strength, so I'm trying to focus on meaningful introductions. Luckily, the staff speak French and some speak a little English, so I was able to communicate and learn some Creole phrases. It's amazing how harsh syllables are sometimes the only separation between Creole and swooning French.

View of the mountains surrounding Canaan, a short walk
uphill from my house.

Elsie, the clinic's head nurse, taught me how to take the patient's vitals before their consultations -- an extension of the clinic used to triage patients. For most of the morning, I weighed infants, helped elderly Haitians onto the scale to take their weight in kilograms, and took temperatures and blood pressure. When the trickle of patients halted, I filed in reception. It was daunting at first, with more than 17,000 patient files from the past three years are crammed into two filing cabinets, but I finished in time for lunch. 

It was difficult to communicate with patients with French alone, as the majority of Montrouis speaks only Creole. I need to improve my bedside manner -- a Bonjou is not enough to help assess patient needs. I did a lot of pointing, my own timid version of Creole I had overheard from the staff (and filled the rest in with French when I was unable to convey myself) to direct patients to the scale and to unbutton their sleeves for the blood pressure cuff. Haitians are friendly and to the point, especially when they come to the clinic. The smiles in Montrouis are infectious. 

I love it here.

There were not as many patients as there normally are, 60 versus the normal 80, so the clinic closed early. I went on a hour long hike with Amy and Robyn, volunteers from North Carolina who are leading the Canaan kids in a summer English reading program. Just up the hill from Canaan is a gorgeous view of the ocean. Villages sprawl from mountainside to the beach, elegant and haphazard. 

Villages scatter the mountains surrounding Canaan.

We followed a rock-paved road for a mile, and I saw a few mopeds hurl by crammed with 3 or 4 Haitian men and women and their groceries, clutching one another as they kicked up dust. A man on a donkey greeted us with a "Bonswa! Komon ou ye?" as goats wandered in the brush. I felt out of place with my camera strapped across my shoulder, looking like a blanc with my blond ponytail and grape-colored Keens. 

At dinner, I was able to speak French with the Haitian doctor, Jean Robert, and share a delicious meal of noodles with pieces of pepper, onion and raisins. Earlier at the clinic, I met Mis ("nurse") Marice, an LPN from Haiti who speaks French as her langue maternelle. It has helped build my confidence in the language, and has made it much easier to translate the patients' Creole. I could ask her to translate the Creole into French when English was not sufficient. Although I stumbled through my rusty French vocabulary, it felt fantastic to smile and laugh and talk about my life. It's a grounding experience to make a friend and delight in a language not my own. 

This is Canaan's cafeteria, where we eat all our meals.
Usually, we have to step over dogs in the process!

I am typing with some urgency because the generator is going to be shut off very early. The large generator that usually feeds Canaan electricity in the evening has broken down, so a tiny generator is burning the bulbs for the entire camp. There hasn’t been water in our house tonight, so I’ll make-do with the dredges of the laundry water and my spare bandana.

I'm off to bathe before the power goes, and the dogs claim the night. Bonwi.