Hands Across the Sea, Deschappelles, Haiti

Day 2 and We're All Done In

2012-01-26T21:42:00.000-05:00

Day 2 and we are all done in......

Today was warmer than yesterday and Shondi and I are both sun burned, Dickie is not feeling well and Jim is a little off his oats today.

We went to devotions on the compound today and it was a delight as always. Karen was not there to translate for most of it so they didn't know what we said and we didn't know what they said. We worshipped together though. Computer work and carpentry kept the men busy. Cleaning and reorganizing started our work day.

Dickie & Jim - carpentry work

Soon, however, we were called to the school to assist Mariah in the field with her class and then Shondi & I supervised the lunch hour...what a riot. I came home beat, that was a BIG job.

Mariah's class

Back to the classroom

This afternoon we brought out the roller blades and you should have seen the kids.....Mariah donned a pair of skates and demonstrated.....they all thought they would put the skates on and do what she did. They required a lot of help. It was so much fun but it was hot and hard work at the same time. I even had to help hold Karen up as she tried out wheelies.

Dieunel on rollerblades

Ti Luc rollerblading

Ismyis

Moise & Vladimy

Sandra holding Karen up

We went to Luckner's radio studio for a visit and cold drinks, then home for supper. We had diri avek pwa kongo (rice & beans).

Off to Luckner's

Mariah is doing her class preparation work for tomorrow, Karen & Jim just visited the children's home and said goodnight and dosed up the sick ones. Dickie is resting and Shondi showering.
Tomorrow the goats come so it should be an interesting day.

We Made It

2012-01-25T21:31:00.000-05:00

Starting from both coasts of Canada and the nation's capital, we all arrived safe and sound in Deschapelles last night after a long and interesting journey. Our flight was unable to land in Haiti due to a disabled aircraft on the runway, so we circled around the Gulf of Gonave several times while they worked to remove it. The day was clear and sunny, so the view was quite nice for those of us (well, me) in a window seat!

Happy to be out of the airport

Happy Travellers

Friends of Karen's, Dave and Tammy, were with her to help us transport all of the luggage back to HATS. Karen and Sandra sat in the back of the truck catching up and Luckner let Dickie drive once we were out of Port-au-Prince. Both Jim and Dickie remarked on the changes they noticed since their last visit.

After saying a big hello to all the kids, a great meal of welcome-to-Haiti-soup (soup joumou) and some initial unpacking, we all headed upstairs to our mosquito tents for the night. Nobody slept very well, however, due to the nighttime cacophony courtesy of goats, guinea fowl, dogs, roosters, horses, drums, etc.

Sleeping quarters

This morning, we went to devotions over at the school. We got to see Mariah teaching her adorable, though sometimes naughty students, ages 3 and 4. Dickie worked on fixing various plumbing issues, such as a clogged drain in the kitchen and toilets that didn't have enough water flowing to them. Jim worked on computer maintenance and supervised a group of guys who were here to fix the internet connectivity issues on the compound. This blog is made possible because of their good work. Halellujah! Sandra and I sorted donations, cuddled baby Sandra, brought some supplies over to the school, etc. Karen was super busy as usual!

Sandra serving food to Mariah's class

Mariah with her students

Working on internet

Later in the afternoon, we headed over to Luckner's to see the Radio Creole station. It is quite impressive. Karen was teaching an English class there and she used us as teaching aids for a lesson on families. We learned why Shondi is not married! The class got out early as they were going to get to watch an important football (soccer) match on the television that was being simultaneously translated on the radio in creole.

Trip to Radio Creole

Father and son at Radio Creole

After returning to the compound, all the adults and the kids went for a walk along the canal. There is always lots to see and do and fun was had by all!

Family walk on the canal

Quick Note

2012-01-21T12:25:00.001-05:00

Karen asked for a quick note to be posted as she is experiencing internet access problems so is unable to blog at the moment. She asked that the following be passed along. Jim

I would like people to know we are all okay here. Sandra is home from hospital and doing well. Baby Jonathan is growing like a weed. Other kids are doing better too now.

Everybody happy this week to have Mariah back. Especially Ti Luc and her cute little students.

Seth's throat surgery is scheduled for January 30th.

My internet is still almost non existant - but hopefully better things ahead some time next week - with a new server and Jim on site.

Thanks so much.
Karen

Update Jan 12

2012-01-12T16:57:00.000-05:00

I am taking a chance that if I write a blog it can be posted. My internet service is worse now than I mentioned on the last blog. I, however, have not yet thrown the modem or router in the garbage can or the computer out the window. But am very tempted. Perhaps it just might help! I can very seldom get online. I can on occasion (certainly not often) get something to go out, but can hardly get emails to download at all and when they do I cannot read them. I presently have 10 emails showing in my Inbox but none of them will open. Oh the joy of trying to operate with technology like this in Haiti. I've been trying for six hours now to open HATS blogspot, website or facebook. I thought I might be able to send an email through facebook, but cannot do anything.

Today is January 12th - the second anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti. There is, no doubt, a lot of memories resurfacing today and a lot of pain in the hearts of many people here. Haiti has no schools open and no workplaces operating today. Many Christian groups are holding services to give people a place to go and a chance to share. I find my emotions are on a rollercoaster today so how much more, are others going through today. As Sandra said on her comment on the last blog, 'PLEASE NO MORE EARTHQUAKES.'

Tim in Halifax is diligently working to try and find something better for me. Jim, who is also a knowledgeable computer man, is in constant touch with Tim and the plan is that when Jim arrives on 24th of this month, he can help get me up and running again. Oh how I hope this really does happen!!!

Precious baby Sandra is still in the hospital and is being treated for pneumonia. I've been running back and forth to the hospital a lot. Each morning I make a change in the person who stays at the hospital to take care of Sandra. Antoinette, Naomie, and Magalie have been taking turns. I take one up in the morning and bring the other one down, and do likewise the next morning. With an emergency like this they do not get a night off, or even a full day. On their scheduled days off they get 3-4 hours and then must return on site. This too shall change!

Sandra in hospital

My other children are ill a lot too. Presently I have my three little musketeers, Anne, Jofky, Karena ill as well as Ismyis, Djemima, and Mirlande ill. Six here and one at hospital. When I get these six doing better five or six more will likely be ill again. Fun and games. During December and January months in Haiti there are a lot of people ill with colds, fevers, etc. I have a big family and the germs just get passed back and forth. It is a good thing I am doing well. Tired, but well. I thank God for that. I keep running from house to house with my load of meds, with hugs and kisses, and at night with my flashlight. Florence Nightingale I am not, but I am doing my best to take care of these precious children.

Karena - ill with fever

Sick kids - Ismyis, Jofky, Anne and Jonathan

I'm putting it in my mouth Mama

Yesterday we managed to get the children out for a short walk anyway, and we stopped for drinks and cookies and a birthday gift for Josie. Josie was thrilled to receive her own "Pink Princess Dress, Pink Princess Cape, and Pink Princess Telephone. She is indeed 'Pretty in Pink' and loves being a princess. Thank you Alexa for this.

Birthday party for Josie and walk combined

Birthday Girl - Princess Josie

Jessie and Seth are still waiting for word as to Seth's surgery date. Please pray for them. Mariah will be returning Saturday morning which will be good for the school as well as for me. This past week we put Mariah's class together with Rose-Lore's as we await her to take over her own class again on Monday.

REMEMBER: I T I S A L L A B O U T T H E C H I L D R E N

Love and blessings to all of you.
Karen and kids

Baby Sandra is in the hospital.

2012-01-10T00:38:00.000-05:00

I mentioned yesterday all my children have been, or are, sick. Sandra, too, had been ill with a cold, cough and fever. She, however, had come through it and was okay. Yesterday she went downhill again and was still not well this morning. Too, we had discovered another problem. Her vaginal opening had closed, almost looked like it was stuck together, and red. Whenever we checked her she would cry in pain and would cry when she would wet her diaper. This morning I sent Antoinette to the dispensary with her. The hospital will no longer let me take my children there directly. The nurse at the dispensary sent her to the hospital so then Antoinette and I took her there. She was burning up by then as the meds I had given her had worn off. What a zoo the hospital is - absolutely a 20 ring circus. I strongly dislike having to go there. I cannot swim. I, however, would prefer someone kick me into the contaminated canal water in front of the mission rather than go to the hospital. But I do so out of love for my children. I arrived there at 11:00 a.m. and six hours later I was still holding my extremely hot baby who had not yet been given any meds. She had seen a doctor after four hours of us being sent to eleven different places in the hospital. The doctor said she needed to be admitted. Then another two hours passed while trying to pay to have an xray and blood work done. Finally after one more hour had passed (making it seven) and while they were looking for a bed and place to put her I asked them to give her something for the fever. It did not go over well with the nurse but they did do so. Antoinette is staying with Sandra tonight and Naomie came back from her supposed day off to take care of the children. Fun and games. Tonight I was Doctor Mama again as I was going around with my little bag of meds for various ailments, checking on and administering what was necessary to several of the other sick children.

Sandra moving without her knees touching cement

Sandra and Karena calling Dana on telephones she brought down

Today was our first day of school after the Christmas break. We did not have a lot of students. Some schools did not open today and do not plan to do so this week. Reason: the word was out that President Martelly had said on the radio that people did not have to return to school until after January 12th (the second anniversary of the deadly earthquake.) Last Thursday - early morning 4:25 a.m. - I was preparing to leave for PAP with our visitors. While standing in my bathroom I started to feel like I was standing in a boat. The mirror on the wall started to move and the room door starting moving as if someone was knocking lightly on it. My thought was "No, it absolutely cannot be happening." It stopped and I became relaxed again. It was according to the radio news a 5.2 earthquake. The weather is not normal for this time of the year, all overcast and feeling heavy, and the people are nervous - thinking perhaps something bad is going to happen again. We, however, plan to keep our school open this week as normal.

Thanks for praying for Sandra, my other children, Seth and Jessie, and for Haiti. Too, for me to be able to keep going and keep it all together. Thanks for the prayer support and for every other kind of support that comes this way. Needed and greatly appreciated.

IT IS ALL ABOUT THE CHILDREN

Love and Blessings. Karen and gang

Last week we were blessed...

2012-01-08T16:52:00.001-05:00

...by having Keith and Joan Wight from Montreal join us for a couple days. We packed a lot into that short time. There was just the two of them but they arrived with a lot of luggage - 8 or 10 large hockey style bags packed with things for our school, my children here, and other children in the area. Our thanks for all these things and for it arriving free of charge goes to Air Canada. Air Canada has a charity for children called "Kid's Horizons". Keith, an Air Canada pilot, helped to get these things donated to Kid's Horizons. Air Canada saw that it was all transported to Haiti, to HATS, to bless children in this area. Thank you Air Canada. Thank you Keith. Thank you Keith and Joan for coming, bringing it all and spending a short but valuable time with us.

Keith & Karen with Air Canada donations

Joan, Karen & kids happy with their backpacks

Joan with Sandra & Jonathan in backpacks from Air Canada

Seth and Jessie were scheduled to return this Thursday, Jan. 12th, and Mariah to return Saturday, Jan. 14th. Mariah will return as scheduled. We will manage this first week of school without her - albeit I might hide out so I don't have to do her class for a week. Mariah has cute kids but I already have more than my share of work ahead of me this week. Hopefully Rose Lore will put her and Mariah's classes together for one week.

You many remember we wrote about Seth being ill awhile back. He had a terrible problem with his throat which in turn caused him to be a very sick man. He pulled through enough to function for awhile and to be able to travel back to their home in the US with the help of a lot of antibiotics. At one point I thought they might have to change their tickets for returning home in December and get Seth back home earlier to see a doctor. They managed to wait and leave as scheduled. The day after they arrived home he did see a doctor. To make a long story short their return date has been delayed as Seth needs medical help before coming back. For starters they will be removing his tonsils, then after the healing time, they will be checking to see if that takes care of all his suffering. We were all looking forward to their return this week. Now we are praying for Seth and Jessie, for all to go well with the surgery and that when they return Seth will be in good health. Being ill is never fun, but being ill in Haiti is not something anyone should have to experience. We will be waiting their return in God's timing when all is well with Seth.

I have been experiencing a lot of computer and internet problems for quite some time which has escalated in the past couple of months. It has caused a tremendous amount of frustration and wasted time - as noted by Liette, Yvette, Dana, Mariah, Jessie & Seth or anyone else who has come lately. When a person's plate is already overloaded, and that person has to sit and fight with a computer and internet service daily, and in the bargain lose 1 1/2 to 2 hours a day, the overloaded plate might just fall to the cement floor and crash . (Dropped plates break easily when they hit cement floors.) I tell you this so if you do not hear from me it may be caused by:
1. The modem and/or router having been yanked off the wall and thrown in the garbage.
2. The computer having been thrown out the office window.

Radio Creole, under Luckner's direction, and with help from his support team continues to get God's word out to the public. The messages and the Christian music it plays continues to bless and help change the lives of people in the area. On New Year's Eve Luckner and team were on the air all night and said they would be starting 2012 out by spending a lot of time on the air January 1st, both day and night, and letting people be involved by telephone. Well, the afternoon of the 1st trouble started. It was discovered someone had tampered with (sabotage according to the repair man) Luckner's big generator. Luckner was home, heard a noise and ran quickly to discover a lot of oil and gas had leaked unto the floor and the generator caught on fire. He was able to put it out before it reached the motor. He decided to use his little generator by putting it on the roof and using long extension cords to run things in the radio station, when batteries for inverter ran out of charge. He needed to look for gas for that little one, but discovered his truck would not start either. It was broken down with an unusual problem, that caused suspicion as well. He then discovered his inverter, in the station, had a problem and would not work anyway. His microphones/headsets in both studios made a screeching noise only and could not be used either. Needless to say Radio Creole could not start the year off for the Lord as planned but they were not crippled for long. The generator has been repaired (albeit not working as well as before), truck has been repaired, inverter repaired and microphones/headsets have been replaced by a trip to PAP. The determination of Luckner and his support crew to reach this area with the Good News and to help those in need has not waned but increased instead.

Several people have asked for information on workteams to HATS and have expressed an interest in coming down. There is seldom a month that does not see a group come to help. If you are interested in the possibility of joining a team in the future please contact Gerry Rhyno at gkrhyno@ns.aliantzinc.ca. If interested in coming early July you can contact Gerry in NS or Beate in Toronto (team leader for that group) at beatefufft@yahoo.ca.

My children have been fighting sickness for a couple of months now - especially from fevers and headcolds. I always have 3 or 4 sick at a time. As fast as I get some better 3 or 4 others are sick. At this time Jofky is still ill, two others have ongoing head colds and Sandra and Ismyis have fevers. Oh joy! Never a dull moment.

Tomorrow school reopens. Do I feel ready? No! Do I feel like I had a break? No! Did my desire to have a day, or at least a 1/2 a day, for myself happen? No! But off we go to school tomorrow for 7:30 a.m. anyway.

I am, in the midst of all the sickness and busyness, looking forward to the arrival of four precious members of my family two weeks time. I may not get a rest, but I will have fun and do lots of laughing. That is the best medicine ever. Will Sandra be able to fill Dana's shoes with goat herding, and feeding I wonder? Perhaps I should have Sandra try milking a goat too. The four coming will do the blogging while here so hopefully you will not have to wait so long to find a blog has been posted.

Yesterday I made three employees, Antoinette, Naomie, and Marguerite, and my children very happy when I put a new six burner stove in the kitchen of the children's home. It was overdue for some time. Such joy on the faces of the workers. Gas hooked up and all was well. A few hours later I was presented with a piece of cake that they had made to celebrate. The oven in the old stove had not worked since they had it. Today, Sunday, thanks to the new stove the children ate their meal on time instead of 2 -3 hours late. We are all thanking God for the provision of this stove. At the same time we say thank you to those who continue to support us so needs like this can be met.

Antoinette, Naomie & Marguerite very happy with new stove

For awhile now I have been sitting on the roof of my house with the older children after dark. It has become a special time for Mama and children. We have some good discussions while there, and I am kept on my toes by a lot of good questions they ask. Last night I decided to try and get a photo of the five children who were there with me - JJ, Moise, Mirlande, Djemima and Leica.

Nighttime on the roof with Mama

Anne, my cutie pitutie 1 1/2 year old decided yesterday to help herself to a box of 'Reliv Kid's Now' chocolate powder mix. She was very happily eating the powder by herself when we found her.

Anne escaped the house with a box of Reliv Chocolate powder

Anne happily enjoying her chocolate

Anne, however, was not so happy when I decided she should leave the rest so it could be mixed with water to share with the other children.

Okay, not so happy. Don't want to share it.

The children are all growing and learning and all very precious indeed. I am tired. I am, too, a happy and blessed mother of 18.

I T I S A L L A B O U T T H E C H I L D R E N

Love and blessings,
Karen and kids

Hi From Haiti

2012-01-04T22:09:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,

Well here I am in Haiti and so far it has been an amazing experience. We arrived on Tuesday to glorious heat...it is minus something in Montreal, not something I even want to think about tonight.

We started at 7:30 this morning and have been on a world wind tour ever since. Lots of fun seeing all that Karen has done here for the kids.

A beautiful home for the boys and girls, separate buildings that are painted such a fun shade of purple. The kids were busy sorting their clothes today, even the little ones. I think that Karena was the youngest at 3. We took a walk along the canal that is just across the road. I use the word road loosely as it is more like a cow path and the kids were singing as we went along.

We saw the school next door. No kids of course as the Christmas break doesn't end till Monday. Being a teacher myself, I was really interested in seeing the classrooms. New buildings and classrooms clean for next term. I so wish that I could send down half of what is in the classrooms at my school!

We visited the place that Karen first lived in and actually started her orphanage in and heard so many stories about her adventures. I will remember the cockroach one for a while.

We brought 10 bags with us full of donations from Air Canada employees. School supplies for the school next door and blankets that the kids here at the orphanage are using tonight. The temperature drops this time of year and they get cold at night. Karen was saying that they like to sleep on the floor as well, so the blankets will be well used.

It is amazing to see how God has provided, protected and looked after Karen and the kids here. What she has accomplished here is mind boggling! God is so good!

I will be sad to leave tomorrow. I've picked out just a few pictures of the precious children that are here. Enjoy!

Joan, J.J. and the babies, Jonathan and Sandra

Keith and the babies in Air Canada bags

The kids with Air Canada bags

Joan and Keith Wight
Montreal,Quebec

Another Dana Blog!

2012-01-04T12:12:00.000-05:00

I’ve had the intention to write another blog since the day I left Haiti, over a week ago. I thought it was hard to write a blog in Haiti, it’s even harder at home, especially after 2 weeks away from my office! Tomorrow I leave for a weeks business trip so I figured I’d better get this done now!

How many HATS people can you get in one pickup? 24! On Christmas day we planned to go Mummering at Luckners. The Newfies will know what that is… So we decided to stop over for a quick afternoon visit and trial run to see how we’d all fit that evening. We had 11 in the bed of the truck, including all the big kids, 8 littles in the back set and 5 in the two front seats. I had two cuties on my lap and mom had Jonathon in the sling. The kids had grins from ear to ear to be going for that 10 minute round trip ride!

11 kids here

8 kids in here

Cab of Truck

Mom with Jonanthon

Okay, so Mummering… Mummering is a Newfie tradition in which you get costumed up with your faces hidden and you don’t talk (or talk in disguised voice) and go visiting. The people you’re visiting try to guess who you are. This would have been so fun at Luckners since there are so many kids the same size! We would have had to get going by 4pm for safety, that time came and went! We were so disappointed so around 7pm Mom organized us to get sheeted up and head down to the kids home. Martha and Germaine looked at us like we were loons, shrieked with laughter and kept asking ‘why’. Ronel was out playing basketball so missed out on our impromptu costuming!

Impromptu Costuming

As we walked outside there were a few kids still outside, they start squeeling, shouting and running into the homes to get everyone else. It’s Pandemonium! We can barely see we’re running around chasing kids, kids are everywhere, running up to us, trying to see who we are, shrieking and running away freaking out.

Chasing the kids

Leica came up to me about 8 times, asking Dana? Dana? I’d shake my head no. She’d come back a few minutes later, peek into my eye holes and ask again Dana? Dana? It was so funny that she wasn’t even sure it was me! Then the kids got into the act, running into their houses and grabbing towels, grabbing their bed sheets, stripping the sheets off of Jared and running around yelling and carrying on. It was SO MUCH FUN, I can’t remember the last time I saw kids so over the moon excited!! I can’t wait until Liette and family join us in Haiti Christmas 2013 and our giant group goes Mummering!

HAPPY NEW YEAR.

2011-12-31T23:43:00.002-05:00

I've heard many times at this time of the year "Out with the old - In with the new." I think I understand what was meant by that, but I do not want to put out the old. I want to embrace everything that happened in 2011, remember it, savour it and thank God for every bit of it. I want to thank Him for the difficult parts and the joyful parts. I want to thank God for walking with me in laughter and in tears, thank Him for giving me health and strength to do what I did, thank Him for friends and family who encouraged me and gave loving counsel (especially for me to slow down.)

I thank God that I am still here, still healthy, and ready to start the new year with Him. I want to be all that He wants me to be, and to do all that He wants me to do.

I thank God for the eighteen children I have in my care - each and every one special and different.

I thank Him for everyone of the HATS supporters. I thank him for your consistent love and care for myself and the children - those living here with me and those throughout the area who attend our school. I thank Him for every dollar that was donated to HATS so the work in this area could continue. I thank Him for those who came down to help, (buying your tickets and covering your expenses while here). I thank Him for your support and encouragement while here, and after you've left. I thank Him for your faithful prayer support. I thank Him for your encouraging emails and comments on the blog.

I thank Him for all the members of the Canadian Board of Directors who work diligently to help HATS grow and to be an outstanding part of this community, helping meet the needs of the people in the Artibonite Valley.

I thank God for Luckner, my HATS assistant, my jack-of-all-trades, and also director of our school. I thank Him also for our HATS employees.

I thank Him for all my family members. Without your support and understanding I would be unable to do all that I do.

I THANK GOD FOR ALL THIS

I've thanked God for all of you and now I thank you. I thank you for all the support mentioned above. Thank you for being a faithful part of the HATS team during 2011.
2 Timothy 4:7 "We have fought the good fight, we have finished the race."

I thank God today too for the all new year 2012, for all that is ahead for us on the HATS team and those we are trying to help.
Hebrews 12:1 "Let us throw off everything that hinders and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us."

Together we will continue to make a difference in the lives of children in this area of Haiti.

HATS motto " Orphans today, leaders tomorrow". IT IS ALL ABOUT THE CHILDREN

God bless you all in this new year.
Karen and gang

Meal preparation at Karen's

Aimee, Jon and Cherie doing ceilings

Painting by workteam and cement work by constr workers

Jessie helping Ti Luc to walk staying within the lines

Walk time

Liz (Nana Toestoes) with Sandra

Bare buff guys at birthday party

First day of school for this year for my kids

Yvette hugging Dieunel, Ismyis and Judel

Liette, Yvette & Jacques with sugarcane

Hugs & tears for Dana & Leica - time to leave

Sandra enjoying Christmas dinner

Djemima, Mirlande and Karma singing in church Christmas morning

Dana - Fantastic blogger, goat herder and photographer!!!

2011-12-27T20:24:00.000-05:00

Can't fill her shoes.

Since I tried to teach my girls, Dana and Liette, when they were growing up, to be themselves always, I guess that relates to their mama too. Dana wins the award in blogging for 2011. I know I can't touch her and am too smart to try. I do, however, need to add my compliments and thanks to that of many others for the fantastic job of blogging she did. She kept me laughing along with the rest of you. I loved seeing life here through her eyes, and the great way she shared it all. Life in Haiti has been normal for me for many years so I do not see it as others do. It is life in Canada that I have to adjust to regularly. I, too, wish she could be here blogging regularly and keeping us all entertained.

Dana and her three precious kids, Jared, Ronel and Alexa came on December 16th with some apprehensions I think, on the part of some, about how they would fit in, be accepted, and how things would go. They fit in beautifully, they were accepted in a big way, and things went really well. They left yesterday, December 26th, and are greatly missed today.

THANK YOU for coming. Thank you, Dana, for all the hard work. Thank you for excelling at goat herding, feeding, rescuing, even milking one, as well as the blogging. Thank you Jared, Ronel and Alexa for all the time spent with my kids and for sleeping with them one night. That was important and they are still talking about it. Thank you Jared and Ronel for the help with your mom's goat herding job and for the three of you preparing 130 gift packages to bless others. Thank you Dana for a fantastic turkey dinner and lemon meringue pie - that I am still enjoying. It lived up to my expectations. An awesome break from rice and beans.

Dana the goat herder

Dana had quite the experience with creepy crawlies -I can't say she saw them all because that would take a lot more than 10 days. In fact with almost 17 years here I have not seen them all. Sandra, please don't fret about being left out we are keeping some for you for next month.

Dana and Ronel love hot food and Haitians like to cook with lots of piman pike (hot peppers). Dana told Martha she would like pikliz ('hot' cold slaw). She got pikliz and yes, it was hot. I have proof.

She wanted 'hot' she got 'hot'.

I so need to cool my mouth

Dana arrived with her three children and quickly saw we have security 24 hours a day, armed at night. A precaution. She knew I do not go far after dark and if so, not without security. Christmas Eve night, after our festivities were over and little ones in bed, we prepared some of her delicious turkey dinner to be delivered to Luckner, as he was on the air at Radio Creole. Jared and Ronel and I were going to do the delivery. I did a good job of assuring Dana everything would be fine as I would be gone around ten minutes and I was taking the security so her boys would be just fine. I told her the gate would be locked behind us and no one could get unto the compound. I talked a good talk but did not walk a good walk!!! We arrived, deposited the food and entered the radio station where a lively discussion was going on - on the air - with three people at the microphones, Luckner leading and people calling in. It was interesting and fun for me. Luckner was planning on ending the program shortly after our arrival and let me know he wanted to greet the boys and wish them Merry Christmas. The boys seemed comfortable there, I was given a set of headphones to put on so I was hearing those calling in to the radio as well as the responses, and forgot about the time. Forgot, too, that Dana was here on the compound without me or security and was not used to Haiti. My bad! I had just explained to Luckner that the program was going on too long and I could not wait for him to speak with the boys - I was going home. At that time my phone rang and I could see it was one of my house mothers, Naomie. I quickly left the studio and went unto the roof deck to answer it. Naomie it was not. Dana it was. I quickly got the idea I was indeed bad. Not a case of 'My bad' but instead a case of 'My bad, bad, bad BAD'. She sounded scared. "Where are you ?" You said ten minutes . . . . . . . " I grabbed my keys, her two boys, Jared and Ronel, and headed to truck where security was waiting for us. Off we roared for home. No problems enroute until we get outside the locked up compound. I looked at security and waited for him to jump out, unlock and push open the barrier gate. He looked at me like he just landed from space. He did not look like an alien but was acting like one. I asked him to hurry and unlock the gate. I wanted to get inside so we could get out of sight and get to the house to try and make up to, and console, Dana. He had the space cadet thing still happening on his face big time and I sharply asked what on earth was wrong with him. Nothing really - just that he had locked up the compound and then laid the security keys down inside and walked out the door in the large gate without them. "You did what?" Great. Just what we needed. I was quickly hoping everybody was at a Christmas party and not looking for us for any reason as we were now sitting ducks outside the mission compound. Now we had to try to wake up a house mother again to come and let us in and we would be even longer reaching Dana to try and make amends.

Naomie let us in and I quickly drove to the house. We could not get in the main door. Locked. Oops, perhaps Dana is really mad and gone to bed and we are outside in the mosquitoes for the night. I felt like locking her out a few times when she was young but now it was the daughter locking the mother out. I was stifling laughter as I sent Jared around to try the kitchen door. Locked too. Another Oops. I ran with Jared to the laundry room door before calling and banging. Good, she missed that one.

We came inside to see her sitting in my office, in front of her laptop, stonyfaced and working (blogging I believe). Actually she was looking scared and upset with a huge and heavy monkeywrench next to her computer. That was her weapon for protection.

Dana blogging with weapon for protection next to her

When I did not return quickly as promised she had gone looking for one of my machetes but unable to find one she took the next best thing. I was feeling badly about being gone for so long but not badly enough to not laugh. I tried my best to hide my need to laugh but I was cracking up on the inside. It was a picture I will never forget - my precious daughter, the great business woman, wonderful mother and fantastic helper sitting in my office in my house with that big and heavy wrench next to her for protection. I was a bad mama but I still laughed.

Our Christmas celebration was great as Dana mentioned on her blog. I want to thank everyone for the fantastic gifts that came down from Calgary with Liette and Yvette, one for all 18 children. The kids were thrilled with their gifts. I am unable to post a photo of each one with their gift but will attach some. Two of the kids received a gift from their sponsors as well. It was a happy gift opening time with joy on all the faces.

Happy little Karena

JJ proudly displaying a gift of his

Josie happy with her gift

Jofky with his glasses

Mr. Cool Cat Vladimy with his gift

Ti Luc loves his batman cape.

Little Mr Cool Dieunel - thrilled with his gift

Karena - 3 and Anne 1 at our Christmas celebration. New dresses off so they could eat as they wished.

Thank you to all who sent money donations for Christmas - which enabled us to buy extra and special foods and to purchase new clothing outfits for the children. I will be purchasing special food items and treats again for the big Haitian holiday coming up - January 1st and 2nd.

Thank you for all your support during the past year. It truly has enabled us to continue to do what we can for the children in this area of Haiti.

IT IS ALL ABOUT THE CHILDREN !!!!!

Last day here at HATS!

2011-12-26T01:21:00.000-05:00

Bugs – Okay, so those that have been here before have mentioned in comments and emails they’ve had no bug problems. You’re welcome! I’ve experience all the bug issues during my stay so you all could come down bug free before and after me. You’re invited to show your appreciation with gifts of anti-itch cream!

Today is Dec 25th and we were up early again getting ready for the church service with gifts for attendees afterwards. Church was great, even though I can't understand what they said. The singing rocks, even without instruments, and I had a great snug with baby Sandra who fell asleep after our late night of festivities last night. We had 62 attend church and everyone, adults and children, went home with a Kado (present), a pop, and 2 candies. They were SOOO happy and even the girls in their late teens were jumping up and down with excitement after peeking in their gifts!

My soft cushioning is a sleeping baby magnet

So excited about Kado after church

Heat - the heat and humidity the past few days is what I remember. You feel sticky all day, if you rest your arm on a piece of paper it sticks to you & you have a constant sheen on your face. That’s great when you’re at Tropical Beach resort and can have a dip in the pool, it’s not so great when you’re in land with no water anywhere at hand. As much as I love these children and my mom I will never come here in July and will continue to visit this time of year during Haiti’s winter! Sandra was stuck to me, both of us with a sheen of sweat by 10am!

Kann. No words start in Haiti with a c. Oops! Sugar Cane is actually Kann. My Bad!

Painting. 1 building and 6 benches complete! In addition to the colored benches below there is the handprint bench for in front of mom's house and also a plain turquoise bench.

The building we ‘repainted’ the front of.

4 of 6 benches

Goats – 46 were purchased by Dec 20th (with 3 purchased after that). My goal was to get those first 46 done. I got close. 44 have been sourced and delivered to us and so far 41 have been picked up. We’ll be sleeping to a chorus of bleating again tonight, oh joy! Our hope is that the last 3 people for these goats show up tomorrow before 10am since Mom is gone until evening in order to take me to port. The last few goats will happen when my Aunt Sandy gets here late January. I will miss my rotating group of goats!

Last Load of Goats. Can you find all 8?

This is taken of the top of the 12ft cement block walls that surround mom’s compound to keep mom and the kids safe. To me this picture sums up Haiti.

A country of contrasts.

This is my last post to publish while in Haiti. I’ve got a ~4hr wait in the airport in Port au Prince so I’ll write a blog or two there as well to put up after I get home. We don’t fly until 6:30 although will be dropped by by 1:30 or 2 since Mom, Luckner and the hired gun need to get back before it’s too dark.

Haiti Christmas

2011-12-25T01:36:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a lot of painting, a secret project of Christmas present for ‘mom’, tons of wrapping (well ‘bagging’), visiting in Borel, brining the turkey, getting the stuffing, potato and carrot/yam casserole prepped and of course handing out goats and emailing out goat photos. That’s just my to-do list. Mom did about 3x that, as usual!

Today I slept in. Every other morning we had to be up by 7 for 7:30 devotions and when you’re waking up multiple x in the night to listen to the chorus of goats (I will be hearing bleating in my sleep for weeks I think), roosters and the ‘gang shootout’ sound that is the neighbouring rice mill when it starts up, 7am is VERY early! I heard a new sound at 9:30 this morning as I was enjoying my sleep on the 2nd floor roof deck in my fabulously bug free tent. A slow twangy sound, which turned out to visitor from the southern US. Alexa said there was a guy here who sounded like he was talking underwater, lol. I guess she`s never heard a southern drawl before! The thing about Haiti is that sound travels! FAR!! The concrete here is quite different and instead of muffling sound it seems to amplify it! Mom talking in her bedroom a floor below you can hear on the second floor despite a thick layer of concrete in between. Mom and I talking quietly on the second floor sleep deck about the boys and how they were helpful and amazingly great with the kids (and with a fair amount of shock and awe in our voices) carried far enough for the boys sitting 50 feet away to hear….. `Mom, we can hear you, ya know!`

Today was the day that the Haitian’s celebrate Christmas, mainly this evening, Christmas eve. I scrambled to get ready and into the kitchen when I realized it was 9:30, I had a bird to cook! I cooked, mom ran to the `pharmacy‘ for paper plates for the kids, I accepted delivery of another 7 goats from Banika, mom bagged gifts, the boys played, I gave out goats & emailed recipients, I cooked some more, mom ran around doing everything, I un-tanged goats, fed goats, watered goats and finally at 4pm, the festivities started!

The children all received their annual Christmas gift from HATS, a new outfit. They all raced home to put on their clothes and came back for a photo with Mom.

Kids with mom

As we gathered in the devotion/playroom the kids presented mom with their Christmas present for her. Antoinette, one of the house mom’s, was quite concerned the kids would give away the secret since ‘secret’ isn’t a word or concept in their language. Shockingly they didn’t!

Mom getting her gift

Christmas present from the kids to mom

Then Haitian Pere Noel handed out presents from the kids and I, each girl a Barbie, each young boy a car and clothes and a game from Vladimy. By this time the kids were hungry (it takes a long time to handout presents to 18 kids) so the House Mom’s served up traditional Haitian fare of Rice, Beans, a chicken leg and they made a festive pink salad. We also gave everyone some ‘Canadian’ food of Roast Turkey, Stuffing, Mashed Baked Potato and Carrot/Yam Casserole. They gamely tried it although a few stuffed the weird Canadian food into their rice. It reminded me of my childhood and of being at friends houses and mixing in the things I didn’t like into what I did so I could choke it down as to not insult anyone. As Luckner says, a Haitian doesn’t feel they’ve eaten a meal unless they have rice, no matter how much they’ve eaten.

Haitian Pere Noel getting socked in the face

Sandra, the 8 month old, who eats canned baby food decided tonight that mom’s food looked better! Within 5 mins she took the spoon from mom and went to town!

Sandra eating mom’s food

Graduating to a spoon only 5mins later!

After supper we did the Cado (Presents) brought down from donors by Liette & Yvette when they were here last month. Each child got center stage to open their gifts one by one while all the others watched with big saucer eyes! The grins as each child opened his or her shoebox of clothes, cars or dolls, sunglasses, candy, etc were AMAZING! I was the photog with Sandra in my arms sleeping and loved it! I’ve included a few random photos of the kids opening their gifts, which the babies slept though they were so tired.

Shoebox Gift – Karena (3yrs)

Shoebox Gift - Dieunel (5yrs)

Shoebox Gift - Vladimy (16yrs)

Sandra Conked out

My largest baby is tired too!

The true meaning of Christmas is alive and well here. I have had the most relaxed (although by no means have I had more than 30minues of downtime a day, if that) lead up to Christmas ever. No stores, no hustle bustle, no endless baking/eating (well, I’ll address the eating in an upcoming blog!), no hurry scurry or stress to find the ‘it toy of the year’ or the item my child really wanted, since they didn’t make a list this year. It’s been amazing!!!! I told the kids yesterday, the same kids that were (2 of 3) bitchy and complaining about coming, that we were coming back in 2 years to do this again and one of the boys, the one who was going to bring his own knife or gun for protection said ‘do we have to wait that long, can’t we come next year or during Spring Break?’

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Gifts ready, Report Card Day, Biting Ants

2011-12-23T11:45:00.000-05:00

130 Gifts are Complete! We did ~130 gifts, we may need up to 100 although with extra’s Mom will be all set and have gifts she can give out for other occasions as needed. We’ll be handing them out on Sunday at church. Today Alexa is combing, cleaning and dressing all her Barbie’s so she can wrap them up for the kids here. Christmas is celebrated on the 24th so we're in full prep mode today! Mom had a turkey given to her by the UN for thanksgiving and she saved it for tomorrow. Gotta get that in the brine soon, Mom is SOOO excited about having a traditional Cdn feast instead of Christmas rice and beans

Our Assembly Line

Sample Gift

Report Card Day. It’s SO different than in Canada. School got out a week ago and today the kids (or parent) were to come back to pick up their report card. Many of the kids are away with their other parent so there were a lot of parents in the room. Everyone was in one room and it started with a speech by Luckner, the Director, who would be our version of the Principal. He talked to the parents about being responsible and getting their kids to school on time and talked to the kids about working hard since people are paying for their education. This part took about ½ an hour and they room was VERY quiet with little shuffling or movement. It was so amazing to watch. Then, in front of the entire room, their average is read out for everyone to hear. The process took about 2hours.

Waiting for Report Cards

Ti Luc was dressed and ready to head over to the school until Luckner showed up at the house. Luckner, as Director, was in dress slacks and a crisp white top so Ti Luc insisted on changing. He picked out his new outfit himself and insisted on being changed into it.

Ti Luc and Mom

Biting Ants: Lex has a bad case of Stomach upset and is spending much of her day in the bathroom so last night we slept in the room. Tonight we are definitely sleeping in the tents. As I awoke I discovered something had marched through my bed in the middle of the night and in their path was my right hand and face. 14 bites on my hand and 9 on my face and another half dozen random spots. Germaine inspected me and says it’s ants. She found a red ant nest in the bathroom yesterday (when cleaning up after the spider episode) although it’s not those. It’s the teeny tiny spec ants that were in my underwear drawer looking for Candy Canes (prior blog). Last night I was eating ‘can’ (Sugar Cane) and although I washed up before bed I must have had a little on my hand and face and the ants were eating me to get the ‘can’. She’s in my room spraying right now although I loved sleeping out in the tent and now have a really good excuse to get Lex to sleep out there too! A teeny bit of can must have fallen from my clothes onto the floor and that was swarming with ants when Germaine did her inspection. For perspective the red thing that looks like a hot dog is actually one of those mini advils. Lesson of the day, Sugar is evil AND it’s my own fault so suck it up princess!

For the record my Mom's house is Extremely clean, it's just that we live around bugs here and it simply can't be avoided.

Ants on Sugar Cane with a mini advil for perspective

As I was chasing a Gecko for a photo I discovered a dead rat so asked mom what to do. She yelled to Jacques I had a gift for him. When I showed him the spot he burst out laughing and said ‘Mesi pou bel kado sa’ (thanks for that nice gift) and since he has seen me taking photos of all kinds of people and wildlife he asked me if I wanted to take a photo of him with his bel kado (en francais: belle cadeau), so I did, lol

Jacques with his 'gift'

A few nights ago I was trying to get a lovely family portrait of my children with their uncle Ti Luc. They were quite the group of fools and this is the best shot I could get. It really speaks to their personalities! Ti Luc has today changed his name to Jared and Jared is Ti Luc. Jared has even mastered dressing Ti Luc! I’ll share more about Ti Luc as soon as I have more time

My kds with Uncle Ti Luk

I have 3 more benches to paint today so I best get at it. By Haiti time I’ve wasted a lot of the day cause it’s already 8:50am and I’m not moving and shaking yet!

A whole blog about sleep

2011-12-22T19:24:00.002-05:00

2 Big Sleepovers. My kids all decided last night to stay down at the kids home. There are two kids homes, one for girls, one for the boys. It’s apparently the first time this has ever happened here and the kids here were beyond excited to have my kids sleep down there with them, so ALL the kids, minus the 2 smallest babies and one really sick girl, slept in 1 room in each home! Mom and I decided we wanted a photo so we went down for a quick visit. Not a lot of sleeping actually happened in the boys room.

Sound asleep, there are 5 in here

All 8 boys in one room

Sleeping Security. A while after we went to visit the kids mom discovered her phone wasn’t with her and she must have it at all times in case one of the house mom’s or security or Luckner need her. We couldn’t find it so wanted the security to come up to the house and dial it so we’d find it by the ringing. She went out onto the deck and waved a flashlight down toward Security so they’d come up to the house. No response from security, which was very strange since they always come right away. We waited 15 mins, looked for the phone some more, and tried again to alert security. No response to the flashlight. We grabbed the camera and decided to sneak down quietly to check it out. We found both Security sound asleep. Not even the flash woke them up! We then started plotting what to do next. Me: ‘Let’s go pull on the gate like we were trying to get in’ (they were sleeping right beside the gate). If they woke up, at least we’d know it was still safe even though they were asleep. Mom’s idea was to go out the side door (the door to the school) and sneak around to the front and bang on the outside of the gate. Mom’s idea was tossed out, the reason there are security guards is that it’s not safe to be outside here, especially after dark. We laughed about that idea and how silly it was. So I brought up my idea again! ‘Let’s go pull on the gate from the inside, it will be safer cause bad guys outside wouldn’t be able to get us’. Mom looked at me and said ‘yes, and the security guards will be jolted awake and will probably shoot you!’. OMG. What?! I started to laugh (quietly) and told mom no way would I have crept down in the dark to take a photo if I’d thought about the gun! Turns out Mom's idea was probably the safer of the two. I was fully aware of the gun since it's handed to security every evening and I took a photo of Ronel with it a few nights before. We took off back to the house and called Luckner and left it in his hands! During our escapades we found the phone had been left in the boys home when we went down to take a photo.

Sleeping Security (they are not in jail, we took the photo through a fence)

Ronel with the Security Guards Gun

After our evening of escapades it's almost midnight (everyone goes to sleep here at 10pm) and mom and I are knackered and heading off to bed. 3 minutes after going upstairs I’m back down and say to mom ‘It’s not a Tarantula but it’s WAAAAY to big to sleep with me!’ We head back up to take care of my nighttime visitor! We get some photos and I get into my PJ’s while mom goes to get what we need to kill it…. By the time she comes upstairs I’ve made myself insane, everytime my pj’s touch my skin and tickle it I am swatting and beating at myself. The mom arrives with a mallet and a Machete! We’re up there cackling like a couple of crazy people! So then mom says that we need bug spray first and runs off to get some. I go brush my teeth and feel something on my arm and see a brown spot and start beating at myself and it won’t leave (the lights are dim in there) and then I realize I’ve been trying to kill a freckle! Okay, I need to take a deep breath, I'm bigger than it! As we’re about to spray the spider (it’s at least 3 inches from end to end) and I ask mom if it’s the jumping or biting kind. It’s not, whew! She sprays it and it takes off under the bed. Oh crap! We move the bed (me jumping around like a loon) and we can’t find it! We search that whole side of the room… No spider. I am NOT sleeping in that room! I grab my pillow, shake my blanket out ALOT and head out to one of the tents on the deck, at least nothing can get in those!! As I’m leaving the room mom says ‘Well now that you’re not sleeping in here anyway… it was a jumping spider, they jump about 3 feet’. WHAT? Yes, now I’ll really trust her when I ask her a bug question! Germaine cleaned the room this morning and found it dead on it’s back under the bed. It had jumped up and was hiding on the underside of the bed while the bug spray took hold. UGH. We're not telling Alexa or she'll never be able to sleep in the room again.

My Bedroom Visitor (at least 4 inches long)

Mom brought me protection

Goat & Paint update, Roosters, Haiti Stats

2011-12-22T10:44:00.001-05:00

Roosters. Contrary to popular belief Roosters don’t just crow at dawn, unless dawn is from 11pm to 8am. You know how in a movie one dog will bark and then all the other dogs in the city chime in and it’s utter chaos? Roosters are just like that, except they do it in the dead of night! It’s very interesting that laying in bed I pick out the different ‘voices’. Last night, by rough count, there were about 18 roosters involved. There’s the deep ‘cock of the walk’ COCK A DOODLE DOOO, there’s the ‘higher pitched adolescent’ cock a doodle doo and even the chain smoking grandfather ‘Cock a ack doodle ac d’. Every time he starts I lay in bed totally cracking up cause he actually sounds frustrated that he can’t finish it without his ‘voice’ cracking. Since I can’t sleep I may as well be amused!

Kabrit (Goat) Update. So far 30 have been delivered to HATS compound and 23 have gone home with their new families. We’re expecting more on Friday. We need another 17 goats to come and go before I leave on Monday since it will be too much for Mom to do without me here.

* It’s not so much the handing out of papers, it’s the moving them around, the feeding, the watering, getting their horns freed from the fence, keeping the kids out of the area. The goats spend a few hours during the day at the school field where there is lots of vegetation and then back to the side of the house for safety, water, etc. Today was the first day I wasn’t involved in the moving of the goats and left it to the kids. When I ventured out late this evening to make sure they all had water I discovered that 3 of the 7 weren’t asleep. That’s weird! Then I realized that 3 of the ones delivered today had ropes too short (this is new!) to allow them to lay down once tied to the fence and 1 wasn’t tied on at all (if we don’t tie them on they eat mom’s garden). So there I was in the mosquito infested dark with some wire that was on my painting tarp (can’t find any rope) trudging through the goat poop to fix up my poor babies. Two peed immediately upon my fixing their ropes (they couldn’t get into squat position with the short rope) and they all immediately started eating since their heads could now touch the ground. Goats take up about 3-4 hours of my day and mom doesn’t have 10 extra minutes!

* Okay, after that rambling missive about housing the goats… after we get them, then we need to find the families the goats are going to. It’s not like you can just pick up the phone and call them! You need to ‘send word’ through people who know people (that is Luckners job) and then hope they show up quickly although they won’t own a vehicle so will grab a tap tap to come pick up their goats. Coming home from Market today, sitting in the back of the truck of course, I hear this extremely load goat crying (I finally know the difference between children and goats) and realize it’s a whole bunch of goats tied onto the side of a tap tap. They’re dangling by their ankles and every time the tap tap goes over a ‘Police Kouche’ the goats would get jarred and start crying. Police Kouche is a sleeping policeman, which is actually a speed bump.

* Once the people come we get their name, take a photo, rename the photo with the receivers name, match that to a gifters name and then email the photos. The first goat photo emails for goats requested up to Dec 13th are being emailed out Thursday. The rest will follow as soon as we can source the goats.

Goats on a tap tap

Paint Update. Despite popular expectation from those of you reading the blog... I haven’t been fired. I guess when you’re desperate for good help you take what you can get! Jessie doesn't come back for 3 weeks so in the meantime I'm all mom has. I need to redeem myself after my painting fiasco’s, so I hope to have at least 6 benches done before I go! I painted a lovely bench today. Here is my one complete bench. I better step up the action!!

One bench done

Stats about Haiti.

The country of Haiti is on an Island in the Caribbean called Hispaniola. It’s south of East Miami, and just to the east of Cube and Jamaica
The island was claimed by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and became the base for the conquest of the Caribbean
In the 1700’s the French formed a plantation colony in the West. The French plantation owners brought in slaves from Africa and in 1804 the slaves revolted, the French fled, and the country became Haiti
The remaining 2/3 of the island is known as the Dominican Republic. The Haiti side has no tourism like the DR has. The DR side of the island is still Spanish
Haiti has a very small, very wealthy elite. They have walled residences along the water and large plantations. Haiti also a very large very poor majority population
Haiti is about the size of 2/3 of Vancouver Island or 2x the size of PEI. There are 10 Million people here and it is considered the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
Haiti has been ruled by Dictators for years, which is one reason the country is in such bad shape
The main language spoken is Kreyol (Creole) although the language of official documents and the language spoken at University is French. The slaves learned the language phonetically and mixed the French in with some Africans and Spanish, so Kreyol is shorter and more efficient than French. Sil vous plait is soupla. Sou Play. Merci Beaucoup is Mesi bokou (or Mesi anpil). I can cobble together a sentence in French although often it’s understood only by the older children who learn French at school.

After that little history lesson I'm going to end this blog with some random photos!

Judel, Jared's little buddy

Mirlande with her favorite goat

Vladimy & Ronel catching thrown food

Karena with backpack

100 Gifts, Market, More

2011-12-21T19:27:00.000-05:00

The kids project today is to prepare 100 small gifts for the children that attend church. We had about 50 children last week and mom told them there would be a gift this Sunday (Christmas day) so we may have a whole lot more than normal! Each child is getting 2 hotel sized body cream, a cahier (school notebook), a pencil with a cute Christmas mouse, mini toothpaste, toothbrush, a stuffy, an ornament and a small toy. For many of them this may be the only present they get this Christmas. It’s taken us 2 days of 10 minutes here and 5 minutes there to collect all the items and get them up onto the second floor deck. I helped this morning and in about 1.5hrs we are about ½ way done. I’m supposed to be finishing the bench painting today although unfortunately my kids are acting toward each other like they do at home so I need to be there to run interference!

Germaine asked mom (as she was going in 5 directions at once), how many people are you? She definitely needs more help here of a full time variety!

Market Day: The market in Verrettes is held Wed and Sat. It’s very strange being a white face in a sea of black, they stare at you, surround you and many try to touch you, simply because we’re so different. Many Haitians are also afraid of having their picture taken and taking one, even of a stall, without permission can cause major drama. They also don’t smile in photos (unless they’re used to Mom and have learned that it’s ok). All Haitians will be laughing and smiling one minute and then in the photo look like it’s a passport photo. At one stall I bought a hat and asked the hat vendor if I could have a photo of him and he said yes, with him. I showed him the picture on the camera after and he asked for a copy saying he was so excited to have a photo of him with a beautiful woman. When I get home I’ll print the photo and mail it down and Martha will find him at market and get it to him. Being larger is considered more attractive here (Jamaica, etc as well) and it’s a sign of wealth as well. If they can afford it ladies here even take injections to help them get more meat on their bones.

Me with hat vendor

People were constantly talking to us, calling out ‘Blanc’ and then a bunch of things I couldn’t understand. Mom said it’s often better not to know and didn’t translate any of it. LOL So one lady, as we’re leaving, grabs at my arm and says a bunch of stuff and all I caught was ‘blanc’ and ‘gros’. White and Big. My mom burst out laughing and translated: ‘that white lady took the injections she could get so big’. Ya, that’s the one she chose to translate. LOL If only the people here knew what lengths people in Canada go to, in order to not be big!

On the way out of the market I bought a small clay pot and it was only $10 Haitian so Mom didn’t dicker, which I love. I’d have been willing to pay more although that was considered a fair price! Mom got lucky and got a bunch of dresses for the girls and then we left Martha (mom’s cook) and Antoinette (the house mother) there to do the shopping for the week. They didn’t come back with us as it will be hours before they find everything they need. Antoinette had her favourite shopping tote, an Epicure Hostess Bag! She was so excited when we got to Market and my mom told her the bag came from my business. You know those totes are strong when she’s buying food for 21 people with it!

Antoinette with Epicure tote

Jared brought out his iPhone today to play a game and show the kids. They were enthralled! Right now he is sitting on the sofa swing teaching Judel ‘phone’ English and the names of fancy cars. Each icon on Jared’s phone Judel will point to it, Jared will say it in English and Judel will repeat it. When Jared isn't with Judel he's either playing soccer with Vladimy or he's taking care of Ti Luc. Dressing him, helping him go see Papa at the school, etc. After seeing how he treats his sister I'm pleasantly surprised and quite glad to know it's only a 'sibling' thing!

Jared with iPhone game

Today was haircut day for the boys. Every 6 weeks they get shaved. If anyone showed up to school with hair like Ronel's they'd be sent home to get it shaved. That's just the way it is in Haiti! Check out the razor that Jofky was getting shaved with!

Jofky Shave

Canal Walk, More Goats, Creatures

2011-12-21T11:53:00.002-05:00

Walking the Canal. Finally, today we had our Canal walk. One stroller wheel is flat and we’ve been waiting to get it fixed. Today we decided to go anyway and tilt the stroller so that the flat wheel was in the air and away we went. This was only Ti Luc’s 3rd walk on the Canal and right off the bat he fell right onto some big rocks. He kept going and a little later fell again quite hard and gamely kept going. We stopped enroute and enjoyed a banana cake I had cooked yesterday and then started our trek back home. Poor Ti Luc took a 3rd tumble although what a trooper! He only started walking at all 7 months ago and now going on long walks and climbing stairs! Amazing what the love of a great Mama (my mom) can do! To read more about her story and Ti Luc you can find that here: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=391394120905

Kids on their walk

Tonight I had the great pleasure of gifting Leica, my meeting sponsor child, two new dresses. One was a dress I wore as a child over 30+ years ago and is very bright and Haitian colored (we got it in Hawaii) and the other was spring dress with lots of soft layers. She was so excited she buried her face in the dress and went immediately to put it on and model for us. She came back to Mom’s house twice in the next hour to hug me again and say thank-you. She’s very excited to have a new church dress!

Leica and her new dress

More little things that can also be big things:

Jared is living proof it’s possible to get Mosquito bites on your Mosquito bites.
The house either smells amazing from Martha’s cooking or smells like burning garbage or burning crops depending on how the wind is blowing.
Cooking 2 meals a day & cleaning up after takes Martha all day. Can you imagine that??
Mom's house is not her own. She always has people in here, from Martha and Germaine, to people looking for tools, to photocopying, to finding tools etc. Her bedroom is her own place just for her. :(
Despite 'North American' brooms the ladies much prefer the straw brooms whereas I can't understand how a straw broom cleans up anything. For a visual, Mom is posing with the Straw broom in the 'mom's hair reenactment photo' from 2 blogs ago.

Goats: 10 more goats arrived today. We were expecting them to come to the house so a) they wouldn’t die from the plastic and b) it would be quicker and easier to distribute them when people arrived and c) they’d not be stolen by Machete wielding children who will scale the 8ft concrete block walls at sundown. We’re in the office eating lunch at our desks (again) and we hear they’ve arrived and have been let into the school compound. We both go tearing out of our chairs to get there before they can eat the plastic. We get there to discover the goats tied onto the trees in the school yard, just outside the entrance of the soccer field. I look at this and with the feeling of being a complete dimwit ask my mom ‘how come we didn’t think of that the first time?’ and she replies that Luckner asked her the same thing when she explained to him our goat dramas from 2 days before… There was some definite ribbing about the smarts of the ‘blancs’. In my defense a) I’m new here. b) I thought they HAD to go on the Soccer Field and didn’t know they could go on the school yard. Not sure what mom's defense was. I think all the bleating of the goats and chaos of the Petite Petite Mwen (Grandkids) being here had her all confused.

How smart are those Blancs?

Creatures big and small: Still haven’t found a Tarantula although did find 2 great bugs. The cockroach found by Alexa in the office and was dead since Martha does a great job of spraying in here. Seldom do you ever see a live cockroach around mom’s house. If it wasn’t dead I’d not have been taking a photo, I’d have been running looking for Martha or Germaine to come kill it. LOL. The body of the cockroach was at least 2inches long (yes, just the body!). The beetle was stuck upside down which allowed me to get close enough to place a dime for sizing (learned that after the cockroach). It was outside so allowed to live. The poor horses and cows tied along the side of the canal were very malnourished and the horse had a oozing sore open on it’s back. Most are ridden bareback here or packed with goods without a proper soft padding (people lay on the dirt floors to sleep so a blanket for a horse isn’t a likelyhood)

A sizeable beetle, stuck upside down

Cockroach, body alone was 2 inches long!

skinny horse

Little mother Alexa has learned to mix formula & change diapers. Tonight she’s napping in Mom’s room (waiting for me to go up with her into the scary darkness of the second floor) and as she sees my mom she rolls over in her sleep and tells my mom ‘it’s time to change her’. She even changing Sandra’s diaper in her sleep!

Alexa and Sandra

More Painting (didn't go so well), Weather, Accommodations

2011-12-20T21:54:00.000-05:00

Weather. It’s been quite cool by Haiti standards and not as humid as I remember. The day temps are in the mid-high 20’s. At night the temp is cool and a few nights now we’ve been so chilled we needed a blanket (typically you sleep with just a sheet). It’s cloudy today and the temp this morning was 22. The Haitians are wearing light jackets and sweaters and that is VERY rare! The cloudy day not only means it’s not hot, it also means that the Mosquito’s are out in full force all day long. Normally you have a reprieve from the mosquito’s until about 4-5pm. Due to the bugs and Mosquito’s here all doors snap closed automatically. Luckily by 11am the sun was out, the jackets came off the and high was 33.

Accommodations. On the second floor of Mom's house/the offices, there are two bedrooms, a bathroom and a covered open area. The boys are sleeping in the mosquito tents in the open area and loving it. Alexa is a bit scared so we've slept inside each night so far. It's quite comfy! These mosquito tents are very hard to find, if you ever see any anywhere please let us know!

Our Room

Mosquito, and other bug, tents

Internet. It’s PAINFUL! It’s not supposed to be painful, it’s technically high speed satellite internet… it’s actually worse than the worst dial up I experienced. Checking email takes a long time and when needing to open a website I start it and then write a paragraph of the blog before I even check to see if it's loaded, often it’s still working on it. I cannot comprehend how Mom gets any of her online work done! Once I write a blog and go online to send it, it’s at least 10 minutes for it to send. Mom thought it was her computer until I got here and told her it was painful on my new laptop too. I wish I understood more about internet down here so I could send down a new modem or router! I’m sure a good hour a day is wasted here by me ‘waiting’. I’m not good at waiting! I’m actually ready to toss my laptop into the concrete wall. Clearly I’m meant to develop patience. Mom says the Haitian's are very patient people since their whole life is waiting for people. Two ladies showed up for goats today and we hadn't been given the goat receipts, so they'll sit here and wait until the someone can run off in their moto to find the men who brought the goats. NOTE: I sent this Blog 8hrs ago and only when it wasn't showing up did we realize the internet had timed out and it didn't send. Will now check after sending to be sure things go out!

Today’s Projects: So while I’ve been fired from building painting I was still allowed to do bench painting once Jacques sets up the tarp... I think I could set up a tarp… Maybe not, lol, based on yesterday. I think since the boys had another project today Mom felt safe to allow me to paint since it would be just Alexa and I. I decided to use up the small bits of paint so that it would help empty out the Depot. I grabbed 3 cans and popped the lids. Within minutes I was surrounded by little people. Mom had the Generator turned off as she was heading out to copy papers for school reports (it gets turned off right after the laundry is done) and the kids that were watching a video had the movie come to a screeching halt so all were all there anxious to help. I allowed the 3 oldest boys, Vladimy, JJ and Moise to help (and tell them they have to share a brush while I'm getting organized) and got them started on Yellow while I stirred the blue. It had a thick ½ skin on the top so I plunged my hands in and squeezde the extra paint off the skin (can’t waste anything here) and then jumped up to wash my hands. Wait, I can’t open the door. Okay, nobody is listening to me. They’re all swarming around the paint. Finally I catch Leica’s eye and she helps me into the house and turns on the tap for me. I scrub and nothing comes off. Oh Shoot, are you kidding me? The small cans aren’t water based like the paint I used yesterday? Okay, think clearly. If they have oil based paints they must have paint thinner! I walk back outside calling to Alexa to come to the depot, undo the lock, go inside and look at the jugs. We find paint thinner, I get cleaned up. By this time I’ve been gone at least 10-15mins... I go back to the front and now instead of 3 boys helping with one brush ALL the brushes I brought out, plus more they’ve helped themselves to, are dipping into the yellow and dipping ½ way up the handle. There is paint everywhere, a little is on the benches, more is on the tarp (yay for Jacques) and most is on the children. Oh man, where is Mom, she’ll be THRILLED with me when she gets back! Mom comes and restores order. Actually at the sounds of her honk at the gate (to alert the security guard to open the gate) many little heads snap up and they say ‘Mama’ and scurry over to sit down like they’ve been quietly watching the entire time. The children are informed by Mama they are done painting for the day as soon as their benches are done. Mom asks them how come they weren’t more careful and why do they have paint everywhere. Mirlande informs Mom that JJ painted his new sneaks so if he can do that they can all be covered in paint… As we look at JJ’s shoe we realize he was trying to make his new sneaks look like Jared’s Pumas. The kids are all sent off to see the security guard to get cleaned up with Gas. I’ll fix up the paint later. I sheepishly came in to eat lunch and blog. 10 more goats are arriving soon so I need to get my lunch (2pm) eaten quick!

Oil Paint hands

Kids painting

Painted Sneaks

Painting, Baking, B-day Parties

2011-12-20T01:02:00.001-05:00

Hurry up and Wait: Raced out the door after a quick breakfast of Rice and Beans to get going on the paint. Run over to the Depot. Wait, need the key. Find mom, get the key. Go back over. Get into the Depot. Find paint and rollers. Paint is in giant buckets and it needs to go to the other compound, find mom to ask Jacques to bring the wheelbarrow (My pantomime skills are improving although they aren’t that good). Wheelbarrow is broken. Jacques has to fix it (it’s a marvel of wire holding together). It’s like that a lot here. Mom starts a project and then people come to the gate so security comes up to inform her. She either goes down to the gate or invites them up. Mom’s working at her desk and there’s a broken pipe or the cooks need to know something or Ti Luc need her or there’s something happening at the kids home or or or.

Painting: I get there with my kids and JJ and our first project is the doorway added to the preschool building. We’re sure we have the right paint since the school records say it’s painted in Aqua . We put on the first roller of paint. Oh no. Will it dry lighter maybe? Okay, let’s hope… keep painting troops. 10 minutes later it’s dry. Ummmm, ya, that has not dried lighter… Oh boy. So now instead of a small doorway we have to do the entire building. Mistake #1. Yikes. So, we keep painting and I love it. No walls to wash, to taping, just put it on as good as you can. I figure I’ve painted a lot my kids have been there, they know what they’re doing. Mistake #2. The paint rollers are poorly loaded, paint is dripping everywhere and being forced out of the tray onto the deck. Mom comments that it looks like the Judel and Dieunel were the painters (they are 4 and 5). After that building is done and I’m about to tackle the next one mom tells me that she really wants some baking done and that the painting can wait for Jesse. I know how to take a ‘not so subtle’ hint! They kids are quite relieved at this information and quickly disappear and I start to wonder if they didn’t make a big mess on purpose…

what we planned to paint

Color Difference, ugh

Martha & Germaine: Martha is my mom’s cook, Germaine is laundry, housekeeping and sous chef. Both of them have some rudimentary English and are very good and understanding pantomime. Martha is a great Haitian cook and her juices are famous among all who have done mission work here. I thought I’d gone to heaven drinking her Papaya juice today and she made some funky Sour Sop juice too. Since Martha doesn’t read she cannot bake anything that isn’t Haitian and Haitian baking is dried out and awkward. This afternoon we had a number of perfect 'Banana Bread' bananas given to us so I made a triple batch of muffins, a cake, etc. I kept popping back from the B-day party to check the oven and when it was perfectly cooked I took it out to cool on the top of the freezer. Perfectly cooked in Haiti is different than in Canada. When I came back from the party 30 minutes later the pan was scalding hot… Martha figured she’d help me out by putting it back in… YUM! So then I made a double batch of pumpkin date loaf for my mother. Martha was on her way out so mom turned on the oven for me to 150 (325 since Mom’s oven runs hot). Before 20 minutes were up we smelled burnt muffins… Martha had helped me out again by turning the heat up to 200 before she left (that’s about 410)… We cannot even get the muffins out of the pan to use for baseballs. Mom has saved them for Martha…

Korosol - known as a Sour Sop in English

Visitors. I had just laid down on the sofa swing with Jonathon (poor baby was tired from those 7:30am devotions so I was gallantly rocking him to sleep) when Security informed us a guest had arrived. My niece Mariah’s birth father was at the gate. He lives quite far away. They travelled up there a few years ago and it was a few hours of walking down the mountain followed by a long tap tap ride to get here. Despite being very poor he arrived with a HUGE pot of fresh fruit, cabbage and papaya, 3 brooms and about a 20lb sack of melons, juice oranges etc. That how it’s done in Haiti! You have nothing and still you arrive bearing gifts for others. Liette (my sister) had donated 2 goats and low and behold we had 2 here so the timing was excellent. His wife is in hospital for 3 months with pregnancy complications and he’s trying to make ends meet with his 4 children. I asked mom if I could give him some money. She took my US and converted it to Haitian Goudes and I went out and handed it to him. MAJOR FAUX PAS! Here you never give anyone a cash donation unless it’s rolled up super small and wrapped in white paper.

My baby with the baby

Mariah's Dad with his goats

Birthdays at HATS. The birthdays here at HATS are so exciting for the kids even though by Cdn standards they would be very simple. Everyone gathers together in a circle and sings to the birthday person sitting at the head of the group. Then everyone hugs the B-day person. The person then gets ONE present and everyone gets a small pkg of cookies and a glass of juice or pop. Alexa’s favourite part of the party was that her brothers had to hug her. You can see the joy on her face as Ronel is hugging her. You can also see the 'oh crap, I have to do that too' look on Jared's face in the background.

B-day Party circle

Lots of Hugs

Lex Hugging Ronel

Sugar Cane, My mother the Diva, Straw Hair

2011-12-19T13:59:00.000-05:00

Last night Mom, Lex and I spent hours sorting through the donated items to figure out what was going to the kids and staff here and what was going to bless others off site. At 9:30pm we were mentally and physically done so we poked the rest into the storage room so we could have the room ready for 7:30am devotions.

I missed a great photo op last evening! I heard TARANTULA and before I can get there with the camera it’s been killed. They've been informed that photo ops must happen before killing! I sure hope they find one for me before I go. This one was running across the lawn during the soccer match. Now I’m super freaked out that the kids often don’t have shoes on. The orphanage kids were not fazed in the least!

White Powder… At church today a few gals showed up with thick white circles of baby powder on their necks. It’s a status thing, it’s their way of showing they have enough money to buy powder. They use it on their underarms etc although the circle on the neck is not for sweating.

My Mom the Diva – so yesterday Alexa said ‘isn’t it amazing that your mom used to be a Diva and look at her now!’. Yes, my Mom the diva. That’s not the word I’d ever have used although it’s pretty accurate. When I grew up I remember my mom didn’t even own runners or jeans and even in the house wore high-heeled feather or fluff topped slippers. I remember coming home late as a teenager and she’d sit angrily rocking in her gold velour chair (throne), wearing her turquoise velour robe with the high ruffled collar. She’d scream when she saw the tiniest bug or spider. We had thick pile carpet that she vacuumed many x a day so there were no footsteps in it. Now she lives among bugs regularly and there are no high heels or carpets anywhere.

Many of you are asking about her hair. For those of you that missed it read back a couple blogs to catch up. Mom wouldn’t let me take a photo of the ‘interesting’ post perm results so we did a re-enactment photo with an item that looks as close to the actual hair that evening.

Re-enactment of hair post perm

Hair after she fixed it

Basic Stuff. I brought the kids 5 soccer balls, getting them from a Soccer supply store rather than the cheap walmart ones. Walmart ones work find at home although here I knew the surface would be a lot rougher. Today in the storage room I came across one of their balls.

Soccer Ball

Soccer Field

Sugar Cane. My kids have been wanting it since they got here. We’ve checked outside the gate a few times and the vendor wasn’t there. Mom told Luckner she was looking for some and the next thing we know a moto shows up at the gate with 2 long sugarcane pieces! My kids were very happy! It took me A LONG TIME to clean up a 4” piece of the sugar cane so they could eat it. Today Jacques, who is the Jack of all trades around her, cleaned up 12 feet of sugar cane (for all the kids) in the same amount of time that I cleaned 1.5 feet… The lesson here is that if someone else is better than you and it’s not an immediate necessity leave it for them to do!

Cane on Moto

cane with kids

Sugar Cane Machete

Devotions. Today we did devotions at 7:30am. It doesn’t matter who you are, how tired you are or how late you’ve worked, EVERYONE is at Devotions at 7:30 M-F, including all staff before work starts at 8am. Everyone is in a big circle singing and clapping. Today was the first time I was able to see all the kids face on, in one place, in the light, without them moving around. It’s also the first time it’s not been 10+ huddled around our legs, or chasing a soccer ball or waving at you or running up for a hug as you’re on your way through the compound to do some work somewhere. As a result of this circle of non-moving children, I have now worked out a number of their names! Jofky is another of the babies, although since he’s not hanging onto Alexa and is chasing after the big boys I didn’t even know who he was until this morning. Now seeing the other girls faces I will no longer have to look for Leica’s hair band to know it’s her. I have also identified Josie, who at a quick glance is very similar to Leica. Then there is JJ (pronounced gg since it’s french) and Moise. Both boys are similar in size with shaved heads, one is 9 and the other is 10. The easiest way to see who is who is to check to see which one is being helpful and running around being a right hand. That’s JJ. He also lead devotions this morning. The one causing dezod (mischief/trouble) is Moise. Yesterday hitting Ti Luc with a big stick, today throwing rocks at a water pipe and breaking it. That leaves about 3 girls for me to identify. I think. Just asked my mom to write me out a list. She’s missing 2 on her list. Now I don’t feel so bad.

Sponsoring. I found out today that the kids in the Childrens home have 2 sponsors. 1 for schooling (which is what I sponsor Leica for) and 1 for their support in the home. The school is from Preschool to Grade 9 and has 248 kids. Today I am painting the school.

Sorting the packing, Who's who, Goats on a Moto

2011-12-18T22:26:00.000-05:00

I have many wonderful family and friends that brought me bags and boxes of new and used clothes, school supplies and toys as soon as I said I was coming here, plus I made the kids purge their clothes and Alexa purged her toys. My basement was overrun for months. As I packed up the 8 bags to come here I remember thinking it would be much easier on the other end to unpack it. No wrapping, stuffing, weighing, etc. Just unpack it. Easy Peasy. Again I was wrong. I’m not sure I’ve ever been this wrong before, lol. This afternoon I unpacked 6 of the 8 bags. Two were food and supplies Mom requested (paintbrushes, nuts, chocolate, gifts for staff, protein powder, etc) so that was unpacked the first day.

I got all 6 unpacked and thought, ok, yup, that’s good, it’s all spread out and organized into groups (clothes for adults, boys, girls, shoes, toys, household goods, etc). Now what?

This is what 6 suitcases of donations looks like (plus a bench full of household things):

Donations - Girls Clothes

School Supplies

Donations - toys & shoes

So as I’m feeling all accomplished and ‘finished’ mom tells me the room I’ve unpacked everything into is used for morning devotions Mon-Fri at 7:30am. Today is Sunday. Oh boy! Mom left on a sugar cane run so I’m in here blogging as I rest up for the marathon of looking through everything with the 18 orphanage kids in mind trying to find things that can be wrapped for them for Christmas. This may sound easier than it is. I’ve played with them, I’ve hugged them, I’ve traded high fives, fist pumps and beaming smiles. I still have no idea who most of them are! The babies are pretty easy. There’s 4 of them – Jonathan who is teeny tiny and a boy (yes, my astuteness is astounding), Anne who looks at me terrified so I know who she is, Sandra who lights up any room she’s in and Karena who has a brilliant smile and loves to high five. I know who 4 others are with no confusion; Vladimy is 15 and can be seen wearing Jared’s Nike’s and kicking a Soccer Ball, 10yo Mirlande who has been blinded in one eye, always has shiny things in her hair and sticks to Alexa like super glue, Ti Fi who has mental challenges and looks unique and Ti Luc, who is my brother. I’ll post more about that another day. That still leaves 10… The rest of the beautiful dark chocolate children have the same hair. The boys are all shaved and the girls all have the same sticking up pigtails – there is probably a proper black hair term although since Ronel doesn’t go for that look I have no idea what it is. They move quickly and many are similar sized. I figure out who they are one day and then they have the gall to change clothes the next day and then I’m lost again feeling like an idiot. My ‘meeting sponsor child’* is here on site, an adorable little angel named Leica and she looks A LOT like 2 other girls. Today I studied the hair band colors in the front of her hair so I know that if it’s the adorable girl with the big smile AND the bright citrus colored hair band it’s Leica. If her hair band falls out I’m in big trouble!

Meeting Sponsor child: the gals who attend my Epicure meetings pay $2 at the door each time and it goes down here to HATS and helps towards paying the monthly support fees for Leica.

Leica

Jared and Judel. Jared loves this photo because not much of him is in it

Jared & Judel

Ronel & Dieunel. Ronel's new Facebook profile photo.

Ronel's new FB Profile Photo

It’s very embarrassing and frustrating to not know everyone when I see them. At church today we were leaving and I had a little boy by the hand and was heading over to the compound with him, him somewhat reluctantly. I figured he just didn’t want the fun singing to be over… then Alexa looked at me and asked me why I was taking home a random child. WHAT??? Oy Vey! I look back and he’s looking at me with these huge eyes and his siblings are trailing along behind wondering what to do…. They have no idea what I’m saying as I try to apologize and probably don’t know what blushing is although I hope by the shock on my face they realize I’m not actually loco (well I may be loco, although I’m not a loco child stealer)!

Many of you have asked what you can do. You can donate. I know my Epicure friends all got nice fat bonus chq’s for November (Yay Epicure) and probably need a tax deduction! You can make a one time donation or you can take on the annual support of a child. More info on the costs are on the website www.hatshaiti.org. One of my local consultants, Denise Krahn, sponsors 2 children down here and I had the privilege to bring down gifts for her two sponsor children and I hope to meet them to deliver those personally. Maybe your local consultants would love to be involved in supporting a Sponsor child as part of the meeting fees.

We still have 2 goats. Only 11 of the original 13 have gone home and we still have A LOT more to find and distribute (we’re up to 42 goats purchased by donors). In between other duties today I moved, untangled, fed, watered, stepped in poop (more x than I can count), moved again (every time the sun changed position) and took a ton of goat photos. Tonight we had goats going home on Moto (Motorbike). That’s apparently not unusual around here!

Goat on Moto

FYI – many of you are wondering about the perm. It came out OK! The photo in Blog #3, Crawling and Flying Things, Milking a goat, The Babies, of Mom and Jonathan, was the finished result.

Crawling and Flying Things, Milking a goat, The Babies

2011-12-18T15:28:00.000-05:00

Flying Things: I read before bed. Always. Here there is no lamp and the light in the ceiling does not allow me to see the pages well enough. So I use the ‘flashlight’ app on my phone to read. When I’m close to falling asleep last night I decide to turn off the main light and just read by iPhone in the bed. Within 1 minute of turning off the main light I’m besieged by wings. They’re flapping. On my face. In my hair. OMG! I scream, my book goes flying and I leap out of bed. I use the phone light to remove the damaged winged creatures (from me beating at myself) from my bed and decide that’s enough reading!

Crawling Things: By the end of the first evening, within 3 hours of unpacking, there was a swarm of what I thought were no-see-ums on the dresser and the bathroom sink. After they were still there on morning 2 I asked Mom about them. She came up and looked… it was ants. Teeny, tiny, little spec like ants. She showed me how they were marching across the wall, over the dresser top and into the drawer. Oh, that’s what’s happening, it’s not random, there’s a pattern, I see it now. She opened my dresser drawer. ULP. Hundreds of little specs swarming down and up the inside of the drawer. She DID warn me about food anywhere but in the kitchen. I did give the kids heck for eating in their tents. I also bought jumbo candy canes for the 18 kids in the children’s home and stored them in my dresser drawer… We quickly got those out of my drawer and into a sealed Rubbermaid container! I started pulling out my shirts and my mom is a mad woman spraying with her can of bug spray, on the wall, on the dresser top, into my drawer. “Ummmm, Mom, my underwear are in there still, I don’t think it’s a good idea to get Raid in my girly bits!!” Her reply? “well you won’t have to worry if you sit in an anthill”. LOL. Yup, that’s life in Haiti! And for those of you wondering, I was NOT storing food in the bathroom sink, alexa’s sweet toothpaste that wasn’t rinsed down well enough was what was calling the bathroom ants!

The babies. Oh my, they are sooo cute! Each Sunday my mom holds a church service in the school. Today about 80 people attended, so about 55 that were not from the compound, and only 4 of those were adults. Kids come from all over, wearing their best clothes and so excited to be able to sing and clap up a storm. Little Sandra was shaking a Maraca one minute and sound asleep the next despite the loud clapping right beside her. Anne is still afraid of me (all the blanc’s except my mom) although sat 2 places down from me in church so we're making progress. Karena sat in front of me and LOVED my nails. She spent most of the service playing with my fingernails. Jonathon spend the service bouncing around in the Sling around my mom’s neck.

Sandra fast asleep

Mom and Jonathon

Sandra, Leica and I

Kids singing at church

Goats... 7 are still here. Where are those people? The goats are tied along the fence and they continually poke their heads through the fence and then get stuck because of their horns. Jared has become an awesome goat head wrangler! Between feeding them, watering them and saving them from the fence it's almost a full time job.

Head Wrangling

Milking a goat: I’ve been informed that I need to milk a goat. Ya, thanks Uncle Dickie! The goats do have big teats, the people coming to get their goats have been checking out the number of teats and those with more teats were selected first. In English, we call them Teats. In Creale they are teetee’s. Say it out loud. Yup, you got it. The first time a new goat owner came over and looked at me and said something something teetee’s I felt self-conscious and then when he looked under the goat I felt very stupid. LOL Anyway, milking a goat. Anything for my Uncle Dickie! I asked Ronel to help me milk the Goat. His reply ‘Nope, I’ll stand at a distance and watch though and laugh’. Nice supportive kids I have! I’m off to go do that now!

Okay, I’m back. Uncle Dickie you are a VERY BAD MAN! As I’m in position, trying to get my hands under the poor goat which keeps jumping away, my mother laughs hysterically and tells me that goats are NEVER milked in Haiti. The poor goat has never experienced this and has no idea why this strange white woman is trying to grab it’s teetee’s. I think we’re both traumatized!

Milking, sort of

Goats and Perms

2011-12-18T00:41:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned earlier, today was the start of goats…

So far about 33 goats have been purchased by donors in Canada. Luckner hired a guy to purchase them for HATS. 13 have been sourced so far. The goats were to be delivered to the school compound on Friday although apparently the man refused so we drove to Luckners Saturday to find out where they were. Of course no-one wanted to sit IN the cab of the truck so the kids all sat in the back. My boys have wimpy Canadian bums so used chair pads.

Kids in Truck heading to Luckners

Word spread that we were at Luckners so the goats that had been tied up at various places started to arrive in 2's and 3's. They were quickly & efficiently trussed up so they couldn't leap out of the truck bed as we cruised a rockin' 15km an hour over potholes on the way home. Goats Arriving, Trussing, Leaving took close to an hour. Goats bleat. A lot. Loudly. Dramatically. When they're standing around snacking this bleating seems innocuous. When they are trussed up in the back of a pickup it doesn't sound quite so innocent. This created another kind of bleating in Alexa and involved some tears and sobs.

Truck with 13 goats

So the goats are in the truck and my mom is ready to leave and take them back to the Soccer Field to eat while we wait for people to show up to get them. "Ummmm, Mom... who is going to take them out of the truck and untie them?" I'm willing to give it a shot although they are quite heavy and I'm concerned I'll drop the goats on their backs trying to get the thrashing beasts from the truck... She looked at me blankly like this hadn’t occurred to her. She had the men climb in the back with the 13 goats so they could untie them at the compound. WHEW!

Trussed up goats

As the goats are unloaded and released into the soccer area Mom see’s plastic bags and bottles and sends us scurrying around picking up all the plastic cause the goats will eat it and die. Oh my, it’s a BIG field! We spread out and start collecting, then she realizes the goats are all heading to the back corner… OH NO, that’s the burn pit and the regular guy is away and the pit is only ½ burned and there’s plastic EVERYWHERE! We get a garbage can and pick through that while shooing goats and we’ve collected an entire garbage can and have barely dented it. Wait, let’s tie them on instead. Nothing to tie to, surrounded by solid cement walls. Shoot. The kids go running for wood, machete’s and mallets. We chop, we pound, we tie up to stakes (poorly I may add as evidenced below). Then we haul water. It’s now hours after we first encountered the goats. Neighboring children, known thieves, have climbed up the school compounds 8foot walls and are staking it out. Any goats left tied up by nightfall will be hauled up the walls and sold or killed for food. We call the guy who has been hired to sleep out with the goats. He’s away for the weekend. So now what? I sure as heck am not sleeping out there with them and fighting off machete wielding children! We call Luckner and ask him to find some of the people they’ll be given to and send them over. I go over to eat lunch at 2pm (at the desk so I can blog) and then run back and forth from the orphanage compound to the school compound each time someone comes to the gate to get their goat. I get them to pose with their goat for a photo while my mom looks through the ‘goat receipts’ to figure out which one matches which goat.

Lunch at the desk

Goat dragging it's stake

Marta and Germaine deciding on their goats

Yes, Goat Receipts! Each goat comes with a stamped official receipt so that a) it’s proof it was purchased by HATS, not stolen. B) the recipients are Ok to walk home with it without someone thinking they stole it and if anyone does accuse them they have papers to prove they own it. The papers have a ‘description’ of the goat although blanc/jaune was quite common.

Goat Receipt

Today was about ½ a day of goat distribution and we got 5 goats to their new owners and have 8 now tied up beside mom’s house here on the kids compound so that they won’t get stolen. Bleating will be a neat new sound to add to the outdoor sleep symphony tonight.

Dragging goats to the house

HATS Hair Salon… was in business tonight. Mom has to do her own perms with the help of visitors. I think she wishes she’d waited until my Aunt came down next month. We checked the perm, it was the right curl. We pulled out the rods. We hadn’t neutralized. Neutralized? OMG, what is that? Is it important? Panic. Laughter, panic more. Cram the rods back in willy nilly, and we ended up with way less rods back in the second time. Then Neutralize, Rinse, Remove. Mom asked me how it looked, I told her: ‘Decidedly straw like. Is that the look you were going for?’ I got a swat on the behind and my mom laughed for the next 5 minutes. I still have no idea how it actually looks.

In Trouble Already...

2011-12-17T19:16:00.001-05:00

I’m in charge of blogging while I’m here and now I can attest to how hard it is. You don’t stop, ever, unless you’re sleeping. It’s so hard to sit at the computer to write a blog! By 9am I was informed by my mother that I am already in trouble since I hadn’t yet blogged and I had arrived more than 12hours before….

I know the blog will be reaching a whole new audience of my FB friends so I’m going to start at the beginning and share more of the little things.

The Beginning: My mom came here to Haiti almost 17 years ago to meet her first grandchild. My mom was always asking me to come down to visit. I always had excuses, the most valid being that it was so expensive although the other excuses were more real to me. It’s scary and dirty and there’s bugs in your food and and and. I always said, ‘me spending 5G’s to come there isn’t going to help as much as me giving you the money’. Then in 2003 I earned an Epicure incentive trip on a Caribbean cruise that was leaving out of Miami… I was at the closest point in the US to Haiti so the money excuse didn’t wash any longer. My then husband and I came into Haiti with our two kids, Jared and Alexa, who were 6 and 2. Yousef and I had a week in Haiti and then left the kids behind with my Mom while we went on the Cruise. During that week in Haiti we fell in love with a young boy, Ronel, who was 6. His family had been killed about 6 months before and he was recovering physically from the same bad men attempting to kill him. One of his many injuries was having had his right arm amputated below the elbow. I knew upon meeting Ronel that he was meant to come home with me and we got back to Canada and started on the paperwork. My second visit to Haiti was in December of that same year, 2003, when we came back to spend Christmas with Ronel and my mom. In 2004 Ronel came to live with us in Canada and the recovery work and family bonding work began. We’ve never been back to Haiti since. It was just never the right time, until now. Jared and Ronel are now 14 and Alexa turns 10 next week.

Sooo. This trip. I could lie and say my boys were so excited to come and were happy to be allowed to bring only a carry-on for themselves and happily lugged 2 heavy suitcases of donations for others. I could lie and say they never once asked ‘what will I do there’ or said ‘ya, nice vacation, I have to work there you know’ when people asked them about their upcoming trip. I could lie and say that I didn’t hear ‘enough with the guilt trip mom, geez’ or that I wasn’t worried about how they’d react or if they’d sit sullenly in the corner playing games on their phones. I DID say to people, I’ve tried to raise them to be compassionate & good people although I’m not sure how it will go AND I hope they come back different people than the grumpy complaining boys I’m heading down with’. By 7pm last night (we arrived at 4pm) I knew they were already irrevocably changed! Within an hour of arriving the boys were playing with the kids and Jared had one permanently attached to his shoulders. It was very gratifying to know that the lessons I’ve attempted to teach them had snuck in somewhere and that although I couldn’t see the evidence of it regularly at home it was there and sprung from them when they got here. WHEW!! I KNEW Alexa would do fine. She was counting down the months, then weeks, then days until she could get here to play with the children. She’s been a mommy since we first got here and always has a baby in her arms and a gaggle of children around her.

Soccer Game

Jared

Getting here…. We arrived with 8 big suitcases and 8 carry-ons, 4 people. Mom told me before coming that the boys would ride in the bed of the truck, one was excited, one said ‘omg, I’m gonna die’. I pictured a BIG pickup… NOPE! I’d say it’s about a ½ size pickup bed. How in the world would we get that luggage plus 7 people the 3+ hours to the compound… Well we did it! Mom and Luckner (her Haitian Director/right hand) in the front, Lex and I and all the carry-on’s in the back seat and the boys plus the armed guard on the suitcases in the back. Since we had no sunscreen accessible the ‘blancs’ (white people) took turns with Jared so no one person would be crispy fried upon arrival. It ROCKED!! Much better than riding in a Tap Tap which is the Haitian mode of transport and often involves pigs and chickens in the same vehicle, dead or alive. We travelled through much of Port au Prince running a couple errands before we headed toward the compound. Vendors are crowded on the sides of the narrow streets and people walk only inches from moving vehicles. From my view in the back of the vehicle I finally understood how come there are not public beaches. As we approached the coast all you saw was concrete walls, each bit of coast fully blocked off by private residences.

All of Us on the Ride Home

Lex, I, and the Policeman

Tap Tap

Vendors

On the Streets of Port

Walls Blocking Beaches

Costs. Anyone stuck on Armed guards still? Yup, you read that right. Anytime they have to go to Port au Prince they take the armed guard with them. He’s a policeman that mom hires to protect them. This is when I realize that having us come here costs a lot. I knew it had costed me ~$3,000 for the tickets + hotel (I used points for most of it) and many other hundreds for things I brought down that I paid for. In my self-absorbed world I didn’t think about the other costs and felt pretty foolish getting here without US funds to hand my mom when I realized! From the $100 a day for the guard (2 ways cause he has to come when we leave too), to the gas to get us, to the ladies that will go to the market for food and then to prepare the food on the weekends (a big meal for tonight will take the two of them most of the day) and the laundry lady needing to come in, and the cook needing to stay longer every day (and that’s just the costs I’ve discovered in 24hrs) and all those costs do not come from the orphanage donations. Visiting work teams pay their own way and I think cause I was family my mom thought I just knew these things…

The little things: When entering the compound you have your hands drizzled with Clorox water to kill anything you may have picked up elsewhere so you don’t get the kids sick. The sign at the bathroom that says ‘remember we are on Septic’ means something very different than at home! They don’t have pumper trucks so you can’t flush your paper after you blow your nose and when us girls wipe up #1 we have to put our toilet paper in the garbage. I’m really bad at remembering that so far! When you eat you rinse your bowl ASAP and pick every crumb off the floor or we’ll have ants and cockroaches by morning. The shower gets you clean even though there is no shower head and it’s just a pipe sticking out of the wall. Kids play soccer on rocks and often in bare feet. Mosquito’s will eat you alive immediately at sundown. Honking is a way of life here, get used to it. Even at 3am. Garbage is everywhere, there is nothing like an organized dump in Haiti. Goats etc eat anything that is edible, so your banana peels and any other food waste is put to good use! Everything else you burn. At 5am the rice mill starts up, it jolts you out of a deep sleep (well sort of a deep sleep cause you’ve just fallen back to sleep after over an hour of honking) and it sounds like gunshots until it warms up and finds it’s rhythm. Ronel thought it was gangs killing each other. After that it lulls you to sleep and drowns out the roosters.

Goats… I heard last week I was helping with the goat project when I got here. Fabulous, couldn’t wait. Match the goats to families, take photo’s, email those photos to people. Got it. Simple. I can do that. HA!! Nothing is simple, this is Haiti! I think the $70 that people pay to give a goat is a steal of a deal. Holy smokes! More info to come on this project. It involves goat wrangling, lots of bleating (and not just the goats), poop, burn piles and plastic (remember how I said goats eat anything?), machetes, buckets, stakes, mallets, brooms, rashes and thieves and we’ve not even had anyone come to get their goats yet… More to follow on this later! While getting the goats at Luckners we had a short visit to the radio station he has in his house. So far he has a huge audience although only one advertiser, so he’s funding it on his own.

Truck with 13 Trussed up Goats

Radio Station

Ronel’s statement today – I’ll never again complain about the quality of the soccer fields at home. Jared’s: I’m taking this one (Judel) home with me. Alexa: Mommy, look at the baby (said about 18x regarding any number of children)

The boys have gone to watch a Real Madrid vs ? soccer game this afternoon and I’m learning to perm my mom’s hair. I hope mom doesn’t hold the results against me…

Gaots, goats, goats

2011-12-11T17:31:00.000-05:00

This is just a short note to let everyone know that we are again doing our Christmas goat program. Goats are a very important asset to many Hatian families and we want to help some families who can’t afford one by donating goats to those in need. To see a video on the importance of goats click here. To donate please see the sidebar on our web site www.hatshaiti.org under Christmas Goats, enter your email address and select the number of goats you would like to donate, click on pay now and you will be able to donate securely through PayPal. Your gift of $70.00 Canadian will give a very meaningful gift that will provide milk and a possible source of income.

Karen donating a goat to deserving family

Hello All,

2011-12-08T21:57:00.000-05:00

HATS has been buzzing with busyness as always. Karen and Mariah have their hands full with school, the children are studying away, Seth and I are wrapping up our projects before we head home for Christmas, and the little ones, well, as always are causing just enough commotion not to get in trouble. As I mentioned, Seth and I will be heading home in 4 days. We are really, really excited to be with our families for Christmas. We are so thankful for all of you who have supported us over the last year and have allowed us to take time to be with our family over this special holiday. Thank you so much for your financial support, prayers, and encouragement. You guys are all such a blessing to us. We, of course, will miss Karen, Mariah, the staff here at HATS, and especially the kids, but we are excited for some family time!

I just wanted to catch you up on the happenings around here, before we take off. It was such a blast having Liette and Yvette around. They did such a fantastic and very efficient job with the school sponsorships. They knocked it out in no time. You can definitely tell Liette and Karen are from the same family with the way they get things done. Thank you both for your help. While they were here, they gave each of the kids a blanket and some photos. The next morning we put the photos the kids received up in their rooms; they couldn’t wait to put them on their walls! The blankets also came at the perfect time, as the weather has dropped down to an all-time low at night since Seth and I have been here...70! :)

Karma Putting Up Her Picture

We have been continuing the crafts and Children’s Church on the Creation story, as I had mentioned before, and we just wrapped it up this weekend. We went through all 7 days of the creation story and who God shows himself to be throughout the story. Then, this past Saturday, we had a Creation Party. We had Creation games, a scavenger hunt, we made a video of what we learned, we had a talk time about how God knows us each individually and made us each very special all for the purpose to serve, love, and to give Him glory. We then made pictures with our fingerprints (because it is a reminder of God making us special since no one else has the same one.) To finish off the night, we had a cookout and made a dessert out of creation candies. It was a blast and I was amazed at how much the kids remembered. God is so good!

Creation Party

The kids are doing fantastic. School is moving right along. Next week they will start their first set of exams. Actually Vladimy, in secondary school, started writing his exams this week. They have three sets every year. So, currently they are in the process of reviewing for exams. When they come home, they eat, then study, and finish off the afternoon with soccer, cards games, or playing house. The younger kids, (the three musketeers is what I call them) Anne, Jofky, and Karena, are as cute as ever. I used to always picture Karena and Jofky as an older, married couple by the way they would interact with each other, but Anne has slid right into the dynamic. They all play so well together and it is so interesting to watch them be creative and play without really even using any words. Sandra and Jonathan are still a bit too young to keep up with them, but Sandra is getting there. She has yet to learn how to crawl, but she sure can slide on her belly wherever she wants to go. Below are some random pictures of all the kids’ adventures:

Sauce Pwa (Bean Sauce) Episode 1

Sauce Pwa Episode 2

Anne's Hair Filled With Shampoo

Leica grew hair overnight!

Sandra too

Judel's Surfer Hairdo

Juice Mustache

As I mentioned, Mariah and Karen are busy at school. I am pretty sure every time I run into Mariah in the office she is working on activities for school. I hear she is doing a fantastic job with her students, even though her class is a tough one. Just imagine 15 3&4-year olds. YIKES! :) This past week she has been filling out reports on each of the students. Karen is still doing what Karen does ...EVERYTHING! She has been organizing Christmas decorations, doing financial reports for Canada, and keeping things running at the school, dealing with some staff problems on the main site, helping teach English at the Trade School. Speaking of Christmas decorations, Seth and I were in charge of putting up the Christmas lights, lets just say God had to give us a little more patience that day. Oh, what a crazy, tangled, blinking mess...

Seth's Patience

Karen, Mariah, Seth and I aren’t the only busy ones around the compound, Look at Jacques beautiful find below. He put out rat poison one night and got 11 the next morning! Job well done, I must say!

Jacques' Find

We have been continuing to do our walks by the canal whenever we get time. Recently, we had one gorgeous walk with the sun setting. We drank some juice and Ti-Luc walked the ENTIRE walk. We were all so proud! When we returned to the compound the children all stood just inside the main gate with Ti Luc for a group photo. At the same time someone called Papa Luckner on the telephone and all the kids yelled out to him the good news of Ti Luc's long walk.

Gorgeous Sunset

Ti Luc's Accomplishment

Before we head home, we are planning on doing one last thing as a whole family together. We are going to make Christmas cookies Friday with the kids! So, be looking forward to some awesome pictures!

Have a blessed Christmas everyone.

Thank you Liette and Yvette

2011-11-28T23:47:00.000-05:00

They came. They worked. They played. They accomplished. They left.

The student's letters and photos in the sponsoring program were completed. Student's letters were written, translated, scanned, and sent out via email to the many sponsors. Wow. A huge undertaking that was handled beautifully. I was, and still am, impressed. I informed Liette and Yvette that I had one important thing to say about the whole thing - ' they both need to come back again next year and do likewise '. What a team! I will be hoping and praying they can return together, as a team, again.

Students writing letters to sponsors

Prescolaire 3 walking to join Liette for photos & letters

Yvette with Jonathan

Jessie helped Liette and Yvette with the work on the school sponsoring program and when not needed there she organized the storage unit in my office. Another job well done.

Karen's Main Office

While here they also blessed my kids with a lot of attention and fun times. It was difficult for all of us to have to say bye and see them leave. There is always a time to happily say "welcome and thanks for coming" and always a time to sadly say "bye and please return."

Fun times with the kids

snack time on our walk

Now we are looking forward to having Dana-Lynn, Jared, Ronel, and Alexa arrive on December 16th. Their project will be to help with painting at the school. We have the new office/library needing to be painted, as well as the improved/finished secondary section - grades 7, 8, and 9. The small office for the person who is assistant to Luckner, as supervisor of the secondary section, should also be ready to paint soon.

On December 11th Jessie and Seth will be leaving to spend a month with their families. Mariah, too, will be leaving in December, probably on 16th, to spend time with her family. She will return in January to stay until school is out in June. The children are going to miss having these three around but Dana and children being here will fill the gap for ten days. Ti Luc will especially miss Mariah. They do have a lot of fun together and Mariah is a tremendous help for me with that special boy. Ti Luc can now do most things the other children do, but not all. Yesterday morning he told me he wanted to feed himself like the others do. He put a lot of effort into trying to get the spoon to his mouth. Not yet successful but proud of himself. So am I.

Mariah and Ti Luc having fun together

I want to feed myself Mama

The Trade School is busy with English, computer, and plumbing classes running. I continue to help Luckner with the English class. When Liette was here she did a fantastic job of teaching the students English in my place. It was good for the students and good for me.

Students in English class at Trade School

On the way home, after taking Liette and Yvette to the airport, we passed a huge long truck loaded with bags of cement. The truck was driving much too fast for the road conditions and on the top of the load of cement two men were standing, acting foolish, dancing, and showing off. I took a photo that I call 'death wish'.

Death wish. Look Ma, no hands.

HATS has a Christmas goat program again this year. If you wish to give someone special a gift, by blessing someone in need in Haiti with a goat, we can take care of it for you. A photo will come to you, hopefully before Christmas, but we cannot promise that. Information on this Christmas project will be available on our website soon.

Thanks again to all of you for being a part of what we do here, for helping us bless people in this area, and for making a difference in the lives of the students by seeing them get an education.

Karen and kids (minus 2)

Love and God bless all of you.
Karen and family

The last day is always the hardest.

2011-11-24T23:17:00.000-05:00

We have had a wonderful time and as much as we miss our kids home in Canada, we are sad to leave Haiti. Goodbyes are never fun especially when it's people you love.

Today we had a beautiful sunrise walk along the canal, organized some donated items and school supplies, and finished a few more sponsor letters and photos. After work, we visited the hospital so Yvette would have a chance to see it and Jacques bought and prepared some sugar cane for us.

Canal sunrise

Sugar cane

Martha made my favourite meal: diri djon djon with chicken and salad. Delicious!

Martha's amazing meals

Late this afternoon, we had a ton of fun with a great water fight with all of the kids. They LOVED it! We followed that with a last walk along the canal. Part-way home we stopped for a little snack that the kids enjoyed, happily sharing three drinks between them.

Waterfight

Ti Luc getting wet

Last canal walk

Josie sharing with Dieunel

Of course we had a final soccer game and then lots of goodbyes and hugs. We'll miss Karen, Mariah, all of the kids and the staff at Hands Across the Sea. We'll be back!

Liette (for Yvette, Karen and the HATS gang)

Yesterday and today..

2011-11-23T22:42:00.000-05:00

..started off with a gorgeous walk by the canal. The sun was rising, the rice was sparkling with dew and there was a mist on the mountains. It was just the right temperature for a brisk walk. We had a couple of good natured marriage proposals along the way which is always fun!

While Mariah was working hard and sulking because she couldn’t come with us, we took a Taptap and went to the market. It was all I had hoped it would be although I didn’t find anything to buy. I was looking for something really Haitian and I have decided I should buy a broom. I don’t know how they sweep with them but somehow it works for them. Liette got asked if Yvette was her daughter! She’s really hoping it’s just because Yvette is so small and not because Liette looks so old. (Note from Liette - for those of you who don’t know, Yvette is OLDER than me!)

Verrettes Market

When school was out I had the two kids that I sponsor over to meet them and give them an early Christmas gift. The look on their faces when Liette explained to them who I was and where I had come from was priceless. It was so good to give them hugs.

Yvette with her sponsor kids

Yesterday afternoon we had the opportunity to distribute a beautiful individualized blanket to each of the children in the home. The blankets are beautiful, with each child’s name as well as many Creole words and verses on them. The children were very happy to receive them. The older children in particular loved seeing the photo of the children who helped send the blankets and enjoyed having their letter translated for them. Ti Luc was so excited about his blanket that he insisted on sleeping under it, even early this evening when it's not yet cold. A very big thank you to Lynn for your hard work and inspiration!

Moise and JJ

Dieunel with his blanket

Sandra with her blanket

Mirlande with her blanket

Ti Luc sleeping under his blanket

We are making good progress on sending the photos and letters to the sponsors. There are a couple of sponsors who have changed their email addresses and your letter/photo keeps bouncing back. If you have not yet received your photo/letter, please send us an email with your updated contact information.

Liette, Karen and Mariah left me to go and teach English and I had a great time of playing with some of the kids. I was pushing Joffkey on the swings and he actually said my name about 10 times with a smile on his face. He usually doesn’t give me any indication that he likes me in the least. I also played badminton with JJ, Moise and Vldimy until the girls came back from English class. Liette’s godsons came for a visit and we had some 3 on 3 soccer. The field was a tiny bit small and there were a few slide tackles but it was good sweaty fun.

Blickenson, Mariah and Liette

Vladimy, Yvette & Malachi

Liette and I have 1 full day left and we are starting to feel sad about having to leave but we will make the most of our time left. So far, it’s been a wonderful time and we will definitely be sad to leave Haiti.

Yvette (for Karen, Liette and the rest of the HATS gang)

Oh the fun

2011-11-22T22:08:00.000-05:00

Oh the fun that was had today trying to write the letters with the Preschool One class! The children in Preschool One are 3 and 4 years old. Defnitely cute, but impossible to get a straight answer out of. The single biggest challenge came from getting their names sorted out. Sounds like it might be an easy task, right? You simply ask them their name and they tell you, right? Wrong!

Writing sponsor letters

Mariah asking preschooler's name

In Haiti most young children have a name that their family calls them, say Tilo. All their lives they've learned that their name is Tilo. Little do they know that their legal name (the name on their class list for example) is Lorestema Jeannette Philistin. So we ask them their name and they say "Tilo". There is NO Tilo on any list anywhere at HATS. So we go through the list again asking them each name one by one. Each time you ask them, "Is your name ---?" They say "Oui". For each of the 15 names on the list! In the photo below, you can see Mariah trying to figure out the name of one particularly cute little boy. After he said "oui" to each name on the list, she started asking him, "Is your name crocodile? Is your name Liette? etc" and of course he answered in the affirmative every time. I was laughing so hard that I could barely catch my breath. After that gong show, the grade 6 and 7's were a piece of cake!

Yvette hugging Dieunel, Ismyis and Judel

Once school was out, we were back to scanning and downloading photos. The internet is amazingly slow here, so please be patient if you're waiting for your sponsor letter and photo.

This afternoon included a trip to Pont Sonde to pay the electric bill. Seems like an awful lot of money for a couple of hours of power per day if we're lucky!!

I had a chance to teach English to a great group of young people at Luckner's trade school. Energetic and eager to learn we enjoyed our time together.

Magalie and Sandra

The day was rounded out by a lovely walk along the canal and then a soccer game where Vladimy beat Yvette and I playing together against him! And he had bare feet. But he only beat us by one point, so our self image is still somewhat intact.

Canal walk at sunset

Mariah with Sandra and Karena

Karena and Sandra both sleeping

This evening we are busy scanning, scanning, scanning. Tomorrow we have the fun of letters and photos with the other two preschool classes.

Dieumima and Isymis

Yvette has her more normal hairstyle today, but unfortunately her feet are swollen and she's not enjoying having "fat feet"!

Thanks for reading!

Liette for Karen, Yvette and the rest of the HATS gang

Sunday

2011-11-20T22:27:00.000-05:00

Today started with church. The congregation consists of mostly children and they do a lot of singing, clapping and keeping rhythm with tambourines. Even though the kids were singing songs I was familiar with, I couldn't think of the english words because the singing was so beautifully loud. I didn't do so badly with the clapping. For those who are thinking of coming in the future, Karen will put you on the spot and make you sing. I told Karen I would throw up if she made me sing and she told me she would bring me a bucket. She has no time for nonsense! We ended up sing "Jesus loves the little children" with the kids joining in. Apparently that wasn't good enough so we brought Mariah up and the 3 of us sang "I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart". The message of the morning was to love one another. Oh, and I never threw up but I felt my lip quivering a little....

Mariah's birth dad Jean Pierre joined us at church and then came back to Karen's for a visit. He brought a bunch of fruit and vegetables as a gift, as he often does.

I got my hair done again. I think they have pulled half of it out. And of course it looks beautiful as always.

Later in the afternoon Liette, Mariah, Vladimy and I went to visit Liette's friend Rigaud and his family. We took a mototaxi half the way there. I didn't know you could fit three people on a motorbike comfortably. I was in the middle so I have no idea if the back person is comfortable. Our driver had the craziest braided hair that stuck straight up like spikes. We sat outside Rigaud's home and chatted. We were treated to fresh coconut. We watch a guy walk up the palm tree, throw a dozen coconuts down and then slide down the tree like it was a fire pole. Very cool.

When we walked back we took all the kids to the field beside the church for a little game of soccer. It was amazing to see dozens of neighbor kids come out of the woodwork just because a soccer ball was there. Later Vladimy took on Liette and I and of course us girls won. But not by much.

In the evening we went through some items that had been donated. It's a lot like opening presents that aren't for you personally. We had fun picking out outfits that each of the kids will get for Christmas this year.

Finally, there is a photo of Sandra and a photo of Jonathan that we have to add because they're so incredibly adorable.

Until next time....adios!

Yvette, for Karen, Liette and the whole HATS gang

HATS Family

2011-11-19T22:53:00.000-05:00

Today we'd like to take a moment to introduce each of the kids to those of you reading the blog who don't know them. And to thank everyone who donated a Christmas present for the kids. The presents are all safely tucked away until Christmas day when they'll bring joy to the kids.

We'll go from oldest to youngest.

This is Vladimy (16). A sensitive, helpful boy, he loves soccer and listening to the radio.

TiFi (11). She loves people and is learning more words every day. TiFi is mentally challenged.

This is Mirlande (10). She is inquisitive, intelligent and bossy.

This is JJ (10). JJ is energetic, loves to learn and loves sports.

This is Moise (9). Sweet-natured and helpful, he loves to play with Ti Luc.

This is Dieumima (9). Intelligent and kind, she loves to walk along the river.

This is Leica (7). Affectionate and fun-loving, she loves to laugh.

This is Ti Luc (6). Smart and determined, he loves to interact and play jokes on people.

This is Karma (6). She loves people and has the biggest smile you've ever seen.

This is Josie (6). Laid-back and cute, she likes to braid visitors' hair.

This is Ismyis (5). Energetic and super affectionate, she loves to swing in the kids' playground.

This is Dieumel (5). Sweet-tempered and athletic, he can be found climbing the monkey bars.

This is Judel (4). Impossible to ignore, Judel will hold your hand and steal your heart.

This is Karena (3). Smart as a whip and with an amazing smile, Karena loves to play house and tell the other young kids what to do.

This is Jofky (2). Karena's best friend, Jofky can be moody, but is sweet nonetheless.

This is Anne (1 1/2). Anne is quiet and sweet, watching the other kids run all around her.

This is Sandra (6 months). Calm and happy, Sandra has the best baby smile and laugh ever!

This is Jonathan (6 weeks). This tiny guy loves to be snuggled and held.

That's it for today! More tomorrow from Liette, Yvette and the HATS gang.

At 3:00 a.m our first alarm went off

2011-11-19T00:20:00.000-05:00

…. actually it was a truck honking it’s horn and pretty much had Liette on the roof…she went back to sleep immediately (unfortunately I did not) until our 5:30 alarm clock went off to start our day. We took a truck full of kids to do a hike leaving behind a crowd of tiny kids looking thru the fence at us.

We saw lots of wild life on the way up…goats, chicken, pigs, horses, cows, dogs and even turkeys. The kids had no problem scrambling up the hill. I was amazed at the people coming down the mountain with huge loads on their head and of course, nothing on their feet. At the top Seth discovered if you move the right rocks you find brown scorpions. A few feet from the one we found another one with all her babies on her back. I thought that was pretty cool. The kids enjoyed climbing the tree at the top of the mountain. And we all enjoyed the beautiful view.

The high school kids were busy cutting grass with machetes (and killing three snakes) in the back field behind the school. They are trying to get it ready for soccer matches. A group of girls cooked a meal for the hard workers, and the boys hanging around in the shade just waiting for lunch...

The afternoon consisted of another beautiful hairdo, some badminton with Moise and JJ, and and a very quick dip in the private hospital pool. Liette, Mariah and I couldn’t have found a better way to cool off.

We took another nice walk along the canal. The two tired babies happily shared a stroller for a quick nap.

Yvette tried to cover up her amazing hairdo with her hat, but the kids all had to try it on. We've decided that Tifi really rocked the hat and we can now see what she'll look like at 55 years old.

This evening we had an awesome lightning show. The clouds were lit up from behind for lightning for well over an hour. Truly an awesome display of God’s creation.

Oh, and we did do a little tiny bit of work….
Yvette and Liette (for all of us at HATS)

Falling stars, fireflies, toads and bats

2011-11-17T21:43:00.000-05:00

Falling stars, fireflies, toads and bats were what I got to think about as I went to bed last night. I didn’t realize that when you take one picture of a tree frog, you’re ok but when you take two, the frog leaps off the wall and pees all over you…interesting….. Today I found out that the HATS kids don’t like frogs because they pee in your eye and make you blind…

Yvette

A long beautiful walk along the canal to start and end the day - what could be better. Haiti is such a beautiful country and the walks along the canal can re-energize you to face the challenges that lie ahead. The kids love the canal walks and everyone had a wonderful time, besides Jofky, who was not happy at being forced to walk for a few minutes.

The day began with awesome singing in the school before classes began. Yvette, Jessie and I had a chance to get several classes of student photos and letters completed today. The majority of the letters are already translated so now we're scanning and prepping them to send out to the sponsors. Your letters/photos will soon be in your inbox!

I got to see Mariah teaching in action. Wow, with a class of 15 excited little people and very few supplies, she is doing a fantastic job. So proud of her :)

There was a rousing game of football late this afternoon with Yvette and Vladimy taking on Seth and Liette. Vladimy and Yvette won by one point, but Moise seemed like a biased referee if you ask me. That was followed by Yvette getting a new hairdo by three talented and determined young ladies. Not sure if the twisted dreads will every come out, but she sure looks cute!

Tomorrow is our hike up the mountain. The kids who are old enough to do the hike are beside themselves with excitement and I'm sure there will be lots of stories about how HIGH the mountain is and how they were unable to do anything but run full speed down the mountain because it's SO steep. We're heading out at 6am to beat the heat, so we'll be heading to bed soon.

Hugs to everyone back home!

Liette (and the HATS gang)

We’ve arrived safely

2011-11-16T20:22:00.000-05:00

We’re happy to say that we’ve arrived safely in Deschapelles, Haiti. We flew into Port-au-Prince early this am and were already at Hands Across the Sea shortly after noon. We had a chance to peek into the classrooms at the school, including seeing Mariah teach her preschool class!

The kids were all so happy to see us, except for Jofky, who is reserving judgement for the moment.

Jofky's just not too sure yet

This afternoon was spent organizing the donated gifts into bins to await Christmas as well as organizing the diapers and formula for the babies. We had a chance to hold babies too! Late afternoon as an English pronunciation / speaking class at Luckner’s trade school with an enthusiastic group of students aged 12-27 years old. After games and hugs with the kids, it was soupe joumou for dinner.

Yvette hard at work

Tomorrow will be a big day as we start the process of getting all of the students photographed and their letters written to their sponsors in Canada or the U.S. We’re hoping to get a lot done tomorrow as the schools are closed Friday for a National holiday.

We’re hot, but happy to be here!

Liette and Yvette

Here we are again, finally

2011-11-14T21:30:00.000-05:00

Here we are again, finally. Actually we tried to get a blog posted on Saturday. Mariah wrote a blog twice on Saturday but lost both due to electicity problems.

Two more sleeps before Liette arrives. YEAH!!!! Wednesday morning early Luckner and I will be heading to the airport in PAP to pick up Liette and Yvette. Are we anxious? Are we excited? Yes and Yes. You bet we are.

End of day play time

While here Liette will be in charge of getting all school photos and all thank you letters done for our wonderful sponsors. Getting them done is only part of the huge task. Letters all need to be translated, scanned, and put into a file in the computer. Photos need to be taken, names of all students prepared in advance to go with the photos, and downloaded to the computer. Then all sponsors need to be emailed with two attachments - the letter from their student (s) and a photo of their student (s). Am I thankful that Liette is returning this year to take on this horrendous job once again?? Thankful does not cover it. I might be seen in the compound next week jumping up and down with joy and praising and thanking God that the letters and photos are done.

Liette is coming and taking on a big job again, but we will have time together as well. That is what Mariah and I are looking forward to. We are both looking forward to having Yvette here for the first time too and sharing everything with her.

Speaking of Mariah we have news about her. Mariah was planning on returning to Canada in December. Plans, however, have changed and Mariah has agreed to stay on until school closes in June. Mariah is one of our preschool teachers. She is doing a good job and is liked by teachers and students. For awhile now Mariah has been in charge of prescolaire I as we have loaned the other teacher to one of our other classes for awhile. Mariah is keen and keeping things going nicely on her own. Eventually the other teacher will rejoin her again and they will share the teaching. Mariah is hoping to be able to start some university courses online in January.

Baby Jonathan was released from the hospital late Friday. O happy day! It was a huge relief to all of us. He is doing fine - tiny still but starting to fill out. Yesterday, he was back to church with us snuggled into the sling Mama Karen carries him in.

Multi-tasking at its best

Today it was great to see Seth on his feet again. He had been ill for awhile, with what appeared to be a nasty case of strep throat. It really was fantastic to see him walking across the compound.
We give God thanks for the renewed health of Baby Jonathan and Seth. Other than runny noses the other kids are well. They are busy with school work and mischief.

Work continues on the school compound. Our office is finished and getting a lot of use. The secondary part of the school, that was damaged in the earthquake, is being worked on when school is not in session. Slowly and steadily things are improving and looking good. Lots of positive comments when people come on the main compound and/or the school compound. HATS has a good reputation in the area and people are pleased to see the work continuing.

Grades 7,8,9 being reinforced & finished

I cannot blog without saying thank you. Saying 'thank you' does not in any way convey the amount of thankfulness in my heart to all of you. You are loved, appreciated and needed. All of you!

Gwo Luckner and Ti Luckner

Mariah with my kids

Karena & Jofky ready to help Jacques

Karen and kids

Precious baby Jonathan

2011-11-08T22:45:00.000-05:00

Precious baby Jonathan has been in the hospital for the past few days and will be for awhile yet. He came down with a fever on Thursday evening. Friday morning off to the hospital we went where he was quickly admitted. Since his fever broke Sunday morning I expected I would get him home today, Monday. Not. His doctor told me he has an infection in his blood that has to be cleared up first and he needs to keep him there for another four to five days. Yikes. It is not easy for us with an emergency like this as one of the house mothers has to be at the hospital all the time. That, in turn, leaves us short staffed on site and no days off for anyone, but this precious baby boy is more important than any of the above.

Baby Jonathan in hospital

Baby Jonathan with Mama in hospital

School is doing well and starting to sort itself out for the year. Next week Liette and Yvette arrive to take care of all letters and photos of the sponsored students. Thank you, God. Some of our sponsors will find that you have a different student this year. If this is so, there is a good reason for it.

Mariah continues to do a good job at the school. She is a mature and disciplined teacher for whom the other teachers and the director have a lot of respect. She will be sorely missed at the school after Christmas. This week she is teaching one of the younger grades by herself.

Mariah in charge of her own class

Our students are delighted and thankful to be receiving a meal at school again. Most of them arrive at school hungry and so this meal is extremely important. Today our school director, Luckner, and his assistant, Wagler, spent a lot of time taking up the food and serving the students. This enabled the students to be served more quickly to make room for other students.

Meal for our students

Luckner, Director, & Wagler Asst Director taking up the meal for the students.

Jessie and Seth have been busy painting the new school office for Luckner and I, and I might add have done a great job of it. Seth keeps busy building things we need. Jessie continues to help where needed - in the office, helping Leica with her school lessons, painting, etc.

Jessie & Seth painting our school office

The office/future library building is finished (only needs painting outside) and looking good. We have a 'real' school office. Thank you, Lord. We used our office today for the first time and were thrilled to have space to work. We will be able to hold staff meetings in comfort from now on instead of standing in the school yard.

Beautiful school office and future library

A 'real' school office. Yeah!!

The children are doing well. The older ones glad to be attending school. Ti Luc is doing well in school with his reading. Writing, of course, is not easy for him. He cannot write small and neatly in an exercise book like other students. He has small portable blackboards in his backpack for this and continues to write with his feet - actually with his left foot. His teacher has patience and understanding with him. He is bright, loves going to school, and has a sense of humour that keeps us all entertained. Karena and Jofky continue to be bossom pals. Anne chases these two around and does whatever they do. Little Sandra continues to blossom and light up whenever she sees us.

Grade One. Ti Luc at front working with his feet

Jofky & Karena

Gorgeous Baby Sandra

My children are all precious and give me joy, along with the stress that comes naturally with being a mother - I now have 18. I am constantly being asked to take other children, but I do not do so lightly. We are a family and I do not want to ever see that change. There is a place and necessity for institutions, but even before purchasing the land for HATS, I knew I was to form a 'family' and do the best I could as a mother to bring the children up and keep the family together. With God's help, that of others here with me, and yours may we continue to be a family.

IT IS ALL ABOUT THE CHILDREN.

Many thanks to all of you. God bless you.
Karen and kids

I am so thankful

2011-11-03T16:31:00.000-04:00

So, even though it is only November 2nd and our Thanksgiving in United States isn’t until November 24th, I have been in a very thankful mindset lately. I am so thankful for God and the way he works. I am thankful that He chose Seth and I to fill this position and has been so faithful throughout the entire journey. I am thankful for how he has grown Seth and I’s marriage and helped us each individually learn much needed things and discover a more intimate relationship with Him. I am thankful that Karen has let us be a part of HATS and the children’s lives. We are so overjoyed to get to see these kids everyday. We are thankful for Karen and her service to this mission. Her faithfulness in carrying out God’s will for her life and her hard, hard, HARD work here. We are also thankful for Mariah and her sacrifice to be here with us and how she brings so much joy to Karen. In addition, we are extremely thankful for James, Ken and Betty, and Sara and Peter: all who have brought us such a source of community and friendship. God has been so good to us this past year and we are so thankful for a opportunity to grow more Christ-like while being part of this mission.

Things have picked up here around HATS. With school starting, Seth and I have been much more busy. Seth doing carpentry and me doing office work. These past several days, I have been trying to get the school sponsor list ready for when Liette comes down, so she can use it when organizing the school sponsorship photos and letters. I have really enjoyed my work here, especially that I don’t do any certain task for a long period of time. This work has been great, and I have been still trying to keep up with other small things I REALLY enjoy doing.

Mirlande and I still try to meet once a week and discuss a bible story focused on one of the Fruits of the Spirit. During our meeting the other day, we got on the topic of dreams. She told me that she would love to become the President of Haiti. However, that she would quickly get rid of the chofer and the door opener to her car because she would want to drive herself. I told her people would probably LOVE her for that. :)

I also have been trying to do a craft each week based off the Creation Story. I am doing a three week sermon spread out on the Creation story. To kick it off, we made animal masks to later use at our final Creation party at the end of the sermon series. I explained what we would be learning in church and how they would need the information they will learn in church to complete the creation party at the end. The kids were really excited. Since then, we have been doing a craft each week for each day of creation and recapping the lesson.

The kids with their animal masks

Within the last few weeks, we have had some really neat visitors. One group was a Canadian group who stopped by for a full day visit. They got to see the whole compound, the school, and time to play with the kids. It was a blast having them around and hearing all their stories. One very encouraging guy named, James, for Seth and I told us how him and his wife went to Africa on their honeymoon and stayed for two years to do mission work. His wife always says he owes her another honeymoon! :) Now that is dedication to God’s calling! The other was a previous resident at HATS. Janine, who lived here for a total of 3 months in 2005, came to visit last Wednesday through Saturday. It was neat to hear her experiences with HATS and the other orphanages she worked with and her new passions in ministry.

Yesterday was October 31st, yes Halloween, but also Mariah’s adoption day. It is such a neat thing her family does. They chose a day between Josiah’s adoption date and her’s and they celebrate every year that God gave them to the family. So NEAT! We had a small party on the bank of the canal as the sun set.

Mariah's adoption celebration

Today, a group from Borel stopped by to play with the kids. They brought mats to sit on for the truck ride there, but the kids soon turned them into toys. We had toboggan rides, house with sleeping bags, and crawling, hungary animals. The kids had a blast and can enjoy the simplest things.

The kids new toys

Mariah is still working over at the school and doing a fantastic job. She looks very professional as she heads over to the school every morning and always has various jobs to be doing. Last week, she hand drew two poster boards for separate classrooms of all the fruits and vegetables she could fit on it. They both turned out great!

Karen, well, I think if I listed everything she has been doing in the last few weeks we would be here for days reading! All I have to say is that lady is BUSY! She has been keeping track of the school, organizing and handing out school books, replacing and adding school students on the sponsor sheet, and everything else you can imagine. She is still go, go, go!!

Karen and her kids

Seth’s turn....

Well, first I want to brag on my wife a bit. She talked about her crafts, but I want to tell you what I see as a helper and observer. The kids love Jess! They love the crafts that she puts together for them and they are constantly asking when she is going to do the next craft with them. Most importantly, they’re learning about God! Before she starts the craft she reviews the lesson from church with them and explains how it applies to the craft. A few weeks ago she asked the kids what were the fruits of the Spirit and what were some examples of good and bad fruit. They were full of good answers! To the extent that we could barely get them to speak one at a time! It’s the kind of disorder that brings a smile to your face because they were so excited to share what they’ve been learning!

Like Jess said, things have picked up quite a bit from August. While things were slow, I helped Jacques harvest the corn from the garden behind Karen’s house. Lately I’ve been working on building 2 desks and 3 cabinets for the offices at the school. I also built a swimming pool (That’s what I told the kids). Actually, it was a very large tool box (6 1/2 X 3 X 3) for the work teams that come down so that they will ALWAYS have tools to work with here (I’m pretty sure there’s a Haitian tool troll that’s constantly stealing our tools!). Soon, I will be building a roof for the small office at the school, as well as helping with painting the offices.

The Boys Repairing the Backboard

I’ve also been playing a lot of soccer with the boys and lately teaching JJ and Moise how to throw the football and run routes. I have to tell a story about Moise. A few weeks ago Moise and I went over to the field next to HATS to play (JJ and Vladimy were busy). We played a few games. The older boys are always trying to kick the small boys off of the field so in the second game I told a smaller boy who didn’t get to play the first game to play in my place. I made sure, though, that Moise didn’t get kicked off. I went and stood on the sidelines and as I started to watch the game I realized Moise wasn’t playing. I realized he was standing next to me, so I asked him, “why aren’t you playing.” I was getting ready to stop the game because I figured the older boys had kicked him off the field. Instead he pointed at a kid and responded, “I let him play in my place.” Then he stood and cheered joyfully for his team! What a great kid! I was so proud of him!

We’ve started a nursery for church (we may have already said that in a blog). Sandra, Ann, Jofky, and Karena tend to take to much of the other kids attention, so we thought it would be best to have a nursery. The adults take turns at it, but I do it the most because when Jess isn’t speaking, I’m the one that gets the least out of a sermon because I don’t understand it all yet. So why not watch the little ones!

Nursery

Tuesday and Wednesday were a holiday here in Haiti- The Day of the Dead. To counteract some of the ‘other’ stuff that goes on during this holiday here, Luckner held a time of prayer and fasting at Radio Creole. Jess and I got to join Karen and Mariah to pray and worship with our brothers and sisters at the station. It was an encouraging time of worship together!

Also, remember Mariah in your prayers. She’s feeling better today because school was out the past two days and she took that time to get a lot of rest, but she could still use your prayers for a full recovery. Thanks

A beautiful picture from a walk

Thanks again for all of your support of us here at HATS. God bless you!

So much for good intentions

2011-10-25T23:32:00.000-04:00

Goodness another week has passed since I last blogged. So much for good intentions. The intentions are good but the time to follow through is not good.

We are all doing well here. Other than colds the children are good. Our new baby boy, Jonathan, is eating well and growing. Sandra looks big in comparison to Jonathan. She is chubby and healthy now, loves to try to stand and has two teeth coming though. She lights up like a little Christmas tree when she sees us. I have her in the office with me whenever possible, which is good for both her and me. Karena is still Mariah's little girl and gets jealous of anyone else with Mariah.

One month old Jonathan

Cutie Pitutie Sandra

My kids love books but destroy them. Thus I now have library hour at my house. It is a great way to get them interested and teach them to care for and respect all books.

Library hour at Mama's place

Karena & Moise at library hour

Jessie and Seth are busier again now since school reopened. Seth has been building storage cupboards for our school office, and a big tool cupboard for our depot. Jessie has been helping in the office and wherever needed at any given time. Sorry photos next time.

School is going well. We have not yet been able to start our feeding program for this year but hopefully we will be able to start feeding the students soon. They are, however, glad to be receiving their Reliv Kid's Now nutritious drink every day. They call it their 'chokola' and they love it.

Mariah is teaching and assisting with all prescolaire classes. She is doing a good job for our school which is being noted by all teachers and the school direction. In fact the school director asked if she could stay a little longer and leave in Dec instead of Nov 24th as planned. She agreed. I will attach a couple of photos of her in her two different teacher uniforms. Her being fluent in French and Creole as well as English is a tremendous blessing for us.

Mariah in her teacher's uniform

Mariah teaching at IMKH

As the office for Luckner and I is not yet finished we are both having problems trying to get necessary paperwork done. Getting textbooks into the hands of the sponsored students is proving a major problem as always but we are almost finished that. Now I need to get going on the sponsored students list and get accurate information out to the sponsors. Jessie will come in handy there soon. Speaking of sponsors - to those of you who have already been sponsoring and to those of you who are new, thank you very much for helping your student(s).

Office-Library building starting to look good

Liette and her good friend, Yvette, will be arriving November 15th and Liette will undertake her huge task once again of getting all student's thank you letters and photos done for this year.

Speaking of students. Is there anyone interested in sponsoring students to attend the Trade School at Luckner's place. He has people wanting to sign up for English and Computer classes - 6 and 8 month courses - but they are unable to pay. He needs to pay the teachers but without help for the students there is a problem. Later other courses will be offered there. The students attending, and wanting to attend, range in age from 14 to adult. Some are presently attending our school - IMKH, and some are former students of ours.

Computer class at Trade School

Our church/Sunday school continues to function. Our numbers are rising again now that school is in. Last Sunday was a special one at our service. Mariah's biological father, his wife, and Mariah's four half siblings left their area and came to our service. It was special for them and Mariah but also for all of us who were there. I explained to the congregation who they were and a little about Mariah's adoption. Everyone was extremely interested, and the school students were totally fascinated. After church the family joined us here and Mariah served them a meal she cooked herself. It was indeed a special day. In the photo, and video clip (if it can be attached) you will see her biological father and family at the back of our little church group.

Ti service at church Sunday morning

On Wednesday we had a lovely group of ten from Montreal with us for the day. Allan Heron, who I first met here last March, was the leader. This was a very interesting group and their time here was too short. I am sorry I do not have photos as my camera battery decided to quit that day. I expect photos will come to me from the team and I will add some on another blog.

Those of you who have been following my experiences here for some time might remember a young lady, Janine Roth, from BC who was here with me some years back for approx 2 months. Janine is presently in Haiti again and we look forward to having her join us for three days tomorrow. She will see some major changes and improvements and meet lots of new children and employees. My kids are excited. Moise was very little and does not remember her. JJ, one year older, says he does, but I am not sure. Mirlande and Vladimy certainly do remember Janine. No doubt the three days will pass too quickly.

I have been blessed several times recently by hearing people say they had been told that this mission has a really good orphanage, and children are extremely well cared for. The word is out that if someone needs a 'good' place for a child they should come here. Government workers and UN workers have passed this along too. Nice to know people see us as doing a good job with children. We now have 2 babies and several small children. I think we need to wait now before adding another one.

IT IS ALL ABOUT THE CHILDREN

I cannot blog without saying thank you, Thank you, THANK YOU to all of you.

God bless each and every one of you. Karen and gang

Birth announcement.

2011-10-13T21:43:00.000-04:00

It is a boy! Three weeks old. His name is Jonathan. Number 18 in my family. He is a precious brother to my seventeen other children: Sandra - almost 6 months; Anne - 1 1/2; Jofky - 2; Karena - almost 3; Judel - 4; Ismyis - 5; Dieunel - 5; Josie - 5 1/2; Karma - 6; Ti Luc - 6; Leica - 7; Moise - almost 9; JJ - almost 10; Djemima - almost 9; Mirlande 10; Ti Fi - 11; Vladimy - 16. All the children are thrilled to have a new baby brother. My boys are especially happy as they have been asking for some time that the next baby be a boy.


My newest one - Baby Jonathan - 3 weeks old

Jonathan being introduced to his brothers & sisters

Baby Sandra welcoming Baby Jonathan

Last Sunday afternoon Mariah went to do some gymnastics with the young girls who meet Sunday afternoons at Antoinette's church. They had a blast and want her to return. I decided she only goes if Antoinette picks her up on a moto taxi and brings her back to me the same way. Why you ask? Perhaps the photo I am attaching of the road I drove Mariah over last week, to take her to Antoinette's, will help you understand why.

I drove this ROAD with Mariah

Mariah has been great about putting Ti Luc to bed every night. It has been a great help for me. Then I go in, pray with him and kiss him goodnight. Tonight the tables were turned. I found Ti Luc putting Mariah to bed instead, and putting her in his bed I might add. He brought a blanket (and did it himself with his hands) to cover her. Then he turned his back to her, so he had the bed railing for support for his back, and proceeded to pray just as I do every night with him. He finished it off, also just as I do, with kissing her goodnight. It was so cute. He then found me in the office and asked where he was to sleep. I told him he needed to go outside and upstairs to Mariah's bed. I expected a negative response to that idea but he quickly responded 'okay mama'. He, however, went back to check on Mariah just as I do him and then he ran to me to tell me Mariah was stuck in his bed. He kept saying 'come please Mama'. Off I went and there was Mariah with her hair severly caught on the metal headboard of his bed. There was no way she could get up without me untangling it. Ti Luc thought it was just too funny.

Ti Luc put Mariah to bed and now praying for her.

Ti Luc now kissing Mariah good night

Good night folks. Thanks again for all your love, encouragement and help in every way. Can't do it without you.

Happy Thanksgiving....

2011-10-09T17:01:00.000-04:00

.... to all my Canadian family and friends. As you celebrate together may you truly be thankful for who you are; for your children and theirs; for all you have; for all that you have done - the good and the not so good; and thank Him for the wonderful country of Canada you live in.

We do not celebrate a "Thanksgiving day or weekend" in Haiti. I, however, endeavor to give God thanks every day - for the privilege of serving Him in Haiti, and for the things I mentioned above. This certainly includes the good and the bad throughout my life as it is the combination of it all that God has used to shape me into the person I am. I am thanking Him for all of you and for all of your support. Your friendship and loving kindness is what keeps me going and keeps me in touch with the needy ones here.

I would certainly enjoy a thanksgiving turkey dinner today with all the trimmings and would enjoy chatting and laughing with loved ones in Canada. I, however, am enjoying the chicken drumstick cooked by Magalie and for the love of my child, Leica, who proudly delivered it to me here in the office so I can keep on working. I am thankful for Mariah being here with me and for all seventeen of my precious children. IT TRULY IS ALL ABOUT THE CHILDREN. If I tried to write all the things and people I am thankful for I would do nothing else so I will leave it at this. I thank my God for his presence in my life and for all of you.

School should actually operate normally this week and for this I am very thankful. By the end of this week we will know who is, and who is not, in attendance at our school. We will be using Mariah's help at the school every morning until she returns to Canada at end of November. Teachers at our school also dress in uniforms (which I might add gives them a very professional look) and I will be having one made for Mariah also. I detect some reservations from Mariah about what it will look like, but I promise I will post a photo later of her in uniform. There was a lot of excitement on Friday when my kids received a new backpack for school. O happy day. Karena, Jofky and little Anne are not yet in school but I gave them a bag too. They were thrilled and hopefully it will ease the disappointment that they are not yet able to go to school.

My kids - happy over their new backpacks

At the moment my house is a mess due to textbooks and boxes. It is ugly and not comfortable but a necessary part of life for the school to operate. Mariah says we look like we are moving house. I might add I do not at all enjoy the first month of school - but survive it once again I will.

Small start on huge textbook job

Hopefully we will be able to get Phase Three of the present construction at the school - especially the room that is for an office for Luckner and I - underway soon. It is not easy to meet with parents, teachers, or anyone else without an office.

Yesterday we had a 'ti fet' for Ti Luc. He was quite excited to be celebrating his birthday.

Baby Sandra kissing Ti Luc Happy Birthday

Ti Luc getting birthday kisses from Rose Lore

Papa Luckner brought Ti Luc gift and icecream

The last blog talked about the two voodoo priests who came to the Lord and were baptised. On Thursday morning a fasting and praying time was held for six hours at the land of one of these men. The, well attended, prayer time was for both of the men and was broadcast on Radio Creole. That day most of the HATS employees were turned to the radio station and praying along with those of us, including Mariah and I, who had gone.

Happenings at prayer vigil going to Radio Station

Prayer and fasting. Mariah & Magalie in foreground

Computer skills and Basic English are being taught presently at The Trade School. Many people are interested but despite Luckner's helping with school fees (just taking enough to pay teachers) most are unable to attend as of yet. I am enjoying doing English pronunciation with the students Monday and Wednesday afternoons for an hour and I must add I do enjoy getting out of this office and doing this. For my friends who know me and have made me laugh, I want you to know I am being careful to have them pronounce the words in Canadian English and not Newfie English a.k.a Newfinese. Because, however, I am writing this and no one can edit it, I am taking the liberty here to speak from my heart. Newfie English is by far the 'best' English there is. It takes a Newfoundlander, a true Newfie, to speak it properly. " Deres nuttin like it by. Nuttin a tal. So dere! "

Some students of English course at the trade school

"Remember one person's life being changed is more important than all the material things the world has to offer."

Love from Karen and family

School's In

2011-10-04T22:16:00.000-04:00

God is moving in our area, thanks to the radio station at Luckner's. Radio Creole FM is sharing the word of the Lord, praying for people throughout the area, playing Christian music, and Luckner is teaching that attending a church means nothing without accepting Christ and following his leading. These things taught through the radio station are having fantastic results. Lives are being changed daily. Marriages are being restored, families are being reunited and people are receiving physical help when needed. Two transformations took place in the past 24 hours - one last night and one this morning. Two voodoo priests have accepted the Lord and with the help of Christians have burned all the paraphernalia they used in voodoo. This afternoon both these men were baptised. Many people throughout this area are thanking God daily for Radio Creole.

Luckner (in blue) with the two men left of him who are about to be baptised

Luckner, Appollon (Magalie's husband), Benoit (Antoinette's husband) and other pastors

Mariah at the baptism

Richard - a changed life

Wagler (works at radio station) & Luckner sharing what is taking place with radio listeners

Schools opened yesterday, Oct 3rd. By next week we should be operating somewhat normally. The first week of school in Haiti tends to see students drifting in slowly. My children were anxious to get back to school and are quite happy to be putting on their uniforms early mornings again and going next door to the school compound. Yesterday was a very exciting day for sweet little Judel as it was his first day of school. This year I have Judel in Prescolaire 1; Josie, Ismyis and Dieunel in Prescolaire 3; Leica, Karma and Ti Luc - Grade 1; Moise - grade 3; Djeumima - grade 4; JJ and Mirlande - grade 5; and Vladimy - grade 9. Jofky cried both days because his buddy Judel was leaving him here on this compound. Ti Fi, Karena, Jofky, Anne, and Sandra must wait their turn for school.

Judel's first day of school - Prescolaire 1

First day of school for this year for my kids

Please give me a little time to know exactly which students are in the school this year. If there is a change in your sponsored student (s) I will be in touch as soon as possible. By next week I will most likely be using Jessie and Mariah's help with doing the student sponsored list, etc. for this school year. Liette, with her friend Yvette, will be coming in November and will be doing all the school photos and letters for sponsors. This huge task being removed from my shoulders by Liette again this year means a great deal to me. Thank you, God, and thank you , Liette.

Basic computer skills and English are presently being taught at the trade school at Luckner's. I am enjoying helping Luckner with the English course on Monday and Wednesday afternoons. He teaches the students English theory for an hour and then I do a second hour and work with them on pronunciation.

Again I thank you for your awesome support of every kind. A lot is being done to help throughout this area, and especially for children, but the people would not be helped and blessed without you.

IT IS ALL ABOUT THE CHILDREN

God bless you all. Karen and gang

Hello All!

2011-09-27T23:28:00.000-04:00

It’s been about a week so we figured it was time for another update. Karen has been gone this week so Mariah, Jess, and I have been in charge. We’ve had a lot of fun together! The past four nights we’ve either eaten or had snacks together to wind down the day, while we watch the Pirates of the Caribbean (half of one each night, since they’re 3 hour movies!). We’re sad that we don’t have the 4th one to watch, though! For any of you that haven’t been to the Caribbean, believe us, those movies are completely accurate! I just haven’t found my gold yet.

Last Wednesday we were blessed to have a dental team stop by and look at the kids! The team is staying a few miles down the road in Borel at Project Help and so they told Karen they would come for an afternoon. We only had one kid who had a problem that needed fixed, and he got to take a ride the next day down to Borel.

Dental Team

Mariah has been keeping busy with school stuff. School starts on Monday and there are a lot of loose ends to tie before school begins. And with Karen gone, Mariah is in charge of that part! This next week will be pretty busy, but we’re excited for this new season to begin. The kids are excited too, especially Judel who begins his first year!

Jess, Mariah and Antwa have also started working on updating our devotion song books, which is long overdue. We’re all excited to have some new songs to sing each morning and a little bit more variety. Also, Jess has set up a few crafts for the kids to keep them occupied while school is still out. The kids have really enjoyed it and have listened extremely well. Karen will be happy to see their work when she returns! The kids are also loving learning gymnastics with Mariah, actually they are doing that right now!

Craft Day

Who's who

Gymnastics

As for me, I’m becoming one of the creatures in the Pirates of the Caribbean- I’m becoming one with my chair! Maybe not entirely. My goal this week was to finish 3 small 2 drawer dressers for the housemoms. So I’ve been doing my best to spread that work out so I can have some woodworking each day and then also help with crafts and other stuff as well. I’ve also had the chance of bringing the boys next door to play soccer a few times this week.

We had a nice relaxing weekend here at HATS. Other than the occasional sound of a saw by Eden (who was repairing a few desks for the school) things were pretty quiet. Sunday was the most home-like Sunday since we’ve been here! Jess, Mariah, Ti Luc and I relaxed all day watching football! It was fun teaching Ti Luc about American football, which is kind of hard since all he really knows is soccer. He yelled “gooooaaaal!!!!” every time Darren McFadden ran across the goal line (even on the replays!) and on practically every pass play (even if the ball wasn’t caught)! I guess i’ll just have to teach him a little at a time! Then Mariah, Jess and I made a pizza loaf and watched our movie!

JJ and Anne

We really do appreciate all of your prayers and support of each of us here, we are humbled because we know this wouldn’t be possible without the help of our Family in Christ! We are just happy to be Christ’s vessels- instruments for his glory! Thanks again and God bless you!

Hello All,

2011-09-21T13:30:00.000-04:00

So, I always say that I haven’t posted in forever, but really it has been a long time! We are going to keep this one short and sweet, though, and just catch you up with the happenings of HATS.

Seth and I have had a lot more down time than usual. We went from being crazy busy while Karen was gone, to having our family being here, to me being sick, and now we are at a point where work is slow. We have really enjoyed the time, but we are also looking forward to getting back to the hustle and bustle again. :) Since we have down time, we have been doing lots of reading and have been getting great time for our devotions. We also got to go this past weekend with missionary James, who shows evangelistic films, up into the mountains to show videos.

In addition to this, we have been playing with the kids! One day last week, Seth and I put together an obstacle course. It was a blast! The kids all ran through it together once and then each one individually did a timed run. This was a pretty amazing feat for the kids. Each turn took about 2 minutes. They all sat and cheered for every kid that went and were beyond excited for their turn. I was so amazed with their enthusiasm and patience that Seth and I just HAD to give them some candy. :) While the kids chowed away. Antwa, Naomie, Seth, and I all gave the course a run too! One word= exhausting. :) (No wonder the kids were breathing so hard)

Doing the obstacle course

Judel completing the obstacle course

Eating their goodies

I was recently able to start a small Bible study with Mirlande. We take our time together to talk over the week, pray over things, and we have been studying the fruits of the Spirit and how that should look in our lives. I have really, really enjoyed it! It is good time to give her one-on-one attention, but it also helps both of us in our Creole/English skills as we communicate and read from the different Bibles.
Yesterday, Seth and I went down to Project Help in Borel to help pour a cement drain on a roof. Peter, with Clean Water, was very happy to have Seth’s help and it was fun being able to help out our fellow missionary friends.

The kids have been a pure joy this past week. It is so neat to see how they are each individually growing and learning. I just want to thank you all for your support and prayers for this place. And thank you for all the things you have done and made possible in these kids lives! :)

Anne being as cute as ever

Jofky's new persona

Jessie

Hello HATS Supporters,

2011-09-20T21:17:00.000-04:00

Lately, we have been getting requests from people asking if there was a way they could receive a blog update in their e-mail. People were noting that it would be great to have it right there in their inbox, so they didn't miss the information. This is possible and very easy! While you are here on the blog website, you will find a blue section on the right hand column. Right above the pictures of the followers, there is a place that says "Receive new posts by e-mail." In the box below, type your e-mail address and the system will send you a confirmation e-mail containing a link. When you click on that link, you are signed up and the system will send you a copy of the blog to your e-mail address whenever a new blog is posted. (Remember you MUST click the link to verify. We have had some people forget to finish that last step :)) This can take up to 24 hours, and is not under our control, but it will appear in your inbox. We, again, want to thank you for following along with the blog and for supporting us in so many ways! Hopefully, this will make it a little easier for everyone to stay connected with what goes on here at HATS.

Good intentions can often be just that - good intentions.

2011-09-19T01:25:00.000-04:00

I seriously planed on blogging more often, every second day doing a short one. Life here, however, tends to constantly get in the way. Mariah did one recently but I realize I really am overdue again. My days are so full one day just runs into another and I hardly know when one has finished and another has begun. This is going to become even more so in two weeks time when school reopens.

Speaking of school. The construction project of office with adjoining library is looking good. This week will see the cement work finished on the walls inside and out. Before we paint, however, we need to get a smooth cement floor poured, and the wood framing done for doors. After this we will need shelves, a storage cupboard in both rooms, and two desks in the office (for Luckner and Karen), filing cabinet, etc. Then chairs so we can actually meet properly with parents and with teachers. For the past couple of years we have held our meetings in the school yard, standing or sitting wherever we can find a little shade.

Office and school building taking shape

Our school will open Monday, October 3rd. Opening was delayed at the order of the president who had an agenda of his own (some political promise he made to do with schooling that everyone knew he could not fulfill.) Thank you to all of our sponsors who are continuing with your student (s). If your student has changed this year I will do my best to let you know within the first two weeks of school opening. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Radio Creole at Luckner's place continues to play Christian music, give God's word daily, and pray three one hour periods a day for those who call in with prayer requests, as well as teach morals, acceptable behaviour, respect for one another, etc. This radio station is making a big difference. When one takes a stand for the Lord, and for the good of all, persecution comes. I knew it would happen and talked to Luckner about it before the station went on the air. Good changes are happening throughout the area and the persecution has hit and keeps on coming. A lot of terrible and evil things take place every night around here and especially at midnight. Radio Creole has a pastor who prays every night from midnight to 1:00 or later. This nightly prayer at Radio Creole, along with everything else that comes over the airwaves from the radio station has upset the apple cart of those who desire to do ungodly things late at night. People want to take revenge against Radio Creole and Luckner. Pastors all throughout this area have banned together and decided to have a day of prayer and fasting (Jen) this Thursday for Radio Creole and Luckner. Then the same evening (Thursday) pastors and other Christians will gather on the roof of the Trade School outside Radio Creole from 6:00 p.m. to midnight to pray. Thank you for your prayer support for Radio Creole FM and for the people in the Artibonite Valley. May God's goodness prevail and evil be knocked down.

Radio Creole FM

My kids are doing well, precious, special and all growing like weeds. They do love to have time with their Mama and I am doing my best to keep up the necessary work load and have more time with them. Too, they enjoy time with Mariah and with Jessie and Seth. Ti Sandra is my new office assistant. She sits in my office with me daily, in what once was Ti Luc's highchair.

Sandra now helps Mama in the office daily

Today is Sunday and what I consider 'Family Day'. We started our day with our little church service. It was Jessie's turn to do a message today. She does one twice a month and Maggie and/or Antoinette the other Sundays. As a part of this morning's message Jessie and Mariah did a skit about keeping our hearts and our lives clean. Our Sunday service is followed with a good meal, and then I try to keep our afternoon open for playing and enjoying time together. Some Sundays we also sit and chat as a family as well and Mama Karen spends time talking about respect for others and growing up with integrity, honesty and good morals. Hopefully some of it will stay with them throughout their lives.

Sunday afternoon family time

Family talk time

Jessie playing with Ti Luc

One happy with ti kado, one in corner due to attitude

Today Mariah helped Magalie prepare the Sunday meal for the children. Mariah helps cook at Luckner's on Tuesdays and Thursdays so by the time she leaves us she should be quite adept at preparing food Haitian style.

Mariah and Magalie preparing the Sunday meal

Mariah, Jessie and Seth painted the two large gates to the compounds as well as the two small ones between the main compound and the school. They had a little help from JJ and Vladimy. It has made a beautiful difference to both the outside and the inside of the compound. It is amazing how much brighter and more attractive a coat of paint makes things.

Mariah can multitask - eat, paint, listen to music and be a goof ball

Finally told the children today that the little house Luckner and I had asked Seth to build was not really for a small 'back up' generator but was a playhouse for them. They were all quite pleased.

Kids are happy with their playhouse

Again, to all of you who follow the blog, thank you for all the support. I have no idea how many actually read what we blog, but I know for sure that a few people do. Thank you Sandra, Dickie and Shondi for always putting a comment on the blog. It is very encouraging for us. Thank you Liette for always posting it to facebook for others to see. Speaking of blogging. Now it Jessie and Seth's turn to write one.

Hello everyone!!

2011-09-16T20:31:00.000-04:00

Well this past week has been a great one. I continue to teach gymnastics for all the kids and moms in the orphanage who want to participate. The class is an hour long every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We have the chance to exercise in a fun and safe environment. We learn pike jumps, tuck jumps, straddle jumps, forward roll and backward roll, cartwheels and other fun skills. We have the chance to play with the parachute for warm up game.

Gymnastics with Mariah

Gymnastics

Parachute warmup for gymnastics

As well I've been working down in Luckner's little shop two days a week. Now I know how to make change and sell lots of things and help costumers with what ever needs to be done. I help Rose Lore with the cooking when I go there and learn how to cook great meals. Rose Lore says that Luckner does not eat a lot but if I cook for him he makes an effort to eat way more!

Mariah helping at Luckner's business

I enjoy very much going to the radio station and seeing my friends that I have made and listening to the great gospel music and the teachings that Luckner and other people do. I was able to go to Ti Riviere with Luckner and a group through the radio station to pray with a young man who wanted to accept the Lord.

One of Mariah's favourite places to go

Praying with a young man in Ti Riviere

Anyway having an awesome week and can't wait for Sunday because Jessie and I will be doing a skit. Should be a blast and hopefully the kids will learn lots from it.
Mariah