When I updated the blog on Monday evening of last week, we
were all feeling grateful for the rain, but then it continued through the night and wee-hours of the morning. On Tuesday we were inundated with rain and it continued to fall sometimes quite
heavily but with occasional breaks in between storms for much of that day. The primary schools were already closed for
teacher training last week, but then the secondary schools closed on Tuesday
and remained so for the rest of the week to give people a chance to deal with
the flooding that occurred in many homes and nearby streets. We were all safe here, neither of the
children’s houses nor the convent flooded, but many people in the nearby city,
were not so fortunate. We even heard
that a couple of people died due to flooding.
Please keep the people of Cap Haitian and other areas of Haiti that
experienced heavy rains, especially those who lost homes or loved ones in your prayers.
There was so much rain in front of the door to the room I
use for therapy on Tuesday morning, that I decided that it would not be wise to
bring the children through such a deep puddle.
In between rainstorms, I did enter the room to straighten up a bit. After I walked through the door, I turned
around and noticed a tarantula sitting on the floor barely a couple of inches from the door frame I had just walked through. For a moment I regretted that I left my rain
boots in a closet in New Orleans. My wet
feet were feeling a bit vulnerable in my sandals. I considered
getting the mop I had in the playroom and pushing the spider into the water,
but I did not like that idea because I did not know if tarantulas can swim and
did not want encounter it in the water once I left the room. An
older child, who apparently had noticed me heading towards the playroom, splashed
her way through the puddle even as I told her not too; she entered as I was
explaining to her that there is a big spider by the door. She seemed frightened, initially. While I was still discerning how I should
respond, considering that it is dangerous and wanting it gone, but wondering if
there might be adverse ecological effects if everyone murdered scary spiders, she
pushed it out with the mop. That day, I
learned that tarantulas do float and sort of swim too. Seemingly unharmed, it made its way across
the water to the nearby small cement foundation, by this time several of the
oldest children had gathered on the other side of the puddle. One of the older boys killed it. The Haitian Creole world for tarantula is
“zarenyen krab,” which literally translates to “spider crab;” I find this
interesting because in Rhode Island, there is a crab that resembles a spider,
which is called a spider crab.
Personally, I would much rather encounter the crab that resembles a
spider than the spider that walks like a crab!
Last week, I wrote that I was happy to have electricity in
the playroom and I was. The electricity
system we have here is somewhat complicated; although I am confident that I would
be quite capable of understanding how it all works, if only there were someone
who could explain it to me in my primary language. The electricity in the playroom was on in the
morning, I think because the workers in the nearby house for the younger
children iron the children’s clothes at that time; and it is turned on again at
6pm. The problem with that was that once
the sun starts going down, at around 4:30, when I start my last group, the room
starts to get dark. I am grateful that
my Haitian cell phone came with a handy built-in flashlight, but still this is
not the best way to conduct therapeutic groups with young children. I asked one of the sisters about the possibility
of increasing the hours that electricity is available in the playroom by having
it hooked up to the inverter and what the cost would be. Thank you to those who gave me money for
Haiti; a portion of it was used to pay electricians to hook up the building to
the inverter. Now most of the time there
is electricity in the play therapy room.
The rooms in that building now also have working electric outlets! Mesi anpil!
(Thank you very much!)
If you are reading this regularly, you know that a couple of
weeks ago a few sisters and a group of children and I attended a wedding. We heard
this week that the bride recently gave birth to twins, one of the babies
died. Please keep the family in your
prayers. Thank you.
For the second time since I arrived we had a liturgy here
for the children on Saturday evening. This time much to my surprise (and
disappointment,) even the homily was in French.
One mass part and one song were in Haitian Creole; I felt happy when the one
song we did sing was one that I like and learned from attending the Haitian Creole mass in
New Orleans. Since the high school age children
did not have to be transported into the city because schools were closed, a couple
of mornings last week, instead of going to the cathedral for daily mass we went
to another church in the opposite direction, and I am glad that that liturgy is
conducted primarily in Haitian Creole, the language of the people, which is
spoken by everyone. I still do not
always understand everything in Creole, but certainly much more than I do in
French. I do not understand why so many
masses here, including liturgies for children would be mostly in French (the
language I understand has traditionally associated with government, education, and the wealthier
and more educated classes.)
I have had very good internet for nearly a month. Today I went to pay for the next month and
felt very confused by the options available as I continue to struggle with understanding
large numbers in Creole and then to get a sense of how much money something
would be in American dollars, very challenging for me in a noisy telephone
store where the clerks are so close together and the individual waiting on me seems annoyed when I ask her to speak slowly (most of the time most people are amazingly patient with me.) I can only hope that my klè will work as well
during the coming weeks as it has recently.
We shall see. I did get behind
with responding to emails last week, when the children did not have school and
therefore even my mornings were busy.
Hopefully I will catch up this week.
Thank you for all who have emailed or messaged me; I am very appreciative
even if I have not responded. Many blessings!
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