A couple of years ago, on my day off I started taking pictures in the yard here, which inspired me to take photographs elsewhere as well. Realizing I had a lot of the pictures and not often knowing what I can give to family, community members and friends as gifts considering my limited budget and the reality that most of my family and friends in the US generally have everything they need, I started making cards with my pictures. When in the US, I buy the blank cards from one the "big box" craft stores. Recently I found myself wondering, especially since paper is not recycled here, if it would be possible to literally make the cards, by recycling paper by hand that would otherwise just be burned with all of the other burnable household rubbish.
There are directions on the internet for just about everything these days, including how to recycle paper. I mentioned my idea to the other American sister in the house; she had actually done this herself several years ago and even had the screen frame that is needed to form the new pieces of paper. She lent me them and a craft book about making paper.
The process involves ripping up the old papers, soaking them, pounding them into a pulp, putting the pulp in water, stirring the water, catching the pulp in a screen frame, removing excess water, waiting for it start to dry, carefully taking the new paper from the screen and then waiting for it to dry completely.
The process was a bit more involved than I would have expected when the idea first came into my mind. It quickly went from being a challenge to see if it were possible to be an experience of metaphor. The process spoke to me of true conversion, being made anew, transformation, reformation, the Paschal Mystery. The old paper was destroyed, beyond recognition so that something new could be created. What a perfect project for the season of Lent! Actually, changing the old paper into new paper was relatively easy compared with processes of the changes involved in normal human development, moving from one phase of life to another. Transforming paper is much easier than embracing the transformative call to change from my selfish perspectives to a become a more loving and just person. How I wish transforming the currently unjust structures and systems in our world could be as easy as changing old paper into new paper! 
It may not really be practical for me to make all of the cards by hand that I like to give to family, community members, and friends. I certainly like the idea of recycling as opposed to purchasing supplies from "big box" stores. I spent much of Sunday working on this little project and I created a total of four cards, kat kat, (the Creole word for both the number "four" and for the word "card" is "kat.") The first card will serve as a thank you note to the sister who lent me the screen and book that were used in the creation of these cards.
Thank you to everyone who reads this and to all who are supportive and encouraging of me and of my work here in Haiti. Mèsi anpil!
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