The Beginning of Goodbye

Today four of my roommates left me. Last night was a night full of mourning. Anna left early this morning; the other three just took off a few minutes ago. It feels like a foreshadowing for me of what is looming in the all too soon future.

Watching them as they cleaned the balcony one last time, drove back to the Toddler House one last time, walked down in the morning one last time, and said goodbye to their children was nearly enough to bring me to tears.

I appreciate these four women, how they have loved the children here, and how they have enriched my time in Haiti. I'm sorry that our time together is over, but thankful that our paths could cross even for this short time.

I'm happy to report that I'm no longer in a miserable state of sickness, but I am still weak and lethargic. Hopefully with some more ample nutritional sustenance and a good night of sleep, I'll be back to functioning at 100% tomorrow. I hope to dedicate every single minute of my time left to loving my children as well as I can.

With the three that left a few minutes ago:

Tales of Gory Woe Part Two??

I am sick, and I could tell you yet another tale of even gorier gory woe than the last one, but I'll spare you the details of this episode. We'll just stick with the fact that I'm sick for now. This is a very frustrating development, especially since my days with my children are dwindling. I convinced myself that I was better this morning after and so after languishing at the Toddler House for a few hours, I walked down to the Main House so I could see my babies. But now I feel the sickness returning full force and it is not making me very happy. Thankfully, one of the wonderful volunteer nurses here kindly gave me a can of Campbell's chicken noodle soup. Then Marguerite gave me a piece of toast and set me up with a cup of sprite. But I'm still very frustrated to have missed a morning with my children, and working hard to trust that God is in control of my crazy body at the moment. My apologies for this extremely uninteresting and somewhat complain-ey post!

In less depressing news, we had a blast at a Toddler House cinema night last night! We had a dance party and watched Tangled. It was so wonderful. I love those children. Life doesn't get much better than dancing in the middle of a bunch of those crazies and then sitting down in the middle of them to watch Tangled.

Popcorn all ready to go for cinema night!

Yay for dancing!

Yay for Tangled!

What to Blog About?!?!

The dilemma of what to write about is quite overwhelming - not for a lack of material, but for an overabundance! Much has transpired in this past week, and I hardly know where to start in recounting to you all that has happened!!!

This afternoon, one of the wonderful Haitian staff here was kind enough to do my hair. She did so with expertise and speed, and I love the finished product!

Last night, we were supposed to have cinema night at the Toddler House, but it was cancelled because of the violent winds that have still been plaguing the area. It should be on for tonight, though and we are watching Tangled!!! Instead of a cinema night, however, my friend Lilly came to the Toddler House for a sleepover! We had a grand time together eating some delicious ice cream that Molly kindly got for us, playing candy land, watching Pixar short films, playing doctor and dentist, and sleeping in the same bed. All in all, it was a grand night.

The newest little boy here is doing better and better each day! All of us are simply enamored with him, and he has certainly become a favorite. Holding him and making him smile is a great joy and privilege. When he arrived a week ago (photo credit: Rhyan).

Cuddling with him today! (Do you see that awesome smile?!)

On Tuesday, I went to the psychologist with five of the kids. This evaluation is a necessary step in the adoption process. It was fun to ride through Haiti with the five kids and see some more of the country. I felt very privileged to be sitting in the back of the van with two little girls sleeping on top of me.

After many many days of storms and clouds and rain and wind and more storm and more clouds and more rain and more wind, the SUN came out yesterday!!! I missed it a surprisingly large amount. It felt like I was in Michigan on a gross day in the late fall, but worse, because it's not supposed to be like that here. The clouds are back this afternoon, but after spending all of yesterday in the sun with my babies, I'm feeling much better.

Lots of the children received packages from adoptive families this week. It was a blessing to watch them opening their packages and looking through their new things and at the pictures of their families!!! I was somewhat disappointed (but mostly thrilled) to find out that this little baby (my Monday girl) is going to a forever family in LUXEMBOURG!!! (Disappointed just because this means I likely won't be seeing her again for a very long time).

And there's my baby bound for Luxembourg!!!

This Sunday, Eglise D'Espoir (the Haitian church I go to each week) celebrate its second anniversary. This past week was a week of revival for the church, and services were held each night. The building this morning was jam packed, and it was a joy to worship the amazing things God has done through this church with these brothers and sisters in Christ. I will miss worshipping with them.

Love's Like a Hurricane

For the past two nights, I have slept, or rather tried to sleep, in the midst of howling wind – screeching and wailing in the most sepulchrally dismal manner. The wind blew so hard that the house shook, vibrated, throbbed. This week has dripped constantly with gloom and grey and wetness. On Wednesday as the storm brewed and gathered strength, the electricity continually flickered on and off and the internet connection was shaky at best. Each day has been progressively colder and rainier until it reached a climax in the darkest hours of Wednesday night and throughout all of yesterday. Crashing noises perpetrated by the brute force of the wind smacking buildings, trees, windows, branches, tin roofs and metal bars resounded in the murkiness. The sheer wetness that blanketed the Island of Hispaniola oozed and seeped unstoppably through the cracks of the walls and filled every corner with a bleary and thick storminess.

There is a hurricane, and it is raging through the ocean and the effects of its very nature are reaching far and wide and consuming this part of the world with its fury. At the eerie sound of the wind, sounding like a giant, full of anger, like the sound of a man who has been greatly wounded and unjustly treated demanding retribution. Raging. Livid. Wild. I lay awake staring at the curtains that thrashed in the window, and wanted to be with my children, each of them. I wondered what they were thinking, if they were sleeping, if they were scared, if they were safe, if they were having nightmares induced by the howling wind and the pounding rain. If it weren't for my kids, though, I would have fully enjoyed the glory of the storm.

The next day, we were stuck at the Toddler House. Everything was shut down. No school. No church. No babies the whole day long. It was the longest I had gone without seeing my babies since getting to Haiti. I occupied myself decently well, but I couldn't stop thinking about them and what they were doing, and if they were eating well and napping well and having a good day and if they realized I was gone or if they were oblivious to the fact. I read a lot. I found a plethora of new vocabulary in my book and made multi-colored vocab flash cards and learned seventeen new words. I scrubbed the floor of our room. I organized all my stuff. My roomies and I watched Deja Vu which is an absolutely terrifying and downright befuddling movie and I apologize to all who were present for my somewhat violently vocal reactions. Molly made us delicious cornbread with potato soup for dinner. My roomies and I messed around with the karoke machine. It was exceedingly fun; especially when we sang the Christmas songs. I read some more, and thought about my kids some more, and looked at pictures of my kids, and prayed for my kids, and stood on the balcony and gazed longingly in the direction of the Main House and missed my kids. It really was hard for me to be without them for thirty-six hours. I cannot fathom how hard life will be when they are out of my life indefinitely.

As I stood on the balcony, awed by the sheer force of the wind and the water, the lyrics of How He Loves echoed in my head. He is jealous for me. Love's like a hurricane, I am a tree, bending beneath the weight of this wind and mercy... That is one strong love. We didn't even get hit by the hurricane, and yet the sheer power of this storm far surpasses most storms that frequent the Michigan. And it's the Love that I will struggle to trust when I bid these children farewell in just ten more days. 

An Assortment of Photographs and Accompanying Explanations

My poor child fell in the nursery and lost a tooth!!!

I don't really think an explanation is necessary for this one...

I greatly enjoyed the company of this little girl who was here at GLA a few days last week. Her family is adopting a little girl from the Toddler House, and her parents were here for their court date. While they were busy meeting judges and such, Kimberlin got to hang out with me and the babies on the balcony. 

We went to the waterfall again on Sunday!!!!!!!!

Happiness abounded.

In great quantities.

And we rode in the back of the truck again all the way up a mountain. And we sang lots of songs. Really loudly.

Two shipping containers arrived in the past few days!! (Two shipping containers = four full truckloads). Never in all of my life have I lifted quite so many boxes.

Or sorted through quite so many diapers....

20 green diapers a pack, 30 white diapers a pack, seven packs a stack, two stacks deep = a LOT of diapers.

Drowning in a sea of boxes...

I apologize for my lack of posting recently! As you can see, life has been quite hectic, and I find there is much much less time to write blog posts with four roommates...

This Week...

• A new boy came. Two years old. Mother died. Super skinny and malnourished. Covered in sores. Red and raw sore on his back with the spine breaking through. 
• Two new preemies came.
• A new volunteer came. From Nova Scotia. Staying two weeks. A NICU nurse. She's nice. I like her lots.
• We went to the baptist mission and ate lunch together and played on the new playground.
• The shipping container finally came to Fort Jacques. We spent a good portion of yesterday unloading box after box after box after BOX.
• I got a bunch of awesome mail. Thank you everyone!
• Two families came for their court dates. One of the families had a little girl, eight years-old, who hung out with us on the balcony a couple of days. Another family came to bring their little boy HOME!
• We got handprints and footprints of all the children at the Main House! GLA does this every three months or so, and they will be sent home with the adoptive families.
• A couple of us volunteers slept in the living room last night instead of our own rooms. Just for some variety. Change it up a little bit.
• AND tomorrow I think we are going to go to the waterfall again!!!!!

University of GLA

I miss school. Quite an astronomical amount. I miss writing essays. I miss studying. I miss learning new things. So today in order to make myself feel a bit better about not being in school, I sat down to recap the important things I'm learning here at the University of GLA that I wouldn't be learning at Hillsdale College.

I've mastered the art of changing a diaper full and overflowing with poop in just one wipe.

I can get a kid out of one outfit and into another in two seconds flat.

It's become habit to move to the side of the street at the sound of a honking horn.

I'm becoming quite an expert on the different physical, cognitive, language, and interactive stages of development in babies and young children.

I've been fine tuning my skills at moping floors, figuring out the perfect amounts of soap and water to put into the big yellow bucket and the appropriate wetness to distribute over the floor.

I am learning that poop isn't actually that gross. I don't even have to hold my breath anymore to stave off the stench. Honestly, poop's really not bad. Even when it's on your clothes. Even when it's on your face. And in your hair. And on the floor. It's just poop. And as for spit up, that stuff is 100% harmless and it's even starting to smell good to me.

I have discovered that hand sanitizer actually has many more purposes than simply sanitizing hands. Many.

Gummy vitamins. They're good stuff. Eat them and you will be healthy.

Ants in swarms used to psychologically harm me and would often lead to spasms of fear and anger. Now I don't even notice them.

Wipes are a great commodity that can be used for optimal healthy hygiene, even in the absence of showers.

Swiping little noses on resisting children is now muscle memory.

When moths viciously attack you in the night, stay calm. Just capture them in an empty gummy vitamin container, give them good mothy names, tell them goodnight, and they will be dead in the morning.

These and many, many others are certainly lessons I wouldn't have learned anywhere else and that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

So Much Goodness

There is just so much goodness about being submerged in creation. So much goodness in clambering up the rocks of a mountain and exploring new terrain. So much goodness in standing under the frigid water and lifting up your face while it splashes and cascades down your body. So much goodness.

We embarked on our adventure to Haiti's most beautiful waterfall shortly after lunch yesterday afternoon. The Water and Adventure Fanatic Kathryn Wong met with The Tropical Wonderland of Watery Awesomeness. Three Haitian guys from GLA, Steeve, Wilmo, and Steevens, took me, Mikayla, Ganene, and Beka. Although I've ridden in the back of a pick-up truck many times since getting here, it is still such rip-roaring, hair-raising, mind-blowing fun to stand in the back of the truck while it veers and bounces and tips and while the wind pounds your face and the sounds and smells and sights have you on sensory overdrive.

After a bit of time sloshing through muddy roads and jouncing over piles of rocks, we reached the foot of the mountain. It was, as Beka said, like a desert – though the mountains were lushly green, the ground around them was a valley of white rocks stretched far and wide. Soon a trickle of clear water sprung up from the ground, the trickle bulged and became a stream, the stream accordingly lengthened and deepened until it might almost be called a river. People were in the water, some individually but most in groups of four or five, doing laundry and bathing. By the end of the trip, I was almost accustomed to seeing completely naked people of all ages splashing in suds under the wide open sky as if it's the most natural thing to be doing, but it's just not something I can say that I typically witness!

The terrain reminded me of the rocky beaches along the shores of the Great Lakes. I leapt from rock to rock, sometimes pretending to be at Cedar Campus where it is quite necessary to be a pro rock-leaper. It was not ten minutes of climbing along the stream up the rocks when we reached the first section of the waterfall. We would continue on from there, scaling rock walls, shimmying along mossy, slippery rock formations, bounding from rock to rock, and delightedly discovering a new waterfall every few minutes, always idyllically framed by rocks, ferns, blossoms, trees overhead and vines reaching low, surrounded on either side by the tall, tall walls of the mountains. Some of the waterfalls emptied into deep pools.

How can one describe the sheer exhilaration of pulling oneself up on a rock at the top of a waterfall, and then, poised for action and prepared for the shock of cold water, jumping, springing, flying off the rock and into the depths below? It is, I assure you, the epitome of awesomeness itself. Every now and then when the steep uphill climb leveled out, we would walk through another batch of clothe-less people washing. I turned to Mikayla, who also just graduated from high school, and we emphatically concurred that this beats college. By a long shot.

I felt a jolt of sharp pain from below, and I looked down to see a steady stream of blood cascading down my foot, indeed it was not at all unlike a waterfall (hence my terminology) (i.e. steady stream, cascading). Naturally, the sight of blood and the idea of being mortally wounded only served to heighten greatly the legitimacy of the adventure.

Then, after maybe thirty or forty minutes of intrepid explorations, the water ended quite suddenly and we were in the middle of the mountain in another rocky valley. This rocky valley was apparently used as an outdoor restroom facility; it reeked of human feces and pockets and piles of waste abounded. The water had not necessarily ended, but Steevens and Wilmo informed us that it had gone underground. After a bit of deliberation, we determined that this would be an appropriate place to turn around and head back.

And so back we went. Down, down, down the stream. Down, down down the waterfalls. Down, down, down the mountain. We stopped every now and then to jump into the pools of water, or to have who-can-hold-their-breath-under-water-longest contests. We got attacked by some fire ants, further enhancing the legitimacy of this grand adventure. At last we reached the climatic ending – we were back at the first waterfall, and this waterfall is good for sliding down. And so down we slid. The bottom was a bit shallow, and the experience might have been somewhat improved if there hadn't been so many rocks waiting to greet us, but that did naught to mitigate the sheer thrill of sliding down a waterfall. I mean really, how great can life get? I won't say that it was the best thing ever for fear that some may accuse me of exaggerating (ahem, ahem), but sliding down a waterfall in the midst of a tropical utopia on a mountainside is pretty great. I got to the bottom, turned around, climbed up the rock wall (climbing up the rock wall soaking wet is lots harder than climbing up the rock wall when you're more or less dry. I tackled the rock wall solo before the wetness, but in lieu of the wetness, Steeve had to give me a hand multiple times...) And then I did it again. And then again. Apparently it was the first time anyone had actually wanted to turn around and climb right on up and slide down again. And then I sat in the water. Or rather in and under the water. And then it was time to go.

But the awesomeness didn't end there. The waterfall was only awesomeness part one. Steeve kindly took us up the mountain to a lookout spot where there is a spectacular view of Port-au-Prince and beyond it the ocean. We sat in the back of the pick-up truck (but it was way more exciting than just sitting in the back of the pick-up truck, because we were sitting on the metal bars on the top of the pick-up truck which basically makes you feel like you're sitting on the top of the world.) I honestly don't know what life with seatbelts, traffic regulations, and paved roads will be like when I get home. It's vastly more exhilarating to be sitting or standing out in the open while the vehicle goes careening down mountains and swerving round corners and bends with an occasional need to duck down as branches threaten to smack you in the face. I was utterly riveted by the landscape – by the tin shacks sitting dilapidated by the side of the road juxtaposed next to elaborate mansions standing proudly on the top of the mountain overlooking the ocean. Fascinated by each face I saw, of children and of old men, of mothers and of babies, of groups of friends chatting under a tree. Fascinated by each spectacular view of the valleys below, by each roadside stand, by each tree and bird and flower.

And then at last we returned home. I ruminated upon the fact that exactly one year ago, I was visiting Grove City College. I doubt I'd believe it for a second if anyone told me that instead of being in the midst of the beginning of college that I'd be frolicking in Haiti's waterfalls in a year.

  

Apple Cake

I have a friend here at GLA named Marguerite. She volunteers at GLA for three months at a time and then goes back to her home in Northern Ontario. I have to give her a lot of credit for being the oldest person I know who comes to Haiti for months at a time, who can take naps on the hard floor of the balcony, who enjoys playing in a bounce house, and who has a facebook. Her life story could probably become a best selling biography so full it is of fascinating and harrowing tales which she recounts to us each day. Her husband, a lumberjack, was killed in a work accident. She had six kids at the time, and the youngest was eight days old when the accident happened. And so she ran her household of six children on her own. That in and of itself is a story full of stories.

She first came to Haiti a few years ago and never stopped coming back, even after getting extremely sick on her last visit here. Marguerite loves the children of GLA very much, and pours out incredible amounts of energy into caring for them. A few nights ago, she went into the big nursery and visited each crib, singing every child a song. We have several shared interest including watching documentaries, following God, babies in Haiti, and nutrition. And French. She is a native French speaker, and I use her as my living French-English dictionary.

Last night, Marguerite and I made an apple cake. Marguerite directed the endeavor, as it was her own created recipe. We made it in the Main House kitchen, to me nothing short of thrilling. The Main House kitchen is much bigger and much much more full of activity than the Toddler House kitchen. The Main House kitchen is where the babies meals are made, where our dinners and lunches are made, where the food of the nannies and nurses are made; a LOT happens in this kitchen. We made our apple cake in the midst of Haitian cooks frying yams, chopping chicken, and peeling potatoes. I've never made anything in it before, and it felt like treading on new and unexplored territory. No doubt baking in this kitchen is actually a very commonplace activity, so call my enthusiasm asinine fatuity if it makes you feel any better, but I tell you it was exciting. And yes that sentence was essentially pointless – I just wanted an excuse to use the lovely combination of asinine and fatuity in the same sentence.

Marguerite's cake was massive. I've never baked a cake in such a gigantic pan. We filled the pan up with finely chopped and cubed apple pieces, poured two bottles of sprite and eight cups of water into the apples, covered them with cinnamon, and baked it for about half an hour. Pouring bottles of sprite onto diced apples was a highly enjoyable experience. While it baked, I stirred up a batch of butter pecan cake mix which was poured in a thin layer over the apples when they came out of the oven, then back into the heat the cake went until the cake batter was golden brown and voila!!! Our beautiful cake was finished. Life was very exciting. I fed several pieces to several children who gobbled it up.

I even ate a piece of apple cake for breakfast this morning. Life continued to be very exciting. I have greatly enjoyed my time with Marguerite and I will miss her when I leave!

On another completely unrelated note, enjoy these pictures from the past week!

My Wednesday boy has been smiling more and more lately!

We celebrated all of the October birthdays this past week!

And there she is in the bounce house...

He does look so fetching in green floral fabric

A day in the life of Kathryn always includes poop. And more often than not, it includes poop on my clothes and skin and hair.

This was his face right after the incident. I kid you not, this picture was taken immediately after returning from the changing room. What a little imp.

Enjoying sunny afternoons on the balcony with two of my favorite little girls