TGIF!

Yesterday we went (again) to the site where the new orphanage is being built.  I spent the first part of the morning dumping charcoal from big sacks into smaller garbage bags, for the kitchen staff to use for cooking.  By the time we were done, our team looked like coal miners! Then I put two coats of epoxy on a concrete floor to seal it so it doesn’t get damaged by rain water.  And a bunch of us swept sand into the cracks between the interlocking concrete blocks of a driveway so that when it rains the water will cement the blocks together.  I officially have a tank top tan. To be honest, it’s more of a sunburn, despite applying and reapplying SPF 45 sun block throughout the day.  It was HOT day.  I’m not sure how hot -  I seem to have no sense of temperature or time these days.  I get up with the sun comes up, eat when they tell me it’s mealtime, and go to bed when it gets dark.  It’s a sort of like being on vacation. 

We also walked from GLA’s property at Fort Jacques to the actual fort.  The Fort Jacques National Historic Site is a beautiful park, if you can overlook the litter (there’s no waste management system in Haiti, in terms of public garbage cans or recycling bins).  The fort was named after Jean-Jacques Dessaline, who, according to Wikipedia, was a leader of the Haitian Revolution and the first ruler of an independent Haiti under the 1801 constitution.  He was autocratic in his rule and crowned himself Emperor of Haiti in 1805.  The Fort was also built in 1805 to defend against a possible French return and attack. During the 2010 earthquake, they lost two cannons that fell down the mountain.  They are still working to repair the earthquake damage.  Here are a picture of the fort and the view of Port-au-Prince from the fort. 

Today was another busy day at Main House.  I spent most of the morning with Mr. W.  It was another hot day, so we filled the kiddie pool on the balcony and let the kids play in there.  Here are pictures of Mr. W.  and Miss D. in the pool. 

In the afternoon, I held Mr. D. for a while.  He’s sick with a cold, so I spent most of my time cleaning up bodily fluids.  Nobody said my time at GLA was going to be glamorous, and it certainly isn’t.  I now understand what they mean when they say the children at GLA are “the least of these”.  These kids all have dirty faces but bright eyes.  They have dirty bottoms, but overflowing affection.  They do not smell the way babies in North America smell (like baby powder and lotion), and yet they have captured my heart with their outstretched arms and big dark eyes.  My heart breaks as they cry big tears and run after me when it’s time for me to leave the nursery. 

Tom Vanderwell and his team arrived at GLA today.  Tom is the Manager of Partner Relations at GLA.  He and his family live in Michigan.  They brought their two adopted Haitian children back to GLA for the first time since they went home in 2003.  It’s been a roller coaster of a day for Isaac and Abby (10 and 9, respectively), meeting their birth families for the “first time”.  You can read about it on Tom’s blog. 

Tomorrow we get to sleep in (hopefully).  Someone needs to tell the roosters around here that their job is to announce daylight! They start crowing at around 3:30, long before sunrise, and about a half hour after the neighbourhood dogs stop barking.  This morning the dogs and roosters were sounding off together in an antiphonal symphony.  Lovely.  T.I.H. (This Is Haiti).