I’ll just apologize upfront for the long-winded blog post. I couldn’t bring myself to write anything of substance on Sunday or Monday, and the internet went down on Tuesday and just came back up this morning. So here’s what has transpired in the last few days.
Sunday morning started bright and early. I was up by six (so much for a day of rest). But since I only get to shower every other day, I was eager to beat everyone else to the bathroom. Not that there was much competition at 6 AM on Sunday. I went next door with Bethany and Becky to the Haitian church at 8 AM. Everything Haitian runs on “Haitian time”. In other words, it starts late. I’ve been told that people in Haiti are reliable as far as doing what they say they will do, but there’s never any promise as to when things will get done. I think the church service started around 8:30 and people continued to wander through the open door long after that, including the parade of children for Sunday School. The kids were all dressed in pretty dresses and shirts and ties, with clean hands and faces. The nannies abandoned their scrubs for dresses, skirts, and high heels.
When Haitian church ended, we all piled into SUVs and made the trip to Pastor Joel’s house for “American church,” which started on time and ended promptly at noon. Then we all went back to Main House for lunch. A thunder storm blew in over the mountains, making it a sleepy kind of Sunday afternoon. Back at Toddler House, I read several chapters of a novel, and spent the afternoon being generally lazy.
Monday went by in a blur. I spent the morning on the balcony with my kids. Just before lunch, I started to feel nauseous, which continued through the afternoon. I ended up sleeping on the couch in the common area for a while; then, thankful for the offer, I transferred to an open guest room when Molly handed me the keys. I felt better after eating supper and drinking an oral rehydration solution. I brought packets of powdered electrolytes to Haiti with me, but had forgotten to put some in my backpack before I left Toddler House in the morning. On Tuesday I consciously drank more water in an effort to stay properly hydrated. It’s so hot here, and it’s easy to get busy and forget to stop and drink something.
Holli had said that those of us who were assigned three kids would be getting another child Tuesday afternoon. I had been spending more time with one child than the others, or I had gaps of time in my day when kids were napping. Now I will be able to distribute my time more evenly among all my kids – two in the morning and two in the afternoon. Having spent time with Miss D and Mr. D in the morning, after lunch I looked for Mr. W but could not find him in the nursery. Miss D was sleeping, so I lifted Mr. D out of his crib and carried him up the stairs to the balcony. Holli appeared a short while later with the list of new assignments. She informed me that Mr. W had “gone home” just before lunch. Apparently, his biological family came to GLA and took him home with them. I sat in the rocking chair, holding Mr. D, and let the news sink in. I found myself fighting tears. Mr. W is such a bright light. He has big, dark eyes and an even bigger personality. He always greeted me in the nursery with a hearty, “Hi-ya” (actually, he said it in more of a karate-chop fashion: Hi-YAH!). Almost all the babies in the nursery greet the volunteers in this manner, even the ones who have not yet learned any other words. Mr. W was also a kid who would not let me leave the nursery without running after me with arms outstretched, forming big tears that said, “Don’t leave me behind”. I will miss him a whole lot, and I’m sad that I didn’t get to say goodbye to him. I spent some time praying for him in the afternoon, relinquishing him to God and praying for his safety, well-being, and upbringing.
On the brighter side of things, I have two new babies! Mr. F is a tiny six-week-old boy who spends most of his time in the NICU. I rocked him to sleep on the balcony before taking him back to the NICU and handing him to a nurse. I also have Mr. M, but wasn’t able to hang out with him today due to his nap time. So I spent a long time cuddling Mr. D. He is a beautiful seven-month-old, and he loves to cuddle! This morning I caught a milestone on video – he pulled himself up on his feet with the help of the steps on the back of the Little Tikes slide. Usually he will stand in my lap if I hold his hands, but this is the first time I have seen him use an object to pull himself up. In the afternoon, he fell asleep in my arms, and I couldn’t help but think as I watched him, that I rocked him to sleep, but he has rocked my world. I’m really getting attached to this little one. In fact, I asked a staff member if there’s any chance his family could come and take him home, too. She said no; his mother has died and his father brought him to GLA when he was about a month old and signed him over for adoption. I breathed a sigh of relief. I couldn’t stand to lose another of “my” babies. I only have 6 more days to rock this precious one before I leave to go home (four days if you don’t count the weekend).
After supper on Tuesday, I succumbed to peer pressure and walked with my roommates from Main House to Toddler House (instead of hitching a ride with a staff member like I have been doing). This was a bad decision on my part, considering I had just finished a hearty meal of pork chops, scalloped potatoes, mixed veggies and locally grown bananas for dessert. The walk was entirely uphill and, although I walk the same route (downhill) every morning with little effort, the trek back up is another matter altogether, especially with a 20 lb backpack strapped to my back. I thought I was going to have a stroke and/or lose my supper about halfway up the first hill. Thankfully, Becky stayed back and walked with me at “Haitian pace”, which is more of a meander than a walk.
Finally, I was warned before I came to GLA that there could be times when we would be without internet, water, or electricity. It seemed a myth to me, since all of those commodities had been available for the first eight days of my trip. Well, Tuesday night we lost them all at the same time! The internet went down sometime before lunch. When I finally made it back to Toddler House, I collapsed on my bed to allow my heart to recover from the walk. Just as I was thinking I had never needed a shower so bad in my life, Molly appeared in the doorway to say that a mechanic had come that morning, taken apart the generator, and left it in a million pieces while he took one part of it back to his shop in town for repairs. This meant relying on city power, which had, at that point, been turned off. I silently prayed that it would be turned on soon so that the water pump would work and I could have a shower. No such luck. Molly had also warned that we should keep a flashlight handy, in case we ran out of stored power in the building. About a half hour later, everything went black. Thankfully, before that happened, someone had put some buckets of water in the bathroom so we could at least freshen up. So, we had a girls’ sleepover - the six of us in our bunk beds, chatting by the light of our flashlights. It was so much fun! It was actually the first night since I’ve been here that we had all taken time to talk before going to bed.
I’ll write more later. Until then...
No comments:
Post a Comment