Haiti: Part 4

Day 4

By day four I had begun to find a rhythm as everything had started to settle in.
I guess you could say I was finally starting to feel comfortable.

The bus was pretty crowded.

Our first task of the day was to plant trees around the new church property.  

This time around, instead of walking, we rode the school bus. When I say we, I mean our team and the students from the youth group at UCI.  And we all rode the school bus─that thing was packed. I'm talking three to a seat with standers in the isle. If I ever had a problem with personal space before Haiti, I sure don't have one now.

We had about 25 or so trees to plant, and way more than 25 people to plant those trees. The trees were still really little (maybe about a foot tall) so I knew it wouldn't take too many people to get the job done. I felt bad just standing around watching, so I wandered over to some nice looking kids and tried to start a conversation.
 
Unlike some of my previous encounters, this conversation went pretty well! The teenager I was speaking to knew a bit of English. And I'm telling you─that made all the difference. We talked about the basics, how many siblings we had, what we planned to study. He told me a little about the youth group and I told him what we were planning to do that week.
 
If I understood him correctly, his name was God Is Good. 

I really don't think I understood him correctly.

One of the few phrases I knew in Creole was "Como rele?" which translates to "What is your name?". So naturally, when I met someone, I'd ask them what their name was. But many of the responses were just so quick or so quiet that I had a hard time hearing what they said. On top of that, I was really no good at comprehending anything spoken with an accent.
 
The first few times I'd repeat my question, but after a few failed attempts, I just learned to smile and nod. Occasionally I'd catch a portion of the name, and after awhile I started to notice a trend. Many of the names ended with the word love. Tchenlove. Anteilove. This list goes on.

Monday morning prayer walk.

After all the trees had been planted, the whole group was divided in two.  

The previous team on site at UCI had left several bags of rice and beans, so we decided to distribute what was left to several families living around the new church.  
 
The great thing about UCI is 
that they're connected with the community─so they know where lie the greatest needs. That left us with the easy task of following lead from the youth group to see where exactly we'd be distributing.

My group visited somewhere between five to ten homes.  

Upon arriving at each home, a student would ask for prayer requests from the family, and then translate their responses to us English-speaking Americans. Then we would pray for the family─one or two students from the youth group would pray, and then someone from my team would pray.

A home passed on the prayer walk.

I don't know why I was so timid to volunteer to pray─but I was. And the thing is, I'm completely comfortable praying out loud in groups. But for some reason, I just couldn't get myself to volunteer. Part of it may have been fear of judgement, which is crazy to believe because the Haitians were nothing remotely close to judgmental. Part of it may have been what I felt was the inability to measure up. You see, so many of the Haitians prayed with such intense passion and fervor that I seemed to think my prayers wouldn't be good enough.

Homes passed on the prayer walk.

 
Well─the Lord knew this and he was ready to see me step out of my comfort zone. I've seen the Lord work through many people before, and this day was no different. It was a little thing, it really was. One of the students looked me in the eye and asked if I'd like to pray. (How can you say no?)

So I went for it.  

The words were far from elaborate, but that's not what matters. What matters is the one we were praying to and the truth that he hears and responds to those prayers.

And that was all I needed─that little push. It's kind of like jumping off a diving board. Once you go for it and realize you didn't completely belly-flop, you've got the confidence to do it again. So that's how it was with praying. Once I had done it, I had the confidence to do it again.

Later in the afternoon, we took the bus to the market.  

Thankfully, on this particular ride we didn't have to squeeze three to a seat. (Some lucky individuals even had the luxury of their own seat.) I would say that market was our first real experience outside the safety of the UCI campus.  

Upon arriving, I was given two warnings:

1) Don't talk to men. A friendly smile can be taken the wrong way.
2) Watch out for motorcycles.

A view of the market from the bus.

Well, I'd say I did pretty well in avoiding conversation with overly friendly men. There was one man who kept talking with me and a friend, but we kept it short with one word responses. Later in the day we found out he was a student on the campus at UCI.  

Woops.

As for the motorcycles─I was almost run over by two. Thankfully I am here today and have lived to tell the tale.

 

At the market we split into three groups, each sent with a translator.  

The market was a pretty busy place with lots of people, noise, and (of course) products to purchase. There were chickens, pigs, shoes, and clothes. Machetes, tablecloths, candy, you name it. And whadda you know─they even had rice and beans.

The world's best bread.

If there was one item though, one thing that I really hoped to find at the market, it was fresh fruit. We'd been given the thumbs up that fruit at the market was safe to eat, which of course put a smile on my face. I love fruit. Really, I truly do.

So you can imagine my excitement when we stumbled upon some mangoes. The woman offered us 11 mangoes for $1─seriously, what a deal!
 
We also purchased some bread at the bakery. You could purchase two slabs of bread for $3. The bread was cut in a way that you could just rip off a square to snack on. I think that may have been the best bread I've ever eaten.

The team also purchased several goats at the market to give to families in the area.

Just some goats in the back of the bus.
No big deal.

I was quite surprised to walk onto the bus and find a dozen or so goats just hanging out in the back of our bus. I don't know if you've ever heard a goat cry before─I don't want to get too graphic with my descriptions, so I'll just say that it wasn't very─well it wasn't very pleasant.

[Interested in reading more? Check out the Blog Archive to the right to find links to my other posts.]

If you liked this post, you might like...
Haiti: Part 1

Haiti: Part 2
Haiti: Part 3
Haiti: Part 5
Haiti: Part 6
Haiti: Part 7