Continuing posts from a week spent traveling in northeastern Haiti last summer.
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Plaj Labe -- we stopped here on our way back from gathering stories |
Friday, July 19, 2013
When
you go to bed at 3 am, the morning comes early! As I get dressed, I
discover that my trusty leather sandals finally gave up the ghost .
I bought them in Peru a few years ago and they have been great –
pretty yet also reliable. I have flipflops to wear here, so no
trouble. But the drag is that my other pair of sandals are really
too ratty to wear to church now, and I get home to Cap Haitien on a
Saturday afternoon – meaning I can't buy anything either before
church or before I leave for the Dominican Republic on Monday
morning. Hmm, wardrobe difficulties.
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Here I am, out and about with what for many people is footwear worn only around the home. Yikes. :-) |
Breakfast
this morning is boiled plantains with an oily sardine and tomato
sauce. Since we're not scheduled to go to communities this morning
my co-workers left early for a konbit,
which is the word used for when a group of people get together to to
do physical labor. In this case they wanted to dig a pool in which
to breed tilapia fish. For me this means that no one will know if I eat the sardines or
not. And I bought granola bars on my trip to the DR last week,
heh-heh.
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Sardines, breakfast of champions |
I
didn't have any meetings in the morning but I had a lot of
translation work to do. For this I needed electricity since I would
need a fully charged computer for the afternoon meeting, and so I
went to the town center to the dance class to plug in to the
generator we were using. I decided for the millionth time that I
have an awesome life, as I worked with the stories and pictures we'd
collected with little kids surrounding me, cha-cha music playing and
people dancing in front of me.
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Trainers Eric,
Osse, and Adelin. Osse coordinates all of the CHE programs for Medical
Ambassadors Haiti. Eric and Adelin coordinate the programs in the
province called "Northeast." |
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And they're smiling! It is very common culturally for people to look serious in photos. It is possible to occasionally capture smiles, though. And it wasn't hard to smile here -- after an afternoon spent driving motorcycles on rough mountain trails, these guys are catching a well-deserved rest.
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