Haiti on Friday July 2, 2010

Friday 7-2-2010
Another “warm” day with temp near 100 and a couple of hours spent with mid day sun frying the tops of toes, nose and ears as the 11 of us travel to and from our destinations in the back of a pickup truck. The sun is north of us overhead- too strange, and I’ve lost any sense of direction since arriving. We listened to much shouting as the soccer was broadcast, little pockets of fans huddled around someone’s TV or cell phone amongst the street vendors. Unfortunately, many were Brazil fans and were a bit disappointed. And now, since the game is done, our turn for getting electricity today was only 15 minutes instead of a full 6 hours like yesterday, when people were treated to a little more power in honor of the games. Battery backup is still OK so far, so we may keep the fans working so we can sleep tonight.
Took a trip to the metal works to haggle with vendors for some beautiful artwork. All are pounded out of 50 gallon drums, but you would never know it from how the pieces end up looking. As Marie reminds us, Haitians re-use absolutely everything, and for good reason, when there is so little to start with.
We also spent the afternoon with the girls at the orphanage. Yesterday we painted a 30 ft parachute with them (some budding artists there too) and today we unfolded the parachute and tried to show them how to grab the edges and billow it up and down and throw bean bags up in the air with it, “tried” being the operative word. Immediately the girls were screaming with laughter and running underneath it and hiding and pulling it down and rolling around under it on the rough concrete floor. Competition must be universal with children, because when the 8 beanbags went onto the center of the parachute, all 30 kids jumped into the middle, diving onto the parachute with concrete below to get them. No casualties from the repeated skirmishes, but those of us “adults” still trying to hold onto the edges were dying of laughter. When some of the little ones slowed down enough to do a fake nap rolled up in the fabric, a couple of us pretended to join them and promptly got barrettes removed and hair braided. The little ones were bit confused by straight blond hair that didn’t stay too well in little braids, but one of the older girls, Roseland, took pity on me and redid them for some of us. By that time I was also covered with fingerpaint handprints all over my arms and neck, left by the girls as they ran by to wash the paint off their hands at the pump, paint from Hannah’s great poster-art project. We now have a poster of the flags of both of our countries painted in a joint project by the kids back in Elmhurst and the girls here. They have an identical one that they will keep too. We also exchanged a video hello between the 2 groups. A beautiful exchange between the girls and our kids back home.
But the highlight of the afternoon was capturing a video of the 4 and 5 year olds teaching our "_ _-something" Rosie to dance the pika-pika as Sharon and I sang “I Will Call Upon the Lord” and “Jesus Loves Me”. And she was doing pretty well too! God’s universe is filled with such odd and amazing expressions of love and joy.
Mae and the team.