Ayiti, cheri

A little over a week has gone by since I arrived in Haiti! The flight down was uneventful and blessedly short compared to trips to Tanzania. I was surprisingly far underweight for my two checked bags (my Dad would be proud), which at first worried me a bit but after living here for a week I think I probably did manage to bring most of the things I might want. When we arrived Sunday afternoon and drove through the edge of Port-au-Prince in order to get to the school, the roads and the driving were reminiscent of Tanzanian streets with the exception that buildings are much closer to the road and things seem a bit less dusty here in Ayiti. Also, no one is wearing any “traditional” clothes and the U.S. influence in music and dress seems to be greater, which makes sense proximity-wise. After a tour of the school Sunday evening and a late dinner, I moved into my room to find that some others will already inhabiting it. Unfortunately, I was not okay with sharing living space with cockroaches, so I had my first roach killing experience within hours of my arrival (after the first week, my count is up to 14…most of those occurred in the first 4 days though). I live with one of the other volunteers in one of the two girls’ dorms on campus instead of in the main building where all of the other volunteers live. Being over here has challenges and perks…but now that we have running water (!!!) I really have nothing to complain about.

We woke up early Monday morning to begin working, which is how we have spent every weekday morning since. At 6 am we gather for morning prayer, then eat breakfast, then begin whatever physical labor needs to get done (so far lots of cleaning, painting, moving rocks, etc.). The group includes 9 volunteers and around 15 Haitian staff…all of the Haitians who live here are great and much more desensitized to U.S. Americans than the Tanzanians I spent time with, so interactions thus far have tended to be more genuine I think, which is refreshing. After work, we eat, then have a couple of hours of Creole class – grammatically very similar to Swahili – then hopefully a bit of free time, dinner, group activities, bed…and then start all over again. Before I got sick, I had been getting up every morning at 4:45 to run around the soccer field and basketball court which is monotonous but makes me feel much better.

The heat has been nice! It has been between 85 – 95 degrees the whole time (maybs a bit cooler at night) but the humidity seems really low and I LIKE the warmth. And I especially like that it is all year round. Around 6 pm it usually starts raining, anything from a light drizzle to an all out thunderstorm – very pretty.

I wasted no time in getting sick, erlack. From Saturday until yesterday (Wednesday) I was vomming on and off…it did not get too bad until Tuesday, when I starting voming uncontrollably; that is when the director over here decided to restrict me to a white bread and Coca Cola diet, which has worked wonders. Today I managed to eat some corn grits for breakfast and some peanut butter for lunch and kept it down, so I am hopeful that will continue and I can be done with being sick in Haiti forever.

School starts in about 2 weeks!! The first year students came for orientation this week, and they were very cute. I found out that I am teaching computers [all grades], Sanciem Natural Science [7^th grade], and Twaziem Biology [10^th grade]…so so excited to teach science! Before I came they were not sure if it would be feasible, but it all worked out. Today we are visiting the book depot so I hope to start lesson planning soon!

Internet access thus far has been less regular than expected...desole (sorry). I think once the school year starts and things are one more of a schedule I will be able to use the nets more often. In the meantime, hopefully I will continue to post a bit, and I would love to hear from you thru comments, email, or snail mail! Hand drawn pictures by children are especially appreciated and will be added to the collection already on my wall (mesi, Nicole!) which has plenty of space for more. That reminds me, children from the neighborhood are often invited into the school to use the playground, and last week I had the opportunity to play with them; very, very cute. The community around the school is very poor (as most of Haiti), but the director and especially his wife do a great job of local outreach so relations seem quite good from what I have experienced thus far.