2 days, 2 perspectives

Day 7 (Wednesday): 

Katie: Welp, today we had a hard time waking up since we both had bizarre dreams. Ashleigh's was frightening and had a talking head in her dream. She told Alcindor this and his response was, "I will pray for you." So sweet! We helped chop up some garlic. In creole, "collie lie" that is phonetically spelled. Lord knows I can't spell English correctly, Ashleigh has been my spell check throughout this trip! We then were surprised with Spaghetti! We were also surprised with fish bones in our spaghetti, my Dad would call the fish bones "roughage" and I call it extra work, to deboning my spaghetti. We did our morning routine of speed feeding. Ashleigh got a nice little surprise after the second bite. She got a spaghetti bath! She walked down the stairs, after finishing feeding of course, with a look of defeat. Too early in the day for this. We did some more praying. It is nice to start off the day with a little religion and  we then took to the porch barrack and did the usual: danced around like monkeys. I held John for most of the day, or should I say he held onto me. He left a little present for me on my shirt, some lip blood. Happens. Ashleigh guarded the large water barrels, which is where we get our bathing/toilet water. One of the boys took it upon himself to spit in them. This is not any only spit, this is regurgitated food that he throws up into in mouth and uses it as mouth wash. So, Ashleigh's defense in basketball was a useful skill today. This little boy didn't like not being able to hawk a loogie into the barrels so he starts to hit Ashleigh in the face and anywhere he could reach. This boy has long arms. Ashleigh got her fair share or bodily fluids by 11 am. We made it to lunch. Our lunch was cornmeal with a side of fish sauce. I opted out of the fish sauce so cornmeal it is. After our "filling" lunch, I fed Sam his lunch and looking into his eyes sweet puppy-dog eyes made we remember why I am here. He put a smile back on my face and make we ready for the rest of my day. I was not very energetic after not eating a lot that day so I tried to get some boys to do the parachute with me. If you are in my generation, you have to remember the parachute from elementary years. The one where everyone would grab a handle and lift it up and down and had to be careful with it not to break the handles. Oh, the good old days. Well, I had a ADHD kid and a child who goes through psychotic phases. Needless to say some handles were ripped within the first 3 seconds. We resorted to some "fotball" (soccer) with an empty water barrel. We heard the dinner bell and ran to feed the children their sugar, flour, water meal. This meal is known and served throughout Haiti. I tried it and it is pure sugar! So of course it takes good but don't do my body good. Ashleigh and I came up with an exercise regime. Well, kinda. Do something athletic after dinner everyday. So today we walked up the street and looked at artwork and found out the Baptist Mission opens on October 4th. This Baptist Mission was recommended to us for a get-away to just be able to hang out and maybe get a burger. My mouth is watering thinking about it. We made it back home and made some dinner. Spaghetti, American style! Ashleigh chopped up an orange pepper, artichoke bottoms, and cherry tomatoes. I took pictures and caught drool from my lips. We threw in some snap peas and waited. We cracked open our Haitian beer, Prestige, and drank. This beer tasted like a Budweiser but in Haiti! The best Bud I have ever consumed. We then ate to our heart's content and I licked my plate clean, literally. We then went upstairs and Ashleigh did her laundry while I fell asleep at 7 pm. She then proceeded to put the clothes out on the line and let the rain give them a second rinse.

Ashleigh: So I’m gonna start with yesterday because I didn't get around to journaling. Yesterday was quite a day! Starting from the beginning, I went to feed Teddy breakfast. On the second bite he coughed his fish juice spaghetti all over my white, clean shirt! Off to a great start! After breakfast I had to go change my shirt. We then went to morning class with our 4 children. This was day 3 of being with the same 4 somewhat Autistic children. By this point, Katie and I are out of ideas and are having troubles keeping them entertained for 3.5 hours each day. None of them are very responsive to anything and the two that do respond, do not follow through with what they are supposed to do. This makes for a very long 3.5 hours. In the process of gathering these children for “class”, John drooled all over my arm. If there is one body fluid I cannot handle, its saliva. Just makes me squirm…and gag. As I tried to ignore the spit sliding down my arm, John and I made it to the classroom. I should mention that our classroom is just a tarp covered patio that we have to barricade off with patio furniture so our children do not escape. We gathered all of the children; Nelio, who is the best escape artist of all, Kelly, who will hold food in his mouth for hours while swallowing and regurgitating it, John, who loves to be held and will squeeze you so tight with his legs around your waist, and Junior, who would just lay in his bed all day if allowed but also likes to be cuddled. Nelio seemed to be in a happy mood, which was good….less escaping. We pulled out the Legos for them to play with along with some bubbles, a battery powered keyboard, balls and other little things to try to keep them entertained. Nelio loves to collect 3 or 4 Legos in his hands and spit into them. He will transfer the spit from one Lego to the other. He also likes to touch other people a lot, so you guessed it, I got more spit on me. Lovely. Kelly started off in a good mood and I sat down next to him with the piano as it played little “demo songs” for us. This seemed to keep him happy for a while as he was slurping around his leftover breakfast. At one point, he got so excited that he accidentally slurped some of the saliva/ food mixture out on his leg and I happened to witness it. Not the best thing to witness. As that incident was still fresh in my mind, and fresh in Kelly’s lap, Nelio came running over to me super excited about something. He got right up in my face bending over, and guess what…drool slipped right out of his beaming mouth and onto my leg. I tried my best to pretend that the warm liquid sliming down my thigh was something other that saliva, but I just couldn’t get it out of my mind. I could feel the gag reflex coming on quickly. After about 3 almost vomits, I decided to remove myself from the situation to take a breather. Good idea…nothing a little wet wipe action can’t fix. When I returned from my quick fix bath, Kelly’s mood quickly turned sour because we would not let him spit his regurgitated breakfast into the collected water buckets. He got so mad at me for not letting him spit that he started slapping me in the face. Again, more spit on me. Joy. I thought I had fixed this problem. After about an hour of playing defense on Kelly, it was time for lunch. I was hardly hungry…my appetite had been washed away with the saliva on my wet wipes. I ate anyways and we had a change of starch for the meal. Corn meal, hold the fish sauce. Katie and I have decided that one serving of fish sauce per day is quite sufficient. So since we had it with our spaghetti for breakfast, we settled for just corn meal for lunch. It was ok…think buttery, garlicky grits. Not too bad, not too great either, but passable for a meal. Besides, we didn’t need much of a lunch since we were planning on making ourselves spaghetti for dinner! Save room! After lunch we started up a game of futbol (soccer) with some of the boys. We had a really great time and it was spit free! Hooray! Then it was time for dinner for the kids. It was the usual flour, sugar, water mixture that is served every night. Our earlier conclusions about this meal were wrong. The reason that they eat this every night for dinner is because they love it! And not just the kids at Wings of Hope….Haitians throughout the country enjoy this for meals on a regular basis. It’s a staple! It’s called la bouille (spelling questionable- pronounced boo- yay). After we fed the children, Katie and I decided to take a walk to the Baptist Mission to see when they open back up. The Baptist Mission is a place where we have heard that we can get some good, Americanized food and just relax. As we thought, it doesn’t open up until the 4^th of October. We’ll have to wait just a little longer to get that hamburger! On our trek back home, we passed an old man who was eating dinner. He said to us, in English, “I am eating something very good”. I asked, “Oh yeah? What is it?” I can’t remember exactly what he said but he described la bouille that we see every night. I commented, “oh la bouille! Yes I know it! Enjoy”. He also mentioned something about cow skin… don’t know if he had cow skin in it or if he just got his words mixed or what, but I’d rather not have anything to do with cow skin on/ in my food so I just said “OK! Enjoy your dinner” and we walked away giggling to each other, confused. When we got home it was time to make our special meal for the week, spaghetti! I could not wait! We sliced up the vegetables that we got to add to our dish: peppers, tomatoes, artichokes, and snap peas. We boiled the noodles, cooked the veggies, and added sauce (Prego =D). Put it all together and you get the best meal all week! Sorry Alcindor, nothing beats something familiar in an unfamiliar world. We also had a much needed beer with dinner! Prestige is what it’s called. Tasted kinda like Bud, but oh so good on the lips! Such a great way to top off the evening. After dinner we cleaned up after ourselves and headed to the room. Time for laundry. Two buckets of water and an hour later I realized just how filthy I am! If you are a clean freak, do not ever do your laundry by hand! I’m not a clean freak and I was thoroughly grossed out by the amount of dirt that came off of my clothes. By the way, the electricity went out while I was doing laundry so I had to finish up with a head lamp, compliments of Katie Alice McKeeman! Thanks! By this time I was tired so I decided to hit the hay! Needless to say, I crashed.

Hide that Bum Bum!

Day 8 (Thursday): 

Katie: Ashleigh woke up this morning saying, "Alcindor must have prayed for me." She had normal dreams! Sure enough he did. So far this day was looking up compared to yesterday, no talking head dreams and the breakfast had not fish bones in sight. So far so good. We also were greeted by a hyper boy named Steve, he was dressed to impress because he was going horseback riding today, so he had on tight sand colored riding pants and riding leather shoes to match! Yup, today was going to be better. We fed the children boneless breakfast and went to pray. Ashleigh is the best closing prayer because she did it again. Since so many kids were going off to ride horses, which they do every Thursday, we weren't quite sure what we were suppose to do so we hunted around for someone to explain out project for the day. We find out, get our group and "play." John thought it was funny to throw a tennis ball directly at the dog Zel, which Zel didn't mind because that meant she got to play. One little boy, Kelly, was playing Hide-and-Seek in the parachute but it turned out to be just hind under there and not want to be seeked. Ashleigh and I were guarding the benches when we realized that our little Kelly was having a grand mal seizure. Thank goodness he was leaning on the dog's house already so we were able to gently lay him down on his side. We felt prepared this time and Ashleigh scratched his back. After that wake up call, Ashleigh became the chosen one and she got to get some loving from John. Her regular cuddler, Junior, wouldn't have it so he climbed up on "Big Mama" (Ashleigh's new nickname). That was short-lived when John pushed Junior away. Around this time I was coaxing a boy to stop peeing off the balcony and asking him to put "himself away." A teacher saw this and yelled the boy's name and chuckled and shook his head. Ashleigh and I deserved a much needed break and I got our lunches. This lunch is in the top running for the best lunch to date, in Haiti. Rice and beans and, hold onto your hats, cooked spinach and carrots! We lapped it up. We looked at each other and went to get seconds, since the kid's lunches were dished up. We got seconds and enough for dinner. We served up the kids their delicious lunches and started some afternoon activities. I went to the porch to see to my delight Ashleigh in a Conga line with a couple of kids! I joined right in. That happened for about 4 and a half minutes then we did some thumb wrestling and I danced with Raoul. Choupy (pronounced like Shoopy), a teacher, called us in, out of the rain, and we played darts, exactly the same Velcro darts that I used at MacKenzie Place! (It is international) We did a couple of rounds of that, and I then went upstairs and played with David, Fritz, and Lazar. I taught them head and shoulders knees and toes! It was really a great time to have a small group like that and just be able to have fun singing in the rain a classic. Ashleigh and I made our way to our room and finished our delicious dinner, that was just as good cold. We now sit here listening to the rain torment Porky, and Sax by the Fire. Perfect.

Ashleigh: I awoke this morning determined to have a great day, even if mass amounts of saliva were involved! I guess the aftermath of yesterday hit because I was just drained today with minimal energy. Oh well, days like that happen, but the show must go on! So I put on my game face and headed down for breakfast. It was great today! Rice soup minus the usual fish sauce! Thanks Alcindor! After breakfast it was time for class. A lot of the children went horseback riding today. It is a Thursday ritual. However, none of our children went, so we had the same routine as the previous 3 days. Round up the children, barricade them off, and start the entertaining, or should I say attempt at entertaining. The kids were in a good mood today, all of them. We started out with a parachute thing that everyone held on to and lifted and fell, and lifted and fell, but that lasted for about two minutes. Kelly decided that it made a better hiding place than activity, so he took it upon himself to stand under it and walk around dragging it with him wherever he went. He then decided to prop himself on Zel’s dog house and just hang out. In case you didn’t pick up on it, Zel is the Wings dog. After a couple of minutes, Katie noticed the parachute costume shaking. Oh no, Kelly was having a seizure. We uncovered him and laid him to the ground like Renee taught us and like we witnessed the other day with Peterson. After about 30 seconds, he stopped. Thank goodness. He laid there for just a minute then sat up and started giggling. Thought something was funny I guess. I was just relieved that he was ok. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to someone seizing in front of me. He then got sleepy and started leaning over to the side so Katie and I propped him up in a chair so he could take a little rest. He sat there for the rest of the morning. On the bright side, we didn’t have to keep him from spitting in the collected water! Poor Kelly… I think I would rather play defense on him than see him in the state he was in today. The rest of the morning went rather smoothly. John decided that he should perch up in my arms for about an hour, so I just let him. After all, I like getting some loves too! Lunch came early and Katie and I were both happy about that. Our stomachs were growling since 10am. We ate lunch then tried to start some afternoon sports again, but we got rained out, or in, whichever way you look at it. Choupy (pronounced shoe-pee) called us in for a game of darts! All of the kids that were able played and the top scorers were awarded a can of milk! Milk? Yes milk, and they were very appreciative of and excited for their reward. I think I need to reconsider the things that make me happy. Milk, for example, I take for granted. Not anymore. Milk is now valued, because it is a value. Thanks kids for helping me realize. Dinner went off as usual and Katie and I had leftover lunch for dinner. It was great today, by the way! It even had veggies in it! Thanks Alcindor! We are tying up the night and trying to get warm and dry. It has been raining all day. I don’t think my laundry will ever be dry! We were supposed to get a new roommate today, but as of 7pm, she has not arrived. Possible rain delay. Hopefully she’s ok. Anyways, I guess that’s it! Ta ta for now!