Charlotte arrived yesterday in fine weather. Andy (another volunteer who’s leaving soon to go to East Timor), Dan (a volunteer), Rob, and I all picked her up in a truck that has no horn. In Haiti, that’s like walking around naked. Cars talk with their horns to let other drivers and pedestrians know when they pass, speed up, turn, etc. In fact, using a horn seems to be the only respected law of the road.
We spent our afternoon with the priests who reside in the visitors’ house in Castel-Pere. Fr. Charlie has lived in Haiti for 43 years. He now stays in the room diagonal from mine and helps our Fr. Marc, the director. Fr. Patrick, a Jesuit priest, visits Haiti often and speaks very good Creole. He has traveled the world and seen places and people that most only ever read about in National Geographic. His presence in the quad will be sorely missed when he departs on Tuesday.
At the dinner table last night, we learned about Fr. Patrick’s adventures in Chad with the Sudanese refugees in the 1960s. The priests retired early to shower and hit the hay. The volunteers and visitors decided to go into town, meet up with Eddie and Yves (two Haitian employees of Pwoje Espwa and Andy’s roommates) at the Bay Club. The Bay Club sits on the coast right across from Ilse-a-Vache. There’s always a nice breeze and rum can be ordered by the bottle for a mere $7. Conversation ranged from the quality of life in Les Cayes, which far exceeds that of other regions in terms of safety, to the truly fine character of those working here in Pwoje Espwa, to our wishes and dreams for the future.
At church today, we baptized 3 babies, sang with the choir, learned how to give the kiss of peace in Creole and sweated profusely. Then, before lunch, Andy and I went out to a field where I tried out my skills on a motorcycle. Andy’s a good teacher but 5 little kids decided to help me too – and I had an audience of 20 who were tremendously amused by my inability to kick start, my propensity to stall and my jerky gear-shifting. I shall conquer the bike, however, and after than I’ll learn how to drive these big, stickshift trucks. My freedom may be restricted because of my gender (truly, in Haiti this is the case), but I’ll do my best to expand my options while I’m here.
This afternoon, post-siesta, Fr. Patrick lived up to the reputation of his order and sat down with Charlotte, Rob and I to teach us a little Creole. His teaching, so exacting and methodical, allowed us to chat with children in their native language after just an hour. Of course, we only asked things like “koman ou ye?” (how are you) and such. He also explained the definitive reasons why Kreyol (Haitian Creole) is separate language and NOT a patois. Apparently, the language is made up of primarily three African languages spoken in the “arm pit” of Africa (Benin, Togo, Nigeria, etc.). The slaves here created a melded language in order to communicate and then added some French from what they heard their masters say. In the early 1700s Kreyol was born.
Tonight, obviously, we celebrate the New Year! Our plans are unconfirmed, as yet. The party for which Fr. Marc wanted me here (the reason I came early and not after the New Year as originally intended) will not occur. The employees of Pwoje Espwa decided that since they could not even afford presents for the kids at Christmas, they could not justify a party for themselves.
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