Haiti Journal May 28 – St. Joseph’s Hospice, Port Au Prince
Butt-early in the morning.
My thought this morning was “Ghandi Hot.” Words like “sweltering” and “dripping” also come to mind.
The city power stayed on all night, so the inverter / battery system didn’t need to kick in. This was a blessing because the overhead fan stayed on all night. All praise the overhead fan.
The crowing of the rooster outside the window quite makes the scene. Did you know that roosters do not only crow at dawn? They actually crow mostly through the night. This morning though, the echoing cries back and forth over the hills of the city really, as redmed says: ‘make the scene’
addendum: Through the trip, a simple way to get a laugh was to grunt out the lyrics to “Here Come the Rooster” by Pearl Jam. We also took to calling them “alarm cocks.”
Off to church this morning. Apparently, there are little ladies who smack you with sticks if you fall asleep or you put your feet up.
Haiti Journal May 28, – Evening – Fondwa
Today we traveled first to church. Church was really huge. I heard that the congregation numbers over 800. Prior to the service, sunday school was going on in smaller groups throughout the sactuary. I can’t even imagine a way to describe the din of 8 different teachers preaching their guts out in the same room, at the same time, in Creole.
During the service, the ushers would walk around enforcing discipline. They encouraged people to stand, sit, pray, and WAKE UP, DAMN YOU! It was a little intimidating! Church lasted about 2 hours, during which I was even heard to shout HALLELUJAH and seen to wave my hands in the air. What can I say? Those women and their doilies on their heads scared me.
This church is one of 5 organized by the same man. He started in Cite Soliel, which is the really bad slum, built on the trash dump. These people in the congregation we saw are mostly folks who moved out of there when the violence got really bad.
The children were all in their brightly colored best, and the adults were too. It’s amazing to see people stepping over the open sewer in their street, in their 3 piece suit.
Afterwards we drove to Leogane, where we toured a hospital. The architecture was straight 1910 asylum, with primarily 1970’s technology and a smattering of 2005 in the pharmacy.
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