StephenByxbe.com

Alright.. well the power shut off last night before I even got a chance to start typing. One day we will get this power schedule figured out. My guess is that they wanted to make sure they had enough fuel saved up so the power could stay on all day for church, since church goes from 6:30 am until about 10pm. It is like an all day event here!

Well yesterday was awesome. We are becoming part of the community now. As we walk around we are beginning to fit in (as much as two white boys can in this place). Kids have stopped saying “Ay you” to us so much and people have started to recognize us.. probably as “those white guys” commonly called “blanc”.

Saturday morning I woke up sick… I was nauseated and did not feel well at all. Seeing as I fell asleep around 8:30pm and woke up at 6:30am I was already pushing 10 hours of sleep. I quickly pepto’d it up and laid back down. I was up by 9am working again and doing fine. I believe the sickeness came from a bell pepper that was in some sauce for the rice and beans. My gut said dont eat it.. but I had to try it Gut was right this time!!

After I re-woke up I started building some shelves to organize all of my stuff a little better. I will put a picture on facebook of my newly designed living area. I finished the shelves and then Nadege (Leon’s Daughter) arrived to escort me and Nathan to the supermarket. We walked about 2 miles to catch a Tap Tap, then hopped 2 tap taps to make it across Port au Prince to the market. We went through a Haiti style SAM’s called “Megamart” and then to the Deli Mart. We got the usual $10 jar of peanut butter, $5 (seems like a scoop) Jar of jelly, some cereal and other random necessities and then hopped the 2 tap taps back home. We convinced Nadege we could walk from the last tap tap to the compound alone and that no one would bother us and she agreed and continued on her way. As we started walking everyone either (1) wanted to help or (2) wanted what we had. Imagine thousands of starving people standing around.. and then two foreigners come walking along with bag fulls of groceries…. you get the picture. We got the “stink eye” from everyone!!! We heard “gimme one.. gimmee one” but we just smiled and said “bonswa” (and we walked a little faster everytime. No worries.. we made it home unharmed It was a fun experience, being out on our own.

When we were walking around the city, we were in one of the areas that was hit very hard by the earthquake. Me and Nathan were discussing a way to describe it to you. This is what we came up with. Imagine a wrecking ball went crazy on the local mall… destroying it – so there is stuff everywhere – bricks, metal, glass, merchandise, cars…. then dump a TJ MAX on top of the pile of rubble, release 1000 homeless people and have them set up shops. This is what it seems like walking down the roads. We walked past a block full off little venders set up in front of a 4 story collapsed building that is now 1.5 stories tall. They sit in front of it like nothing is wrong. We walked a little further to a University (nursing school) that completely collapsed into the road. This is the first time on this trip I have smelled death. It was gut wrenching. There were a pile of bones and skulls in the rubble by the road. Nadege told us she walked past this just after the earthquake and there were people crushed all in it just hanging everywhere. It is sad knowing that every pile of rubble on the side of the road has people buried in it, but life continues to go on.
Once we made it back (5pm), the internet was finally up! It had not been working since about 8pm the night before. I opened my computer and had about 100 emails, of which almost everyone needed a reply.. so I sat and replied to emails – all regarding Haiti – for an hour. I know this is all boring stuff but I am getting to the good stuff in a min – the cultural bonding moment. Supper was great, as usual. Rice, beans, chicken and potato crisps. Sooo good. We ate and relaxed and then did a lot of cleaning. We made a big mess in the dining hall, when making the bunk beds, that had to be cleaned by sunday. Then around 8pm the church meeting got out.. Boom.. power goes off.. normally we have until 10pm, but not last night.. so we didnt even try to type out blogs or anything.

We decided to get ready for bed so Nathan was headed to the shower and I was headed to the restroom when we ran into a bunch of people downstairs. They are Pierre’s kids. Pierre is the gate keeper and watchman at the compound. They live in the first floor of our building in a space the size of most people’s living rooms. Pierre’s kids are awesome. He has 2 children (Islan, Amos) and then 1 niece (Dolly) and nephew (Woodly) that live with him. They were asking us something from downstairs and we didnt know what it meant so we stopped by on the way to the bathroom. They were saying “Nou we veso.” We were trying to translate it but our dictionary is awful. We got “We see…..” and we kept asking them in creole “What is veso?” and “point to veso” and they kept pointing back at me and nathan. It made no sense.. finally a new kid showed up and was like “veso… manje” and acting like he was eating. Manje means food/eat. It made sense then. They saw our plates from dinner on the balcony rail and needed them. This “lost in translation” time took about 20 mins. This then led to all of us trying to talk for a few minutes and me and nathan having to translate and use our hands to explain. We just sat and laughed.  A friend of ours, Reginold, then walked up. He speaks a good bit of english and also plays the guitar. He had his mp3 player on and played some backstreet boys and other 90′s music for us. He wanted to hear us play and sing after we sang all the songs on his mp3 player. So we grabbed the guitar and started playing. This is where it got really awesome. As we were playing some worship songs they started singing in creole while we were singing in english. It was amazing how the two translations went together. They were amazed that we knew the songs and could sing along with them. I was amazed at how it sounded when we had both translations going at the same time. This led us to translate a song into creole so “maybe” one day we could lead worship at Blanchard Church and teach them a new song or two. It was so much fun sitting and talking with  them and singing songs that lift up the same amazing God in two different languages.

Church should be exciting today. It starts in just a few hours. I will give you an update when its over. We pick up the new team today around noon so the week starts again. Wish us luck and keep us in your prayers.

Always with love,

Stephen