Haiti, part 2

Before I begin, I have a side note:
Not that I am the world traveler, but people. Don't lose your passport. Always put it back inside wherever so you know exactly where it is and secured. While we were on the plane from Miami to Haiti there was a woman that was asking around her if they saw a passport. No one could find a passport so she assumed she dropped it in the Miami airport. Normally, you have a copy of your passport and you go the embassy and get a temporary passport to get you back to the states.

Well, the day we got there was July 4. She was told she had to wait until Monday because the embassy was closed for the holiday. Do you know what she said?? "Haiti celebrates Independence Day, too???"  Lord help us. "No, ma'am, but the American embassy does." This is where our country is going with the dumbing down our education system... And you know what? She got sent straight back to the states. Without leaving the tiny little airport.

The next day was Sunday and we were to go to church. We were prepared for 3 hours worth of church. Whew. It was already hot as snot... I'm going to explain who some people are and hopefully it's easy to understand. In the blue there is Maria, armed with her wet towel around her neck and plenty of water. Karen is on her way into the tap tap. And Wendel, one of our translators, is on the right. I couldn't believe it, he's in dress slacks and a long sleeve button down shirt.

Here's most of us in the tap tap. On the right is Kaleisha and Rachael.
On the left is Lisa, Tori, Maria, Karen and Mariann.

This is the church band, drums, a keyboard and a guitar. 

 Look at these sweet girls. Most of the young kids were up front and center. It was so fun to see them doing what they were supposed to do. And the singing was so loud and boisterous, very passionate.

They served communion.

Then they served us communion.

They were being so good!! This one in the green fell asleep. And you could tell they were hot just like us. 

And they had these girls/women that were greeters/minders/etc. They had multiple roles but they helped the kids with pages in the bible or hymnal, but they also woke the kids up if they fell asleep (at least the older ones). Notice the "windows", they're basically cinder blocks with holes in them.

After church (which lasted only 2 1/2 hours, lots of water, lots of fanning, lots of skirt-wagging, whew it was hot...) we got a tour of the church/school. Last year, the church is where the group stayed.  The church schools the local children.

That chalkboard is paint on the cement wall.

This is Pastor Duplessey pointing to the empty lot across the street from the church.

This empty lot. The church was gifted this lot to expand their school. They not only teach children but they also have a nursing school and they are wanting to have a secretary school as well.

There's our trusty tap tap!

There were a couple kids still there when we were leaving and THEY LOVE cameras. So these are a few pictures they took. Lisa and Rachael.

Tori. In the background, left to right, is Tifaney, Anndi (Lisa and Tori's mom), Wendel, Elizabeth (our other translator, and Eric (our leader).

Karen.

This is the outside of the church. As you can see, there are a couple air conditioners (right there is the pastor's office) but they only work when the electricity is on.

This is a home that we drove past to the church.

This is the pastor's house. The top floor is where we stayed. The bottom level is where we ate our meals.

We had some time before lunch and we wanted to explore up onto the roof (the ladder was calling our names!!!) so we hopped on up! In the foreground is a house in the process of being built but they've been in the process for a long time. Loans are difficult to come by and are very expensive, so people build their own houses as they get the money.

This is the back yard of the house. This is where they cleaned our dishes and the pots and pans from meals. The hole with the lid open is the cistern that holds water to clean items with and to pump up into the water tank for showers and washing hands.

The view.

That's the water tank.

Y'all, this girl is hilarious. You know any single men? She's ready. They have to have all their teeth and be willing to come to our church for services (she doesn't want to leave Sunbreak).

This was the neighbor's house. Yes, there were people living there.

Most trees were some kind of fruit trees. Coconut, banana, mango, etc.

Lunch on Sunday is the bigger meal. There was BBQ chicken, fried plantain, apricot, white rice, a beet and corn salad (that's the only thing I didn't like), mac and cheese, potato salad and this corn casserole which was really good!!

 

This is another home that was being constructed. We were taking our community walk.

 

Then we asked if we could come into a hotel (one of the only hotels I saw) to take a look at the view.

Tifaney wanted a picture with the little goat for our pastor's wife, Brenda. We saw lots of farm animals tied up in different spots. But they're all terribly afraid of humans so Elizabeth tried to get the goat closer to Tif.

This was one of the nicest homes I saw. It didn't look like a prison (except for the fact it was made of cement), nice car, definitely not what is the norm around Haiti.

This was the nicer part of the road leading up to the pastor's house. It's not dirt, it's quite rocky, uneven, to say the least.

The pastor's own banana tree.

 
This was dinner on Sunday night, very low key. This was probably my favorite meal. It was like a mixture of oatmeal and cream of wheat blended. It had a little bit of sweetness (probably with condensed milk). It was SO good. Even though it was hot and this meal was hot, I ate two bowls. Along with a little bit of leftovers.

And that was our Sunday.