Living Haiti

Friday November, 19th...

I was looking at the date this morning and wondering how November is already over half gone. I guess sometimes time really does fly. I have only a few more days until I head back to the States for a holiday with my family. I'm getting excited to see all my loved ones.

We've been pretty busy around here. I'm sure you're hearing snippets of news about Haiti lately. The reality is that there is a lot of newsworthy activity going on here, but I'm afraid most major news channels only want to cover the sensational end of the stories here. I'm not a journalist, and honestly, how could I ever know the whole of the story here, but it's easy for me to see an abundance of newsworthy activity here...

A seemingly unsurmountable occurence of poverty
An upcoming election
The lack of suitable recovery following a major catastrophic event
An epidemic that has killed more than 1000 people

And now, fighting in the streets. What I've found out in my time here, and in my relationship with this country is that the real story is not always easy to find. You have to ask a lot of questions from a lot of people, and be patient, then maybe the answers will start to come. Questions and Patience. I've been reading a lot of reporting from news entities and am sometimes upset, and sometimes offended at the way the Haitian people are portrayed. I wish the international community would approach people and situations here with a little more dignity. As people we share a commonality, and sometimes we're unwilling to share the small courtesies with each other that we expect for ourselves. But...I don't think I'll write anymore on that now, I'm far to0 opinionated and way too uninformed to try to write opinions of the greater state of Haiti for the whole internet to see here.

What I can say is this, the cholera is bad and is taking a lot of lives. Where it is hitting families and communities it is hitting hard, and many people are dying senseless deaths. It's sad. It's sad to hear of parents carrying a child to a hospital and then carrying them back home, lifeless. It doesn't make sense in my head, and it probably shouldn't, but it is a story that has been repeated countless times over here in the past month.

There is fighting in the streets...most of the fighting has been up in the North of the country, and most people are saying that it is only directed against the UN forces that the people are upset with. Yesterday there was some rioting in Port Au Prince in the downtown area. It was a holiday here and given the situations with the election and Cholera, I'm not too surprised that it happened. I haven't seen any signs of violence when I've been out in the street with one exception...and the exception that we saw was what was left after a fight in the streets, most likely after someone stole something. I've never found myself in danger, nor do we intend to. We try to make wise choices about where and how we move around the city. I talked to my dad today and told him not to worry...we play it safe, even if our daily routine hasn't been touched.

Things are going well with work at the orphanage. We got the phone call that one of our children's paperwork is done for his adoption. Now we just wait for the passport and visa...and the lawyer is doing that this time! It's possible he'll be with his family soon!

Today I have a meeting with a lady here who is helping with four of our children that are alraedy linked with families. Their paperwork is progressing as well! These things are all very exciting. So we're trucking along, trying to do what we can do. We've had a steady stream of visitors here which adds another exciting element to life around here, but Gertrude and I did find a little time for our own shennanigans up on the roof last night and tried doing the limbo with our clotheslines. It's always good to end an evening in this house laughing with Gertrude!