My Mucker

I haven't showered at all since Monday night. I'm officially starting to feel really gross. Haha.

For breakfast, we had spaghetti with spam in it (aka: "spamghetti"), avocados, fruit, coffee, and bread with spicy peanut butter or Laughing Cow cheese spread. After breakfast, we packed our sleeping bags and suitcases away to have room for the day's activities. Our first order of business was getting assigned our "muckers" or partners for the week. There's one Haitian translator to every American. We have to be responsible for our muckers while in Plain Matin, also knowing where they are and how they're doing. For us Americans, our mucker is our go-to for all questions and concerns relating to life in Haiti. For the Haitians, I feel like we're more along the lines of an English partner / pet project to keep alive for the week.

Pastor Paul's wife, Jan, is my mucker. She already speaks very good English and, more importantly, is extremely patient with my Kreyol. I'm struggling to learn the language verbally, since we don't have it written down. I can't exactly go to my Kreyol textbook or dictionary and see the words I need, like I could when studying Spanish and Italian.

To complicate this situation, I have to learn how to answer, "What is your name? Where are you from? How are you?" in Kreyol for tonight. We're doing a men versus women challenge this week to master basic Kreyol, which means I'll be on the spot. I have to learn this!

But of course instead of studying, I spent the morning playing with a baby girl named Jayla and three of her cousins (or sisters? All the kids travel in a pack and it's a bit of a challenge to understand who's related and how.) Jayla was too precious!

Lunch was leftovers from breakfast. After that, we split up with our muckers and visited homes around the community. I didn't understand much of anything, but the walk through the mountains was breathtaking and it was interesting to see how people in this community live. It was also interesting to hear from Madame Pas that the beautiful hanging yellow flowers I see everywhere are drugs. That's what she told me when I asked what kind of flowers they are. "Oh, they're drugs." I meant, what are they called, but that works even better. Madame told me she once knew a man who made a tea from those flowers and got so high he spent five days recovering in the hospital from hallucinations. "So do not drink them." Wasn't going to after that story. Thanks. :)

Madame Pastor and I spent a long time with one family of three women with several children. After Madame talked with them, she explained to me that the oldest woman is a medicine woman and the family practices voodoo. She said she told the women about Jesus and about the church here. She said she invited them to come experience church and attend at least one service, but the women were skeptical.

While at their house, it started pouring, so we waited inside with the family until the rain slowed enough to walk back to church. It was fascinating to see all the homes. Some are cinder block or concrete with a tin roof (like the church) and some are thatched roof huts. Madame said the house she and Paul are building will hopefully have two stories - one for her and Paul to stay when in Plain Matin and one for visitors like us, so future groups won't have to crowd in the church. However, it will cost about $100, 000 U.S. to build a house like they envision and materials in Haiti are difficult to come by, so Madame said she doesn't know how long it will take to complete the house.

Now the band is warming up for church tonight and dinner smells like it will be ready soon. I tried to write earlier today, but the little girls kept taking my pen and notebook! They liked signing their names and writing songs.

Speaking of songs, Madame Pastor told me during our walk that I have a beautiful singing voice. I was very surprised that a) she had heard me sing and b) she actually liked it. But apparently she heard me singing to Jayla this morning as I carried her around.

Oops. Change of plans. Jeff just said it's dry enough now that we may try to do some construction before dinner. I guess I should go get the details.