Wednesday, May 27
What an amazing day! Not to discredit the days we’ve had thus far. Today was especially amazing because we got to spend the first two hours of the day in classrooms at the Brakeman school, leading crafts. We had the kids make salvation bracelets, faces out of paper plates, cross bags that we put balls in and “bubble catchers”. At the end of each of the two classes we went outside in the courtyard and blew bubbles for the kids to catch. The kids were so polite and enthusiastic. It was wonderful to relate to both the students and their teachers on that level.
We spent the rest of the day in our “assembly line” passing concrete buckets. Later in the afternoon we made bets on how many buckets of concrete it would take us to get the job done for the day. Rudy Sr. won with a whopping 97 (the actual number was 80-something, but everyone else under shot). It took us about 20 minutes to pass and pour that many buckets of concrete a distance of about 30 yards. The work song of choice for the “older” members of the group was the Beverley Hillbillies theme song, while the “younger” members of the group sang the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song.
Even with the language barrier, we feel a bond developing with the Haitian crew members as we work side by side with them. We ended the day at the job site with another game of tossing the stones (except this time we had small yellow balls left over from our classroom activities) into the bucket.
The CHE (Community Health Evangelism) trainers came by and met with Rudy and Wes this afternoon in preparation of some upcoming training for Haitian members of that team. CHE works in the communities educating residents on local health impacts like disease prevention, Cholera and clean water initiatives.
As we type this, the team is trying to learn how to carry baskets on their heads as many Haitian women do. Wish we had pictures to show the event!
Haitian Woman Carrying Groceries on her Head