Fun Friday!

Bonswa, Zanmi!

Today was another beautiful afternoon exploring the beautiful city of Port-au-Prince. Again, most of us woke up before the sunrise to go to the tent church. Pastor Gary preached this morning in half English and half Creole, so we could understand a lot of what he was saying. Dickenson graciously led us back to the guest house and we all loved that he was able to join us before school.
After a delicious breakfast, we loaded up the tap-tap with our supplies and set off to the Home for Sick and Dying Adults. The boys stayed downstairs in the men's ward, and the ladies went upstairs to the women's ward. We took care of some of their needs by cleaning their arms and legs, giving massages with lotion, and giving the ladies pedicures and manicures. With the help of the translators we were able to connect with the patients and get to know them and bring them a little joy to their day.

The next stop we made was to General Hospital - Pediatric ward. The night before we all worked together to make care packages for the families to bring with us when we visited. We worked as a team to make sure all of the packages got to the families in the ward and everyone had some water. The patients in this section were mostly infants and young children, and it was touching to see their parent's sitting next to the crib and holding their hand. Many of the parents had been there for hours and the care they had for their children was so inspiring. After the care packages were distributed, we got a chance to interact with the families a bit and some of us got the honor of holding their little ones. The scene was pretty chaotic and it wasn't the most comfortable environment for a lot of us to be in - but we learned a lot and better understood what these families were going through.

After seeing the thousands of street vendors our whole trip, we finally got the chance to do some real bargain shopping. 'No merci!' was the phrase of the afternoon as we made our way through all the vendors beckoning us all to their stands to 'give us a good price.' We all came away with cool Haitian oil paintings and wooden knickknacks. As we were making our way out of the market, we all jumped into the tap-tap to escape the very persistent street vendors who had abandoned their cart and followed us to the tap-tap. It was a fun and unique experience, and we all came away with a hundred new friends each!

Our last stop was to Apparent Project - a non-profit organization that employs the local Haitians and uses recycled materials to make various forms of jewelry, ornaments and other products for world-wide purchase. We got a chance to have a tour of the facility and got to see where the necklaces, bracelets, and pottery were made. And some beads were even made out of recycled cereal boxes! Then we enjoyed a delicious homemade smoothie and got to shop around and spend all of our money!

Valery proved his mastery at driving the tap-tap as we pushed through the crazy traffic to go back to the guest house and have some dinner. The cooks did a fabulous job and made us some delicious spaghetti.

As the weekend is much to soon, we're gearing up for another water truck day and an adventure to the beach to finish out our week!

One of the pottery rooms at Apparent Project. The phrase on the wall described our team very well:)

Thank you so much for all your support and prayers, they are very much appreciated. We can't wait to come back and share all of our experiences with you!

Orevwa,

Megan & Beebs