Churches

It's saturday again, and that means I get to wander further from campus. Today I wandered all the way down town in John Ackerman's truck.  And I saw for the first time just how big this city is, and how big this country is. It made me pensive. John had a refreshing view on Haiti, one that is hard to live by and does not allow for first world do-gooder glamorizing. I put that out there to give you a context for the following post.

 As I sat down to write this I realized my inspiration to write does not come in my darker moments when I'm ready to crawl into a hole and stay there, but in those moments when I see things that I want to share - cool things, fun things. 

But that's not where my heart has truly been at these last few days. It's been rough. And in many ways, it hasn't been rough in ways I expected. 

My apartment is clean and cool. I have a cleaning lady and a laundry lady. I've been able to eat fairly well. What has been rocking my world lately is my lack of a home. Or, to put the problem in another light, I have too many homes. Where is my home? What is my normal? I find that I have too many places that I miss. It's stopping me from engaging in this, this one-more-stop-on-the-road. This week has been hard. I've had to push myself to engage with student, with staff.  I tell myself that this uncomfortableness is temporary, that soon I will feel at home. But I know that this is as unstable a place as any other. And for the first time, I find myself surrounded by people who think like me, and yet are different. There are people here I can learn from, and people I can teach. And somehow this is overwhelming. In every move you are asked to let go of the past. What I struggle with is the fear of letting go of the past and not having a future to fill it with. 

How do I explain this week? I've been missing places. Bokrijk. Plankendaele. Leuven. Nyack. New York. Nanuet. 9w. Bear Mountain. Carnforth. Capernwray. Mersey Side. Oxford. Paris. Oostende. Hastings. 

I've been missing things I didn't do. Hike Bear Mountain.  Go adventuring through the North York Moors. Keep my Guitar. Take acting classes. Stay in basketball.

It's a swirling mess inside my head. 

'to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world' Salman Rushdie said, 

And I think it's true. You'd have to swallow multiple worlds to know me.

but that's not really the heart of the matter. 

I have so many worlds in me, so much information that I've stored away. Why is that? I wondered - 

I used each world I knew to mask the insecurities, the fears, the terror at times of being un-moored in the world. I wonder what security must feel like.  But I've been called into a new life. I must now believe that I am enough. I don't need my worlds to do what I was created to do. This truth is world-changing (pun intended) and it leaves me wondering what I really think or feel about anything. 

I saw the PaP cathedral today, what was left standing of it. I had goosebumps. It was so much more than what I'm going to make of it in this next paragraph, but for today I took this away from it:

St. Maarten's kerk, Zaventem

I've always been drawn to cathedrals. 

 Stone walls built to hold sacred time have always quieted me in a way.

Nyack Episcopal Church. NY.

Capernwray Chapel, U.K.

 In all the places I've lived, churches have drawn me in - just to sit and pray. 

When I think of my faith, I often think of Notre Dame in Paris and the rose window. 

Saint Chapelle. Paris.

Notre Dame. Paris.

Seeing the cathedral in ruins made me think of my own life. Sickness, moves, my own choices. These last few years have broken many things in my life. 

Port-Au-Prince

Port au Prince

I realized that unless I admit to myself daily that I am like that cathedral, I will never be rebuilt. 

I am broken. I can't fix me.

and then I find this.

And this:

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.” Hemingway.

So the week has been hard. But I'm not out for the count. I'm in pain because I'm being rebuilt. One brick at a time. The work is hard, but the goal is worth fighting for. Keep praying for me. I need it. It's working.

So, my apologies for a post all about me. I promise to post more about the school and my students in the future. After I grade their beowulf tests :-)

Love you all!

One Week In

One week into teaching! I can hardly believe it. Part of this feels so surreal, so unlikely, and so strange.  The other part of me feels like I have always done this and I will always do this.

And so I find myself mulling over what stories or highlights to pull out of the cloud of swirling memories.

I teach 3 classes a day, except for Thursday, during which I teach all four.  This Thursday was a holiday (Ascension day) so we had no classes. That meant I had all my students three times.

My classes are all interesting. I wonder how to teach them, as I have no measuring stick. I don’t know, from my own experience, how much I can make them do. The people who are telling me what I can do, I don’t know well enough to understand what they mean with that.  I am encouraged to know that this is pretty average wherever you are, and that the freedom I have to explore the curriculum is a gift I don’t need to be afraid of using. I’m planning each day as I go and some are more interesting than others. I have some yearlong structures I need to still get into place. My 12^th grade class was introduced to the library for their first self-selected reading.

Our stove was finally fixes on Wednesday, so we’ve been able to cook in our own apartment. The relief of having a stove is beyond words.  We’ve since found out it will light itself without matches, but only after we used the back-burner that was connected to the starter. Trial and Error.

---Blog post interrupted by visit from fellow teacher and his wife. She’s just flown in and she’s from Belgium! I am excited to start speaking Dutch with her soon!---

Being that it’s now ten and I am getting pretty tired, I will leave you all with a sad substitute for real news: The bullet point list

This Week:

1)   Enjoyed a wonderful birthday party on Friday night. My team won at Kube (I made the final kill shot).  I am so blessed to be working with people who came and loved on me after only knowing me for one to two weeks.

2)   The birthday cake was in Dutch. The brownies were gluten-free. The chili was hot and the crepes were not only gluten-free but also covered in Nutella.

3)   Figuring out the online homework assignment pages in Sycamore as well as figuring out what to give, as homework is daunting.

4)   The coffee maker in the staff room doesn’t work, but I have a detachable electric teakettle in my apartment.

5)   I’ve made two treks into the mountains this week.  Forget about pictures. You’re not getting any. You need to get on a plane and come here to see them yourselves.  I kept looking up and around and saying out loud, in wonder, I GET to live here. I live here. How did I end up here? It’s beautiful

6)   Bought a Lemon balm plant (Melise) and planted my Moringa seeds. My garden has begun.

7)   My French is becoming more confident.

8)   My birthday presents (from mom, but bought by me): A Kreyol bible, a map of Haiti and the lemon balm.

9)   The elementary school principal has kindly offered to meet and pray with me on Tuesdays. She offered even before I finished asking.

10)                  I am challenged and intimidated and stimulated by my kids. This teaching thing is a pretty sweet deal.

One of my fellow teachers kindly put up pictures of the picnic and our thursday excursion on her blog
http://www.elisahannay.com/elisa-in-haiti.html
Check it out!

Ayitian Market

Before I launch into an update, let me link you to the apartment video that was missing from last week's post.
Apartment Link

I apologize for it's length, but it took me three tries and 50 minutes each try to get it up so I will leave it as is for now.

And now, the update:
Wow. This place is amazing. I'm sporting a full arm bruise from the volleyball game last night. The staff put on a volleyball game, and it was very fun. I only was on the winning team once, but hey! I took a few dives and I got a good workout so that's a win! The last week was spent in decorating my room, staff updates, information overload and a lot of learning. One of the things I am learning is that I do have many Eyore traits in me and I tend to write or speak about situations in a way that conveys more of the struggle than the triumphs. This week was somewhat hilarious because, since I've never been more excited or content or, well, competent feeling, my over compensation engines kicked into overdrive. I was pummeled with all sorts of strange inferiority complexes. Some so weird, I had to laugh out loud at them, but other were revived, unhealed wounds that I recognize as no longer being a truth I believe but still... I learned that it's not enough to grow out of some things, but you have to make sure the doors are closed to them at all times. Cryptic, yes? But some of those struggles are not helped by sharing, so I'm only (hah) asking for prayer.
Today I went to the outdoor market up the street. I rode a taptap, haggled a little and depended on my two guides very much.  I forgot to ask them if I could put their names up here, so I'll only describe them for you. They're both second generation haitian american citizens, who've chosen to make haiti their home. He runs a bee keeping business (and I've already got the first jar on my shelf. raw organic honey for roughly the same price as in Walmart. not bad) and she teaches 4th grade at QCS. They were incredibly generous in taking me with them on their bi-weekly shopping trip. Not only did it cut my eating costs substantially, it also meant I could buy fresh, organic produce so I could stabilize my diet!
I want to do the market justice, so I won't post about anything else.
Taptap's cost 10 gourdes (depending) and at 43 gourdes to a dollar, that's not bad.  They're essentially pick-up trucks with two benches in the back. there's a driver and a loader. the loader stands at the back and shouts to let people know they're loading. Taptap's have fixed routes, so on Delmas, if they're pointed up, they're going up and vice versa. They pack as many people in as they can and when you want to get off, you tap the drivers screen or call out 'Merci' if you're at the end, the message is conveyed for you.  it's about a 5 minute drive with no traffic and we walked another 5 minutes until we ducked into a wooden doorway. That lead to a steep hill, although I never saw much of the hill because it was crowded with people, wheelbarrows, merchandise, chickens and who knows what else. My guides were trying to find the entrance to the market as it had changed since their last visit. She had at first grabbed my hand an apologized for it, but after taking one look at the crowd, I grabbed hers and told here to 'lead on!'. The entrance to the market turned out to be three steps leading into what looked like a shanty town. There were rickety wooden stalls built up about two stories over our head and they were covered by tarps held up by ropes. There were all sorts of stalls but mainly produce. Flies were buzzing everywhere and people were packed in. It was not for the claustrophobic. The market sprawls out beyond the wooden structures into at least three concrete, steel covered bays and down into the streets beyond. You could hear the butcher section throughout the market. the rhythmic chopping sound was made as they chop through chicken or goat, bone and all, by pounding on it with a machete. My guides had a regular stall, but we couldn't find it, so we began to shop where we could. As soon as I had made my first purchase (get this, they work in haitian dollars, which is 5 gourdes, but the money is all in gourdes. So I'm converting U.S. dollars to gourdes to haitian dollars to even get an idea if what I'm paying is worth it or if I can afford it. All this in Kreyol which is close enough to French, but still a bit of a learning experience) the regular market lady shows up out of nowhere and gives my guides a bit of a hard time. They laughingly explain that they've been looking for her and that they haven't made any significant purchase anywhere else. We bought most of the produce at her stall and I got some fruit.
It took us about an hour, and I spent about 500 gourdes for everything. That's roughly 12 dollars for a week or more's worth of produce.  A success, by all means!
The ride back was made special by the lady's live chicken peering at me from her shopping basket. I feel adventurous enough to plan on a live chicken purchase one of these days.

I'm late for dinner so I will post this as is with all the run on sentences and grammar mistakes. I hope you'll forgive me!

Bon Swa!

I have finally made some documentary efforts on your behalf.  Below is an overview of the campus. The peace and quiet in these pictures are temporary, I'm sure, and a direct contrast to the streets outside. Today I attended two churches and a teacher meeting, skyped with a dear friend in Belgium, and tried hanging curtains for the second time. We lost power three times but it didn't stop any of the events.

It took me 40 minutes to load the movie and I'm not even sure it did load. Tomorrow we begin orientation for real. I have a schedule, and a classroom. I'll show you those later on. 

I also made my first solo walk outside of the gates... I know I will get in trouble for telling this story, but I must be allowed a little pride in the matter :-) After church we went to Epi d'Ore, a sandwich shop up the street, and three of us decided to check out the grocery store for things like dish soap. Well, halfway through shopping, I felt a little nauseous. Without a doubt it was the amount of rice I had been eating, but there was no un-eating it. I handed my bags to a friend and told her I was going to head home before it got worse.  It was a nice walk. Being outside cleared my head, and I felt oddly as if I was walking down the streets of New York. The sudden pockets of bad smells reminded me of the wifs of subway smoke you would get in NY, and so did the panhandlers. I only got called Blan once, and a bunch of boys called after me 'mon cheri, I luv jouuu' but since they stayed seating, I wasn't too worried. In all, it was a nice walk I look forward to doing again if I need groceries.

The Tour

The school is wrapped around the soccer field. My apartment, the chapel, office and snack shop are on the north side. The elementary school and second gate are on the west side. The library, workroom, high school and basketball court are on the south side. The East side is a wall running along 75 Delmas. 

A tour of my apartment

The library and faculty workroom

standing with library to my right, looking at the football field, with picknick area beyond

left is football field fence, right is high school parking lot and library

spinning around, so the library is at my back, the other entrance

elementary entrance

elementary side shot, with back to the football field

Quesqueya Chapel, my apartment is on the other side.

The view of the street from the high school girls' bathroom

same view, with the bars, in case anyone was worried.

The Flipside

I' ve used that phrase so many times, it's nice to actually be ON the flip side.

I feel rested and all caught up on sleep after a busy day yesterday. I'm sure you've all heard it before but nothing can really prepare you for cultural immersion. 

I am here.  And it both looks like what I was expecting and nothing like it. 

Last night I felt more overwhelmed by my own insignificance than by anything else. But I had expected (although dreaded) that. I'm not one to easily admit I don't know things.  And I don't know many,many things.  

But God is sovereign, and He is good. two things that comforted me last night. I think we all want to be special, needed and be able to bring meaning to others lives. I don't think I am struggling with anything unusual. But, like everything worth doing, it takes time. 

The weather here is beautiful. Breezy and warm.

My reading assignments for the week

There will be a longer post probably tonight, when I can upload pictures. 

Love you all. Thank you for your prayers. 

My view: lunch area