Promised LAND
“She was standing right here last night. How could she be GONE?!”Shelley turned to me in the hallway in front of the artisan house kitchen. The incredulous look on her face hadn’t changed since she had received the news. 16 hours prior Vesline’s mom had been standing right over there: a bright-eyed grandma cooing over […]
Dancing and Singing
I had an emotional catharsis with a business planner today. weird.Talking about business strategy and crying my eyes out over death and destruction do not normally go hand in hand but it is somehow to be expected here.As I was leaving the Apparent Project house afterwards, an old man approached me. “shelley, I’m hungry”. He […]
the 12th…
The last few days have been hard. Somehow I wish the calendar wasn’t cyclical, because I’m not really ready to remember what happened a year ago. A lady stopped by yesterday. I didn’t recognize her until she showed me a mangled scar on her ankle. She thanked me that she still had her foot. I […]
Haitian Christ in Dezolasyon
“Is the traffic this bad because people are trying to get out of the city to avoid the protests?” “No,” I replied to Shelley’s mom, Marilyn, “this is just normal Haiti traffic”. I pulled forward, narrowly avoiding an unforgiving tap from a Mack truck that was making a 20 point turn in the middle of the […]
Jaqueline Regnus
Jaqueline looked at me with those puppy dog eyes. Please Shelley, I need help. I’m sleeping in my friends yard. I don’t have a tent or a tarp. The landlord kicked me out. Please. My reply was firm. Jaqueline. You have been given a chance to work. You have been given the chance to change […]
The children suffer..
This morning I checked my facebook status and saw that another friend was headed to the market. I hasn’t been open in several days and with the current political situation being what it is, I darted out of bed, threw some clothes on and headed out myself. We have so many people depending on us […]
Thanksgiving in Haiti
I am thankful to be alive today. I don’t mean that in the general, universal sense (while that would also be true). I mean that I am glad that I didn’t die yesterday. Let me explain. When you live in Haiti and your car is broke down or being used by somebody […]
Soap and Hand Sanitizer
We are literally on a shoe string budget right now. While the ladies are making money with their jewelry, we are about to lose our house, our car, our inverter etc.. And now Cholera.Would somebody be willing to donate $200 so that we can buy 100 bars of soap and 100 small bottles of hand […]
Cars that run are nice!
We have a Toyota Fourrunner that is very sick. The axle has broken four times, it sputters and pants at best when it is running, it always smells of gasoline, the gas gauge is broken, sometimes the keys work, and when they do sometimes the doors open but not always, the check engine light is […]
A million miles an hour…
It feels like life moves so fast here. And for such a laid back Carribean culture it is a weird opposite. Almost everyone I know here is working their backsides off almost around the clock. There is so much work to be done and so much urgency. We felt that this week with Hurricane Tomas […]
