Project: Orphanage Sort

First of all I want to say that I’m typing right now ON MY COMPUTER! It was hand delivered last night along with a lovely photo album, work gloves, and more sunscreen – thanks Mom!

My Sunday goal had been to get to the beach. It didn’t happen. But what did happen was pretty interesting – a bit of an adventure. After lounging around base for a while I decided I desperately needed to escape the heat via a large body of water. After much discussion I ended up setting off with another volunteer named Jeanine. We left base in search of a moto-taxi to take us to a beach called Ballisimo (sp?). None of the motorcycle guys seemed to know where we were trying to go but finally we found one that seemed willing to, at the very least, take us somewhere that might be right. 20-some minutes later it became clear we had not gone the right direction at all. We pulled off to the side of the road and spoke with a local guy. After much talk (some in English, some French, some Creole) the guy on the side of the road said we could pay the driver $20 US and he’d wait for us to swim (at this beach we were at that WASN’T Ballisimo). Considering that it was about $19 more than we’d initially agreed on AND we didn’t have US dollars we told him to take us back to town. We returned to base slightly disheartened – although the ride had taken us into a lovely area in the mountains. Vowing to find water the two of us set off again – this time looking for a beach that was supposedly a ten-minute walk away. No big deal, right? Well as we were leaving base we saw one of the local volunteers and after a brief discussion he offered to take us to the beach. About an hour of hiking later we told him we had to turn around. In flip-flops I trekked through farmland, through woods, and never even made it to the beach. I got back to base a while later, admitting defeat. I sat around for a bit longer then was rounded up in a group to go get dinner. I’ve probably mentioned this before but, again, we don’t get fed on Sunday’s so we’re responsible for getting our own meals. So anyways a group of us walked over to a place called Massaje for the meal of a lifetime (relatively speaking). Just know that I ended the night with a cheeseburger, fries, milkshake, and coke in my stomach.

So because I’m still letting my sore back rest a bit more I decided to do the orphanage sort. This entailed sorting box after box of donations to take to the local orphanage(s). This huge shipment of stuff was pretty impressive. It was mostly stuff from Gymboree – apparently they decided to send a bunch of last season’s stuff to Haiti! It was really quite amazing things – all brand new. Some of the clothes donated were as much as $80 per garment. A lot of these clothes are going to help a lot of kids out. One funny note – a lot of the clothes sent were winter clothes. We’re talking down jackets, tons of sweaters, wool caps. So all of the clothes may not get used (or maybe they will and they’ll be tons of Haitian children running around in snow gear). Overall the workday went well – I got a chance to stay around base, taking it relatively easy while still accomplishing something. We’ve been given a roster of the children at one of the orphanages so the next step is to make a bag for each individual kid.

So now I’m in the office, blogging away with the music from the bar next door blasting away. As a little side note I want to say that the bar – nay – the entire country of Haiti plays one playlist ad nauseam. It’s a few mainstream American rap songs, a few Haitian rap songs, and a few “best of Bob Marley” songs. So anyways we don’t have work tomorrow as it’s Flag Day in Haiti! It’s apparently a pretty major holiday and everyone takes off work to celebrate. I’m not totally sure what tomorrow entails for me but I do know that (as of now) I and some other HODR volunteers will be heading over to the Sri Lankan UN base and challenging them to a game of basketball! I’m very much looking forward to representing my country in the name of basketball. My scouting report indicates that the UN team will be pretty short BUT in extremely good shape so it should be an interesting matchup. Assuming the game goes through as planned I’ll have a full report tomorrow and will have a friend take pictures which you can all see when I get home.

I’ve got to run – No Woman No Cry is playing!

Love,

Daniel

P.S. I had goat for lunch today which was DELICIOUS.