Haiti is in the dry season at the moment. So it's typically hot and arid, and hasn't rained for months. There have been a few brief showers - one or two at night, that have reverberated on the tent walls - which have only lasted for a minute or two but that's all. No real rainfall so the ground is hard and parched. I was here in the rainy season once and it's common for dramatic bursts of rainfall several times a day - even during this time of year the ground can't cope with the sudden and torrential downpours and the streets turn to rivers of mud, rippling currents, carrying rubbish and anything else in its path.
The mosquitoes are out in abundance then too. Breeding and biting.
January is the best month to be here to avoid the extreme heat of Summer and the biting mosquitoes. The temperatures now are between 25°C - 32°C, dropping to about 20°C at night.
Earlier today the thick cloud seemed to promise heavy rain. It was cooler. And when a smattering of rain did come it didn't last long.
I realised today how nice it is to have a break from the constant flow of noise; my own mother tongue and the relentless sea of words and sound bites - which are normally a constant, so pervasive, and is hardly noticed until it has suddenly be silenced. It has now been replaced with French that I hardly understand and yet the sounds and vowels aren't so alien to me after all. I had French lessons from the age of about six yet it didn't stick. I have French words in my vocabulary that I didn't know I had, like sacre coeur, notre dame, gauche and chauffeur. I'm shrouded here in a kind of muffled, partial deafness. Even at meal times as the constant, albeit pleasant, chatter bounces around the taverna walls I can opt out and wallow under the surface of the strings of vowels and semi-vowels that flow and undulate just above the crowded table top of soups and powders, crockery and elbows . . . punctuated with the international noises of approval. Most of the sounds can't be decoded anyway so I let them pass me by dissolving and fading. Firing from mouths and rolling off tongues, if I do listen I'm left interpreting gist and mood from volume and cadence. Often getting it wrong - someone sounds angry but then a final smirk and laughter from another betrays the playful bickering and the friendly jousting.
I'm left listening to the patterns of song, nasal interjections and throaty banter. Processing the sing-song melodies of communication without the code to make sense of it all. I feel so comfortable here, so relaxed at that table that it's heavenly to feel so accepted without needing to keep up and speak up. I'm a mute member of the family - enjoying my food and accepting the extra helpings that the sisters take in turns to dish out. Washing up and placing back on the table in complex configurations is fun too.
The singing in the church, too, is similarly emollient at 5am or 5pm. The French is foreign yet the hymns they sing are immediately recognized but unknown. Mass is understood and followed fairly precisely because of my own indelible mental map of the precise order I hear every day at home. Each word or phrase can't be registered with the English words I know so well but there is an approximate registration that tells me where we are in my cognitive sequence and map of the Mass. Precisely the same moments of extreme reverence, sorrow, hope and gratefulnesses that the Mass inspires are repeated now as I witness this great Sacrament translated in French. It might easily be Creole or Swahili but French as it happens is beautiful and intrinsic.
There are few barriers where you might expect them. And words of wisdom and gestures of kindness are in abundance: just when I least expected an easy time; prepared myself for a terrible ordeal of discomforts and hostility, as a reasonable cost of carrying and delivering to a hard place: this instead. Still prepared for challenges and adversity; I wonder if this is some good fortune before bad . . or will we simply get things done and sail homewards, swiftly. I hope so.
Tuesday, 28 January 2014
Monday, 27 January 2014
after the earthquake, wind, and fire
For a moment the sun pauses on its arc across the sky; the heat is still searing but there's an imaginary pause all the same. The leaves, like palms outstretched in the light, listen too. Clouds, continents in oceans of enamel blue - grand and morphing inventively, shifting shapes of symmetry - slows to still. All these speak of His greatness. There is Spirit. Not one entity but a Spirit complicit in all. The tiniest to the greatest. A greatness pervading the least likely, the least expected, the least deserving. A tiny germ vital to the greatest construct. A still, small voice of calm . .
We must be at the mid-way point now, half way through the trip - at least in terms of days. Though productivity is not a constant; and we will achieve more as our departure nears. The milestones of time I have plotted out are the 1st of the month (this coming Saturday - pretty random but feels significant), the tenth (around the time the container arrives at PAP from Miami), then, say, the 20th that gives time for potential haggling at the port to get the thing through with as little aggravation, and with the lowest costs, as possible. Then on the 24th we take a bus to the Dominican Republic with, hopefully, every loose end tied and every challenge resolved as fairly as possible. I have to say, I am looking forward to reaching this point: when we've resolved all, or most, of the objectives and can leave with a small bag of essentials and make our way home.
Right now I feel uneasy about the length of time we are grazing here - almost three weeks so far, and although it still feels like paradise, there's a kind of conditional joy attached to these comforts, that linger amidst the well-being and contentment, but they are my own imagined issues, I'm sure . . taking so much from the sisters causes me some guilt, its a kind of repressed state of being that lingers in the background - I want to give to them (and although we have determined between us to make a significant contribution to some of their projects) - their giving, and in abundance, is quite magnificent . . . and we're 'taking' it all: their privacy, their food and sharing in their community whilst they give it all freely I feel somehow in the way. Of course, I realise that these concerns are self-made and we are helping the children in their care. But I don't see that as any justification, but they give as freely as we are giving, admittedly, and this makes it an acceptable collaboration, I suppose. There's an unhurried pace to life in the convent and the nuns are so kind and welcoming. We are with them for three meals a day - unless we are out on the road - which from the start I have been trying to ease back from because I was worried it might be too much for them. And yet I can see it must be my awkwardness in receiving so much kindness from relative strangers. I have spoke to some of the nuns, and Gisele, in particular, and she is adamant that we are no trouble and that in fact the sisters feel we are the ones giving. One couldn't buy this experience and we have got to know all the nuns that live in the guest house, about a dozen sisters. And much to my shame, and to make matters worse in a way, we haven't been all that specific about when we are leaving. The head sister has been unbelievably generous insisting we stay as long as we like. And granted, she knows that the container has suffered from delays in getting here - and that originally our departure date was the 29th of January. So there we are!
We retire early at night and we make as little disruption as possible and try to relax and enjoy the gift that the sisters are giving us so freely. Darren and I were painting rocks today with one of the sisters . . honestly, it feels more like convalescence than any form of work. But we accept it when things are slow and we try to be patient while we wait for things to arrive or take shape. Sister Gisele is a delight - she painted a beautiful palm tree on the face of a smooth pebble. We had something else planned for the first half of the day but things changed at the last moment.
At night - particularly those close to the weekend - there's loud music coming from the main road. A loud DJ, music and bottles clashing. It's hard sometimes to sleep with the sweltering heat, the hard ground, the competing animals barking and calling together with the mesmeric chorus of grasshoppers . . but one does block-out that nocturnal cacophony in-time as fatigue envelops the din and one soon wallows asleep.
We must be at the mid-way point now, half way through the trip - at least in terms of days. Though productivity is not a constant; and we will achieve more as our departure nears. The milestones of time I have plotted out are the 1st of the month (this coming Saturday - pretty random but feels significant), the tenth (around the time the container arrives at PAP from Miami), then, say, the 20th that gives time for potential haggling at the port to get the thing through with as little aggravation, and with the lowest costs, as possible. Then on the 24th we take a bus to the Dominican Republic with, hopefully, every loose end tied and every challenge resolved as fairly as possible. I have to say, I am looking forward to reaching this point: when we've resolved all, or most, of the objectives and can leave with a small bag of essentials and make our way home.
Right now I feel uneasy about the length of time we are grazing here - almost three weeks so far, and although it still feels like paradise, there's a kind of conditional joy attached to these comforts, that linger amidst the well-being and contentment, but they are my own imagined issues, I'm sure . . taking so much from the sisters causes me some guilt, its a kind of repressed state of being that lingers in the background - I want to give to them (and although we have determined between us to make a significant contribution to some of their projects) - their giving, and in abundance, is quite magnificent . . . and we're 'taking' it all: their privacy, their food and sharing in their community whilst they give it all freely I feel somehow in the way. Of course, I realise that these concerns are self-made and we are helping the children in their care. But I don't see that as any justification, but they give as freely as we are giving, admittedly, and this makes it an acceptable collaboration, I suppose. There's an unhurried pace to life in the convent and the nuns are so kind and welcoming. We are with them for three meals a day - unless we are out on the road - which from the start I have been trying to ease back from because I was worried it might be too much for them. And yet I can see it must be my awkwardness in receiving so much kindness from relative strangers. I have spoke to some of the nuns, and Gisele, in particular, and she is adamant that we are no trouble and that in fact the sisters feel we are the ones giving. One couldn't buy this experience and we have got to know all the nuns that live in the guest house, about a dozen sisters. And much to my shame, and to make matters worse in a way, we haven't been all that specific about when we are leaving. The head sister has been unbelievably generous insisting we stay as long as we like. And granted, she knows that the container has suffered from delays in getting here - and that originally our departure date was the 29th of January. So there we are!
We retire early at night and we make as little disruption as possible and try to relax and enjoy the gift that the sisters are giving us so freely. Darren and I were painting rocks today with one of the sisters . . honestly, it feels more like convalescence than any form of work. But we accept it when things are slow and we try to be patient while we wait for things to arrive or take shape. Sister Gisele is a delight - she painted a beautiful palm tree on the face of a smooth pebble. We had something else planned for the first half of the day but things changed at the last moment.
At night - particularly those close to the weekend - there's loud music coming from the main road. A loud DJ, music and bottles clashing. It's hard sometimes to sleep with the sweltering heat, the hard ground, the competing animals barking and calling together with the mesmeric chorus of grasshoppers . . but one does block-out that nocturnal cacophony in-time as fatigue envelops the din and one soon wallows asleep.
Sunday, 26 January 2014
Saturday, 25 January 2014
Friday, 24 January 2014
Thursday, 23 January 2014
Adoration . .
Darren's gone into town with two escorts to research a few things. I've chosen instead to remain here at the convent where it's relatively quiet and peaceful. My body feels a bit hammered today, fragile after the 5-mile hike yesterday around, up and down Petionville. The sun is fierce so I'm in the shade.
As mass ended a Florence bell rang out from the darkness. It was somehow comforting to think of a Tuscan haze, terracotta and cold beer. It was coming from a solitary church some way off, amidst shanty and rubble. Over there the camp fires heat breakfast. Parents ready their children for school and themselves for work. Riding tap-tap or taksi.
In the church there's Exposition all day. Long lines of children make there way from the school below into the church for a few minutes of fidgety contemplation. I can hear them sing.
Back home this heat would be the height of Summer. The view from the wall reminds me of a London park. The sun is intense, and quickly burns - although this can be deceiving and one can easily sit too long in the brain-washing heat. Shadows fall across swept paths and parched grass. The contrast is complete. The riot of colour invites me never to leave.
On the narrow path besides the wall there is a steady of flow of traffic. Cars ferry sisters to work. Open trucks laden with water for thirsty plants and blossoming flowers. An elderly sister, I know from mealtimes, walks hurriedly passed on some mission. She announces, "Adoration . ." She's just come from the church. She annunciates the French vowels beautifully with a broad smile. Prayers prompting some urgent fiat. And tired, too, in the mid-day sun.
The sky is baby blue. Growing lighter just above the rooftops. A sharp blue. The children can be heard playing out during their break, the generator keeps the power on, the trees stir, too, heralding the breeze.
I shared a few more precious moments with Sister Gisele. Sitting by the door. She speaks softly, her French lovingly articulated; we chatted about the Annunciation - I guessed rightly that the word might be the same in French. Though her pronunciation gave the word much more opulence. She showed me the picture from her wall. A faded monochrome print - redrawn in parts by her own hand, but clearly the Annunciation. Mary holds her heart. Gabriel elucidates unambiguously. Few words were needed between us - despite our limited communication, we could still convey our appreciation of this event - we each love the poignancy of this magnificent occasion.
As mass ended a Florence bell rang out from the darkness. It was somehow comforting to think of a Tuscan haze, terracotta and cold beer. It was coming from a solitary church some way off, amidst shanty and rubble. Over there the camp fires heat breakfast. Parents ready their children for school and themselves for work. Riding tap-tap or taksi.
In the church there's Exposition all day. Long lines of children make there way from the school below into the church for a few minutes of fidgety contemplation. I can hear them sing.
Back home this heat would be the height of Summer. The view from the wall reminds me of a London park. The sun is intense, and quickly burns - although this can be deceiving and one can easily sit too long in the brain-washing heat. Shadows fall across swept paths and parched grass. The contrast is complete. The riot of colour invites me never to leave.
On the narrow path besides the wall there is a steady of flow of traffic. Cars ferry sisters to work. Open trucks laden with water for thirsty plants and blossoming flowers. An elderly sister, I know from mealtimes, walks hurriedly passed on some mission. She announces, "Adoration . ." She's just come from the church. She annunciates the French vowels beautifully with a broad smile. Prayers prompting some urgent fiat. And tired, too, in the mid-day sun.
The sky is baby blue. Growing lighter just above the rooftops. A sharp blue. The children can be heard playing out during their break, the generator keeps the power on, the trees stir, too, heralding the breeze.
I shared a few more precious moments with Sister Gisele. Sitting by the door. She speaks softly, her French lovingly articulated; we chatted about the Annunciation - I guessed rightly that the word might be the same in French. Though her pronunciation gave the word much more opulence. She showed me the picture from her wall. A faded monochrome print - redrawn in parts by her own hand, but clearly the Annunciation. Mary holds her heart. Gabriel elucidates unambiguously. Few words were needed between us - despite our limited communication, we could still convey our appreciation of this event - we each love the poignancy of this magnificent occasion.
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