Haiti 2011, Day 7: Partnering in Work and Play

Another night, another morn. Day 7. No sandwich making today. We are treating ourselves to sausage-and-hot-kraut-filled deep fried pastries. A woman down at the crossroads, before heading to Mona's house, makes these delectible treats in a cast iron pan with about an inch of oil over an open fire. At 50c each American, our $20 lunch budget goes a long way, even for a team of 14! Angelica will pick them up hot and fresh around noon.



In the meantime, Jerry's team heads back to Gertrude's in the morning to pour the porch. Once that is done a few larger rocks need to be moved. So Tom suggested a bit of landscaping around a nearby tree. By early afternoon their work is done, so they can rejoin my team up the mountain at Mona's house.

My team was back to business as usual. A new pile of rocks were delivered, so us girls got to work hauling. The guys jumped right in. Bibi got creative with the wheelbarrow and loaded it up with two of the largest rocks and a stack of mediums. I helped him pick up a couple of them and thought, "Glad we're not carrying these all the way to the foundation!" He pushed it up a burm from the trail to the hill the foundation was on. If I would have tried pushing that, it would have tipped to the right or the left. I don't know how he pushed so hard and yet kept it straight and upright, load after load after load.

Soon all the rocks were moved and concrete was being mixed. It was nice having both teams on one site. It gave us enough hands to fill a bucket line well. Cement started passing hand to hand, to hand again, until all mixed cement was poured over, beside, and all around each rock stacked. Then we would start the entire process all over again by mixing more concrete.

The breeze was beautiful and it felt good to work hard. It didn't take long with a full crew to use up every rock we had. So we called it a day and began the trek home. Jerry's team began to complain about both the distance and the terrain. We shared this had been our trek home each day! So we huffed and puffed our way back up the mountain, taking a break at each plateau.

After dinner we didn't expect music as the band was told to rest their voices for a night before recording would begin on Thursday. But the band showed up anyway just to party. The tent was packed with tons of young adults, dancing and laughing. Josette (Joe-setta) grabbed me and before I knew what hit me, we were dancing front and center. The keyboard behind us, the drums to the left and all the guitars in the background. And there was Pastor Paul, off to the right, rapping on one of the mics. I couldn't believe it. It was wonderful to see how Pastor Paul immersed himself in the lives of his young parishioners. So we danced and danced. It was amazing when the Haitians sang, how many times you heard the name of Jesus.

Later in the evening, our new friend Christy, prepared a salsa dance party for us. We all followed her to the pavilion and lined up behind her. Christy met up with our team in Miami last week to travel into Haiti with us. We had "talked" by email and facebook for several weeks prior to leaving, setting our plans to become travel companions. Val, one of the founders of HAPI, had put us together. It's always good to travel with others, so it worked great for all of us.

Christy lives in New York. Manhattan, New York. She came to Mizak to teach dance lessons to some of the Peace Pals. Christy's background is in classic ballet, jazz and modern. As she said, "We won't have a mirror here." So everyone came out to learn salsa. Christy gave us the background history of the dance and then began showing us the basic steps.

Female: right foot back (1), shift weight to left (2), together (3), hold (4), left front (5), right back (6), together (7), hold (8).

Male: left front (1), right back (2), together (3), hold (4), right foot back (5), shift weight to left (6), together (7), hold (8).

Everyone paired up, male with female, except Whitney who insisted on dancing the male part. I think most of us were with Chrity through three variations of the salsa.... and then she showed us twirling. That was it. Darryl and I got voted off.

An hour or more later Christy come up to Paul's porch and wondered how to shut down the music. Everyone was still dancing and didn't seem like they would be stopping anytime soon! It was a ton of fun. HAPI will be enjoying Christy's gifts and skills, not to mention her heart, for month's to come. She will be staying until possibly April or so. They will probably all still be dancing once she does get the nerve to turn the music off! God bless her.