Dadelie - By Terrie Wold

Dadelie by Terrie Wold I sponsor Dadelie Brillant a 6 yo first grader at College de la Grace, Pignon, Haiti. She is such a bright, fun, energetic young girl that I am so very proud of. In 2011 I was able to meet Dadelie and her parents which was great! This year I got to go to their home and see where Dadelie lives. Her father’s name is Harry and he used to be a well known singer that traveled around the country performing in a group. When he became a Christian, he married Dadelie’s mom as a sign of commitment to the family and his new faith. Harry is a worship leader at Jerusalem Baptist Church, he also works at a rural school and does multiple jobs to support the family. He was surprised to hear that I retired- why would anyone quite a job if they actually had one? The Brillant family has 3 daughters- oldest is 13 yo, Fasemel who sings in choir at church & is a friend of Lydia Lucien- she looks just like her mom. She attends secondary school at College de la Grace. Dadelie’s mom is a teacher’s aide at the school for the past 9 years- works with pre-school children.

They share that Dadelie has been asking about me every day & very excited that I was coming to see her. She stood up and sang a song for me with good pitch & clear diction- her voice got stronger & stronger as she sang- it was AWESOME!! They shared they pray for me every day- pretty humbling!!! The family lives in a cement block home a few blocks from the church. The walls are stuccoed inside & out and painted very nicely-appears to be three rooms- living room with wooden table and chairs pushed up against a wall- we sat on plastic lawn chairs to visit. There was a curtain with bed behind it that I assume her parents sleep in. Dadelie and her mom showed me where she sleeps which is a large double bed with wooden headboard & footboard- the 3 girls share this bed. Dadelie had the fleece blanket I made her in 2011 spread out over the bed- it was still in good shape which was nice to see. Harry shared that the goat I gave them in 2011 was male- they sold it and bought a female goat that was pregnant- the baby that was born was butchered and eaten for the big family celebration of Dadelie graduating from Kindergarten last year. The goat had twins and they wanted to feed me one of the goats when I arrived as a celebration. I was touched and humbled sharing that they needed to eat the goat themselves- I pray that I did not offend them! They asked me for prayers that the goat would continue to have babies. Debbie shared that I wanted to learn Creole and she asked Dadelie if she could teach me some words. Dadelie was willing to try. We got mixed up the next morning at school when Debbie came to take the family to meet Kervensky’s family Dadelie was ready to start teaching me. I apologized to Dadelie and promised we would connect the next day- Deme- tomorrow. At Kris’s suggestion I made a list of words or phrases for her to teach me- starting with numbers. When she came to teach me she took it so seriously- often taking the paper and pen to write the creole letter or word for my understanding- she slowly formed the letters and words with her mouth for my understanding- so very cute!!!!

On Sunday afternoon she asked her dad to bring her to the school to see me. She was dressed in a beautiful flowered dress with sash & stayed for over an hour- it was wonderful!!!! We shared more teaching of Creole words, Conner taught her how to play the solitaire matching game & spot it game. We tried a puzzle for a short time but it is 3-D and very difficult.

Both Conner and Dadelie colored a picture and signed their name on the back- we asked Conner to keep both pictures.

She asked for Naomi to share a picture which was fun- Naomi picked out a couple of pics for her and wrote on the back. Very Special!!! I had to leave when Debbie came to take us to meet with the Dorcas Women. My goal is to learn more Creole so I can have a conversation with Dadelie. I also plan to make a photo book of pictures Naomi took of her for her to have. Sponsorship is such a gift and blessing for both student and sponsor. To learn more about sponsorship through Hosean International Ministries and Caleb and Debbie Lucien, please feel free to contact us at any time, we'd love to share more about this with you! Also, here is a link to their website and a link to sponsor a student is on the site......www.hosean.org

Haitian Roads and our travels to Pignon

The roads in Haiti are mostly dirt and gravel. There are some paved roads in towns and villages, but primarily you will find very rough roads that take you just about through anything including some pretty good sized rivers! We had quite an adventure making our way out of Port au Prince and North towards Pignon.

These very colorful buses/trucks are seen everywhere in Haiti and are called Tap Taps......they are like the local version of a city bus. People and often times large loads of a variety of things including chickens and goats are transported all over in these. Usually you will see people on top, hanging off the back and crammed inside in order to get a ride somewhere! Conner tried counting Tap Taps as we were driving out of Port au Prince, but where he got to 50, he gave up! They were really fun to see because of all the bright colors and creative paintings from top to bottom!

The housing shown here is just a few miles outside of Port au Prince and has recently been built in order to begin to provide housing for those who lost their homes in the earthquake. These apartment buildings are in high demand and the lines of people outside are hoping they might be able to get on the list to be placed in an apartment. There are still well over 200,000 people living in tent cities around Port au Prince and have been in these tent cities since the earthquake in 2010! My mom's last trip to Haiti was in 2011 and she felt very positive about the progress that has been made in this city and she didn't see nearly as many tent cities as she has in the past, so she felt very good about our drive through the capital. The need for housing in still a high priority, but is also a huge challenge when the poverty levels are so extreme. So, these apartment buildings were a very positive sign of a step in the right direction for earthquake recovery. Haiti is in the process of paving National Highway #3 which will be the only paved highway running North and South from Port au Prince to the northern coastal city of Cap Haitian. The paved part of the highway has now extended to the city of Hinche which is about 1/2 an hour South of Pignon. So, we were pretty lucky to have paved roads for the majority of our trip! The highway has been a work in process especially since the major earthquake that struck Port au Prince in 2010. Having a paved road has really been a blessing! The mountains of Haiti begin to rise shortly after leaving Port au Prince and are just beautiful! The roads have been cut into these mountains and have many winding turns and steep areas with a grade that probably wouldn't meet any code in our country, but they have been able to have a paved road and that's a great start! I really had no idea of the beauty I would see while driving to Pignon.....Mountains and Mountains and beauty everywhere we looked! Along with the beauty was a great deal of poverty and poor conditions. Many people live right alongside the highway (I mean...right alongside!) Homes are often made out of mud and branches or if you are able to afford it, cement block. Roofs are usually tin or sometimes just a tarp. This was very eye opening for the boys to see as we were driving. People walk right along the sides of the highway as well to get from town to town and from place to place. Women carry large amounts of water, food, wood either on their heads or strapped to their backs. Shoes are usually flimsy flip flops if they have shoes at all. That was heartbreaking to see as we were out in the middle of nowhere driving through the mountains and we would see people walking and walking and walking. Definitely a different way of life than we are used to. It makes you feel so blessed for those things we just take for granted such as running water in our homes, highways that are maintained, and bridges to go over rivers instead of having to navigate through them! Once we got to Hinche, we were pretty exhausted! The boys had fallen asleep and and our drive, which was only about 45 miles or so had taken us 2 1/2 hours.

Now, the fun was going to begin. Our paved highway was now at its end. We would continue on for the last half an hour on a very roughed in road that would take us to Pignon. They are beginning to cut in a road and level out a road that will be paved eventually, but for now, it's just dirt. Our dirt roads here in the US are still maintained pretty well and would be the envy of people in Haiti!! The rough road was quite adventurous, we were really shocked our luggage made it strapped down on top of the van! We drove through large ruts, around deep holes and through rivers

- it was a pretty crazy drive and this....was the National Highway!

We finally arrived in Pignon and had made it to College de la Grace which would be our home for the next 10 days!

Getting to Haiti - an adventure in itself!!

Oh....the luggage - all the luggage!! Kristina, Mom, Mark, the boys and I all left from the Fargo airport on Sunday morning, June 2nd. We were checking 18 50 pound suitcases filled to the brim with donations and supplies for our mission trip plus we each had a good-sized carry-on as well, so we were loaded down with bags! We ended up having trouble right off the bat with checking in our bags and wound up having to pay "a bit" more than we had anticipated and almost missed our flight! We tried to get through security as fast as we could and some of the tools Mark had packed for the networking job he would be working on didn't "quite" meet guidelines.......so, we were slowed down again, but got it figured out in the end by checking mom's carry-on through with all the extra tools. But, mom didn't have her clothes/toiletries, etc. for our overnight in Ft. Lauderdale....But, we bought her a cute tshirt in the Chicago airport and she was set for PJ's! We made it to Ft. Lauderdale and headed for the hotel (luckily without the 18 checked suitcases as those were checked straight through to Port au Prince!) We gave the cab driver the hotel address and he didn't have any idea where that was or could even think of a hotel in that area........possibly our first indication that the hotel wasn't going to be the greatest place we've ever stayed in! We pulled up and checked in and.......it was pretty sketchy, so luckily we weren't there for too terribly long! We had to be up bright and early to head back to the airport for our early morning flight to Haiti! Once we arrived back at the airport, we were met by Caleb Lucien and his daughter, Charisa! Caleb and his wife Debbie would be our hosts in Pignon, Haiti and Charisa had been at the University of Florida in Tallahassee for her college orientation weekend! We were very excited to be able to travel with them to Haiti and have someone we knew with us in the airport and to help us with our major luggage and transportation out of Port au Prince to Pignon where we would be staying for our time in country.

Caleb had gotten a driver with a van to take all of us back to Pignon. So, the driver began loading all of our bags into the back of the van and on top of the van so we could begin our journey! It was pretty hot and definitely a bustling big city! The boys were pretty excited, yet a little anxious and nervous for what was to come. Fortunately, they had met Caleb before and so it was great to be with a familiar face and to have Charissa with us too!

We were off and ready to leave the airport. First stop was the Servotel Hotel for a quick breakfast. The hotel was close to the airport and set back off the main road a bit with armed guards. The hotel was quite modern and seemed to cater to foreigners. The restaurant was very nice and looked out over a pool! We were pretty surprised and really weren't expecting to see such a nice place in Haiti! The food was delicious and it was nice to sit down to a great meal and great conversation before hitting the bumpy, winding, mountainous road towards Pignon.

Reflections

Well, as some of you may have realized by now, we are already home and in re-entry mode! Writing the blog while we were in Haiti didn't work out quite as well as I had hoped partially because we didn't have access to the Internet or even power all the time, so getting things up on the blog became more difficult than I had anticipated. Plus, getting photos updated with the blog entries would have been challenging too with slow internet speeds. So, here we are.....back home again and reflecting on our time in Haiti as a family. We feel so very blessed by our experiences and by the people who helped to make this trip happen and for all those we met! We look forward to sharing more about the sites and sounds of Haiti in our coming posts. We've decided to post by topic instead of going back through each of our days in country, so you will get to read about a variety of things and see accompanying pictures!

Friday morning already!!!

Wow, how time flies yet at the same time seems to stand still!! We feel like we've been here for way longer than 4 days and that is definitely in a GOOD WAY!! What a beautiful place! We are way up in the mountains and surrounded by mountains which is beautiful scenery! Everything is very lush and the trees are filled with fruit! Yhe boys learned almost as soon as we got here how to throw rocks at the ripe mangoes in the trees to knock them down for an afternoon snack!! They are having lots of fun with that!! They also got some help from a guy who is staying next to us with a mission group fromNew Jersey how to get a coconut out of a tree, get it chopped open with a machete and then drink the milk inside ( which seems more like water to me!!). We all got to tasted it which was a lot of fun!!! watching our friend, Jake, get the coconut was just as fun!!! we have spent time with Dadelie and Kervensky as well as a newly sponsored girl named Bianca who is now sponsored by friends of ours in Wisconsin!!! Mark and Ethan are really staying VERY BUSY working on the wireless network and wiring up the computer lab, but things are going really well and his guesstimates in amount of cabling is working out just about right too, hooray!! More posts soon!!!!! Thanks to you all for your love and support and prayers!!