So last night we were all sitting around chit chatting and Susan had told me that she had done some research on Haiti and read something about witch doctors and voodoo. Steve started the conversation and I , as were the others completely enthralled in learning more. Steve had said that when he was here after the earthquake that he had this one girl come in with a broken arm. Her family had splinted the break with tree bark wrapped up to secure her arm. When steve had taken it off to take a look at the arm, he noticed that there was leaf paste painted on her arm indicating that she had already seen a witch doctor for a cure. CRAZY!!! So then Freddy came in and gave us the low down on the history. Freddy is our go-to guy....I cant remember if I already talked about him or not (I have yet to read any of my blogs, I am just basically barfing out information and then letting others get on the computer) but Freddy has been coming here I believe since the 80's or early 90's as a missionary. He is from Alabama and pastors a church there. He spends a great deal of time here and among the Haitians and has even lived here for a few years with his wife. He is an amazing man!!!! Hilarious and full of stories - he has even played football for university of alabama under Bear Bryant....very cool!!! So he began in his very southern accent. He told us stories of people around the island that are considered witch doctors, he said at night you can sometimes hear the drums beating from the mountains and he even told us about some hexes that are put on people. I literally hung on every word, I was fascinated by his words.....and totally freaked out!! LOL...He told us "How to make a zombie"....here's the recipe....Tim you will love this one....take a puffer fish (because they have poisen in their system), they (witch doctors) dry the fish out, when it is dry they crush it up into a powder and sprinkle it on someones food or drink....apparently your heart rate drops to the point of death (a real doctor will in fact pronounce you dead). Cemetaries are above ground here (I have pictures), they bury tthe dead in the cemetary and then they come back alive out of the tombstone.... CRAZY!!!!!!! Freddy said these people just walk around like they are drugged up or dazed... He told us about how if you drive by certain houses (witch doctor houses) you will see personal items hanging up - those are hexes on those people that the belongings belong to. NOT EVERYONE BELIEVES ALL THIS.... but they do believe that voodoo occurs and that if you are practising voodoo you are worshipping the devil. This is a very religious island and they all have strong beliefs, I cant even articulate it all.
Ok so now today....my team consisted of me, Wes, and Steve.....GREAT TEAM GREAT DAY!!!! our interpretor was again Aldo - I wish I could pack him away in my suitcase - I have already friended him on facebook and do I dare say I will again see him.....picture Cuba Gooding Junior...Aldo is just so much fun. Our "runner" to go back and get the supplies was Michael - he is the one that walks around wiht a CD player that he traded for a time when he worked. If these "kids" (they are 24 and 23 respectively) come home with money in their pocket, they have family members waiting for their share and they have a difficult time saying no. They want to help their families but they also want to better themselves....its a very fine line. So off we went. I should say that after yesterday, we have discovered that many of the filter and aggregate are not working the way that they should. We are having success but some we are having to dump out and start again (I think I said that in a previous blog...sorry). Our group from yesterday was 5 for 5. So with the switching of the groups, the pressure was on to succeed. We went to the first house - I kept picking on Wes and Steve and kept saying "ok if you guys dont put it in correctly, dont blame me....I had perfect success". The minute we walked out of the church (where we begin every day - you saw the picture on facebook) and around the corner, 2 children walked with us and held my hand.....too sweet!!! One had a shirt on that said "sporty" and one had a buzz lightyear sweatshirt on. Sporty had shorts on, Buzz had nothing on the bottom. These 2 little boys were so stinking cute!!! We took tons of pictures of them. While I was laughing and taking pictures of the boys Wes and Steve installed the water filter....NO FLOW came out. Seriously....they didnt have any water coming out. Failure :( We laughed a little bit about how i wasnt involved in it, and tried together to come up with a solution. We decided that we needed to come back later. The family had to go and get more water so we could try it again and that would take them time. Each family had to start out with 15 gallons of water. So we went to the next house with our kid posse in tow (sporty and buzz hand in hand while we walked)....wes and Steve both said that I should install it..... Steve was busy doing.....well.....playing with the kids, narrating a video for you tube and taking pictures, Wes was just handing me stuff....I installed the water filter... BAM good solid water flow. Lets just say i installed the next 3 and yes they all worked. I brag about it but it was honestly just luck. It was a scorcher of a day too - by the time we were leaving in the morning it was already 85 degrees at 7:30am. After lunch we headed back out. We often have many kids following us, Aldo tells us that they like to hear the english language. We got to the first house....music was blaring...Aldo just looked at me and said that it was voodoo music. I installed the water filter, why wreak a good thing....LOL... it didnt work no water flow...it was the voodoo not me :) After that we installed another 4 filters and came back to this house and fixed the one. Total for today 9 from our team. It was a GREAT day!!! Wes and Steve got to feel success as well installing their share while I played and joked around with the kids and moms.
Tonight we had fresh lobster bisque (lobsters snagged out of the ocean) and got to see Dada's (pronounced Day day) bakery. This is an awesome bakery that sits about 10 minutes from where we are at. Steve and starfysh inversted in Dada (micro business) and now dada sells fresh baked bread to locals. That is the premise behind starfysh....an amazing organization that wants to help the people of Lagonave. That is their passion and their mission. What is great is that they arent just putting a bandaid on the problems here, they arent just coming in and giving things to these people. They are changin the culture, they are teaching them about health and water and disease, they are investing in the people so that they can sustain this project. These filters will be around for years and years and I am so proud to say that I helped with Starfysh. I have already told Steve that this is not the last time he is hearing from me, I want to continue to help. I am not sure what kind of level that will be and I dont know if I will make it back here again but I do know that this organization is in the infantile stages but it is ready to explode impacting GREAT PEOPLE.
All for now - love and hugs and kisses!!
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