Life in Garcin

November 4th 2016
Bob and I visited Kalabot last weekend. The drive up is always quite a trip but thankfully we had no problems. Gail an American volunteer and Sr. Pat came with us. We were delivering many things that had been shipped on the shipping container to be distributed to those areas of the mission. I also had been given a donation of beads so I encourage a youth group to make jewelry so they could make a little money. They were very excited and started right away. We will return on the 14th to discuss budgets for the schools, school lunch, and clinics. It proved to be a nice visit and we were served a wonderful lunch.
We have also distributed clothing and school supplies to the two chapels near us. There are so many donations but when you divide the items for all the areas there is not much given to each area. The people are very grateful for whatever they receive this is always a highlight of our fall visit. I often see people wearing clothes we have sent; St Thomas T-shirts, an elderly woman at church wears a Bonaroo t-shirt as her Sunday best. Shoes are like gold, so are school supplies. All the items become someones treasure. Last week my sister, who is a school teacher, arranged donation from the school district she works for of tables, chairs and cabinets their district no longer had a use for. These will be of great use here.
I have been working on arranging for the three people that didnt get their surgeries to go back to Port au Prince to see another medical team coming from the US. Everything here is more difficult than it seems it should be. I had to email the information to a man in PAP so he could email the information to the team in the US.I sent this email seven times before he ever got it, it had to be rewritten each time because although my phone said it saved the draft it did not. It was very frustrating, and now I know we need to go on Monday so the team can evaluate the people, but I cannot get a time to be there. It is Haiti so you just do the best you can do.
I would like to comment on our little household here. There is Mono he is in his mid seventies and must have had a stroke while we were home for the summer. He can read and write and is our sentry sitting on the roof watching all that goes on. Bermond he has a wife and two beautiful daughters. Fr. Gracia had asked him to be our bodyguard a couple of years ago when some threats were made towards Bob. He is about 510 and very skinny. He takes care of the gardens on the roof, and is a teacher at the school. He sleeps here every night we are here. His oldest daughter (about seven) has started to join us for supper once a week. Janet and Madam Friznell they clean, help me do the laundry, shopping and cook for us. We have become family, we all get along well and everyone is pretty happy most of the time. Mono has started this week expanding our knowledge of the hymns we sing at church, so each evening Janet and Madam join us and we sing a few hymns. This is very nice and adding to our feeling of togetherness. They all help us navigate Haiti and make us feel safe. As you can tell my mood is better. The sisters are having an election party Tuesday night. I was looking forward to watching the election with other Americans and we are all rooting for the same candidate so no problem there. It looks like Anita and I will be in PAP with patients and probably will find different Americans to watch it with hopefully. Thank you for your interest and prayers, Denise