Gauvreau en Haiti

Have a great day all of you!

Bonjou, kouman ou ye?

Our Creole is coming along slowly. Our desire is to be able to understand the Creole spoken in the street, they speak fast and many words are shortened. The people who are educated speak more of a French Creole. Even they have some problem understanding the Creole spoken in the street.

We wanted to post our blog about one week ago, but because of our Internet problem or slow connexion, we lost most of the text of the new blog. We also decided to change the blog site to be able to insert more pictures of our life in Haiti.

Since our last blog, we have been very much occupied. It has been almost 2 months that we have been here in Haiti. I finally start to get used of my new environment, and sometimes I miss my children and family. We cannot have everything. We are not completely installed because it takes time and money, and a lot of shopping. (ALBUM 1)

To shop here is very tiring, especially when there is a lot of traffic and the cars are going in every direction (it is not North America, neither Europe here). It is the law of the strongest and bold. There are a lot of new merchants who have their booths on the sidewalk and on the side of the road. It is hard to drive through this and I am always afraid to hurt somebody. (Pray) I hope that Georges and me will be able to visit, by walking, all these booths. I am always amazed at all the things they can sell there.

In the middle of July, Georges helped André with the construction of 6 little houses for the people who are in need and live in tents. A group of young people from outside of Boston "Celebration International Wayland Church", with their pastor, came to help build them. The houses measure about 12 x 10 feet. A family of 7 to 8 persons can live inside of them. Generally, the cooking is done outside. The group have worked very hard under the burning sun and sweltering heat, 40 C and more. We had them for at least 2 weeks; even our downstairs neighbour said it was too hot. (ALBUM 2)

 We have started to distribute beautiful small dresses that two women, from Greenfield Park Baptist Church, had done for the young Haitian girls. The mothers were so happy to have a nice dress for their girl. Like this young girl, on the picture, who wears it all the time! Next year, when we go to Montreal, we will bring some more.

Thursday, July 29, we went to the orphanage (God's Littlest Angels) at Fort-Jacques, in the mountain. The temperature was nice and not too hot. We have emptied 2 truck loads full of items that were sent to the orphanage by containers. There will be 2 more coming in during the first week of August. (ALBUM 3) Friday, July 30, Georges was making individual's bags full of different items for all the families listed for the distribution. The leadership of the orphanage have given and will give medications that they received to clinics, of the area, that need them the most.

I do include pictures of some of the last rain we had. (ALBUM 4) I hope that you will be able to see the drops falling from the sky and shoot out from the roof. The water, that you see, is rushing in our street. We had lightning and thunder with it. We say that it is a sound and light show. Sometimes this is frightening, especially when it falls close to us.

Friday, July 30, we had a two hour of sound and light show. You should have been there to see all the beautiful lightning. Some of them were so closed by that all we saw was a bright light encircling us, and with them the thunder felt very close to home.

For our sector, compare to other sector, we do not have electricity too often. We were 5 days without electricity from the Haitian company. Finally, our downstairs neighbours phoned the company and they came to check and their conclusion is that our wire was too old; we should have a new one put on. But, they did not change it and we are still in the same situation. So, we use the inverter and when the batteries are too low, we start the generator. It cost a lot in gas. To give you an idea of our installation, I put some pictures of our terminal box (not to Canadian's standards), inverter and generator. (ALBUM 5)

Much love!

Jocelyne et Georges