Looking Again

Despite just shy of a year living in Haiti, Patrick and I are constant observers to all we are immersed in. But once in a while we have to remind ourselves to look again, to see anew the vibrant activity of the life around us.

A friend of mine recently moved to the UK with her family for several months. Although the daily routine of life with two small children in essence was similar to days at home (waking, snuggling, playing, naps, snacks, meals, bath time) she was able to look at her life, at her family with new eyes, with renewed wonder as they explored a strange and wonderful neighborhood and foreign surroundings. I think that spells the magic of travel, that same magic that inspires Patrick and I to risk living in a place like Port-au-Prince. Stepping out of your comfort zone allows you view everything creating your environment intently and with wonder. Focus settles on self as well--dissecting, celebrating, challenging, questioning, discovering that which makes you (or your loved ones) tick. Even home can be appreciated in a different light, with a new bird's eye view. The art of living becomes fresh, vibrant, intense and intentional.

Yet as time passes and the routes we take to work look more familiar, the faces recognizable, the routine, well ROUTINE, I have to kick myself now and again to take note, to continue the active observation, to not let where we live, what we see become commonplace in a place that is anything BUT common.

Today's quiet clinic allowed me a few hours to run downtown to buy some materials for the CONASPEH lab on my own. We have found a technician willing to essentially volunteer her time as we get a stationary and mobile lab underway. I had a shopping list of stains and solutions to buy, so when a free moment presented itself, I had to jump! I didn't know exactly where I was going to find the lab supplier, but at this point in the game, I felt pretty sure that if I asked enough people, I'd find my way.

Since I'm not often in the car by myself, I had some time to reflect. Port-au-Prince is a place that inspires frustration and awe, revulsion and respect, shock and amazement, sorrow, hilarity and joy--sometimes all in one vista. Yet after all this time it is a place where I find comfort and pleasure in the chaos and teeming life all around me. Although it in no way feels yet like "my town," it is a city that finally feels familiar. In fact, I started to smile thinking of all the things I see a version of every day that, if I'm not careful, I get too accustomed to seeing.

Barnyard animals mingle with foot traffic in neighborhoods, sans gate, corral or coop. Graffiti paints walls with political slogans or tributes to Aristide or (most recently) Michael Jackson. Children in dirty t-shirts and bare feet huddle along a median in the road, playing cards or wiping down cars for change. A passerby lifts his shirt, shows me a cut on his stomach and asks for $1 to help fix it. Buildings line every neighborhood in various stages of crumbling construction or deconstruction. Palm trees bend around giant Digicel billboards. Roads wind up and around steep mountain inclines and through neighborhoods stacked like blocks, one building shouldering the other. Sidewalks bustle with faces of every age, wearing all colors of the rainbow, and sporting T-shirts with bizarre American slogans or catch phases that read ridiculous in context. Vendors crowd every corner and alley selling every thing from livestock, garden produce to canned and packaged non-perishables. If I pull up to a curb and ask for directions, someone always stops what they are doing to show me the way. Fruits and vegetables of all shapes and sizes fill baskets in markets, and the selection changes as the season dictates. A kaleidoscope of colors swirl on tap-taps that wave me by, flashing their catch phrase philosophy such as "Love Eternal" or "Meci Jezi" as they pull over to a curb to pick up another passenger.

I eventually found my destination after stopping and asking, turning around, choosing a street, getting out to walk, discovering that suddenly the driver's side door of the Galloper refused to close, finding rope and tying it closed, recommencing walk along a crowded sidewalk, asking another woman who directed me to a man for directions, following a young boy who after introducing himself showed me his ID (?), squeezing between vendor and parked car, hopping over streams of sewage, weaving around cans piled with charcoal and saluting the saleswoman with her sooty merchandise, kicking a pop bottle, inhaling some fumes, and FINALLY doing a wee dance of joy when "PROPHOLAB" emerged from the milieu. As I approached the store hidden behind a metal barred wall, doors were opened by a gun-toting security guard who nodded a welcome as I entered.

I made my order, paid the bill and waited for the supplies to be collected. I sat and chatted a bit with one of the two security guards wielding very large shot guns, and thought--again with a smile--that even the site of men with guns in public no longer inspire a second look or a shiver down the spine. With the UN toting threatening artillery on the backs of their trucks and security guards of banks, guest houses, labs, and anywhere else packing heat to ward off potential threats, the shock value of such sights has ebbed. One of many such desensitizations following acclimation to life here.

Back to the Galloper, I didn't even curse the door hanging open-and-tied ajar. I was just grateful that no passing opportunist attempted to break in and clean out its contents. I'm guessing that the Galloper had heard through the grape vine that Global Ministries has finally raised the money to buy CONASPEH a new vehicle for outreach and projects, so she will be sold for glue soon. I could hardly blame her for throwing another trick at us in her final days as we dream of brighter, shinier, less clickity-clackety wheels. So with one arm holding the door closed, and the other taking care of wheel, then shift, then wheel again, I navigated the creaky, clunky beast back into traffic with a smile on my face. Of course a million and two people pointed out that "Miss, your door isn't shut," (in case I or my fatiguing biceps hadn't noticed). One man offered to help me fix it as we drove in parallel down the street. Maybe later, I told him and waved with my pinky goodbye.

After returning home today, Patrick and I greeted Silvia who has returned to "light duty" around our house. I'm so thrilled she is back, although scold her to take it easy and let Solomon crawl to HER. She insists on bringing along her daughter to do the laundry while she tends to Solomon. Despite us reassuring her that sick days were ok to take for as long as she needs them, she wasn't having it. I have to say I'm impressed with her daughter. She dropped whatever routine that normally comprised her days we to take over and help her mom. I smiled thinking if OUR sick days functioned similarly in the States. I'm not sure the Nebraska school system would be overjoyed for substitute KIM in for an English lecture. I know for sure my dad would raise straight out of his sick bed to protect his way of life from me "helping" by such methods as cruising the farm in his large Case tractor and potentially taking down another electric fence OR tending to the livestock just long enough to form an emotional attachment to little Bessie who happened to be next in line for the slaughter, thereby making his life as a practical farmer and businessman more difficult 'cause his daughter found a new "pet." Silvia's daughter has a warm face like her mother, an easy smile, and she moves fast. She just finished school but doesn't yet have enough money to go to university, so is sitting the year out. We've chatted about her dreams. I tried to talk her into nursing school, but she assured me that medical anything wasn't for her.

I took Silvia and her daughter home today, and stopped for a home visit with one of their elderly neighbors. She lives in the top story of a creaky, crumbly cement home, and access to her living space lead me up a treacherously steep, thin-stepped and uneven staircase. The wiry, grey-haired 76 year-old-woman woman welcomed me into her home and commenced with describing for me the aches and pains that keep her awake at night. Her husband sat listening on the balcony. He reported they'd been married for 48 years, a "long time" he said grinning. They were a delight, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing a little clinical exam for my new cheerful and feisty patient. She proudly related that she'd had 10 children, and lived with one man all her life. I thought (and commented) how remarkable I found their marriage. Elderly people are a minority in Haiti, but elderly COUPLES, well, I just don't see them! For both to survive illness, poverty, a tumultuous political climate, and to have stayed married through it all... well that's worth celebrating! After creating a little therapeutic plan for my new patient, they both thanked me generously, and the woman escorted me down the mountain-hike of a staircase (sans hand rail!). Despite low back pains and creaky knees, she navigated the cement grade like a nimble mountain goat, flashing me smiles all the way down. "I'm scared" I said (partially joking), so she held my hand as we descended together. The community, now gathered in interest of a blan in their midst, waved me goodbye as I not so gracefully "trotted" into the distance yaw-yawing the galloper to lurch on as I steadied the door from flying open and navigated back along rutted, cratered, twisty-turny neighborhood roads.

Today was one of those days that I was entertained by it all. The work, the roads, the situational comedy, the bravery, the community, the hodge-podge and calamity, the chaos and the joy. Nice to see it, once again, with eyes wide-open in wonder at the adventure of it all.