"THE DAYS ARE JUST PACKED"

That's the title of a Calvin and Hobbes book.  And the artwork on the cover features the little boy Calvin on a tree branch reclining against his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, while nestling a water balloon on his lap.  Both boy and tiger have big goofy, satisfied grins on their faces.  Nothing of note is getting accomplished, but they're tuckered out and happy.

A lot of our days here feel kinda like that.

Take this past Wednesday for example:

6:30 am  I've just walked a fast 15 minutes from home to meet Ruysdael and Mikenn on the main road to catch a tap-tap to Ruysdael's school in Cap Haitien.

 Mikenn is along to translate for me.  Ruysdael needed me to come to school as his guardian for some parent meeting thing since his mom is currently in the Dominican Republic to see a doctor.

Tap-taps zip by, one after another, but they are all filled to capacity.

7:00 am  We finally get a tap-tap.  Ruysdael, Mikenn and I and four other guys are hanging off the back of this think.  Periodically it stops to jam one more school girl onto the laps of the seated passengers.  We take the "scenic" route down by the river.  (Every time I think I've seen the ugliest side of Haiti's poverty, there's some new depth that comes into range.)

7:30 am  Mikenn and I sit down to meet with a school official.  The whole conversation is in Creole and I do nothing but look back and forth between the admin guy and Mikenn - who is nodding his head a lot.  (Apparently most of it is about school dress code.)  But it's enough to satisfy the school and Mikenn and I soon head out to find the bank where I am supposed to meet Melissa and our Director, Brett, and friends Phil and Emily Heckman.  We are taking the day off from teaching because the Heckmans and the Grosses need to get a Permis de Sujour - a sort of Haitian "green card" - and Brett is our guide through the government hoops.

8:00 am We find the bank but no sign of the others yet.  Mikenn and I cross the street to find some shade in front of a Sherwin Williams paint store.  (Sidenote: Sherwin Williams?? This is the only American franchise of any kind I have recognized in this whole city.)  Soon, we are approached by several people begging for food. 

8:30 am  The bank opens and soon Brett and the others arrive and we head inside for some sweet air conditioning.  We opened an account here two weeks ago (a four hour process!) and now we need a letter from the bank attesting to that fact.  More paperwork and waiting.  We ask how much the bank charges for these official letters.  Thirty five dollars apiece.  Our jaws drop.  Between Phil, Emily, Melissa and I, we are spending $140 to get four letters from this bank saying we each have an account there!  (Bank Motto: "We LOVE our foreign customers.")

9:30 am While Phil and Emily finish up at the bank, Mikenn leads Melissa and me to a photo studio to get two passport-sized photos for our Permis.  The photographer has some equipment malfunctions and the power keeps going off and back on, but before long we have our pictures and the cost was not outlandish, so we are happy.

10:30 am We are back at the bank and the letters are in our hands and we are ready to go to the Immigration Office.  There, a pleasant, but business-like woman starts sorting through all of our documents and going down her checklist.  I knew there would be some sort of hiccup and it doesn't take long to surface: our official letters of employment from OMS are in English and should be in French.  Brett needs to go back to the office and redo them.  Brett and Phil and Mikenn head back to Vaudreuil while Emily, Melissa and I decide to do a bit of grocery shopping at Kokyaj.  The food there is all imported odds and ends - you never know what you might find.  Finding unusual things is the fun part; deciding whether you are willing to pay the asking price for any particular item is the hard part.  Melissa is excited over some Tostitos Cheese Dip and six precious Johnsonville Sausages. 

11:30 am  We check out and, since we now have a few bags of groceries, we decide to wait at the convenient Kokyaj restaurant above the store.  We order a couple of Cokes and, since we have little cash left, Melissa and I decide to split a beef kabob for lunch.  Emily orders a chicken basket with fries. 

12:00 pm Pleasant conversation with Emily at our table is interrupted when Melissa announces, "My wallet is gone!  It was here just a minute ago and now it's gone." We three jump up, start looking on the floor, in Melissa's backpack, among the bags of groceries.  All the while a young lady in a red t-shirt, who has been doing bits and pieces of cleaning in our vicinity goes about her work nonchalantly.  The waitress comes and all of a sudden several employees are now involved and looking and sharing opinions. And the red-shirted girl walks by, still disconnected from the commotion.  It's obvious that her jeans are way too tight to conceal a wallet.  Then Emily spots the wallet under an adjacent table, apparently stashed for pick up later. 

In the end, the young lady is fired from her job.  I feel bad because she made such a bad decision and is now unemployed in a country where good jobs are hard to find.  I'm left wondering if she was driven by greed or desperation.  And on reflection later, I'm pretty sure the waitress was probably an accomplice. The incident shakes up Melissa and leaves us feeling violated but thanking the Lord that the thief didn't succeed.

 

12:30 pm The guys return, our food finally arrives, meals are shared and we are ready to get back to Immigration to complete our files and to get fingerprinted. 

3:00 pm We are headed back to Vaudreuil.  Miss Kate calls and offers to drive our kids home from school.  Our family is reunited in time to turn around and head with the others to our weekly prayer meeting, this week hosted by the Ayars at Emmaus Seminary, a twenty minute drive down the road.

3:40 pm Our family and a half dozen other missionaries are riding to Emmaus together in the big van.  Apparently, the gas gauge hasn't worked for years.  The only way to avoid running out of gas is to track the mileage since the last fill-up.  250 miles is the max.  We must be at 251.  We coast as far as possible but we're still a mile from the campus and now stranded precariously on the side of the road. 



A gallon of gas is brought from Emmaus but there's air in the line and Brett's afraid of running down the battery with repeated attempts at starting the van.  Fortunately, a friend from another mission is passing and offers to tow the van until Brett gets the thing restarted. 

 

The kids always love prayer meeting time because they get to play with all the other missionary kids - all together in one big group.



Melissa and I always like prayer meeting time because it's our weekly chance to reconnect with all the other missionaries, to share stories and praises and prayer requests.  AND we love studying Scripture together each week under the guidance of Matt Ayars, the president of Emmaus Seminary. Currently we are studying the Psalms.  

We have a great discussion about Psalm 42 -
"  As the deer pants for streams of water,
    so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
    When can I go and meet with God?"

5:45 pm We head for home, dinner, showers and bedtime.

So why share this day in detail?  I guess I am still processing the difference in pace of life between Haiti and the U.S.  On the one hand, it's hard to get used to how little I get crossed off my "To Do List" on a typical day ... or even a typical week.

But on the other hand, it leaves a lot more space for relationships.

And "panting".