Alive and Well in Haiti

I told myself I wouldn't spend as much time blogging while I'm here as I did last time. I want to spend more time being effective and doing what I need to do while I'm here...but considering we're on lockdown due to today's elections, I figured I would at least give a quick update :)

So far things are very mellow today, as far as I'm aware from people around here and what I can gleam off Twitter and the internet. The polls opened late and have bee missing documents and people haven't been able to find their name on voting registries, so the outcome should be interesting. I am pretty sure Abby, Adri and I will be long gone before any semblance of results come about, which is when I expect protests of any kind will take place. We are hoping that we can get to work tomorrow. Since I did some rubbling last time I was here, I'm excited to work on a couple other projects that were not here last year, particularly working on school builds and the bio sand water filters. I also want to get my fill of rubbling one of these days!

It's been such a blessing to have Christa here...Abby and I met her on our last trip, and she's been here for most of the time we've been gone. In that year she's got a great understanding of the Creole language, and seeing her interact with all of the members and children of the community is extremely amazing and inspiring. You can simply tell the pleasure that people get when they see Christa: there's so much love in their eyes, and they are genuinely excited to see her. Christa was our fearless leader at the local market yesterday (since it's Sunday, we have no cook, and since we're in lockdown, we can't go eat anywhere, which means we had to load up on food to cook today, yesterday). It was Abby, Adri, myself, and two of the other people that were on our shuttle into Leogane on Thursday: Diego from Mexico and Kisa from....I think Washington state? Basically we told Christa what our menu for today was...and she led us through all the market stalls and translated at each of these until we had purchased our pasta, garlic, carrots, mini-lettuce, tomatoes, mangos, and bananas. Our hope is to use basil grown here and have a nice pesto sauce pasta with a light salad. Sharing the kitchen with 70 other hungry people, however, should be interesting. Anyhow, Christa is awesome, and I'm so glad she's still here!

The last few days have been really interesting...talking a lot about everything going on. Hopefully I'll know how to share my thoughts on all of this once I'm done processing all of it internally.

Until then: I'm a live and well, and happy to be back :)