It’s the start of another week. Overall, everything today seemed a little clearer. I think things are starting to fall into place. My spoken French is slowly coming back and the Kreyole is getting better. I’m still adding in Bangla vocabulary and trying to use Bangla sentence structure, but I think that will fade with time. The best phrase I’ve learned so far is “L’ap vini, piti piti” (it’s come, little by little).
I was told we would leave for the Ti Foye in Kwadepe (Kreyol for “Croix des Peres”) at 8am. I was up and ready to go by 8, backpack packed and everything. I’m still falling for this trick!! We’ve yet to leave on time for anything and so I need to start adding 30 mins to an hour (sometimes more) to any estimated time that something is supposed to happen. So at 8 I did the rounds of the hospital grounds and said “Bonjou” to everyone who was around. We were finally on our way around 9:30am. C’est la vie. It all worked out in the end because the Ti Foye didn’t start on time either.
Kwadepe is a great little village! It is adorable as far as villages go. Tiny brightly colored houses surrounded by banana, mango, and palm trees. The Ti Foye was held at the house of the Volunteer Mother (mere voluntaire). Each Ti Foye is supposed to have a volunteer mother in charge and the monitrices just facilitate and support the mother. There were 9 kids today, all of whom are underweight for age and 3 whom are classified as very underweight for age. We all sat under the banana trees while Beverlie, the monitrice, went over the “3 kalite mange”. I had practiced the song so I could sing along today. =) In the meantime the volunteer mother and the other monitrice, Guerdy, prepared lunch: bean sauce with carrots (with added butter), vegetables with little crabs, rice with chicken bouillon, butter, and oil, and orange juice.
(Picture: Guerdy preparing Ti Foye meal)
(Picture: Beverlie talking with the mothers)
Right now I’m sitting outside on my veranda because it’s too hot inside. There is a nice breeze out here. It would be quite enjoyable if I wasn’t breathing in burning garbage fumes. The garbage pile for the entire hospital is located right next to my apartment. Yup, disgusting. Luckily it doesn’t generally smell. The pile has been building up since I got here and even started to overflow out of the cement walls that are supposed to contain it. They are burning the pile now. Smoke and the occasional large chunk of hospital garbage ash are floating up onto my veranda. I guess it’s good that they are finally doing something about it. I just wish they didn’t choose right now to do it!
