Long time, no post...

Hi all!

I've been trying to right a profound blog post for the past hour, and I have to let those thoughts steep for a bit longer in my the tea kettle that is my brain. Until then, I'll just give a basic update on what we've been up to.

Jon and I are plugging away here in Marouge, a village outside of Mirebalais. Although we haven't been able to start much of the rennovation project in the house, we have kept ourselves busy with smaller projects we come up with on our own. One such project is tackling the back yard. When we arrived here, it consisted of one random plant (something edible that we don't have in the states), a full grown tree, and a large trash heap. You see, here in rural Haiti, we have the priviledge of dealing with our waste first hand. No garbage trucks here. Whatever trash we make, we have to deal with and look at until it either decomposes or some goat eats it. Thus, my first week here, I bought two separate buckets for compost and trash, and established a small compost heap out back. Jon and I also sorted through the trash heap, taking out anything we might be able to reuse, mostly plastic bottles, and cans to fill with soil and start seeds in. We tried to hand till the soil out back, hoping for nice black topsoil, but finding mucky clay. For a while we would walk to a near by field to find good soil, carrying it back in a 5 gallon bucket, but this was a bit tedious. On the most recent visit of our MCC supervisors, we were surprised with a lovely wheelbarrow, 2 shovels, a pick ax, and a hoe. It was like Christmas. Our efforts will be so much more efficient now! Can't wait to start planting.

I should also mention that there is the construction of a caretakers' house going on within the fence of our property here. Once it is completed, Jon will move there along with a pair of brothers, and they will oversee the property, keep it locked up, and help us deal with any issues that arise in the house. For the meantime, however, the two brothers, Jon, myself, 3 construction workers, and the local pastor are living in the retreat center building. We've got quite a full house. The workers are all pretty cool, and I enjoy spending random days working as their laborer on the little construction site. I sift sand for mixing cement, mix the cement, make sure their trays are full as they slap the cement up onto the walls. They get a kick out of me working with them, and often we have an audience of curious neighbors who come to watch. One little boy said "It gives me pleasure to see a woman do this sort of work". It was such a foreign concept to him, and made all the more crazy by the fact that I am a "blan" woman, or white/foreigner woman. He was pleased. And I was happy as well.

There are always interesting things going on around here. Recently, I discovered that chickens, or at least roosters, like to sleep in trees. Our friend, and future caretaker, Fafa, has recently aquired a rooster and it is tied up in the front yard until we can trust it to stick around. On more than one occasion, I have walked outside to find an empty string tied to a cement block, meaning the rooster (we have come to call him Kernel) has left us once again. I always joke that he's gone on vacation somewhere, and Fafa trots off into the meadows to find him. One evening, as we were sitting around, Kernel frightened me by flying up into the air, to the very end of his string, and catching the lowest branch of the mango tree. I was alarmed at this behavior, but Fafa calmly untied the string and watched as Kernel hopped from branch to branch until he was nestled high in the tree and he fell asleep. In the morning, he apparently just flew back down, he was tied up again, and life continued. The next night, however, Fafa wasn't around when Kernel attempted to reach his nightly resting place. At some point in the day, his leash broke, and when it was tied up again, it was shortened. Kernel hadn't entered this into his calculations before flying into the tree, because the lowest branch was just out of reach and he awkwardly flew til the rope yanked him down to earth. I felt bad after watching several attempts, so I took it upon myself to untie the rope and let him fly into the tree. He didn't get the picture. He started running off, and because I hate to see him fall on his face time after time of pulling att he end of his rope, I let him run for a little while with myself holding the leash behind him. Eventually, I realized he had no intention of running back home, so I picked him up and asked Samuel, a little boy, what to do with him. He insisted I just throw him into the tree. I was a little surprised, never having considered throwing a chicken anywhere, but he seemed confident. So, I grabbed him, and gracefully tossed him into the air. I watched as his little balled up self went up, and then slowsly descended to earth without his wings opening. I wanted to yell "Kernel! You doofus! Fly already!" but it was too late. He came crashing to earth with an awkward thud. The few onlookers laughed and insisted I hadn't thrown him hard enough. So Samuel took over, and grabbed Kernel as if he was a football in one hand. He wound up, and chucked the bird as hard as he could. This time the wings opened, but he missed the branch and squawked loudly, unamused at what we were trying to do. Finally, we threw him into the crook of the tree, thinking that even if he didn't open his wings and fly on his own, he would realize what he was supposed to do when he landed. Sure enough, he started hopping from branch to branch as planned, until he found a nice spot to hunker down for the evening. Heh. What a night. For both Kernel and myself.

Other than throwing chickens and gardening, we are making relationships, learning the language, and getting used to the local markets. I keep having to remind myself that not all progress is visible, and even so, progress isn't necessarily our priority here. We are here to learn as much as serve, and we are certainly doing that on a daily basis.

I will try to do a better job keeping up with blog posts. Hopefully I'll make visit to Port Au Prince soon, which means I'll have unlimited internet and I'll be able to post pictures. But until then, just do your best creating a mental image of me chucking a rooster into a tree. :)

Hope all are well
Peace
Annie