Whoops I did it again just like Brittany Spears.  Actually I didn’t do anything.  I had no internet or power most of the day.  I just don’t see how you can get your power turned off without notice even when you pay your bill.  So not fair.

My day did not start as planned…they ran out of coffee.  This is not good for me or anyone I may come in contact with.  Actually I had what I believe was about ¼ cup of day old coffee.   I was in a fit of rage for a short period.  There are no coffee shops for me to even walk to go get my fix.

I woke up with a  boat load of new mosquito bites this morning. Every night I take my cold only shower and then spray myself down with mosquito spray before bed.  It just doesn’t seem right.

So today was horse therapy and my whole Paco fix. We took the kids in the pick up today.  There are really no car seats to speak of here.  They’d look at you like you had three heads if you asked about them.  Kids just pile in just like the older days here back home.  Susan and I had to be in the bed of the truck with the wheelchair since the cab was full.  I did not want to point out to her we were sharing the ride with a cockroach.  She had already noticed.

As we were heading down the road, cool wind in my hair, the refreshing splash of the germ laded water hitting my face.  I was half tempted to see what it tasted like but thought that could be a bad decision later on.  I like to live a little on the wild side you know.  I’ve grown accustomed to be caked in dust, it’s kind of like a dirtier version of baby powder.  It gives a lot of texture to my hair I can tell you that.

So here we are heading down the road with the kids and about 10 minutes later, we pulled over.  Jamie got out and advised us one of the kids decided to have a seizure.  It was a little freaky and for a minute Jamie thought the girl died.  We hung out trying to get her stable but it didn’t happen.  I told Jamie that she wasn’t dead at least.  Sadly if the girl would have departed this heavenly earth, there would be absolutely positively nothing we could do to change the events.  The ambulances here take forever as in hour plus, there are no AED’s, heck, I don’t even think people know CPR down here.  I told her just remember the “staying alive” song and go from there maybe throw in a breath for shit’s and giggles.  You will die here and you will have to like it.  There are no other options.

I think it freaked our driver out because the girl was in the front seat next to him.  Personally, I think the nannies put on a too too tight headband on her.  We found out later that she has had seizures in the past…we didn’t get the memo on that. Two of the kids I would say kind of knew something was up.  The once boy Cade, likes to belt out very high pitched screams unannounced which mostly scare the crap out of me.  I do like Cade, he’s kind of like me, impulsive.  I would say the biggest difference is I don’t pull food out of my friend’s mouths to eat.

So my plans with Paco were dashed…I was so sad. Gertrude’s sister took the keys so we pretty much stuck.  People in Haiti don’t trust anyone.  I don’t know what we did for a couple of hours after that.  It’s a blur.   A group I think from Help Haiti comes here once a week to see the kids.  They came at lunch.  I’ll just say due to all the change of structure and routine it turned into a disastrous lunch time hour.  It was like “Shark Week” gone wrong.  Once one kid sets the food deprivation tone, it went downhill from there.  It was though kind of humorous to see this group thinking, “what the hell is going on?”  I wanted to say “you”.  I think it was funny that a young college age guy said I think this kid is full they won’t eat anymore.  Honestly, that does not happen here.  Ever!  Ever meal is a clean plate or in this case, bowl, club.  Food never ever goes uneaten.  Again, ever!  Yeah I know it’s like 3 cups of food for a 2 year old but they honestly eat it like it was their last meal.

It was like a food fight gone wrong.  My friend Jamie was feeding a boy who was crying and would not swallow his food.  Susan decided to sing some Beetles tunes to calm him down so he could finish.  Appropriately she was singing Hey Jude because the boy’s name was Jude.  It calmed him for a minute.  I was on protective watch for the stealth food stealers.  I am getting good and see the signs of impending chaos.  I was the food body guard per se.  Well this one boy ( the regurgitator) was on the prowl today apparently still in starvation mode.  He put up a diversion by grabbing Jamie’s water bottle.  And in a quick one two move, had a fistful of rice and slop gravy.   In the process of this, food went flying eventually landing all over Susan’s head, neck  and who know where else.  It was like slo mo, and nothing could have been done to prevent this event from occurring.  Sadly, the kids thought   nothing of picking the food out of her hair and eating it.  Gross!!!!  Of course they eat it off the floor so I guess out of clean hair is probably cleaner in a sense.  She exited to shower off the remains of a third world lunch.  I’ll just say it looked like head lice on steroids or maggots covering her head.

We spend a good part of the day outfitting the kids with some replacement clothing.  They have loads of clothing but for some hoarding reason, do not want to use it.  We took care of most of the boys.  You would have thought they were getting a new wardrobe and we even let them pick out things they liked, which they never get to do.  Each child here has a dishpan size bin with their name on in.  In the bin is everything they own. Obviously it is not a lot.  I can’t imagine everything I own in a dishpan.

I’ll just say this about the clothes fitting session, I am glad I did not buy these as gifts somewhere.  There are 10 year old boys wearing size 6. The 3-4 year old in 18-24 months.  It was a real pain in the rear to find clothes.  I think the biggest size we used was a 10 or 12.  These kids are dinky.   Every kid has a herniated belly button, I don’t know why.  I tried pushing them in like you do for those punch balls but it doesn’t work so well.  They don’t roll up very well.  It looks an appendage  coming out of their stomach.

The kids loved their clothes.  By the end of the night some of the clothes sustained damage.  Nothing is safe here from being damaged. 

Jamie was going to get the girls taken care of this week.  My mom had made some dresses.  Mom, they look awesome!  The 8’s will fit a teen.  It crazy but I guess when you only eat rice and cornmeal you don’t really grow too much.

These kids here actually have it pretty go in the grand scheme of things.  And when I say these kids, I mean the ones at this orphanage.  They get three squares a day, a bed, showers, and some love. There are many kids here who get a meal a day, no showers, no bed and a little love.

After we finished we decided to set out for a walk to find sugar cane for Susan.  We got a little lost and I think we ended up in someone’s yard.  A nice lady told us to follow her to get us back to the main road.   We would have just backtracked but she took us through a broken wall, behind a school, through a large smelly garbage pile and eventually made it back to the main road.  Lo and behold, the sugar cane dude was pushing the wheel barrow.  We got our fix.  I found it highly ironic that we were chastised for spitting out the used sugar cane.  Like we were littering, oh please, look around people you have got to be kidding.  Maybe they like all the garbage is a form of art or they are blind.  Speaking of blind, I can’t believe how many of the kids have cataracts.  I thought you got those when you hit AARP eligibility not as a child.

After that we did some other non news worthy stuff…can’t remember.  But eventually we ran out of stuff do so we did what most people do (speaking for me), we went in search of an early happy hour.  I grabbed three empty beer bottles to exchange for fresh cold ones to take as roadies.  We walked to the market area.  This area stinks to high heaven and is full of flies.  I smell meat that’s probably been sitting out all day, that or it’s a dead dog.  We finally procured some Prestige and the lady was amused by our tactics or walking and drinking.  I don’t think they do that much.  We caused a stir as we paraded our very cold beer down the stinky path. Some were met with jealously and others cheering as the crazy U.S. chicks doing their own version of girls gone wild in Haiti.  They come to recognize us for being out daily.  I don’t dare take photos because I don’t want to get yelled at.  There’s a goat’s head on a table and boy do I want to take a photo.  I won’t.  I don’t’ want to anger the natives.

One crazy thing here that baffles my mind (not hard to do) is that I find so many teeny tiny things that these kids find and put in their mouths.  Small button batteries, beads, nuts, bolts, nails, pen cap, tiny toy wheels, you name it.  That child safety organization would have a hay day here.  It’s a Mecca for small choking hazards.  I swear there’s a secret stash where they get this crap. No one thinks anything about it.  I don’t know the rocks may move stuff along in the digestive track but I don’t think a pen cap would.  I took so much stuff out of there mouths it was crazy.

I learned that Haitian’s think we have so much because we put “In God we Trust” on our money.  I heard it straight from a Haitian mouth.  If I was a Haitian, I’d see about getting that on their money, which by the way is disgustingly gross and smelly.  It makes U.S. money look sanitary.

Haitian’s occasionally eat cats.  Totally gross.   I hope the Kibby we ate wasn’t cat Kibby in disguise. But they also like them as pets probably to keep the rats from eating their children.  Dogs in Haiti are just that, dogs.  Some are pseudo pets.  They think we are nuts for having them in our homes, on our furniture, beds and everywhere else imaginable.    I thought it was funny that every animal in the Port au Prince area roams free but up in the sparsely populated mountains, they are tied up or are in pens.  I don’t know how they know keep track.

I went out across the street and filled up a container of dirt.  If I call it soil I will get in trouble so I am defining it as dirt.  A boy came up and in broken English asked what I was doing.  I told him I was getting some dirt.  He asked why and I said caused I wanted to take it home.  He could not comprehend why the heck someone would take dirt home.  I just like to collect dirt and sand from countries I visit.  Hey, I won some blue ribbons in the fair for some of my collections. 

I even went out and started finding old bottle caps and pieces of tile.  I looked like a white garbage picker.  I got a lot of strange looks digging junk out of the ground.  I might try to do something with the collection of abstract items I have discovered.  I even found some money.  They kind of leave me alone when I go into digging mode, I don’t think they know what to make of my antics.  I forgot to get my sand from the beach when we went to Jacmel and Jamie promised me she’d hook me up before she came home.  I told her if she didn’t, I’d have to beat her about the head and neck area.

I’m glad my time here is winding down,  its way to much unpaid work to keep up with two blogs daily.  The lack of power here holds me hostage from my creativity.

I can think no more.