General Musings of a Banal Variety

I've gotten into a routine here. That means things are not so fresh anymore, and the only ‘stories’ I have are about...

...Walking 45 minutes on dusty roads in 95 degree heat to get home from the bank.

...Or walking along wide rivulets of green liquids throughout downtown.

...Or talking with Juslie about the experience of 'gender inequality' in Haiti- those discussions taking the form of Juslie telling me how uncomfortable she is routinely fending off older men (Juslie is a very mature 16, but even by her own account, still a child).

...Or trying to locate a Polaroid camera in St. Louis so that Tom can bring it down for me. Rather than giving sandals or washrags or some such necessity, I want to give photos as a gift to some of the women I've met. Photos of them, or their children, or them with their children.

...Or how long it takes me to scrub my laundry and hang it out to dry in the sun.

...Or how I sit by the river near the house every now and then, getting through strange waves of sadness.

...Or how I ate the best mango I’ve ever tasted while I was staying at a hotel on Wednesday.

...Or how I get yelled at all the time, how people make kissing noises at me all the time, how men tell me they love me all the time—and I don’t even hardly notice anymore.

...Or how I am often asked if I am a Christian and whether or not I’ve yet been saved by Jesus. This happens in broken Creole (on my part) and I usually admit to having grown up Catholic and hoping that shall suffice and satiate curiosity enough to change the subject.

...Or how taxi drivers always give me their telephone numbers and shrug their shoulders when I refrain from sharing my own. They want to be my friend, and maybe more, and I never know who to trust. So I say thank you, I’ll call you if I need a ride, and they really want me to call them when I need more than a ride. And their cars are falling apart, and all the lights on the dash are lit up most of the time, and the windshields are caving in because the glass is ubiquitously cracked, and the door handles only work from the inside, and the heat seems to always be on, and everyone whether drive or bystander is a mechanic by necessity.

...Or how I should probably start wearing a wedding ring of sorts in order to thwart unwanted advances.

These are the things I’m thinking about these days.

Sometimes I find the humor in it, sometimes I'm just tired, sometimes I can't get my mind to wrap around everything that is so different from my 'other' life, sometimes it all feels familiar, and sometimes I look forward to going home.

It's when I'm not seeing the humor that I'm not writing here on this blog, when I make it more difficult to Keep up With Grace. I guess I haven't been seeing the humor for almost a week.

This upcoming week, I will start doing in-depth interviews with a subset of the caretakers I've already surveyed. I can hardly wait for this phase to begin. In my world here in Haiti, everything, up until this point, has been moving towards this end. When I finish that, I go home and my world will revolve around making sense of what I learn from all this data collection.

I'm alone here at the compound for the next few days. Three weeks ago, I would have been frightened or uncomfortable with this situation. But now, I've got the hang of things. And it feels good.