"Let Haiti Be Haiti"

We decided a few months ago, we had to stop comparing everything here to the states and what we were used to. We had to stop having American expectations in a country that isn't America.
"Let Haiti Be Haiti", states it very well. This is my new moto! Spoken by Tony Brandt before his trip here in June. He said it because we were without city power for 4 days which meant our batteries (which provide power for our house when city is not on) could not be charged. The generator broke (which provides power to charge the batteries when city is off too long). So...no power means no lights of course, but it also means no fans which = sleeping outside which = mosquitos. This also means eventually we run out of running water because we can't pump it from the cistern to our tanks on our roof. I'm not sure he knew what he was saying when he said it, but none the less, he felt more prepared for the unexpected, the unexplainable, and the awesomeness of this country. There were moments of each in the week while the June team was here. City power came on 2 hours after that team arrived.
For me, it was spending an entire morning driving to 4 construction stores to get tap cons to hang shelves on concrete. Nope not one carried tap cons. A country that builds all of it's buildings out of concrete and 4 construction stores do not carry tap cons. I tried to get Jacques to explain it to me, but it's unexplainable.
For Dan and Tony, it was going to the construction store and not being able to get what they needed to hook up the power at the girls orphanage the way they wanted. There's no ordering. If they have it, they have it, if they don't, they don't.
For Jeff, it's picking up the part for the generator that was shipped from the states, having a man working on it one morning, then to have him up and leave it to go to work saying he'd be back that night. That was two days ago. Still no generator repair man. Unexplainable.
For Drew, it was getting yelled at by an old lady for throwing brush beside the full dumpster like everyone else does. Unexpected.

"Let Haiti be Haiti" this week...
Last week, I asked Drew to work on some landscaping around our outdoor patio in the yard. I love flowering bushes and lots of color, other than that, no special requests. Jeff walked in on the conversation and thus began the brainstorming.

Those of you that know Jeff well, know he is a visionary and can see the finished product before there is actually anything even there. You also may know, he doesn't do anything small scale. I decided it was best to step out of the way and let he and Drew go to town. So my simple idea of a few nice bushes turned into Pond/waterfall/fountain.
Digging began promptly on Monday morning. Stones were moved around the yard and put in place on Tuesday. Taken down and redone Wednesday after the liner was in place, now some of the stones could be secured with hand mixed concrete.
Pump...hmmm well one store (after driving 40 minutes to get there) sells the pump in one size, but the adapter in another size...don't have it. What store orders a pump in one size and the adapter for it in another size? unexplainable. No problem, they can make their own adaptations. They get the parts, set everything up, only the part of the pump that should pump water up to the waterfall doesn't.
Drew, risking getting stuck in rush hour traffic,shows up at MSC 10 minutes before closing knowing that getting the part would only take 2 minutes. But the shotgun-armed guard would not let him in saying they were closed, when there were clearly more customers in the store. The waterfall would have to wait another day.
Thursday, the final stones could be placed around the pond, the fountain is working, the waterfall is working, but still something missing.
As Drew was cleaning out our paint shed, he cames across a box of solar powered lights my parents gave us maybe 10 years ago, never opened. I guess you could say, we were saving them for something special. This was the missing thing, which meant some stones had to be shifted again. Finally the last light was in and the final stone was where it should be. Now all we had to do was wait for sunset.
At sunset, the lights came on, had dinner out by the pond/fountain/waterfall and lived happily ever after...awesomeness... Until the next time we are required to "Let Haiti be Haiti".


There are many things here that we don't understand, we can accept and try to mesh with, but don't understand. There are also many beautiful things here. We have to remember those things and laugh at the unexplainable and unexpected with our new moto "Let Haiti be Haiti"

For now, I'm going to "Let Haiti be Haiti" because I've been trying to upload a picture of the pond for 3 days and our internet won't let it. I'll try again another day because I still have American expectations.