During the night of April 1st, something amazing happened. Silence descended upon my room. In Haiti, I cannot stress how big of a deal this is. So in this quiet time, I began to detox. I was physically wiped out from continuously walking for two hours, back and forth about 70 yards, with 100 pound bean sacks on my back with 10 other guys en route to transport all 20 tons of the beans from a truck to a storage room for future food distributions. Unwilling to move, I picked up a pen and started writing. Without initially realizing it, I began to express all my joys, frustrations and fears collected from my last year of life. Writing, pausing, praying, getting distracted, refocusing, and writing. I finished this “letter to God” with a strong sense of unity. I felt alive and connected, with myself and God.
Someone brought a DVD player and projector down after the earthquake. I am not sure how high those things were on Urgent Needs List for Haiti but trust me, I’m very thankful it’s here. Jay and I watched Gladiator. Maximus is a man, period. I’d like to steal some of his traits. Thus after finishing the movie, I was in bed, awake and amped. That connectedness became present again. I grabbed my pod (iPod, yeah, I’m cool, I abbreviated iPod to pod) laying there tired but very awake praising God and jamming. I just kept getting more and more amped listening and praising. At one point, I was standing upon my bed silently (it was very late) screaming and singing with my heart pumping pure Spirit adrenaline. I knew the enemy was trying to attack; random thoughts, images and cramps became present to try and interrupt or calm this growing intensity of love beaming through me to God… albeit to no avail. I eventually fell back onto my bed face up, arms wide, laughing to myself with warm sensations washing over me again and again… I woke up refreshed. Then someone reminded me it was my birthday.
So beginning my 26th year of life and celebrating 25 of them, I went on a walk. I walked with the filmers here on a path and direction I have never been. It was beautiful. Lots of kids and kites. Lots. And we walked through some super slum areas. Not the friendliest people. So we walked a little bit faster. Found Stavi(I’ve linked his facebook profile if you’d like to befriend him) then saw way too many people bathing then finally returned. It was a long walk.
We ate lunch then decided we were gunna visit the rum factory down the street. We walked down and waited for Marcus to arrive to give us a tour. While waiting, Stavi thought he saw a snake so he was throwing rocks at this over arching tree stump on the steep face of the riverside embankment making half scared half curious faces that literally had me and Jay side by side looking at each other to make sure the other was seeing the same thing. It was nice to laugh. Then we decided to wait inside the rum factory compound. I saw Makinglove (yeah, that’s pronounced like its spelled) and put together that his dad was the security man there. Makinglove was flying his kite, like most kids here are doing these days, inside this compound and then suddenly yelled over the wall and rushed off tying his unattended high flying kite to a bus. Once he was out of sight, I stood up and untied it from the bus and began letting go higher and higher. It has been a long time since I tried to fly a kite. This was evident because several times under my amateur guidance the kite nosedived, plummeting to earth at space speeds. Right when I was getting the hang of it, Makinglove came back and wanted his kite. Geez, fine… kids, right?
Marcus finally came and took us on a tour, let us taste unfiltered mega fermented “moonshine” rum out of 55 gallon barrels. Still having trouble tasting anything. Then for 12 dollars when bought 24 bottles (50 cents a bottle) of Clairin Sonson Pierre-Gilles’s Kafe di Swa, the finest rum made in Messaille, Haiti. Then we went home, ate, changed, and went to Good Friday service. We walked in while a cute little girl was singing solo upfront with the microphone. I think the song was called, not sure if this is a direct translation but, “Ima Scream til Your Ears Bleed”. I didn’t like it.
After church, some people wanted to take their picture with me because it was my birthday. So I did karate poses with them for their phone cameras. Diana made me a cake, it was decorated with bananas, lollipops and gummy bear vitamins- . We all got to sit down and eat it together in celebration. And just like my 8th birthday, I had too much coke and cake and sugar crashed shortly after that.