A Sunday morning in Haiti

Hello from Cyvadier. We had a nice dinner last night at the Cyvadier Platz hotel by our favorite swimming beach. The dining room was real quiet. There was no band, no manager, no crazy March team members, only a bunch of crazy Peoria volunteers. There was one table of Sri Lankans, one table of French speaking people, one group from BC in Canada and one single blonde lady busy on her lap top. Our good buddy Belloni appeared towards the end of the meal and I bought him a Prestige. He said he knew where to find us. I had to send him home on Thursday as I did not need him then. I figured he would be mad at me but he seemed to understand. The food was very good even though Christopher, the owner was not present. Our bill was much less than we expected. We did speak with the manager in charge and we are working on details for next Saturday evening. EDH, the local power company is quite unpredictable so we use the generator when EDH is off. Thank you again Caterpillar and especially the folks who arranged the gift last September. Today I managed to complete the task that will be revealed to the team on Monday. I have not been bribed enough to divulge details till then. I suspect that the March team has some idea what the DOM is up to and will leave it at that.
For those of you who are keeping score, we have requested that Boyer drive us to 7:00 AM Mass. I told Bruce we should just keep the Toyota and drive to Mass by ourselves. Will the church walls fall in when Boyer enters? No, Boyer just dropped us off at the door and came back 1 ½ hours later. The Mass was 1 hour and 45 minutes. Last night Boyer was wearing a rosary around his neck as a piece of jewelry so maybe there is hope.
We had a patient show up Saturday with a RTC for yesterday and expected to be seen. I sent her away with instructions to return during clinic. Yes, team members and experienced FOTCH volunteers, I gave her a valid RTC slip. Maybe I should have made it for the September team. LOL.
I am not seeing much news from home on the PJ Star website so that is a good thing/ I understand that Bill Clinton went to the Northern part of Haiti last week but not to the Jacmel area/ I wonder what effect that will have in the long run.
A note to the July team: Today we took all of the small fans apart and finished cleaning them after the Haitian girls had attempted it. We also WD-40’d all of them. The bill for services is in the Haitian mail. There are two of the fans that we are unable to stop squeaking, no matter how much WD 40 we spray in it. We drove to Ti Moulage on Saturday and the surf was quite strong so I suspect the undertow was also strong. We are all set there for Sunday and made the Saturday evening arrangements at dinner on Saturday. There was a meeting Saturday of many of out Haitian workers today and Bruce was introduced as big boss. Carol and I are labeling Bruce as Boss # 5 as there are others who are above him on the organizational chart. He does tease well. A note to the previous FOTCOH teams, the swimming beach was filled with Haitians on Saturday night. It was great to see families enjoying the water. It was some sort of a party or picnic with several Haitian families. Yes, all of the vendors were there with paintings, jewelry, but no t-shirts and no t-shirt lady. Yeah.
Today will be a rest day. We may walk back to Cyvadier Plage hotel for lunch. You can look up Cyvadier Plage on Google if you care to. The Internet is working better today. It was very slow yesterday. There is still no rain, only heat & humidity. Roger sprayed for bug yesterday and gave us all a headache from the smell. It lingers on today. But now all of the bugs should be dead and that is a good thing. Strangely, we saw two cats in the past 24 hours. One was on the road from Ti Moulage and one here in our back yard. Speaking of the road from Ti Moulage, we almost stuck a stray cow that darted across the road right in front of our Toyota. I do not know how we missed it. Boyer’s right arm is still painful so he drives, shifts gears, and operates his ever ringing cell phone all with his left hand.
Thanks enough time on the computer this morning. It is time to get outside and watch the men who are fishing on the east side in 3 boats. They have the diving flag out so maybe we will have some lobster soon. We hope you are having a great weekend.