Day 6: June 17, 2011



VBS



Day 6- Still in Beauchamp we have one more day of VBS. It’s not raining this morning and we are praying it will not rain on our three hour trip home in a Tap-Tap. We had to get two smaller Tap-Taps for the ride home because the big one could not make it through all the mud on the roads from all the rain. Paulette has asked the leaders at Beauchamp to take us to see the town’s voodoo temple as we have not seen one the whole trip; some of us witnessed a ritual in the market place with a chicken. The leaders here refused to take us to the voodoo temple; you could practically see the fear on their faces with even the mention of the word. Luckily our translators and security guys that came with us from St. Louis Du Nord are not scared of the voodoo temples and know where they are. We had to walk through the market (which was open and hectic today) and we saw a lot of chickens and clothes being sold. There is not really much of a system to their market, everyone is just set up wherever they please and is allowed to sell pretty much anything they want. We get to where the voodoo temple is and we are told not to stare but we walk by and then they tell us to walk back. Well by then like anywhere else there is a crowd of people gathering around us (if your white they want to be around you), and the people inside the temple are also staring at us. We all were shocked and grossed out a little when we realized they had body parts including skulls hanging from strings inside the gates. We started our journey back and I asked Paulette if she thought the skulls we saw were real and she said she had no doubt they were, the only question is was the person killed in a ritual or were they dead already when the voodoo worshipers decided to use their head as a decoration.

Having fun in Beauchamp

We headed back to the mission and set up for VBS. Today there were not as many kids, but that’s expected on market day; many kids go to the market with their friends or simply have to go to help their parents carry things or set up. We had fun and afterwards we blew bubbles, painted fingernails, and sang. Alex a boy in our group said he wanted to try to paint fingernails so we gave him some polish and we all sat down with the children and painted nails. Well it turned out Alex was actually pretty good at painting fingernails and we all joked with him. The translator however really got him; he told the little girl Alex would paint her toenails too. Now this little girl did not have shoes on and walked who knows how far in the dirt so it took Alex a minute to get over the American way of thinking and how dirty her feet were.  



Alex painting fingernails



Then the translator comes back with a bottle of glitter polish and tells the little girl Alex will put glitter on her nails. Now Alex being a typical American teenage boy does not understand the difference between glitter and the fingernail polish he already put on. After all the girls in our group explain to him it’s normal to put glitter on top of fingernail polish he agrees to put it on. We all got a good laugh out of it and now Alex knows he can paint fingernails. After VBS we loaded up on the Tap-Taps and headed back to the mission. The ride was a little scary and at one point we had to get off and let the truck get through a scary spot in case it was to flip or crash. Everything turned out okay and we made it back to the mission safely, resting after a long three days at Beauchamp. The girl in our group that was sick saw a doctor at the mission and they gave her 3 IV’s from being dehydrated, but she was overall feeling much better. Another great day at Northwest Haiti Christian Mission.



Resting before dinner after a long journey home!