Day 8: June 19, 2011

Me and Kristen are so photogenic! (This was after church)

Day 8- Today is Sunday! We only have two days left, our group has mixed feelings about half of us are ready to go home and the other half (including me) wishes we could stay longer! We get to sleep in somewhat this morning as we don’t have devotions. We ate breakfast and then got ready for church. I paid to have my clothes washed along with some other girls in our group and we are learning what lye soap is and how it smells (not to good haha). Anyways with our lye soap dresses we all are sitting at the tables downstairs. Some of the people in our group have babies from the orphanage. If you have a baby you take it to church with you, and they have all the little girls dressed up in fancy dresses SOOO CUTE! I didn’t have one, but there were plenty of babies in our group to go around (especially since the boys didn’t really know what to do when the baby started crying).



This was painted on a building- Hey it's even in Anglais (English)



Church was amazing, as different as it was I loved it. It was a three hour service and two of the hours were singing (all in Creole). While we didn’t know what they were saying we could still worship with them in a way I still cannot really explain in words. The speaker was someone at the mission so he spoke English and they had a translator translating to the Haitians. The sermon was on hope, and faith in God that he would restore Haiti. Looking around in the church during the service you could see God through those people, you can see his love on their faces, and he gives them hope.



The two soccer teams huddled.



After church was lunch and then a soccer game! I had never been to a professional soccer game before, so I didn’t know what to expect, not that the people who had been to professional soccer games saw what they expected to either. It was $3.00 (in American currency) or 100 Gouds (Haitian money) to get it. That is a lot of money to Haitians so we were not expecting many Haitians to be there. Once we were inside the soccer complex (which is owned by the mission) we were escorted into the brick surrounding around the whole complex then into a chain link fence, which surrounded the soccer field itself. We were sitting inside the fence where they were playing soccer.



All the people behind the chain link fence paid to get in,
everyone else is watching from a rooftop outside
the soccer complex!




There were more people watching the game from outside
the complex than there were inside!




Lots and lots of arguing during the game!



The wall on the far side had seats built into it and that’s where we sat. We could see people on top of houses and building watching the game from outside the complex, matter of fact there were more people outside than there were inside. Beside us, the only Haitians inside the fence were dressed really nicely (so we were pretty sure they were professional criminals). Our theory was confirmed when one of the guys wanted to talk to a leader from the mission that was there. He pulled him aside and told him, I’m a drug dealer, I’ve been to jail three times. What all they talked about I don’t know, but I was just happy we brought LOTS of security with us from the mission.



SECURITY



After the game started the real security came in, UN Troops, Riot Police, and even some U.S. Soldiers. They policed the field and were making sure no one disrupted the peace. One of the officers told us that if Haiti was to lose they would have to escort the referees out of the stadium and to a safe place or they would be killed in the street. This made us all a little nervous and the security from the mission decided it would be best if we left the game a little early.



Riot Shield! :O



Mohawk Goalie!



There was a goalie on the other team, he had a Mohawk. We all talked about how cool it looked and one of the translators told us here if you wear your hair like that you might as well wear a dress; and that he looked like a girl. We all got a good laugh out of that but most of his criticism was probably from the fact he was the goalie for the other team. We headed out a few minutes before the game was to be over, but we weren’t fast enough and right as we got to the door the final whistle blew and it was mass chaos. We all held on to the back of each other’s book bags and the mission’s security shoved us down a shortcut they knew through an alley. We got back to the mission and had dinner and we were wiped, from another great day in St. Louis Du Nord.



Another great day in Haiti!