Family and Friends,
I tried to explain “Black Friday” to a Haitian person today. That was interesting. Haitians can definitely relate to shopping all day in order to get everything on your list, but their lists don't have a bunch of technology gadgets and toys and things like that.
Here are some thoughts about food in Haiti:
Everything that goes into obtaining, preparing, cleaning up after, and storing food is a big deal down here. This process can easily eat up big chunks of your day even with a hired cook preparing one of your meals. The market is a real challenge, and many foods are seasonal or just not available on any given day. People mainly cook over open flames here with charcoal or wood. It is amazing though how good they are at getting the pot to a perfect boil when they want to.
On Thanksgiving morning we were invited to a friend's house to learn how to make Pik Lis, which is basically Haitian cole slaw. I love that dish! It turned out that we sat and talked all morning and eventually ate a whole meal together around 1 o'clock. The kids did pretty well considering they had to sit there for five hours. Once in awhile they did get up to explore the yard or go to the outhouse, because several of us have diarhea now. Alexandra went five times at least. She's feeling better today.
It is just amazing to sit and watch someone patiently prepare all of the various foods. The cook meticulously cut each carrot and piece of cabbage into tiny little strips, something a food processor could have done in 10 seconds. We also watched her catch a chicken, kill it, pull the feathers off, butcher it, marinate it, boil it and eventually fry it with the plantains. Plantains look just like bananas, and they even call them “banan” here, but they are more like potatoes to eat. It was quite a meal and it was definitely made with a great deal of love and care. The key was the conversation that went on throughout the process. That is probably one of the best lessons we Americans can learn down here...how to enjoy doing hours of menial work while simultaneously building relationships with family and friends.
Meals are quite the production around the property where we live. A lot of times we end up eating in front of several hungry people who are working on the construction, waiting for shoes, or any number of other things. It is a hard to describe how that feels, but it motivates you to think, “If I am going to eat this food I better use the energy it provides to help these people.” Also, the cooks are like moms or grandmas to us...they watch us like hawks to see how much we are eating or not eating. We are very grateful for the food, but it just takes awhile to get used to eating hot food in the middle of the day outside in Haiti, and we aren't used to eating so much beans and rice yet either. We'll get there.
We don't have a fridge here, but we share a small freezer with the orphanage. Well, we have one for now anyway. I say that because the freezer has been having problems lately. The issue has to do with the local electricity, which is not only hit and miss, but the power it provides is much less than you get in the US. So even if it is on and it will run a CD player or something like that, it might not be enough for the freezer motor to kick on. So for the last couple of days we have had to run the generator in order to save the meat in the freezer. This won't be feasible long-term, but we are doing it until Pam comes in a few days and gives us some guidance on how to proceed with the situation.
You can't talk about food around here without thinking about bugs. The ants in our house have their own economy and network of communication and transport. Their scouting program is really the most impressive. I swear you could rub a little smudge of jelly anywhere in the house and they will be carrying it off one lick at a time 20 minutes later. Ants seem to each have their own personality, too. I watched a team of three of them walking near the sink this morning. The first two were walking steadily along, but the third one was suffering from a severe case of ADHD. He would get distracted and go look at something and then a few seconds later run to catch up with his comrades. This happened several times. Admiringly I named them Larry, Curly, and Mo. Then I killed them.
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| Arriving in Ti-Rivier November 10th and unloading the Bus |
I finally got a picture to upload! Remember 1997? I just went there...or at least it feels like I did because of how long I had to wait for the internet to do something. One more way to learn patience in Haiti!
We'll write again soon. Keep living the adventure with Jesus!
God Bless,
the Grimms
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