Mission Haiti Neighborhood Characters: PETERSON



Craig (Mike and Pam's son) and Antoine at the wedding
(see post, Mission Haiti Neighborhood Characters: ANTOINE)

 Family and Friends,

Please enjoy the latest installment of the Mission Haiti Neighborhood Characters series.  This time it is about a twelve-year-old who hangs around quite a bit, Peter.  We'll try to post a photo of him soon.  Enjoy!

PETERSON

I used to call Peterson “the 11th orphan”, because for a long time we had ten kids in the orphanage, but Peterson always spent most of the day here as well and pretty much lived here. Then we got an actual 11th person, John, so I didn’t call Peterson that anymore. But now John has left, so I’m back to calling Peterson “the 11th orphan” again.

Peterson, or Peter as most people call him, reminds me of how you might imagine some boy who works on a Pirate ship running errands and making announcements for the captain. He is twelve years old, and his voice is very, very loud. He is also very adept at climbing. I’m sure he could shimmy up any ship’s mast in ten seconds flat as he regularly climbs any and every tree around this neighborhood. From there the crew of several hundred would have no trouble hearing the orders of the pirate captain as Peterson calls them out. He also has a knack for learning every little skill and word and game, and no doubt he is destined for great things, just as that boy on the Pirate ship is destined to be Captain himself one day.

Kester and Peter are pretty much best friends now, though they get on each others’ nerves as both of them are overly competitive. Sometimes Peter just gets frustrated because Kester is only 7, I think. But they spend countless hours playing games, kicking around the soccerball and other balls, messing around in the yard, etc… Peter is learning English really fast and has a good chance to truly be fluent some day as do the other kids in the orphanage.

Sometimes I wonder if Peter’s mom is at home wondering where he is at any given moment in the day. One day I asked him about that. I said, “Peter, doesn’t your mom ever wonder what you are doing all day?” He said, “No. She just knows that if I go home she has to feed me. I just know that if I go home I have to do chores, especially hauling water, so it is just better to stay here most of the time”, or something along those lines. Once of twice a week he hands Lynn a piece of bread he managed to buy down on the street. It is understood that we will hand it back to him with peanut butter and jelly. He needs a little skin on his bones!

When Jeri Kraai of Rock Valley, Ia. came down here recently, she taught a group of people to sew diapers for the babies in the community. It wasn’t the women or the men who learned the fastest. It was Peter! After that we had him make a little rug to use as a pad for our bench out on the porch. He could probably make a lot of other things, too. He is a little entrepreneur in the making. He sold us part of his pig at Christmas time and countless supplies of bananas and peanuts.


May Your Adventure be filled with Characters!
-The Grimm Family Adventurers