I wake up to something tickling my face. Panicked that a tarantula has infiltrated my mosquito net, I panicked at sat up prepared to fight. But it was just my squadmate, Belle, gently waking me by brushing my face with the gauzy mosquito net. 6:30. “Good morning, Ruthie,” she whispers. We live in pretty close quarters in the dorms, a small room and 2 toilets are shared by 17 women. I switch on the fairy lights I hung above me and reach into my packing cubes to extract the day’s uniform. Every day the women wear long skirts or dresses while the men wear pants. I pull on my teammate’s converse, a cute, closed-toe option for hiking around the city with questionable roadside sanitary conditions. No way was I stepping in dog poop today.
The mornings are my favorite part of life here. Every day I wake up to a sliver sunrise and sunlight flickering through the leaves of the fruit trees. I walk past the basketball court and ‘the church’ (a large, tin-roofed pavilion with a peeling mural on one wall) to the eating area. After I fill a mug with fresh coffee and mix in powdered creamer, I pick a quiet seat and open up my Bible. At 7:30, breakfast is served, usually consisting of pb&js, eggs, and cereal with yogurt. Across the field, a rooster clucks at his possee of female followers, and the chickens scurry around as if they were given life-threatening orders. Someone usually picks up Piggy, who is, ironically, an I’ll-tempered orange cat belonging to one of the cooks. He prowls around between our legs hoping for scraps, and biting anyone who he doesn’t get along with. I confess I’ve never been Piggy’s biggest fan, so I never get close enough to figure out how he feels about me.
At 8:30 we head to the bus, a sketchy-looking, halfway-refurbished school bus with crusty seats and cracked windows. Our driver, Eddie, enjoys entertaining us along the way, honking when we go through tunnels and sometimes purposely driving over humps so that he is sure we are awake. It’s Monday, so we are headed to Pastor Job’s parish. My team walks to an elementary school in the morning, hurrying behind our translators who are unaware of the speed with which they walk. The ugly part about walking through the streets of this country is the frequency of cat calls we hear. It’s best to just scurry along next to your translator.
The school is kind of chaotic: one big room that serves as a church on Sundays and grade school for Haitian kids on the weekdays. Brown chalkboards separate the 4 morning classes, pre-school age to third grade, and the kids sit on miniature plastic chairs swinging their legs and arms, scribbling on a notepad on their laps if they are lucky enough to have one. It is a privilege for these kids to come to school every morning, since the Dominican government has no public school system, and it is difficult for Haitian children to get into school because they are undocumented. We watch the lesson for the first half, and then, heavily assisted by translators, we teach kids English through Bible stories and flash cards. “Cat!” I say. “Cat!” They repeat. “Now, what is this?” I ask as I point to the picture of the cat. “What is this!” They continue. Normally teaching consists of ridiculous hand signals and silly songs and dirty skirts. Finally, we get to play with the kids, arm wrestling or letting them dig their tiny sticky fingers into my red hair tugging until my scalp is raw and I’m sure my hair is gone.
Our team walks back to the church for lunch, where another team that had gotten back early has made us pb&js, a world racer staple. I doubt I’ll ever get tired of them. At 1 o’clock we begin SMT. The purpose is to collect data about the community as well as build relationships with homeowners. (See my blog, Mission of Hope, to read more about this ministry style!) Christian, our translator, leads us to a house about 10 minutes from the church. He knocks on a wall inside the grate and a woman lets us into her home, pulling out chairs from back rooms and borrowing them from neighbors. We sit in a cramped living/kitchen/dining/sleeping space and speak to her about her family, her life, and her faith. This woman loves the Lord because He protects her from being deported and provides food for her family. We share about our lives too, our testimonies, and the reasons why we are here in her community. Every time we leave a house, we pray over it, asking the Lord to bless the family and provide for their needs. I love ministry here, I love the Haitian people who I get to meet, and I love this country which is so beautiful and welcoming.
On the bumpy bus ride back, I pop in my air pods and watch the clouds descending on the mountains. It really is beautiful here. We arrive at the campus around 4, nearly hitting the gate as Eddie magically squeezes the ungainly bus through the gap. I change into shorts and head over to the Mission of Hope store for a few scoops of ice cream to eat by the pool, or I’ll play a game of basketball with a squad mate. Team time is at 5. We spread out in the gazebo, a bright blue octangular portico in a corner of the base as a heard of cows chomp on grass on the other side of the chain-link fence. At 6, dinner is served, usually some kind of Haitian or Dominican specialty. Today, it’s coconut rice with yellow chicken curry and lentils. After dinner, I end my day with some time with the Father, or in intentional conversations with squad mates. I lay on the grass staring up at the stars that pockmark the velvety black sky. I already said it, and I’ll say it again, I love it here.
