Living in two worlds
“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart will always be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.” -Unkown
Two weeks ago we had our “big adventure day”, as our family calls it, and we traveled to Michigan. We are spending the next couple of months in my hometown of Midland, Michigan. It will be a jam-packed summer of writing and speaking for me. Frentz will keep busy behind his camera lens, and spend time researching for his next business launch. Jayvan is signed up for all kinds of social activities like soccer, science camp, library reading club, and swimming lessons. Asher will be along for the ride, taking life on at full speed and keeping us all laughing! We will appreciate being out from behind the compound walls of Hope House, and soaking in the fresh, Michigan air. We will also be missing our friends, family, foster daughters. and life in Haiti. It is a bizarre thing: living in two worlds. We are never together with everyone we love. We are always missing someone or something. Yet, it also creates such beauty and diversity in our lives.
Recently I was reflecting on the vast difference between the two worlds we live in. Not only by culture and climate, though those differ greatly too. I was reflecting on the difference in the way we live our daily lives. Practically every simple life task is performed differently. I realized that not even how we brush our teeth is the same. It’s no wonder we find ourselves exhausted the first few weeks we are adjusting after traveling here or there.
Please note that this post is not a blanket description of how all people in Haiti live. In fact, I fully realize that life on our ministry’s compound has “luxuries” most Haitians do not have access to. Luxuries like running water, security, and electricity. Also, I hope you will hear my tone that this not a list of complaints. Our family adores our Haiti life. The work we do and people we love far outweigh any extra steps it takes to accomplish basic life tasks throughout the day. However, as a reflection and a way for you to understand our lives better, I want to share some of the different ways we live daily life in Haiti. I hope this will be a fun way for you to appreciate the ease of your day-to-day, understand the contrast and shock we experience going back and forth, and give us all some perspective that there is more than one way to get the job done!
Without further ado, let’s break this down:
Brushing our teeth: In America this is a pretty simple process. We turn water on, wet our toothbrush, brush our teeth, and rinse our toothbrush. In Haiti, we try to refrain from subjecting ourselves to the bacteria and parasites that could be waiting for us in our water, so we brush our teeth using cups of filtered water from the large, blue Culligan jugs. It’s an extra step, but a very important one that we don’t want to forget.
Drinking water: In Haiti, water does not come filtered in our refrigerator, and we cannot drink water from our sinks. This is always a hard one for our kids to remember when we first get back to Haiti! Praise God, we do have a pump which allows us to have running water for taking showers and washing hands. This water however, is not clean enough for drinking so we must purchase filtered water. Only the water from the blue Culligan jugs is fit for drinking.
Electricity: In Haiti, we do not have the simplicity of turning lights on and off as we wish, and then paying a bill at the end of the month. Our electrical system is much more complicated than this. The city provides sporadic power, and we do get a bill, but for the most part we have to provide our own electricity through batteries, invertors, generators, and solar panels. Depending on if we are running off from solar power or city power there are different appliances we can use or not use. For example, our washing machine can only run on city power or generator power, so whenever one of the two turns on, we scurry to get in a load of laundry before it goes out! We constantly need to think through the usage of our electrical items, and be cautious about what we are plugging in, when we are plugging them in, and often checking the type of power and level of battery storage.
Getting dressed: There is no purpose in checking the weather in Haiti. We just wake up, and put the least amount of modest clothing possible, and go! It’s currently “stand and sweat” season in Haiti, so no layers, and the more breathable, the better!
Eating: In Haiti our diet consists of: rice and beans, rice and beans, rice and beans, and then the occasional beans and rice. Haitian cuisine is absolutely delicious, but growing up in the Midwest, I can only remember two meals my mothers cooked that had rice: Uncle Ben’s cheesy broccoli rice, or cream of mushroom soup and chicken rice casserole. My Haitian husband, on the other hand, thinks he hasn’t eaten in a day if he hasn’t eaten rice. There are a variety of tropical fruits and vegetables available, but the staple of rice and beans is nearly daily on the menu. Our stomachs take a good while adjusting to the extreme diet changes of rice and beans to pizza and cheeseburgers. Ha!
Going out: Most days, especially for the kids and me, are spent inside our compound which is surrounded by 12-foot cement walls, secured with barbed wire at the top. It doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to think of how claustrophobic we begin to feel. When we have work to do or errands to run outside the compound, we commonly need to check for protests or demonstrations first. We do this by listening to the radio, checking in with friends who live in or are near where we are going, and watching our email for US Embassy insecurity alerts. It is quite freeing to just grab my purse and run an errand when we are visiting Michigan.
Going to the bank: This is not a “drive-thru and get a sucker” type experience in Haiti. Typically, my husband or our upper management do our bank runs with bullet proof vests on. They will take a driver with them to wait in the car. On the way home they are cautious to watch for thieves on motorcycles who may have been tipped off by someone inside the bank that money was withdrawn. Going to the bank is a risky transaction.
Driving: Oh how the driving differs, let me count the ways….but then we would be here all day. Sidewalks are fair game. Two lane roads can at least be four lane roads, maybe five. Seatbelts are simply décor, if the car you are in still has them. Honking is a way of dialogue. Honking can say, “Open the gate”, or “I’m coming around the corner”, or “Hurry up your conversation with the street vendor”, or “Watch out! I’m more important than you are, and your life is not worth me hitting the brakes!” I remember one day in 2010 when the horn on our pickup truck stopped working and we had a visiting missions team. I told them we might not be able to follow our scheduled itinerary because the truck horn wasn’t working. I was only semi-joking, because driving without a horn can actually be quite hazardous!
Washing the dishes: Even the method used to wash dishes is different. Dishes in Haiti are hand washed, with cold water, and then rinsed in a bleach water to kill the bacteria that was in the soapy water.
Curfew: Most evenings in Haiti we are home by 5:00pm. This is when we have family dinner, and within the next hour or so, it becomes dark. On occasion, we may go out to dinner at a restaurant in Petionville, but 29 out of 30 evenings as of dinnertime, we are home for the night. The primary reason is safety since it gets dark so early. I remember when Frentz first visited the States and he could hardly believe that we could leave our home at 8:00pm to go see a movie, or make a late night ice cream run with the ease of safe roads and street lights.
Showering: When showering in Haiti, step 1 is always “shake the shower curtain for roaches”. Step 2 is getting into the shower and gawking at how crazy, dirty my feet are as the water color quickly changes to a dusty brown and my feet leave dirty imprints on the bottom of the tub. Depending if the city power is on or not, it is possible we have warm water from our solar tank, but most showers in Haiti are a quick, cold water, “get wet, soap up, rinse off, and get out routine”, followed by itching afterwards because of the water quality.
How we sleep: Last but not least, even how we end our days is different. Too many evenings as our heads hit our pillows, we lie awake and play “gunshots or fireworks” as the popping keeps my heart racing. I often wake up to the awful sound of dog fights, strange banging that causes us to get up and check on our safety, or the unending song of the neighborhood roosters.
If you have been wondering where I have been for the last couple of weeks, I have been packing, preparing, and adjusting to this enormous transition. We are grateful for precious time of family and freedom this summer, but we are already missing Haiti, and our life there. We miss the Caribbean sun that almost never goes away. We miss our staff and kids we live and work with; the brave mothers and sweet little babes. We miss our tribe of friends that celebrate our good days, and understand our bad ones. We miss the friendliness of the culture, and the reliance we have on God in such a real way. But for these next few months we will be appreciating the great blessing we have to be at home in two very different worlds.
Some of my favorite ways to settle into sweet Michigan life are: waking up to a bowl of Multigrain Cheerios, which I miss because we don’t get cold milk in Haiti. Relishing the independence of driving myself around with the music turned up and the windows rolled down, enjoying music in English and soaking in this fresh air. Walking to parks and watching my boys run and play, experiencing the sheer freedom of childhood I once had on these same parks and sidewalks. May these weeks be full of these sweet things, and many others!
I can’t wait for all God has in store for our journey together this summer!
His Kingdom come, His will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
