Back to Jac

This was our first full day on the ground in Haiti..

There is another group here at the Loving Light Hotel, about 8 in the group from all over the US, called Forward Edge. They are here to help for a week. They all got up and went off to a church. Sarah and I were asked if we wanted to go, just as we were headed out for a little foray and we declined. It was a tough decision but I wanted to define my independence, as not always taggling along with them.

It was the right decision. Sarah and I wandered around some of the streets that I knew from my March trip and then wandered into some new territory. I had two great impromptu little shows, eaadch starting with just a hand full of children, but both growing organically as word spread. I could see them running down the street toward me.

The other was for a small group of children playing by the river. A boy had been throwing rocks at the swallows darting over the water and garbage strewn shore. A man gathered cardboard from the refuse and added it to a fire. Soon thick black smoke billowed from his project.

We also had a couple of nice conversations with people on the street;. A young man named Marc was very eloquent about the plight of Haiti and the query of where all the billions of dollars donated to help them has gone. He said there was no one to ask.

Another young man offered to take us to his artist’s shop. There in a building propped up with wood were a half dozen young men painting beautiful placemats, coasters made of fibre board and paper mache bananas and mangoes. The ground was strewn with half painted avocadoes. Another boy trimmed the beautiful bunches of paper mache bananas, looking good enough to eat.

As we walked along through a tented neighborhood a young mentally disabled woman came up to me, wrapping her arms around me. What a wonderful hug we shared to the ljoy of the children that had been following me ala Pied Piper after my mini show. Guess I need to come up with a name for these forays I do, not in performance mode, but definitely having the same effect. I think I just came up with showlet.