Friday, April 13, 2007
After the older kids left for school, the younger kids got a hair cut, or I should say, a head shave. That explains why all the younger kids have the same hair length. I got to do Jasmine's hair. She cringed when I pushed the machine too hard, but she didn't cry. I tried to do it softly, but then it wouldn't shave quite well. I just did a rough cut and left the rest to Kenny. We do this because most of the kids have some kind of skin disease on their scalp, and it's a lot easier to treat them when their hair is short, or in this case, almost nonexistent.
Then I went to Fontain with the group of guys that always come (Jude, Enock, Figaro, and Daniel) to work on a little building project. Our mission today was to reinforce the back fence, where people would jump over since it was too low; to rebuild a side fence, which people have broken down by walking over it; and to fix the front gate, which have broken repeatedly due to abusive use by the locals.
Just to give a little background, we had an underground water pump (which, if you remember, I mentioned earlier that it got broken... and you can guess how), and people could come in freely to get water from it. A side gate was built so it could let people through the fence to use the pump. But since it had to be locked when no one was around to watch the premises, people started to walk over the fence to get the water. I suppose it was the least contaminated, hence the pump of choice. Now that the fence is broken, animals (mainly the goats) could come in freely to eat our plants (flowers in particular). Also, since we have a fairly big and flat grass field, kids would sneak in and play football (or soccer, if you're from the US). As the kids run around playing, they would destroy some plants as well.
So we had to repair and reinforce the fences. We bought some barbwire (pronounced "bah-bwi-re" here) and nails at a hardware store and some wooden poles from vendors on a sidewalk. Originally, the fences were built to guard off animals, so they were built low. But since people climbed over them and broke them, we put two additional layers of barbwire, making it about as high as my shoulder. I think we did a pretty good job. Let's hope that it's not destroyed again when we come back.
While we were working, I got a strange call on my cell phone. The caller ID showed 12 zeroes, so I have no idea who called (but it also showed the same number when I got a call from Dominican Republic). The apparently signal on the other end wasn't so good that I only heard a few words before it got cut off: "How are you?...hospital... in Cange..." That was about all that I could gather. Maybe the guy on the phone found my number on my blog and wanted to get information on Zanmi Lasante. Hey, if you're the caller reading this, you should look up "Partners in Health" (www.pih.org) or google Zanmi Lasante. I hope you find what you're looking for.
Mosquitoes are everywhere. It's quite annoying when they hide (or live) in the toilet, and when I take a crap (or when the toilet takes my crap) they would stab me from behind. It's like fresh meat to them.
