Well this week’s blog will most definitely have to start out with Saturday night’s salsa dancing extravaganza. Raoul, one of the men from an organization I’m working with (Raoul I told you you’d make it in my blog soon! Fair warning!) informed me of a club which has salsa dancing Saturday nights and also teaches lessons during the week. After dragging two other MCC employees around by day to locate both this club and another few dance clubs to get times and cover charges, I selected this venue for Saturday evening. I dragged a friend of a friend who had a reputation for enjoying dancing (not salsa dancing mind you) out with me. She lives about 20 minutes away from my house in the opposite direction of the club and since it was dark by the time we were to head out, it was necessary for me to go collect her in our company truck before heading up the hill to our destination.
I will have to say that this driving trip to pick her up goes down in my book of “firsts” that are so amazingly absurd they require documentation. I spend most of my days on the road driving from site to site and thus am typically instructed to take back roads from my fellow carmates to avoid traffic jams. This has gotten me exceptionally knowledgeable of all the short cuts and back roads, however I can’t for the life of me find my way around on any “main” (I use the parenthesis here because main doesn’t necessarily mean paved or it good condition) road. Then you add pitch black to that and forget figuring out where you are. So I stuck to my roots and headed out in my Cinderella sparkle 3” high dance heels and red Toyota Tacoma to her house. Of course back roads here can hardly be compared to logging roads in the US. No that’s much to tame of a comparison. I’d say they are more approximately simulated with serious off-roading in the US. You know that recreational sport men do where the main goal is to see how far one can drive before getting stuck? Then they proceed to spend the remaining 10 hours of their day winching themselves out? Yep that’s transportation at its best in Port-au-Prince, and my evening commute. And you know what’s hard to see when it’s dark? Dark people! Which we have a lot of here. And they walk to get everywhere. Summary of the last two paragraphs: It’s quite challenging to off-road down a street in the dark avoiding Haitian children, grownups, and dogs alike in Cinderella sparkle high heels….while laughing hysterically at the ridiculousness of it all THE ENTIRE WAY. Needless to say I made it to her house with no injuries to myself or any surrounding people or objects. Off to the club we went!
We arrived at our destination safely and after waiting for a Voodoo priests to finishing putting a hex on our car (yeah..don’t ask cause I really can’t explain that one) we made a break for the club entrance. We of course arrived at the dance club much too early which was both good and bad. Bad, because we soon realized our much hoped bedtime of 10pm (and more importantly getting off the roads at a decent hour) was not going to be met. Good, because we got personal attention from a dance instructor at the club who joined us at our table and remained there for the rest of the night. So needless to say my dance card was quite full. By the time our new found friend had “advertised” me for a dance or two many other strapping young (and old) gentlemen game to request a dance. I contemplated the entire night how best to describe the setting and aura of the club in my blog and I think I’ve figured it out. I’d say it was 1950’s American ball meets Latin performance showcase meets Haiti. Not a single soul in that room, aside from my friend and I, had had less than a year of weekly dance lessons in Rumba, Cha-cha-cha, Bachata, Salsa, and Tango. I found myself leaving my street style hip bumps and shoulder shakes at home and uprooting some of my best (or at least what I’d seen on TV) formal performance dance frame combinations. The 1950’s American ball atmosphere was brought about from men kindly asking you to dance, walking you up on stage (from behind to make sure you got up the stairs ok and then in front once feet hit the dance floor), and then thanking you for the dance and returning you to your seat, regardless of how far your seat was from theirs. Quite the process just for one dance. You think they’d double up or something on the number of dances they had with each lady. More bang for your dance!
The evening’s festivities proved to be quite enjoyable and we both had a blast. Come 11:30pm we decided to head home. Earlier in the evening Sue (lady I live with) had sent me off with a final note saying “If you feel like you’re being followed on your way home when you arrive at our gate don’t get out of the car. Just honk your horn to wake the guard across the street and myself and we’ll come out”. Since that doesn’t scream 100% security we will just note that my solo drive back to my house after dropping off my friend was done at a much faster speed then I will openly admit. The suspension on the Tacoma might have seen happier days as well. Never has simply going salsa dancing been such an outing (and such a heart stopper in entirely NOT the way you would think) and yet I’m sure I will do it again soon…maybe this Friday. I just be a livin’ on the edge…
This coming weekend we are all happily preparing for Kurt’s (our MCC Haiti rep..aka: boss) wedding. The start of the weekends festivities include a party this Wednesday at the guest house/office. For the party Kurt has purchased a goat which he offloaded into our backyard last week to graze and plumpify. I believe I have mentioned said goat in previous posts. I regret to inform y’all that a terrible no-good-very-bad-thing has happened and that is that I have BONDED with mr. goat. He has sort of become my new county fair 4-H project (we can thank the lovely Sally Sandoz for that description). Of course bonding here can be defined as feeding it stale leftover toast from breakfasts and apple cores. After going a week without naming the poor devil I’ve succumbed and titled him manje (“food” in Creole). Manje is a black little goat who got loose Saturday and required quite a bit of coaxing (more of that bonding stuff) to return to his pasture out back. He bhahhs and complains all day until you head out to feed him something and then he shuts up while you chill with him which makes eating him seeming less and less appealing. I have been notified that we will be getting one more goat tomorrow as well (a friend for Manje! Oh joy! <tear>) so I hope to bond a little less with the new arrival so that I may be able to slightly enjoy my feast on Wednesday. I intend to reiterate to myself as I’m eating goat at the party that it is NOT Manje but instead Mr. New Arrival.
On the engineer front (since I suppose that’s what I SHOULD actually be blogging about) it looks like I will be teaching my first workshop next week if everything goes as planned. That being said and with my given 4 weeks of experience with Haitian organization, I think there will be about a 50% chance of that happening. Regardless I am excited for a change of pace and will be working with my translator this week to make sure the process goes smoothly.
After getting lost for an hour and a half on Sunday in a cattle field on our way to church (what a mucky off-roading experience that was in our Sunday’s finest) we headed over to my “problem-child” site (City Soleil with the community center and long spanning trusses) to take down some measurements for the trusses we are planning to have built. This community center is a concrete fenced in area with a soccer field and several buildings. When we arrived a boy’s soccer game was in full session with kompa music cranked at an ear piercing level. I can not explain the sense of achievement and excitement I had at that moment to be a part (even though I haven’t really been involved until these past few weeks) of such an impressive project. This is a project that is providing a safe location for the city slums to instate a sense of community without the fears of what remains on the exterior side of those walls (not gonna lie, it aint puurty folks. A local doctor was murdered last week and some have started burning down tent camps near by). They say a picture is worth a thousand words. So that means a video must be worth, what, a billion or so? Thus, I took a video which I will attempt to download onto my blog to provide a visual display. If you look closely as the viewport pans from left to right past the concrete soccer field you will see a Haitian man in a green shirt walking towards me dancing. Little did I know that this man (Daniel, the man who is overseeing this project and who I am working with) was walking towards me. Little did he know I was videoing. :)
Well I suppose I better put my pretty little head to bed. Until next week, I hope this blog finds you well and without a goat in your backyard who has become your friend whom you must eat on Wednesday. Night!
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