Love & Haiti

While I'm going to get more in-depth on my trip to Haiti (I plan on trying to sell an article about it, I think) I just want to highlight one really, really stupid part of my trip.

While the fine ladies and gents over at Praying Pelican did a wonderful job of keeping my fellow missionaries and I safe from hostile locals and illness-inducing food (sort of) they failed to warn us ladies about handing out our actual contact information to the local construction workers we would be working with. I know, I know; whenever I hear warnings about "Don't give your actual number out to strangers," I always think "Who does that? Who is that stupid?" Apparently, I am.

My main mission in Haiti was to help rebuild schools and houses, buildings that people would actually need. Three out of the five days that we were there we actually did that; Monday through Wednesday we spent sifting rocks out of sand, mixing cement, shoveling pieces of cinderblock out of rooms, bailing water from the nightly rainstorms, and throwing cement on the walls. We worked with a local Haitian construction crew of about a dozen young men, between the ages of about twelve to 35. (I don't actually know about the 12-year-old part, Fiddler Cherie may or may not have actually been a hired member, maybe he was just doing it for fun.) It was exhausting, strenuous work, made harder by the boiling hot sun. Our first night there Praying Pelican also encouraged us to "build relationships" with the local people. So in addition to building infrastructure, our second mission was to develop God in their lives, by talking to them, or something, I don't know. I talk to people anyway, I figured I wouldn't have a problem with that, language barrier or no.

The local construction crew absolutely loved my friend Deanne and I. We're both cute girls, in our mid-20's, friendly and chatty. We threw ourselves into the dirty work and actively engaged the construction workers in conversation, fulfilling both missions pretty well.

One thing that they (the proverbial "they") tell you is that Haiti is a poverty-stricken, destitute place, where infrastructure is non-existent, people bathe in standing water in the streets, children run around naked for lack of a better option, and trash stands in heaps for months until they burn it, because there is literally no other option. It is a dirty, smelly country that needs help. People will do almost anything to get out of there. (Unless you're Wyclef Jean, apparently.) Almost anything, including marrying an American to get to America and a better life.

You see where I'm going with this? Three men in particular loved chatting with Deanne and I. There was John, Lucien and Pierre Louis. John was the biggest offender- on the same day, he wrote "love letters" to both Deanne and I, declaring a passionate romantic love for Deanne and saying something "wet" to me, which I refuse to try to understand. He tried to write these letters in English, but his grasp of English is challenged, to say the least. Both of us got marriage proposals throughout the week. They would call us over to where they were working, saying "You my frien?" After we nodded- yes, I your frien- they would tell us, in broken English, using French, Haitian-Creole, and hand gestures, that they wanted to visit us in America, asking us where did we live, could we buy them laptops? After struggling to understand them for about ten minutes, either we would nod and say "Yes, ok my friend!" and walk away, or the big boss would walk by and they would scatter. He spent the better part of Tuesday and Wednesday chasing them back to their posts. And then they would come back, asking us to please, give us our numbers, our addresses, our emails, so they they can contact us after the trip.

It sounds harmless, it does. And I thought it did at the time, so I wrote down my email and phone number one time, giving it to John. I wasn't too sure if I should- I'd seen the Digicel guys walking around the main streets of Haiti with their red aprons, so I knew they had cell phones, and I'd spied a few Internet cafes. But Deanne assured me that they couldn't contact us anyway, so I thought of no reason why I shouldn't. One other woman on the group, Vicki, said we should've given the church number, but it was after the fact, and I didn't know the number anyway.

Hindsight! Perfect 20-20 vision, right? Last night I received 20 calls within ten minutes of each other from John. The first night I got back I received dozens of calls from the same number. I added the number under my contact list as "Do Not Answer." Deanne actually picked up the phone when John was calling her to try to talk to him. We don't have the benefit of being actually in the same room with him anymore, so he can't use hand gestures, limiting him to his measly broken English-Creole combination. The only words she got out of him were "I love you" and "You my frien." When I contacted Verizon, they, in their brilliant wisdom, do not make it easy to block a number via cell phone. In order to block a number, you have to go onto their website, go to "Safeguards," and then enter the number, as long as it is a 10-digit American number. Because no one has ever been harassed by a foreigner, ever. It was recommended to me that I write a letter to Verizon, which would be addressed within 24 hours.

So the saga continues. Lesson learned- learn a fake number to give to these people, and fast. I'll keep you all posted.