Mwen Kap Pale Kreyol

Oriol and me up front

Today I spoke at my friend Oriol's church.  He teaches English there to small groups of people, and he wanted me to come and speak with them.  I spoke in Kreyol, and they asked me questions in English.  I think I did okay.

I had planned out what I wanted to say, and then Oriol and I met for about an hour before hand so that he could help me with some of the phrasing.  We were supposed to begin at 2:00 (or so I thought).  Knowing how horrible traffic can be around here, I thought we should leave at 11:00.  That gave us two hours just in case traffic was bad.  We hit one big "blokis," but we still arrived in an hour.  Okay. Not bad.  Oriol and I had plenty of time to prepare.  Then he shared that we weren't starting until 3:00.  Hmm.  Now we had about two hours to kill.  I had told Gertrude we'd back by 4:00 or 4:30.  Guess that wouldn't happen.

View from the church roof

I'm still trying to figure out how/why Haitians have so much trouble with time.  Keeping track of when things start or end, arriving on time, starting on time . . . pretty much none of it happens.  It would make for a fascinating sociological study.

Rhonda and me on church roof

My talk went well.   They understood my Kreyol, and I understood their English. My topic was some of the differences between American and Haitian culture.  They laughed when I said that in the States you couldn't sell cooked food on the streets.  Selling food on the streets is such a part of Haitian culture that they can't imagine it not happening.  The hardest question was about how kids in church youth groups act . . . . or something like that.  The other part that they could hardly believe was that if kids didn't go to school, they or their parents could get in trouble.  I explained some holidays that were celebrated in America but not in Haiti:  St. Patrick's Day, Memorial Day, and Halloween.  It was hard to explain Halloween.  I needed Oriol's help with that one.  I mean, how do you explain "Trick or treat" and giving candy to strange kids in strange costumes.  I didn't even try to explain haunted houses, witches, goblins, etc.

Young listener

A quick kid update:  Alavarez is feeling better.  He still had a fever this morning when we left, but by the time we got back the fever had broken and he was eating again.  Yea!