My plans for 2008-2009

I will be going to HFC when I first arrive in Haiti. I'll spend a week or two with the kids before moving to my new home on Delmas 75. There is a home for malnourished infants and toddlers where I will live along with two girls my age who work at the home and teach at a local school. Taking care of those kids will fill my free time, but my real job will be helping out with the Ravine medical ministry run by Christian Light Ministries and working with Dr Ed Amos in his clinic on Delmas 31. I will have weekends to visit HFC, go to the American church nearby (what a treat!) and see my friend Kim at Quisqueya Christian School, also just down the road.

I have committed to 3 months in this arrangement and after that, I will decide if I stay or go. Nikki's clinic in Merger will be opening around that time and I would love to move out to Merger to work with her but that mainly depends on how much experience I can get with Dr Ed and how prepared I feel to run a clinic 7 months after graduating from nursing school. There is no shortage of places I could work in Haiti so I'm not sweating it. I have options.

To be totally honest, I am rather nervous about going back. I have not met Dr Ed or Dorothy, the woman who owns the house where I will be living. We have communicated by email and we have mutual friends, but it's not the same. Anytime I start a new job and a new living situation, there is a whole period of adjustment and settling in. I hate that period! And not knowing what to expect makes me focus on the things that I know are inevitable in Haiti: the thirst, the shootings, the people constantly asking for money, the lack of transportation and freedom to be out on my own... All the things that I disliked about Haiti without the counterbalancing rewards of the children and my relationships with them. When I'm in a rational mood, I can convince myself that I will form new relationships that will be just as fulfilling and encouraging, but it definitely makes the prospect of going back a lot less exciting. I know myself and the God who accompanies me well enough to know that I just need to go and it will be fine, but truthfully, I am dreading it.

On top of all that, it's very strange to imagine going to Haiti and not staying at HFC. I've never been in Haiti and away from the kids for more than a week at a time and I know that it's going to be difficult. I have told a few of the kids straight out that I am not coming back to HFC long term and I have hinted at that to all of them, but I am pretty sure that none of them really grasp it or understand my reasons why. I want very badly for them to accept why I have decided to work elsewhere but I fear that they will just see it as another rejection, another person abandoning them. I will be living in the same city, but with the awful Haitian roads and traffic, I don't expect to make it to Bolosse more than once every few months. That's depressing.

So those are my plans and my state of mind. I haven't seen the kids in 4 months - the longest time I'm been away from them in 2 years - and I haven't spoken Creole in 4 months. I'm trying to get back in the Haiti swing of things but I'm not having much success. I think I need to eat a few mangos...