Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Another Gonaives adventure

I took Eric to Gonaives last week to kill 2 birds with one stone: he needs to get observation hours under a licensed physical therapist and the physical therapists needed someone to translate for them. So we took the public bus there (that's another whole story in and of itself!) and spent a couple days in the ghetto. Eric was a huge hit and everyone thought he was my brother. Supposedly we look just alike...despite the fact that he is tall, thin and dark. Must have something to do with both of us being white.



We did home visits in Jubilee, checking on a variety of people with physical disabilities. Most were stroke victims and it was sad to see how young some of them were, as young as 35 years old and suffering from partial one-sided paralysis already!





Kathy is teaching the ladies and young women of Gonaives how to make jewelry and wind chimes using supplies they can find locally. The ghetto of Jubilee is one of 3 major trash dumping sites for the city, so the sand flats are covered with aluminum cans, matress springs, broken glass, pieces of ceramic plates and bowls, bottle caps, and other non-flammable items that survive the daily trash-burning. It sounds silly now, but Eric and I got really excited about hunting for treasures for the ladies, so we headed off to the beach and to the dump. Local children flocked to help us as we selected the most colorful pieces we could find, loaded them into rusty paint cans and carried them back to the school. Pounds and pounds of trash that will be transformed into artwork and hopefully, a reliable income.





2 comments:

Rantipole15 said...

Hi Kez--it's Bep! I think this is my first time commenting, but I do read your blog regularly, and I think of you and pray for you a lot. You are doing amazing things. The reason I'm commenting is more silly--I laughed at how everyone thinks you and Eric are siblings because you "look alike"--we got that a lot in Kenya, too! Someone once saw a prayer card of the Thorpes up in our house and thought John was my father's brother...though that's actually understandable since they both have the same coloring, and beards. :)

lmbayard said...

your adventure doesnt sound silly, that sounds like FUN!! and in your first couple of sentences you said that the team needed translators... does that mean eric was translating?!?!