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.