A pigeon post

In Jubilee, we have a little gang of teenage boys who spend all their free time with us, being helpful and being obnoxious and being teenagers. The core of that group, Djeff (in blue), Obenson (shoveling in orange) and Wiesguer (mudding in green with me) make little toy men out of discarded bottle caps. They sell them to visitors and to Mama Kathy who markets them online through 2nd Story Goods along with the angels, journals, jewelry and other products the people in Jubilee make.

 

 

 

 

The boys earn about $2 for each "bouch-ko" man. The money is completely theirs, but frequently, they give it to their mothers to help feed everyone. The boys also put some of the earnings into a savings account overseen by Josh (and Grace in his absence). They use the savings to fund school supplies, clothes and recently, pigeons.

 

 

 Pigeons are considered good luck in Haiti and they are considered a food option. The boys have bought and are now raising about 10 pigeons which they will eventually sell for a profit. It's quite clever of them. What's also quite clever are the names they chose for their birds: Ben, Josh, Isaac, Grace, Keziah, Lala...etc. Each bird is named after one of the Americans that works in Jubilee.

 

Meet my pigeon counterpart.

 

 

The pigeons have a little pigeon house where they sleep, nest, and lay eggs. Wiesguer, though 16 years old, is very small, so he has been climbing in and out of it. Not long after they started the pigeon business, Wiesguer came to clinic looking like a puffy mess. He was having some sort of allergic reaction and his mouth and eyes were so swollen that we could barely recognize him.

His grandmother covered him with a flour-like powder; Grace and I started him on steriods. It took a week, but the swelling disappeared and he started to look like himself again. We still don't exactly know what caused the reaction, but Wiesguer is thriving and so are the pigeons.