the arrival

PICTURES TO FOLLOW SOON

__________________

Sleep came fast and waking  up came either earlier as church services started at 7am. With coffee and water on hand, we entered the church directly beside the rectory and school. The service was amazingly formal and happily had many of the doctrinal similarities of a very high Episcopal church. The service was not only amazing but the people were open, friendly, and received us with open arms when we were recognized before the whole congregation.


After brunch we loaded the truck up once more, said "orevwa" to Hinche and started down the treacherous road to Cerca-la-Source. If the road was paved, we would have easily covered the distance up to the gates of the school in probably less than thirty minutes. It took us nearly three hours. The route was horrible, scary, and unlike anything I have ever experienced. But on entering the gates, the staff and children made us feel not only welcome but like old friends and we quickly forgot about our aching backs and stress. The school and community opened themselves up to us and made us welcome, safe, and secure. Immediately upon getting there, barely having any time to even set up our "rooms" (which were truly high tin ceiling rooms with concrete floors and walls that also doubled as the children's classrooms) we were needed outside in the common area where Father Walin was getting ready to begin his 5pm church service. With quickly clouding skies it only took a handful of minutes for the sprinkles to turn into quick a steady rain and only a huge blue tarp with some random holes through in protected the huddled congregation underneath. They sat in the long bench-like desks of the students at the school and had most of the entire liturgy and hymns memorized because a Book of Common Prayer was beyond a rarity. This service, much longer than the one in Hinche, lasted two hours but I could have stayed glued to my chair and listened to their marvelous acapella singing forever.


After the Eucharist and our introduction to the churchgoers and community members there, we spent the rest of the evening getting our sleeping areas (which made the rectory in Hinche look like the Ritz), visiting more with the children and staff led by a delightfully wonderful gentleman named Wozne Belo, eating a delicious meal and just trying to relax. For all the fun we had had already that day, a bitterly uncomfortable sleep ensued with not much at all separating our backs from rock hard concrete floors and no fans. A huge wind storm blew through that whipped the even larger tarp around and slammed it with frighting voraciousness down upon the edges of the tin roof creating what sounded like cannons firing right outside. Donkeys brayed, dogs snarled, fought, and whined, the horses neighed throughout the night, and the voices of men and the engines of mopeds and their honking horns were constants. Then roosters seem to be intent upon waking us up starting at 4am and did not abate it their chorus after that. Luckily (if there be luck in this) the heat - or lack thereof - would prove much kinder than we would have ever expected in this place.