jumbles of numbers

Most days things are pretty jumbled up here. I thought about the sheer amount of ridiculous things that happen in a day, and it made me shake my head. Absolutely never a dull moment. Here is a taste of the last few days, in numbers:

• 4:  number of car accidents in 4 days… no one seriously injured but still, one a day was a bit much
• 2: amount fingers that were lost when one of our Haitian carpenters had an accident with a skill saw..yeah, bad news
• 30: number of minutes that gun shots whizzed past our treatment center in Cite Soleil the other night when Justin was working
• 5: number of hours we were on lockdown due to manifestations because of Baby Doc’s return and other nonsensical political activities
• 2: number of precious grandchildren that were taking care of their grandmother who was sick with cholera.. warmed my heart (below)
• 400: number of kids that attend school in a nearby orphanage we’ve been helping- how can that many kiddos fit into a  space that small?
• Approx 20: minutes I blew bubbles with Plumpy yesterday
• 1: number of flip flops I have broken;
• 4: number of times Justin has told me I brought too many shoes
• 6: amount of guys Justin is watching Terminator2 with tonight
• 3: loads of laundry I’ve done to keep up with bleaching the clothes we wear to the clinics
• 2: amount of rats I think we have living in our bathroom and as a result: 1: pair of underwear has been chewed through; 2: bars of soap have disappeared; and 5: amount of rat terdlets I had to clean off our sink today

Yes, it’s a glamorous life here….

perspective

“I don’t want to live. I want to love first, and live incidentally.” -Z. Fitzgerald

These past couple days have been lined with introspection… resolutions, prayers for Haiti, thoughts of a 2011.

Justin and I spent a good part of the afternoon praying in the hills behind our base. It’s a quiet place to go and collect our thoughts and to have a grander view of the region surrounding us. You can see the ocean in the near distance, and the expanse of the hills that shape the coast line here. I always think what potential Haiti must have had at some point decades before, for tourism, for recreation. It’s been damaged almost beyond repair now.. the harshness of dictatorships and squandering of physical and natural resources have all but consumed it.

It is in these hills that I can hear my heart the clearest. I haven’t found much time lately to be quiet, to listen, to get past the noise of the generators. It’s a bit of a hike to get to the top, with no clear marked trail. But the reward is solitude and more importantly, perspective.