The Plan: Part deux

Ok, so hopefully my previous post helped to lay the foundation in your minds of where I'll be. Now I'll try and tell you what I'm going to be doing. This may be difficult because its going to be a learning experience the entire way through the process.

My roommate:
I will be staying at Jacob's Well Youth Camp (JWYC) from January 5th, 2011 to early May 2011. So this trip will be roughly 4 months long. I will be living with a girl from the nearby town of Limbe. The village that I will be living in is called Little Guinea, this is where the camp is located. I do not personally know the girl I'm staying with, but I do know that she is close to my age, but a few years older. This past summer, a Mango Tree project was begun at Jacob's Well. The intent of this project is to plant and grow mango trees to produce mangoes that can be sold to generate some revenue for the camp, this way it is a little bit self-sustaining. This girl has been helping organize this planting project. My understanding is that she is acting as Jacob's Well's secretary for both the mango project and the school.

Security:
Along with the safety of having a roommate at night I will be supervised by security guys. Gersan and Betty call them "elders" meaning they are either elders in the community or in the church. Either way, The Valcins trust them with my safety and the safety of this other girl and the camp property. They are already conducting 24 hour surveillance on the campground to make sure that none of our materials and camp supplies wander off or get broken. They will continue to do this while I am there. I will be with someone, either my roommate, the elders, or a teacher at the school at all times. The elder's wives will help feed me so I don't starve, they will hopefully show me how one would go about doing laundry in Haiti, which I'm excited about, all the ladies do their laundry on the same day and just hang out together in their front yards and hang-dry their clothes on the nearest cactus fence, I hope I get to participate soon!

My Jobs

School:
In August the two schools that serve the area around Little Guinea closed down because the teachers weren't being paid, so they quit coming to school. The families in the village don't have the resources to pay for school for all their children and usually only the oldest child of the family is able to attend school. Jacob's Well had a long-term goal of opening a school and a clinic in the far off future, but because of these schools closing and the Cholera epidemic these have both become needs that were forced to the top of the list. This past Fall a school has been meeting in the church building at the campsite. Haitian teachers from the village are currently working for free hoping to receive compensation very soon. The girl I will be living with has been in charge of collecting money from the parents and keeping track of the children's registrations. There are currently about 150 children registered and 115 attending school. There are around 300 school-aged children in the village and we would like to provide them all with the opportunity to attend school.  My involvement with the school will be to teach English to the upper grade levels. I'm honestly not sure what "upper grade" means, because the oldest grade I think is some where around 5th grade. I have never taught English as a second language before, so if anyone reading this blog has any ideas they are more than welcome. I don't want to reinvent the wheel here, so I'm planning on using an English-Kreyol bible and going through it starting in John. I will memorize verses in Kreyol and they will memorize verses in English. When I was little I memorized everything by singing songs and I have some old cassette tapes with singing bible verses that I'll probably take. Also I think its easier to learn songs in a foreign language than just learn to speak. So that's the plan for now.

Health Education/Clinic:
There have not, up to this point, been any cases of Cholera coming from the village itself, but there is a very large hospital in Limbe which is not far away (and upstream), so there have been several recent cases of Cholera occurring inLittle Guinea because of people bringing Cholera to this hospital in Limbe. I will be working to educate the people of the village about water safety, general sanitation and hygiene, nutrition, etc. This will be a large task because I will be reinventing the wheel in a way here. Not only will I be mainly speaking Kreyol, but there has been no program like this in the area. Because of the camp I have come into contact with many of the children, but I have not seen many adult faces around the camp in the past few years. I will be working to build relationships with the women of the village. Not only do I want to love these women, encourage them, tell them they are precious and not worthless, but I want to help them provide better lives for their families. I don't want to take them charity. I want to teach them skills. But most importantly I want to do this all with the love of Christ. If I walk into their village and in my uppity white-girl voice tell them that they shouldn't drink from the river and they shouldn't feed their kids this or let their kids do that I will probably hurt feelings. I will probably destroy the gospel of love, and I will NOT form relationships. They will not change their behaviors and I will do more damage than good. I would appreciate much prayer for this area of my work. I want to be an encouragement. I don't want these women to think that I am telling them they are bad mothers when they are breaking their backs to provide for their families. I want them to leave feeling loved, worth something, joyful, having built relationships with me and the other women in the village, and if they learn how to be more healthy along the way then I have succeeded. I don't want to walk into a village that has drunk water from the river for 6 generations and tell them that they can't do that anymore. I want to be able to teach, but to teach in love and with encouragement.

I will not be "running a clinic" per-say, but I will be using my first aid and response training to help in whatever ways I can. I really have no idea what types of things I'll see. Because I have served as the "camp nurse" on the past trips as soon as I get to the village now everyone runs up and starts showing me their cuts and scrapes. Hopefully I'll be able to use these opportunities to talk about proper hand-washing and wound care. We'll see.

In summary: (For those who scan the long blog and just want to get to the point.)

I'll be teaching English to children and educating the women of the village about Cholera and other health topics while hopefully forming encouraging relationships with all. 


I'm really not sure what this is all going to look like. I'm trying not to imagine it all in my head and form ideas and perceptions of what it will be like. I know that no matter what I day-dream it to be it will end up being vastly different, and I'll be discouraged. I am fully prepared to fail at everything a few times. I already know this will be a humbling trip. I want to glorify Christ and that is currently my only goal.

Please join me in prayer.