And Now, For Something Completely Different*

*a la Monty Python

I am not in Haiti anymore, which is stating the obvious to the four readers of this blog (hola, madre). I spent just four days in Port au Prince at the General Hospital, and June 1 onward, was home wrestling with interminable questions: "Why did I leave?" "What should I do now?" "Am I useful to Haiti?" "Is usefulness anywhere even possible for me, right now?"...It was quite the pity party.

The only response, not even an answer, came from writing a little narrative of my last six months. I wanted to tell the story to myself, so its complexity never leaves my memory and so the admiration & affection for my Haitian and American partners never dims in my heart. I´m happy to share this narrative (shoot me an email or fb msg), once I have a chance to fix the typos & such.

I have a few months free until I must reaquaint myself with Gray´s Anatomy and the insulin/glucagon pathways. In the space between now and then, I hunger for another journey; that brings me here, to El Salvador, where I am currently living with a host family and begin language school this week. When I arrived in San Pedro Sula, Honduras 11 days ago, my Spanish vocabulary was 0, nada. An attempt to spend that first night at a convent didn´t work out, and led to some amusing mishap with my automatic recession into Kreyol as I fruitlessly struggled communicate with my taxi driver. The next day, however, I took a bus along the northern coast to Trujillo. Outside this town sits the Finca del Niño, where my dear friends Alisha, Erin, Kate, and Francesca live and work.

I spent a lovely 5 days with them: a privilege to witness the rhythms of the Finca´s school and home-style orphanage, the active love Honduran & American staff give the children, the generous simplicity with which the volunteers approach rural communal life. They offered me joyous hospitality. I spent the days walking the serene boundary between coastline and jungle, sharing bunks with Erin and Alisha, playing Settlers of Catan, dancing to Spanish World Cup songs with the Casa 2 girls, kayaking in the bay, running the red dirt hilly roads with Erin, watching over multiplication tables in Kate´s 4th grade class and marveling at her teaching abilities, playing tag at recess, following Alisha´s guidance as we cooked fried chicken & mashed potatoes & mango cobbler over an outdoor wood-burning fogon, enjoying plain beans and slurpy mangoes straight from the trees. Also time in the chapel, with its stained glass window as a proud symbol of the Finca´s serendipitous history, "El que in mi nombre recibe a este niño, a mi me recibe." It is so good to be with friends.