The coolest thing happened, too. Growing up I used to wondering what it was that made black people's hair different from mine.
Turns out these kids had the same reaction to mine. They kept running their hands through it, laughing and being confused at the same time. They crowded my personal space and crawled over me and were endlessly amused by swiping the icons of my iphone screen back and forth and back again. I enjoyed every minute of it.
Today was our first full work day. I'm exhausted.
We worked from 6am till 5pm. Cleaned out lines, then checked flow on the plumbing for the guys' and girls' bathrooms and future staff quarters. Insulated all the walls. Installed showers in the girls' bathroom. Then this afternoon they let me drive the bobcat to pick up some rocks to lay down as filler between the sidewalks and the dorms. That bucket list item is now scratched off my list.
After work we took showers and reported to the dining hall to be greeted by a fresh batch of incredibly seasoned chili with cornbread and snicker doodle cookies. Talk about having meals I didn't expect...
Right when we sat down though, we got the request to help unload a container that had just arrived. It strikes me as odd that it would basically catch everyone by surprise that an 18-wheeler with a shipping container full of boxes was going to arrive. But we're on Haitian time here. Things happen sometimes, and sometimes they don't. Time is different. Dictated by the sun, and that's about it. Wake up with the sun, have dinner when it goes down. Everything in between simply happens or it doesn't. Schedules aren't important.
Speaking of happening. I saw something happen tonight that I did NOT expect to see in Haiti. I expected to see poverty and destruction. Naked children and voodoo. These things I expected.
What I didn't expect to see was what happened after we unloaded the 18-wheeler. The only way time matters down here is when the truck drivers charge by the hour. The quicker you unload and get the container off their truck, the better, and the cheaper.
After we unloaded the container, Art backed a flatbed truck up to the 18-wheeler, and the fork-life and the bobcat (with fork attachment) moved into position on either side of the container, close to the cab of the 18-wheeler. Right then it dawned on me what was about to happen.
Sure enough, the forks, albeit with a bit of accident nudging of the container and wobbling back and forth, lifted the front end of the container in tandem, the the flatbed used its winch to pull the container partially onto it. Once the container was supported by the bobcat, the forklift, and the flatbed, the 18-wheeler drove off. It just pulled right out from under the canopy of metal hovering above it. Doug wondered what OSHA might think about this operation when half the workers were wearing flip flops, and I haven't seen a hard hat the whole time I have been here. I managed to nab a picture, but it was toward the end of the operation.
In other news. I have ants in my pants. More specifically, my underpants.
I guess I should have figured that the pre-packaged snack that American Airlines gave us on the flight would not be ant-tight. Combine that with the unpremeditated placement of said snack in my bag next to my underwear, you can now understand my plight.
Oh yeah, and I took my malaria pills. And after the chili dinner, the boys' dorm is going to be one interesting place tonight...
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