Eat, Pray, Love

I am feeling a whole lot better than Wednesday that is for sure. Missing a day of work is painstickenly stressful, because the work just piles up. Especially with Brunette being on vacation, everything falls to me automatically. I had paperwork and 20+ work emails waiting for me at the beginning of Thursday. I was very thankful that I was feeling good and my head was clear enough to get all that work done yesterday.

So today I left at 7:30am with Chalot (Lamardelle driver) to be on my way up to Kenscoff for the week. As usual, he will be dropping me off at Delmas 41 and then Roberto (Kenscoff driver) will come and pick me up later to take me to Kenscoff. It always takes a whole day in order for me to get to Kenscoff, because there is always a lot of waiting around at Delmas 41, normally about three hours of time on average. But today, was not one of those “average” days, it was a curveball. Living in Haiti, you must know how to catch these curveballs, because they will come at you AT ALL TIMES! SO BE PREPARED! I am fully aware of this phenomenal, so that is why I had a book with me. Thank goodness I had a book with me, because today I waiting at Delmas 41 for 6 hours!!! Oh boy, that was a record. It wasn’t all that bad, because there was a meeting between the children and their biological parents today. Five of the children from Kenscoff came down to meet with their biological parents at Delmas 41. The meeting is suppose to be only like 30 minutes between the child(ren) and the parent(s) and then they will have individual time with the social worker on questions about the international adoption process.

It is always extremely hard for me to watch the meetings between the biological parent and their children that they have decided to put up for adoption. The meetings are always so awkward and hurtful at times. The children are always quiet and reserved, or just down right rejecting of the biological parents. It must hurt tremendously for the biological parents to witness the utter rejection of their child when seeing them. I feel even worse when the children are so happy to see me and want hugs and kisses and go dead silent as they are put into their bio parent’s laps. The images of the bio parents’ facial expressions really haunt me. What saved me today from extreme awkwardness was the fact that most of the children today were older children, so they knew their biological parents and did not openly reject them. They all smiled, gave hugs, and were civil about the meeting. It also helped that there were five children all together, so it just turned into a giant play session. This was one of those more successful meetings in my book.

I tried to let the children have the maximum time and interactions with their bio parents, since these meetings don’t happen often. I just sat in the back of the court yard and read my book quietly. The book that I brought with me today is called “Eat Pray Love” (Thanks Danielle for leaving the book for me! You the best!). I only picked up this book because I had seen the movie last year and absolutely loved it. The book was just sitting in my room and I thought, “Why not? Some reading is good for the soul.” So I opened up the first page and literally could not put it down. This is something amazing for me, because it does not happen very often. It’s happened to me like literally three times in my life time. This is mainly due to the fact that I never really have time to read for pleasure, but always for school or work. And those kinds of reading are not fun! It has been a really long time since I can just sit down to read a book with no worries, and most of all, NO HIGHLIGHTER in hand!!! I love the ever-so eloquent writing style of Elizabeth Gilbert and her in-your-face attitude on life. I actually found many parallels through her adventures in the book and myself. The small chapters really made it an easy read for me. By the time I was getting really to head up to Kenscoff, I had already gotten through the First Book: Italy, which was 115 pages. I was so amazed and proud of myself all at the same time. Not only did I read a lot, but I had fun doing it. She literally had me laughing out loud through her writing. Which, whenever this took place, the Haitians looked at me with mild curiosity, but more so thinking “Lori, the crazy Parisian sitting there laughing at a book!” (Yes, they all think because I live in France that automatically makes me a Parisian!)

Whenever I take a break from reading and look around me, I can’t help but smile. I noticed that the title of this book could not have been any more perfect for the scene at Delmas 41 today. The biological parents and the aunties all brought food for the children at lunch time. We all sat around and ate fried bananas and spaghetti. EAT. We all prayed together for the wonderful food and for the safety and happiness of everyone in the world. PRAY. There was an abundance of love and care between all the parties involved. The biological parents’ great love to put the children up for adoption in order to give them a better life and future. The great love of the children for everyone that had a part in their lives. The great love and respect of myself for everyone in this ordeal. LOVE.

When we all finally said our goodbyes to the bio parents, the children and I headed up to Kenscoff in the back of Roberto’s pick-up truck. I love riding on the back of pick-up trucks, because that is where you can get the best view of Haiti. I am sitting tall on the tire cover part of the truck bed and I can literally experience Haiti with all my five senses. The children and I sang all the way up to Kenscoff.

Today was a wonderful day. What a great way to start my weekend in Kenscoff!