The DeYoung Diaries

Baby On Board - I'm pregnant (email subject)

Happy April Fools!!! hahaha... sorry, with my new baby niece, this book I’m reading all about babies, and just so much baby talk, I just couldn’t resist…. But come on, we are making $65 a month and live with 200 kids already; I doubt too many people fell for that one… though anyone who knows me know that I would have adopted at least 10 of them from here or Haiti by now if I had the money for it. J

So anyways, we’re on spring break here or Semana Santa (Holy Week) as they call it where everyone either goes crazy at the beach or fills their week with “serious religious activities” (like we’re doing here at the orphanage). We decided to bypass both for a couple days and head to the mountains with my mother-in-law who is here visiting from Mexico (the reason I missed my Monday email again). As I was riding the big tour bus through the curvy mountain roads, I thought back to exactly one year ago, on the same type of bus also on our Spring break curving through mountain roads too, only in Mexico, … when we spontaneously flew down to interview to work for NPH, a trip planned only 5 days in advance when we scored super cheap tickets to Mexico City while all the “danger alerts” were out. I can’t help but think of the crazy chain of events and how much has come from that spontaneous decision. It seems like it’s gone by so fast but yet so much has happened since then… unexpectedly becoming foster parents to two beautiful Burmese girls and the devastating separation to follow… packing up my classroom in Owosso and life in Lansing… finding a disaster of a classroom here and long list of kids, all with the same diagnosis of “mentally retarded”, and somehow turning it into a fun learning environment where I love coming to teach each day… meeting and saying good-bye to so many new friends from so many places… near-death experiences and rare illnesses, countless hospital visits… wild adventures traveling on backs of motorcycles and in overcrowded guaguas through bustling cities, along palm-lined shores, past fields of sugarcane, and through vegetated mountains… meeting crazy wonderful people along the way with all their crazy wonderful stories that inspire and mold me and my perspectives… a natural disaster that brought so much tragedy yet such an amazing outpour of love and kindness too… deaths and births of loved ones… I’m not sure I quite realized what we were getting ourselves into taking that spontaneous flight one year ago, but looking back, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So anyways, that brings me to this week and my update. Since I think everyone takes the most interest in all of the crazy illness stories, I will start with that. In addition to the “gripe” (pronounced greepay) which is like a cough dew cold that you always have either a little or a lot and never really goes away, an inevitable surprise came Monday morning that I thought I had become invincible to. On my forearm, I found a circle of several elevated bumps which eventually formed one big large pink bump known here as “hongo” (fungus). The kids are covered in them, in many of my photos I’m sure you could find 20-30 covering their sweet little heads, which in 8 months has never stopped me from cuddling, hugging, and covering them in kisses. I expected this would be a trade-off, I would love them and save them the hurt of rejecting their affection, and in return would get the hongos myself (like the 4 months of impossible to get rid of biting lice I got in Mexico). But after a few months here, I figured I was invincible to them and figured this meant I could just smother them even more. Not sure why it took 8 months, but no such luck. Just pray it stays on my arms, and not covering my head like our little guys (and girls) who get their heads shaved regularly. Our cute little girls here and gorgeous actresses like Natalie Portman can pull off that look, but I think I’m just not one of them… I have pictures of the hongos but chose not to attach them just because they’re not pretty but let me know if you really want to see.

The rest of the week has been kind of the same… more parties… more specifically a barbecue/dance party thrown by the Canadians where I spent the night twirling around with my student Moises (my blind boy with CP who calls himself my boyfriend) – looking across the basketball court I realized he was the only one in a crowd of the 200 who wasn’t able to get up and dance, so I can’t quite explain the joy that came when I asked him if I could “have this dance”. He is one of those kids who is like a little slice of heaven… I don’t think it’s possible to spend time with him and ever leave in a less than stellar mood. Thursday we had a thank you party for the Canadians on behalf of the “special ed. dept.” where we presented cards, sang songs, and ate cake that I was up baking furiously til midnight the night before after seriously screwing up the recipe (you’d think with the amount of cakes I bake I couldn’t still screw it up). We also spent the week doing a fun Easter unit, making crafts, painting eggs, and creating Easter baskets for our Easter party on Friday. I managed to pull Dave out of bed before the sun once again so he could help me fill Easter baskets and hide eggs Friday morning. It was still a week before Easter so I came up with this long explanation which I reenacted for the kids of me calling up the Easter bunny on the phone and asking him to come one week early because we were going to have vacation from school. The kids didn’t understand or care since they thought the Easter Bunny was American anyways and he had never visited before, but they giggled along and enjoyed all the treats and festivities.

Okay, and again more of the same weekly events… more Italians of course, who were on their way to Haiti to host this event/donation thingy put on by Dannon yogurt at the NPH hospital there. More aid trucks to Haiti and just more aide…. Thankfully I was able to slip some money (donated last week by my lovely BFF Tracye and her friends) to my new friend Cristel on her way out to visit family in Haiti for Semana Santa… She is a gorgeous Haitian girl and our new French teacher here who lost her home in Haiti, and I already love her.

Saturday was my first day running “Dominican Experience” by myself here. They were a group of high school students with their teacher for Alberta, Canada doing like a mini Peace Corps (2 weeks instead of 2 years) but actually really like the Peace Corps… staying with low-income families, no running water/electricity, working in the bateys, getting to know the people, cutting sugarcane in the fields with the underpaid Haitian workers… no fancy resorts or swimming pools… the real deal. And compared to many of the high school “service groups” I meet down here, they were really really great. No complaining about spending all day in the hot sun…. they got lots of yardwork and gardening done, and they also painted super cute murals of animals and such on the walls of the previously blank pre-school playground. They included me in their “daily reflection” group which was full of tears as they shared some pretty profound stuff for a group of high school kids. One girl I had a chance to talk to told me she herself was adopting from El Salvador so this was quite an experience for her. I was blown away by them, and excited to hear they all seemed to want to sponsor kids and come back as volunteers.

Friday afternoon, classes were cancelled and my roommate Katha and I organized a teacher training on how to use some new donated materials to play learning games and help the kids use more hands-on techniques (as a previous volunteer in the school explained to me once, here it mostly like the teacher writes on the chalkboard, the kids copy it down, and if you can’t see it or don’t get it, you’re just kinda screwed). It turned out pretty good, the teachers did get really into it (we brought lots of volunteers up front and the trouble wasn’t getting them to participate but rather to get them to sit back down after!) The room was loud and they were having fun, and hopefully a piece of that will transfer back into their classrooms… J

Sunday we went on this “religious outing” and marched for 3 hours in the sun in what felt like 100 degrees stopping to pray every 5-10 min. or so – no water and no bathrooms – then went to a church service that some teens put on for another full 3 hours – also no water and no bathrooms – I don’t know how the people do it! Poor Maria Ines asked me to look for a bathroom with her which we didn’t find (I brought my Nalgene bottle that I shared w/ her and I myself used the bathroom in one of the tia’s houses halfway through the parade), and when we came back she sat through another hour rocking and crying through church until I finally took her outside where she immediately dropped her pants and peed on the side of the church… then refused to speak for an entire hour because she was so ashamed. The people would tell me “you shouldn’t have given her water” but it’s just so crazy some of the things they do here like this. Now you might understand my comment about retreating to the mountains… not cause I’m not religious, but just some of the things they do here are just so crazy. But the religious controversies I come across here are another topic I could go into for several more pages so I’ll just stop here.

So the rest is just same ol’ same ol’ – working in the school, watching movies under the stars in the park curled up with kids in the grass, playing “beauty shop” for hours in Santa Ana where the girls rip through my hair not quite understanding my hair isn’t African like theirs, and just playing, dancing, goofing around here… also 2 days up in the mountains which could be another whole email too. But I know everyone says my emails are too long and though I always have a goal to shorten them it just never happens. Maybe I will cut them to every 2 weeks or maybe try a blog again (last time I just couldn’t get it to work from the orphanage or upload all my old emails). Anyhow, Happy April Fools – go play a great trick on someone, and also very Happy Easter, have fun back home with eggs and bunnies, I’ve heard the big Easter tradition here is sweet beans, like baked beans with syrup and sugar and cookies inside, so consider yourselves lucky to be in the USA.

Oh and let me know if you would be willing to pray for Yudelkis, one of my students and former Santa Ana girls who has a hole in her heart and is very sick. She needs lots of prayers.

Love, peace, and prayers,