Monday, February 23, 2009

Screaming Girls and Squealing Pigs

Sunday morning I got up and was making breakfast when I heard a little voice outside my window. "Natasha?" It whispered. I looked out and saw "Rosie" (that's what I dubbed her since I can never remember her name). I knew that she wanted to come in but I decided that it would be better if kids didn't come in on Sunday mornings. There was another girl out with her so I decided to give them each a sheet of stickers instead.
I took the stickers outside and Rosie turned to go in the door behind me. I told her "no" and when she turned around she dropped what she had in her hand. It was a little bag of coffee. It broke and she started crying.
I felt bad then and helped her clean up the mess. I kept saying it was okay but she just kept crying. Finally, I figured out that the coffee was for her Mama and she was going to be in trouble. I decided to just give her the five gourds to buy some more. She smiled then and hurried out to get it.
Not two minutes later I heard screaming like I have never heard before. I mean, make your skin crawl, blood curdling screams. I stood up from my seat at the breakfast table just as I heard pounding on my door. I opened it to see Rosie crying and screaming hysterically, still hitting the screen door and her mother, standing on the steps to the porch with a switch in her hands.

It was awful. I didn't know what to do. Here this little girl is crying hysterically and is obviously going to get a whipping- but it's her mother! I still can hardly speak Creole so I had no way to find out what the problem was.
I kept thinking, "Was it the coffee? Good grief, she can buy more..."
But there wasn't much I could do but say, "Rosie, ale Mama." (go to your mama) Anything else would probably get her in more trouble later.
She went screaming down the porch (and got a nice switch on the way past her mother) and off the mission property.
Later we found out that her mother had sent her an hour before to get coffee AND she had told her not to go to the mission. So, yes, she probably needed a spanking.
A whipping? Not so much. But, that is the way things are here. Truthfully, her Mama, I think, is a lot nicer than some.

This morning I was doing the breakfast dishes when I looked out my back window to see three boys chasing our pig. It had gotten loose when they were taking it to the butcher shop and they were trying to catch it.
Oh, but that was funny to watch. I got some excellent pictures that I will have to post later. They finally caught her when Willy (a great little kid here at the mission) grabbed onto her tail and just hung on!
Then, after that, I got to watch how the Haitians butcher animals. It was interesting. They burn the hair off so they can save the hide. Apparently they like it in soups. ilck.

1 comment:

Bethanne said...

Thanks for sharing this bit of Haitian life. One of my friends was adopted from Haiti.