Whitness here

Another quick update to let you know I made it back to Chicago. My luggage hopefully will be joining me soon.

Looking forward to catching up with y’all!

Apologies for being delinquent on the blogging. I’m heading back to Chicago tomorrow, Tuesday. I’ll post more then!

Street addresses in Haiti are not nearly as helpful as they can be in American cities. First, many places don’t have street addresses because there are a lot of tents and temporary shelters, and they’re often not in neat little rows. But more importantly, street addresses, when they do exist, can be picked by the owner. So 52 Grande Rue may be next to 31 Grand Rue, which may be next to 95 Grand Rue.

I have yet to see a woman driving a motorbike or a car here. And I’ve been looking. I asked one of our local volunteers, Jean Kendy, about this today and he said that it’s just because women tend to work inside the home. There’s nothing to prohibit them from driving – anyone is eligible to get their license when they’re 18 years old – but yet, few of them do. I understand his explanation, but I still have a hard time stomaching it. Women here work little vending stations along the roads, selling Cokes and making egg sandwiches and such, so I can’t understand why they also don’t drive.

The currency of Haiti is the goud. One U.S. dollar is equal to about 38 goud (abbreviated as HTG, or gourde in French). However, some merchants price items by the “Haitian dollar,” which is a currency of sorts that doesn’t physically exist – it just exists in words. (Very confusing.) One Haitian dollar is equal to five goud. So, if a juice is $6 Haitian dollars, that is equal to 30 goud, which is little under $1 American.

Cokes and Sprites here are made with sugar cane. That’s right, no high fructose corn syrup here, baby! (Also, there are no “diet” beverages here.) At some vendors, you can purchase a half a litre of Coke or Sprite, in a glass bottle, for 15 goud – so less than 50 cents – although you have to return the bottle or drink it on location. As I recall, a 20oz of Coke at most drugstores and gas stations in the States costs about $1.59 these days. And you get stuck with a plastic bottle and high fructose corn syrup if you’re drinking something with calories.

Speaking of beverages, when ordering a hot chocolate or cocoa, do not ask for a “coco.” That means vagina in Kreyol. Order a chocolat.

For the last few days, I’ve been working on a rubble team clearing the Nicole Kindergarten, an elevated two-story school in Leogane that collapsed during the earthquake.

Although it’s an incredibly challenging site – HODR volunteers have been working on it for more than a week now, and we think there’s another three full days of work to go – and more grueling manual labor than I ever would have hoped to do in humid 100-ish degree heat, it’s been a particularly rewarding experience.

The school’s headmaster, Jackson, visits the site daily (if not multiple times a day) to shower praise and support on us. Jackson started the school with his wife some years ago. He obviously was devastated when the building was destroyed in January.

Jackson paid $800 to have a small section of the site cleared so that the school could re-open. That sum – which is HUGE by Haitian standards (and, of course, an amount which the vast majority cannot afford) – covered the removal of four large dumptrucks of rubble. Those four truckfuls equated to clearing 20-foot by 8-foot section of the building’s slab – a mere fraction of the building’s footprint, but enough for the school to hold class again.

Now, about 30 Nicole Kindergarten students, wearing adorable bright yellow uniforms with their names threaded across their bellies, meet this cleared area during the week.

The makeshift classroom has a couple of old green chalkboards, part of a wall with a definitely not Disney-licensed painting of Goofy on the wall, a small playground slide, and pint-sized tables and chairs for the wee ones.

This area is separated from the ruins of the rest of what used to be the kindergarten by some gray tarps from USAID. The roof also is a tarp.

And for the last week, those tarps also have separated the classroom from the crew of 10-15 volunteers who have been loudly banging, shoveling and wheelbarrowing during four morning hours of the kiddies’ schoolday. As distracting as I’m sure it is to the children, they’ve been remarkably well-behaved – arguably more well-behaved than the volunteers (myself included), who like to smile and wave and take photos of them when they’re on break.

(My favorite part of the day is when the students wash their hands before lunch. With the assistance of a teacher or aide, the timoun dip their hands in a bucket, lather and rinse, all while singing a song in French about the importance of handwashing and how to do it properly. Once they’ve washed their paws, they get in a single-file line and place their hands on the shoulders of the child in front of them. It’s terribly cute.)

After working at so many sites where children were able to come and “help” us because they weren’t in school, nor being supervised by their parents, it’s refreshing to see these little ones in class.

The headmaster, Jackson, also has been delightful. Almost every afternoon, he drops by the jobsite with treats for us volunteer workerbees – sugarcane one day, mangoes another, grilled corn on the cob (prepared while we worked), etc. One day, long after his usual visit to the site, he spotted us standing alongside the road while waiting for our (tardy) taptap back to the base. He pulled over to make sure we didn’t need a ride somewhere.

Jackson could not afford to clear the entire site, so he is incredibly appreciative that we are doing the work for him, for free. And, on top of that, he said that he appreciates how much we appreciate the little treats he delivers during the workday. (Us volunteers, of course, appreciate being appreciated for our work. There’s a lot of appreciation going on!)

Another volunteer here, Sara, who is fluent in French, told me that Jackson revealed to her that our work has helped to change his opinion of “white people.” He explained that the influx of aid he’s seen since the earthquake, including the help he’s personally received, has both surprised him and demonstrated to him that people outside of Haiti do genuinely care about his country and his countrymen.

This is the stuff that makes it all worth it.

Work Tuesday began with a meeting with my crew standing on the roof of a partially-collapsed home.

By 12:30 p.m., the roof had dropped to the ground and what remained of the walls was only a few feet high in most places. Our work was done!

Working on the “demo” (demolishing) crew was an interesting experience, but also one of the most dangerous ones I’ve had in Haiti. The demo team’s job is to fully collapse buildings so that HODR shovelers, pickers and sledgehammerers (ha!) on rubble teams can easily access the debris and get it out of the way.

The demo team is armed with sledges, metal chains, rope, some pulleys, a 12-foot long piece of plywood dubbed the “demo stick,” rebar cutters, wenches and a small battery-powered handsaw to slice stubborn rebar. So demo basically brings down (admittedly unstable, poorly constructed) buildings using the guns on their arms (muscles!) and brainpower.

Because the buildings the demo crew are structurally unsound and in various degrees of stress, most of the time there are only two or three members of the crew using tools at any one time. The other members of the crew serve as spotters by maintaining watch on the walls, pillars and other structural elements of the building which can be affected by the work currently being performed. If a column starts to wobble, or a platform that a worker is on starts to drop, the spotters yell for workers to stop immediately and to clear the building.

Of course, that system is in no way foolproof. One well-placed hit with the sledge can bring down a column without warning, so it’s really important to develop a strategy to bring down a structure while minimizing the time spent inside, on top of, and next to the structure. And just like with rubbling, working at these sites are full of other hazards. On Monday, for example, one member of the demo crew sliced her forearm on a piece of sawed rebar, resulting in 16 stitches. (Like the trooper that she is, she was back out with the team on Tuesday, when I was on it.)

Luckily, the team of eight I was working with in the morning was led by several veteran demo crew members and a HODR staffer, all of whom did a good job of breaking us in to demo work. Before beginning a phase of the demolishing process, they would ask us, “Where are you going?” meaning: “If the building starts to go down, how are you going to get out safely and quickly?” Thus, each of us always had exit strategies at the front of our mind.

Although the building didn’t come down as smoothly as I (or the rest of the team had hoped), it did!

We began by attacking a roughly 10-foot by 14-foot section of the roof in the back right of the building that was already leaning about 30 degrees toward the ground. A few team members started sledging on the roof so as to expand a deep crack in the concrete. This allowed us to access and cut the stubborn rebar that connected this section of the roof to the rest of the structure. Members on the ground also faulted and then brought down two columns supporting this roof section, which increased our access to the weight-bearing columns in the middle of the house.

The crew then shifted our attention toward the front of the building, where we knocked down part of a section of wall and roof that was being supported by the building’s metal door. The door was wedged under a column and roof piece. We looped a thick rope around this column and four of us volunteers used that to yank it out of place, like in tug-of-war.

Bringing down the large still-standing roof section and columns in the middle of the building proved to be the most difficult. We began by looping metal chains and ropes around three weight-bearing columns that were holding the section up. Each of those chains and ropes were anchored to columns or pillars on other pieces of property some 15 to 30 feet away with wenches or pulleys. Those devices allowed us to steadily increase the pressure on the rope or chain.

With a volunteer manning each of those ropes, and spotters on all sides, we started to increase the pressure to try to pull the columns toward us and the ground. But it didn’t work. One of the columns wouldn’t budge at all, and the other two moved only slightly. A four-foot wall next to one of the columns we were trying to pull down – which we previously had thought would collapse easily because there was no rebar in it – also hindered our progress by holding steady.

So, we paused our work on the tensions and knocked a hole in a side wall of the building. Because there was so much stress already being placed on the columns and the building’s walls, we used the demo stick to reach through this hole and knock out a few bricks at the top of this stubborn four-foot mini-wall, by banging one end of the stick with the sledgehammer from outside the wall.

We were set to resume increasing the tension on the metal chains and ropes hooked on to the three columns, when a small crack in the roof near the top of the mini wall suddenly ripped through the ceiling. (This happened just as Ton, a lanky and consistently monochromatically-dressed volunteer from Amsterdam, was looking to enter the building to move up a cable loop on a pillar. Rather scary.)

With that, the columns toppled and the roof dropped to the ground. Dust and debris rolled toward us seemingly in slow motion. Everyone hopped back a couple of feet in surprise.

Just like in the movies, but without explosive devices.

(And, of course, nobody was hurt or injured.)

In the afternoon, we began attacking another site.

While awaiting out taptap back to base at the end of my rubble team’s morning shift, a young woman walked past us.

I heard the clip-clop of her crutches before I even saw her. Her left leg was amputated above the knee.

Bicycles, motorbikes and trucks whizzed past her on the street as she slowly but steadfastly maneuvered down the cluttered side of the road.

As she got closer, it became very obvious that she was pregnant. I would imagine she was in her third trimester.

For reasons I can’t fully articulate, her image has stayed with me all day, although I don’t know anything about her.

I figure she was pregnant on Jan. 12. I figure her leg was amputated as a result of the earthquake.

And so I wonder how her life has changed as a result. If she’s worried about being able to provide for her future son or daughter. If she has other children. If she has a family. If she has a job or money. If organizations or resources will be able to assist her. If her mobility will affect her ability to parent.

And if she’s spent any time fretting about this stuff.

Or, if like so many of the people I’ve gotten to know here, she’s wasted no time lamenting a couple of bad cards and has simply carried on, maybe a little slowly, but steadfastly.

Being away from home for almost a month means I’m missing out on some things …

Spending Father’s Day with my dad. Helping to plan Ann’s bridal shower. Attending a rescheduled concert with my friend Monique. Discussing interesting stuff a work conference. Visiting with my friend Ally, who lives in Boston (and I haven’t seen in years). Going to Pride in Chicago. Shopping at REI with Chris before she moves … twice. Chatting with Kelli about her upcoming wedding.

Tomorrow, my uncle goes in for heart surgery. I wish I could be there with my family to offer my support.

Here’s to his full and speedy recovery!

Each day, I fall in love with Haiti a little more.

This largely has been a result of amazing experiences with the people here and opportunities to experience their culture. However simple or small, these have shown me the grace of the Haitians and the beauty of their country. Their resilience and strength in the face of great hardship – not just the earthquake, but that surely is included – is inspiring.

Although I have never regret at coming here, nor a desire to leave early, I think charting my emotions while here would show a low during my first three to five days, after the initial high of being here and the novelty of a new culture wore off. Simple environmental shock, combined with disgust and dismay at the prevalent poverty and the abundance of trash and filth, were the hardest things to which I had to adjust.

But those mild anxiety-based feelings subsided the more I experienced Haiti.

Haiti is amazing.

To be fair, seeing this sometimes requires a little digging. Just like in America, some of the men here are creepy and disgustingly forward. Finding beauty in a city where walking in the street requires nimble legs to dodge waste can be challenging. And as an easily recognized foreigner, given my white skin, there also have been a few instances where folks have tried to take advantage of me or other volunteers.

But that all being said, the pros have totally outweighed the cons. The three little stories I posted a while ago speak to that, as does the experience I had Sunday.

Yesterday, on our day off, a group of nine volunteers including myself traveled to another NGO’s basecamp for a locally-guided hike up a mountain. It was, by far, my best day here. (I know, what a long lead-in to a summary of my day off! Sorry for being dramatic, but it was a pretty dramatic day.)

The trip started with a little snafu in that the HODR international volunteer who had served as the liaison to the coordinator of the trip didn’t show up for our planned 7 a.m. departure time. Our group was set to meet a volunteer from the other NGO, called SASH, Sustainable Aid Serving Haiti, at a place called Belvue Market at 7:30 a.m.

Although none of us had ever been to this location, we decided to wing it with the (correct) assumption that everything would figure itself out. These were some fun folks.

We walked to the Leogane bus station a little ways away from the basecamp, located the correct tap- tap to take us to SASH headquarters which is near the market, and squeezed in. And I do mean squeeze.

Maybe half an hour later we hopped off near the SASH building, which is literally located on the beach. A SASH-er then gave us directions on how to meet our guides. A few minutes later, we had located them: Jamison, a former HODR local volunteer and current manager of an IDP camp at the mountain; Bertrice, a very knowledgeable mountain resident and mother; and SASH staffers Jessica and Josh.

The whole group huddled briefly in the school HODR is building — known as the satellite project because the small group of volunteers working on the structure live there, near the school instead of at the basecamp, for days in a row – discussed the day’s itinerary and paid a small fee (about $13) for activities and food. Our group served as the proverbial guinea pig; Jessica hopes to make the hike a small but regular event — a way to educate people about Haitian culture in a non-touristy setting. The money raised will feed directly back into the community by providing income to tour guides and raising funds for education and other communal needs.

The hike kicked off with a serving of Haitian hot chocolate (for most) and bread. Despite the absurdity (to me, at least!) of drinking a type of beverage normally reserved for cold winter evenings, the chocolate earned rave reviews from the group. The drink was described as chocolatey, minty and a little spicy.

We then began climbing the Korai Mountain path. I have absolutely no idea how far it was (the day before, it was described as 10K, but I don’t know if that was round-trip or not), nor how many vertical feet.

What I do know was that the hike was amazing, full of totally calendar-worthy views, which, of course, are impossible to translate into equally amazing pictures. On the ascent, the ocean was at our backs, and a view of the mountains on our right. The trail we were taking was unpaved – some sections had been covered in rocks, but much of that had been washed away by recent years’ floods. Because of the narrow and uneven surface, the path isn’t accessible to cars (although we did see an SUV on its way down, which greatly surprised Jessica), although donkeys and motorbikes – yes, motorcycles on this rocky, unpaved path what a scary thought – can manage.

Along the way, Jameson and Beatrice pointed out plants of interest – this one helps cure stomachaches, this one fatigue, this one makes water taste cold, this one can cause blindness – and answered our (many) questions.

We made several stops on the way up, including a few for us to catch our breath – it was, per the norm here, very hot and humid. The hike was more challenging than I was expecting on my day off.

Our first stop was to check out a family cemetery a few hundred yards off the path. Just as in New Orleans, or places where water tables are high and flooding is likely, the rich can afford to have their bodies buried above ground. Of course, these such tombs are hardly the norm in Haiti, and especially on this mountain.

At another stop, we met the mayor of several of the mountain villages and some other families. They were referred to as wealthy because their home had a cement floor; everyone else has dirt floors.

At the next break, we visited Beatrice’s house, a very modest but incredibly tidy (dirt-floor) two-room structure, and met her four children. (One of her sons was named Bruce Lee. I kid you not.) The walls and corners were made from pieces of plywood and timber, while the rooms were separated by wool blankets and waterproof tarps. She led us to her neighbor’s, who was drying Haitian tobacco. He rolled a cigarette (using graph paper as rolling paper) with it for the smokers to sample and showed us an area where he was smoking wood to make charcoal.

Along the path, we saw a curious mix of “old” housing structures – huts fashioned from palm leaves or similar types on wooden frames, or those made from tarps and sheet metal pieces – and new, large camping tents, either distributed by SASH or other aid organizations. The latter stuck in my mind more so than the shack-like homes I’ve grown accustomed to seeing in Leogane, Port Au Prince and other cities. There, in the middle of a green field surrounded by lush mountains, a cluster of carrot- colored dome-shaped camping tents, large enough to more than four people, would rise up seemingly out of nowhere.

At each stop along the way, children and adults who took note of our presence – which, for a mountain that rarely, if ever, has foreign visitors – joined our group and walked with us. Our group began with 13 people, but by the end – when we stopped for lunch and work at a large village near the top of the mountain – there were more than 50 walking with us. Notably, a group of giggly young girls grabbed hands with many of us blancs and began quizzing us on our names, and likewise, us on theirs.

The village which marked the end of our climb had a school building which was completely destroyed in the earthquake. SASH had acquired two large tents which the group of us assembled before lunch with some assistance from local volunteers. (This prompted a few jokes by us HODR volunteers that we had “built two schools” on our day off.) In appreciation for our work, the principle and his friends grilled for us ears of corn.

Our arrival and the school assembling was a Batsignal that summoned more townspeople. Were there an NFL stadium in this town, I think we would have come close to filling it. (I’m exaggerating slightly, but only to emphasize how many people came out to see us.)

With hundreds of eyes locked on us, we were then served a very filling meal of a grain-and-bean mixture (the grain was grown on the mountain and tasted a fibrous Israeli cous cous), a spicy pickled dish of carrots and onions, and for the meat eaters, chicken and a tomato-based sauce for the grain. To drink, we were given a hot tea which had citrus and ginger notes. The entire meal was amazing and incredibly satisfying, even for this veg.

We were also served slices of abricot, a fruit which is only found in Haiti (something I learned from a quick search), and tastes like an apricot, pear and peach mated, and breadfruit. Both were foods I had never had before, and both were delicious.

The graciousness of our hosts was heartwarming, and we tried to repay them the favor by stuffing our faces with vigor. None of the onlookers approached us during our meal or afterward, which was very sweet and yet, somewhat awkward. On the one hand, I felt we were almost on display … just as they were to us, in a sense – both of our groups were clearly interested in each other. I felt badly that we didn’t have the time or opportunity to talk to them and really get to know them. On the other hand, I thought we might have come across as a bit boring – we hop up to visit them, assemble a couple of tents and eat, and then left. Pretty unspectacular!

One detail worth noting: Lunch was served on tables complete with white linen tablecloths. In a community with so little to spare, it was an honor that didn’t go unnoticed.

With a nasty looking storm approaching, we crammed a few other activities in to our visit before descending the mountain. A few tried shimmying up a small palm tree to knock down the green coconuts dangling at the top.

Once knocked down, a handful of us were given a shot at cracking it open with a machete. Naturally, I jumped on this opportunity … but unfortunately, chopping open a coconut with a large blade is more difficult than the Haitians make it look. Whereas they can slice off an end so as to access but not spill the juice with a few perfectly placed whacks, my attempt was a pathetic hackjob which required multiple very ungraceful swings of the blade.

This post has gone on long enough, so I’ll sign off for now. I took about a bajillion photographs from the day and will make sure to link to them when I am stateside.

Despite having almost four months to prepare for this trip, I spent a very limited amount of time studying Creole. I was pretty disappointed in myself for this. I (correctly) felt that it would be more difficult to get to know and experience a new culture without speaking the language.

But that being said, my very limited French language skills have been rather useful.

Many moons ago, I took French in grade school and through high school. But I completed the senior level class in my junior year, back when I was 17 years old. I haven’t studied French since.

Eight years since my last lesson, things have gotten rusty, but not as rusty as I initially had figured. (Although that probably isn’t saying much.)

Some background:

Haitian Creole and French are the official languages of Haiti, but the vast majority (think 90+ percent) of Haitians speak Creole (or Kreyol) only.

Haitian Creole originated as a pidgin, which is a type of language that evolves (or evolved) from another language. Pidgins are used to bridge communication divides between speakers of different languages. They start with a very limited vocabulary – so very few words, probably starting with ones needed immediately to accomplish specific goals. By definition, they aren’t the speakers’ native tongues. They tend to borrow words from other languages.

When a pidgin becomes a people’s primary language, it is said to have become “Creolized.” At the same time, the pidgin’s/creole’s vocabulary grows. (Props to my B.C., a HODR volunteer from Toronto, who has let me tap her wealth of knowledge across a broad spectrum of Haiti issues, for explaining the fundamentals of all this!)

As you probably figured out or already knew, Haitian Creole has its origins in the French language. Many Haitian Creole words are very similar to French when spoken; Haitian Creole words are written more phonetically than French words, in my opinion.

Most of the times that I’ve tried to communicate with Creole-speakers/Haitians has been on worksites. Each day, one to three local volunteers work alongside the international volunteers, including myself. Although a few of the local volunteers speak English, most do not. Also, members from the community – such as passers-by, the owners of now-collapsed homes and children – end up chatting with us or chipping in assistance.

By now, I’ve got a bunch of Haitian Creole phrases down which are helpful for making smalltalk. These include: “Koman ou ye?” (How are you?); “Li chaud” (It’s hot – Always useful here!); “Mwen rele Whitney” (My name is Whitney); “Ou ka ede mwen?” (Can you help me?); and “Komman dit on … ?” (How do you say … ?).

Oh, and “hungry” is “grangou.” Yea, I got that one down, too.

But for more complicated thoughts, or words that I don’t know in Creole, I often try expressing them in French because the two languages are similar and that some Haitians have some knowledge of French. Unfortunately, I’m nowhere near fluent in French, so even coming up with the “right” words in that language can be tricky.

Communicating with the not-parentally-supervised kids that invade our worksites has been tricky, as they’re energetic and extremely eager to “assist,” but not interested in following directions. For the most part, they’re a joy to have around. But they can also get in the way. The nervous Nancy in me is concerned about the potential for them to get injured …. As all kids do, they tend to horse around. While I know the Creole phrase for “Don’t do that,” sometimes that statement isn’t clear enough.

For example, last week while working on the nearby field hospital campus installing waterproof tarps on a temporary structure, some kids started climbing on a ladder. I couldn’t physically go and remove them at the time (hands were full or I was on a different ladder or something), but I couldn’t think of the French words for “Get down” or “Get off.” The best I could come up with, again in French, was “Put your feet on the ground,” which surprisingly did the job. It was a weird way to phrase the thought, but apparently the words were similar enough to get the message across to the kiddos.

Another instance from the same day: Two of the boys started slapping and punching each other. Since I didn’t know how to say “Stop fighting” in Creole (or French – like I said, I’m rusty!), I instead in French said “Stop playing the game of war.” Again, it apparently was successful as the “timoun” (children) quit slapping each other … although I’m sure my awkward phrasings made me seem like quite the eccentric!

I’ve helped teach some beginner English classes with a volunteer from Ottawa, Canada, named Madison, and this Friday I attended my first Creole lesson, taught by two of our volunteers. I’ll try to post some on that later.

One

At the rubble site I was working at Monday afternoon, I wheelbarrowed pretty much three hours straight. The homesite slab we were clearing was behind several shacks, so once we had scooped up the rubble, we had to wheel it about a block and then dump it on either side of the exit of the narrow street. It was exhausting. We had five wheelbarrows running almost constantly that afternoon.

Unfortunately, one of them was incredibly squeaky. Painfully squeaky. And it only got louder when it carried a full load. It was really obnoxious.

After several rounds back-and-forth to the dumpsite with this rustbucket, a white-haired Haitian man who had been sitting stoically on a three-foot wide porch-like platform outside the shack that was his residence flagged me down. I had exchanged niceties with him in Creole when I first saw him earlier that day, but hadn’t spoken with him since.

He touched my arm, pointed to the wheelbarrow, and then gave me a can of oil.

I thanked him, greased the axle, and then went on my way … silently!

Two

Earlier this week at the same site, a Haitian man approached one of my team members who had just wheelbarrowed a load of rubble to a pile in the street. Without any introductions or smalltalk, the man said to the volunteer: “I don’t speak English. I appreciate the work you are doing. I have to go now.”

And with that, he left.

Three

While working with “Team Topless” at a rubble site in a rural part of town late last week (directly across from a sugar cane field), a woman started shoveling with us.

Haitian children frequently swarm our sites and try to help, in their energetic but sometimes childish ways. And young men, property owners and curious passers-by also sometimes lend their hands for a bit.

But never before had I seen a Haitian woman getting dirty with the volunteer blancs.

Wearing a long brown skirt, a short-sleeved blouse and sandals, she wasn’t dressed for rubble work. But that didn’t stop her from picking up a shovel and start cranking it, completely unannounced.

After a few minutes, once we noticed her and realized she was helping, I said hello to her in Creole and asked her name. She pleasantly responded that her name was Mme. X (not including her last name here to be polite).

I then introduced myself by first name and identified the other members of my team who were nearby.

She beamed and then re-introduced herself … with her first name.

It turns out she was the homeowner, and she was there to help … and to give us coconut juice to thank us for our work! She had one of the lingering kids shimmy up one of her coconut trees and knock down enough fruit for each of us who wanted some juice.

That afternoon, we got another round of coconuts for the road.