MGH -Alligators on the roof, chickens in trees and ants in pants.: 10

Welcome to The Diary of Higgins & Haiti!

Hello everyone,

You will be glad to know that I have compiled the diary of my volunteer period in Haiti. It can be found if you click on the link below:
http://alligatorsontheroof.blogspot.com/

I hope you get a chance to flick through it or even have a read at the 1-28 posts (under September archive). I have ordered the posts in the reverse order (a blog usually starts with the most recent first) to allow you to read my account in the order that it happened - kind of like a novel. The only post which is out of sync is no.7. I have struggled with this for days and there appears to be some error which will not enable me to slot this piece of info where I wish it to be.

I am aware that you are all incredibly busy, so I will add a video clip which I have compiled all my fave images from my trip along with tunes that remind me of the special country and its people. This will basically tell you the story, without having to read it, if you so desire. I will also be adding a page for this blog on FB. Before you all groan, this is to allow me to keep my Haiti life and my personal life separate. If you do visit Facebook, please join this page to keep up-to-date with my news and future projects – the more hits I get the better. Or click on the 'like' button on the right hand-side of the page!

Check back once a week for news!

Once again, thank you to all you lovely, kind, generous people who made this adventure possible with your kind words of encouragement and support.

Once a week we take the young school children for an arts and craft session. It’s regarded as a way to help them express some of the feelings they have about living in their testing environment. We encourage happiness within our class, be it through singing, dancing or painting with bright colours and this week we decided to make Mother’s Day cards for the children to take home.
I made 80 card templates and wrote on them the words maman mwen, kontan manman jou, mwen renmen ou.

We then drew round each of the children’s hands on the front of the card and armed them with the necessary tools for them to create their masterpiece. Ok, so glitter glue isn’t the best idea and they had much more fun covering themselves in it than using it on the cards, but it wasn’t a complete disaster and every mum got a unique card.

Sharing is a new concept for most of the children here and it’s difficult to draw flowers on 20 cards simultaneously. I then got them to form a quiet queue and made them line up to allow me to wash as much of the sparkly goo off them before they went home. Actually, today’s activity was a blast and we all really enjoyed it. When collecting all the materials at the end of the session, it was brought to my attention that a large number of crayons were missing. One little girl had stuffed as many coloured crayons in her pants and was edging cautiously towards the exit before I spied her.