7 – Our home.

 

We shared our compound with some chickens, a rooster and some chicks. They would spend the day looking for worms or beasties to munch on and then retreat to their bed in the tree. The mum would go first and then, one by one, the chicks would hop, hop, hop up the tree to where they had built their nest. I suppose this bizarre behaviour was all in an effort to avoid being eaten when it got dark. During the hours of darkness, the community takes on a whole new life with the animals assuming the leading role. Because of the sparseness of the land, you can hear any tiny sound for miles. On one morning we walked out to find one of the chicks had fallen out of the nest and broken its neck, poor little thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The recurring night-time noises are performed by cows, dogs, cockerels, donkeys, pigs, sheep and  goats. All night, every night! I  think the crazy dogs bark, and when they hear their own echo, assume it’s a rival dog returning their call and bark back – which gets repeated and joined by the other animals for the duration of darkness.

 

 

 

A new noise has entered the fray this evening. To begin with, I assume that it was the normal evening rainstorm, but then it becomes apparent that it is a different pattern of tapping sounds on the tent. On closer inspection I can see that my tent is slightly bulging inwards in a uniformed fashion and the tapping noise is more muffled than rain drops. I turn on my torch to see about  30 giant cockroaches running up and down the outside of my tent (having some sort of rave) and, under their weight, my tent is bulging in.

 

 

 

 

 Pretty much everywhere is a toilet in Haiti and people just pee in the street. However, we wanted to try and encourage our younger pupils just to ‘go’ in the one spot. In the compound there were actually 2 out toilets for the children but they were the most disgusting things you have ever seen, or smelt. In large part, the mess was caused by  the toilet seats being too high for their little bottoms to reach and so they just used the floor, wall and on occasions, the ceiling.

 

 

 

 

 

This was easily corrected. Armed with protective clothing, bleach and scrubbing brushes, we cleaned as much 0f the mess as we could. We then made small steps to enable the children to reach the toilet and stand more of a chance of aiming at and hitting the target.