Cookin' it up with Madame Sabine

I have a lot of extra time on my hands, and I had too much time on my hands to begin with. I never really know if students are going to show up or not, so I usually just sit out on the OFCB steps around classtime and wait. If people show up, there's class. If they don't, I go back to doing whatever. But, I haven't felt like my time has been wasted lately. People have already commented on the last post that it is much more important "being" here than "working" here, and that is very true. And this is perhaps best represented in my recent delving into Haitian food, by helping Madame Sabine in the OFCB kitchen. Madame Sabine is often referred to as "James' mom". She cooks all the food at OFCB, always says I'm not eating enough no matter how much food I put on my plate, and frets and frowns whenever I look tired. Madame Sabine does not need me in the kitchen. I think I'm actually slowing the cooking process down by not being nearly as skilled as the master chef, but she likes to have me in the kitchen anyway. So, I fumble around cutting carrots and onions and mostly just getting in the way in the small kitchen, while at the same time getting to know Madame Sabine, getting a chance to practice my Creole, and learning how to make Haitian food.

My tasks so far have mostly involved cutting up vegetables, which I can't do very well, or squeezing lemons/oranges to make fresh juice. But however little I do, Madame Sabine always comes to my defense and tells people that I prepared most of the meal myself. Amilor walked in on Thursday and she started ranting about how much I cooked, while I caught his glance and shook my head. He pointed to a pitcher of lemonade and asked her if I had made it, and she shouted "He washed the lemons in the sink before I made it!!", as if that was the really, hard part. I did learn the proper method for making fried plantains though, which I was pretty pumped about. If I'm ever in charge of meal at the Eco-house next semester and I have some bananas on hand, I will probably blow some minds with my skills.

Today, I went back to the Fort(s). I had nothing better to do, and I figured it's not every day that I have the chance to go exploring French colonial fortress ruins in the mountains of Haiti. I also kind of wanted to see if I could get there by myself, which, looking back, could have ended badly, but luckily didn't. I sat in a little enclave in the walls of the Little Fort, overlooking the Bayonnais valley, and read "White Teeth" by Zadie Smith. It was nice. Going back down the mountains, on the other hand, was the opposite of a pleasant experience. I began to feel way more tired than I had the first time I had gone to the forts, which is saying a lot. And at one point, I got semi-lost and had to ask for directions. Luckily, there was a girl heading towards OFCB that offered to lead the way, but that didn't end so well either. She was carrying a basket of fresh mangoes on her head, and the smell of the mangoes would waft down to me, and I would imagine the warm food and the cold showers and the comfy beds at OFCB. And then I would remember that I was miles from OFCB, drenched in sweat, hungry, and feeling like death, with the mangoes taunting me. But I made it back to OFCB, about 8 hours after I left, and collapsed, reminding myself that I was an idiot.

This morning, I went to meet Pastor Delivrance (pun intended?), a local pastor that I had met on one of my walks and who had asked me to come by his church Sunday morning before the service. Apparently, he knew Peter very well and Peter had attended his services more than once, and I got the impression that it would be sort of rude for me not to stay. But I told him I would only be able to stay for about half an hour, and that I would need to get back to OFCB for church there. That didn’t really work out, and I ended up staying the entire three-hour service, and having numerous awkward moments. For one, at the beginning of the service, there were only two other people in the church. And once more people arrived, the assistant pastor reprimanded all of them for being late, shouting things like “The American arrived on time (pointing to me)! He respects priorities! You, on the other hand, apparently don’t care about spiritual matters!”, and waving his hands in the air. To make things more awkward, the pastor eventually called me up to the front and asked me to introduce myself. And I immediately forgot all the Creole I’ve learned since I’ve been here and managed to say something along the lines of “Good morning. I work at the school. I’m happy to be here.”

But it was definitely interesting getting to place OFCB in perspective of other churches in the area. OFCB is pretty much the equivalent of a mega-church in the States, just because it’s big enough to seat a couple hundred people, and because it has electricity. Pastor Delivrance’s church is about the size of a Davidson classroom, with walls made from just rocks and cement and a roof made of metal sheets. There’s a dirt floor and tiny benches made from planks of wood nailed together to sit on. But none of those things mattered to the congregation, who sang and danced and beat on drums, and showed a lot more liveliness than you can find in most churches in the States. I didn’t understand most of what was said, but from what I understood it was about comparing physical hunger to spiritual hunger. Despite the many awkward moments, it was definitely a unique experience.