Ah, the last week in Bayonnais. All the awesome things that I will miss about Bayonnais seem to have become amplified over the last few days, and so have all the things I will not miss a bit. It’s been hotter than most days, made worse by the fact that my room’s tiny ceiling fan decided to break off and fall to the ground. The food is becoming less and less bearable, since I have basically eaten the same five or six dishes on repeat since I’ve been here (It’s like chicken parm week at Davidson. That’s just too much chicken parm). And I’m missing the Olympics, which is no fun. But this week has the potential to be the best week of my time in Bayonnais. Now that my days are numbered, lots of people are asking me over to their homes to hang out and talk. So, I’m finally doing what I came here to do, which is spend time with people, and no longer have endless hours of free time. For example, on Sunday I stopped by Amilor’s house to borrow his camera on my way to someone else’s house, and I ended up talking to Amilor for well over an hour. We sat outside his house, which has a beautiful view of the mountains surrounding the valley, and talked about cell phones, and buying rice, and the war in Iraq, and electricity. It was awesome. And later that night, I played in what has become an almost nightly game of rummy at OFCB. Night games of rummy with Jonel, Yevens, Eddy and Iverner, sometimes lasting a few hours, have become very common.

(Amilor's son, Lordyone)

















On Friday, I figured it would be a good idea to check how much money I had with me to make sure I had enough to travel out of Port-au-Prince when I leave. And I found my wallet empty of all cash. Sometime in the last three or four weeks, someone sneaked into my room and stole all my money (which was stowed in a box, atop a closet). A mysterious someone made off with the remaining $500 of my Bonner money (which was going to OFCB anyway to cover room and board for the summer) plus around $20 of my own money. I do not know who performed this dastardly dead, but if I had to guess, I would say: Smog. Apparently this isn’t the first time this has happened. Peter apparently lost around $300 and a friend of his lost about $100 (why nobody cared to inform me of this earlier, I have no clue). I wasn’t really upset by the news, considering I haven’t had any other problems regarding safety since I’ve been here. This barely dents my impression that Bayonnais is one of the safest places I’ve ever been. People here seem to live by an unspoken honor code that rivals that of Davidson College, which is amazing considering the conditions many people live in.

But I was surprised to see how much this news upset people around OFCB. The news got out really quickly (especially since Amilor and Demilsaint announced it at church on Sunday, and went on a mini-tirade about it). $500 is a big deal here, considering that is far more than most people in Bayonnais make in a whole year. Amilor told me “It is because of things like this that Bayonnais is the way it is,” meaning he thinks incidents like this could drive foreign visitors (the main source of funding for organizations like OFCB) away from Bayonnais. And in some ways, he might be right. There hasn’t been a single group of Americans (expect the Wisconsin engineers) visit OFCB this summer because international news of food riots in Port-au-Prince (which were apparently fairly exaggerated) scared a lot of groups off. Actionnel promised them all that things were more than safe, but they still cancelled. On the other hand, Bayonnais is far, far safer than the areas surrounding Charlotte, NC, where most of the groups come from. I mean, theft and violence is a very, very rare occurrence in Bayonnais, an area that has no police force and in which the Haitian government has practically zero influence. To me, that’s pretty amazing. Ironically, it took someone stealing all my money to make me realize how amazingly safe Bayonnais is. And the safety of Bayonnais is not a reflection on the enforcement of law, but solely on the integrity of the community.

(my last trip to the Bayonnais market....)
















My sermon appointment was bumped back to this Sunday, which means I don’t know if I’m going on a road trip after all. I don’t know why I bother writing about things I plan to do, since if I’ve learned anything this summer it’s that everything is subject to change. But hopefully I will get a chance to see a little more of Haiti before I leave, and hopefully I won’t bomb on Sunday morning.