New Hair, Up and Down the Mountain, Pill Bottles, and Schedule System

Hair Braiding

Talitha got her hair done yesterday. It looks amazing! Julia and Talitha walked up to the school/clinic to have it done. It was pretty much a whole day process. I have braided the kids' hair for years. I remember when Talitha was a tiny baby, I was really excited about doing the hair. I learned the process and have since braided other people's hair as well. BUT....I think the novelty has worn off after 13 years. I don't think I ever got to where I could do the hair as well as what you see in the picture above. We would really like to consistently employ a couple of women to do all four of the girls' hair. It's only about $20 a month, which is incredibly inexpensive compared to in the states. Most things here in Haiti are astronomically expensive, but there are other things that are relatively inexpensive.

Down the Mountain

We walked back up to Gramothe again today. Ron continues to organize the depot which is basically the workshop that is full of various items. He's trying to categorize and see what exactly is there. David continues to organize his classroom. He still needs to get some paint, but hopefully he will be able to paint the classroom next week. Christelle and Billy helped me in the clinic. Above, Billy is packing some of the supplies back from the clinic.

Up the Mountain

Basically, you have to walk uphill both ways to and from the clinic. From the clinic towards our home, you walk down to the riverbed and then up the goat trail and then finally up the road to the house. Billy packed the bag down toward the riverbed and I packed it the rest of the way up. As I was getting tired, I said to the kids, "I feel good. I feel great"....and the kids said, "I feel wonderful". This is from that movie What About Bob where Bob is afraid to go out and keeps talking himself into thinking he's ok. The kids love to joke about that movie since I'm a mental health professional and it'a about a patient that follows his psychiatrist to his vacation home.

For the rest of the hike, everyone kept saying, "I feel good. I feel great. I feel wonderful" as we were walking. We also were able to practice our creole with people passing us by. Mostly I think people were laughing at how difficult it was for us to pack a simple bag when the villagers are accustomed to packing all kinds of heavy items throughout the day. But we made it through and kept telling ourselves that we were doing good. I didn't actually feel so wonderful, but I did feel relieved to make it back home. 

Pill Bottles

We did bring back a TON of empty bill bottles from the clinic. The kids are peeling the labels off the bottles now as we sit inside listening to the thunder and rain. So far, they have peeled about 80 bottles. Basically, the teams bring in the medications and then some of the medications are divided into little baggies to distribute individually to patients. Then the empty bottles can be used to fill other types of prescriptions in the clinic. So, basically it is a good recycling process. The kids can easily assist when counting out tums, tylenol, vitamins, and the also peeling labels on bottles. They are also going to help packing school supplies for different classrooms later this week.

Rotation Schedule

We've created a new rotation system in the house. We have an amazing lady LeeAnn who is helping us in the house and also going to the market for us on Tuesdays and Fridays for fruits, vegetables, and eggs. She is not able to read much and even if she could, we do not know creole yet, so we have put pictures of the kids to show which kids have which roles in the house. We have them on various doors such as: Kitchen Helper #1, Kitchen Helper #2, Dish Helper #1 & #2, Laundry Helper #1 & #2, Garbage, Entryway, Balconies, etc. We then have a picture of the person in each room that is responsible for keeping up that room. Each person has one job and one area for the week and then other things such as their room that they are simply always responsible for.

We put each picture in a zip lock bag and tacked them around the house. Some had to be on the door near their section of the house because we couldn't put pictures outside or on the balconies. We had a similar system in Oregon, but had it on clipboards. I think this will work better. Basically each person is responsible for a certain section of the house and if at anytime that area was a mess, they are docked 1/2 hour at bedtime. The areas they are responsible rotate each week, so we'll just move the pictures around. Yes, I am a therapist and I know that we should focus on positive rewards if at all possible, but there are some things in our family where a demerit system seems to work well. We will also randomly reward for positive behavior and especially for those that are seen helping others and being considerate.

We'll see how this system works. So far it's going good. We're able to just look in the room and literally see who is responsible for that room. This way LeeAnn can also "help" hold the kids accountable and even help the kids with certain aspects, but she is not there to do their job. We've only had one person docked today, so that's a success.

Overall, it's been an amazing week so far!