Sophie’s First Stitches

The first few days of being back in Haiti have been exhausting, fun, frustrating, and joyful all rolled into one really long package.  In this blog, just because it will be interesting, I am going to describe some of the issues that we have run into in just the first 4 days of being back.  The truth is, we would not want to be anywhere else, but that does not take away from the difficulties that sometimes come.  Before I get into these, I want you to know how great it was seeing the kids again.  The first day, there were about 5 kids waiting at our house when the car drove up, and they really just wanted to see Jess, Sophie, and meet Elijah (I was kind of old news).  They were beaming at Elijah and just really love him already.  Samara loves Sophie, and Sophie loves her as well.  However, so far, it seems like Sophie is liking Son Son and Tony the most because she can say their names easily (Ton-Ton and Son-Son).  I will write more about these things in the next blog, but I really want to write about the almost comical number of things that have “gone wrong” since we have been here.  We knew life would be a little more difficult here with 2 babies, but other circumstances have not really helped.  

Friday and Saturday we pretty much hung around the house and got things settled.  The kids were in and out all day and we walked Sophie down to the kids’ house for a while, but they were both pretty uneventful days.  Then Sunday came.  We went to church at Hope Rising like we always do, and about halfway through the service, Gueline came up to me and told me the tire was flat.  So I called our security guard (Chinaider) and asked him if the spare was ok.  Of course it was also flat because someone had accidentally driven over a piece of iron sticking out of our gate.  So Jessica and her parents were still at home (we were not ready to take the kids to church quite yet) and Phil got in our white truck and came to pick us up.  On the way home, we ran out of gas (in our defense it was our first day back and the gauge is broken) and had to walk to a friend’s house to ask him to go get one of our tanks from home.  We finally got back home, planned for the kids to come and watch a movie and then do service later that evening.  

Neither of those 2 things happened.  Instead, if you noticed the title and the picture with this blog, then you know Sophie had to get stitches.  Well, I was in the back of the house and I heard some panic from the living room and came running up.  Sophie had fallen into the book shelf face first and had a pretty deep cut on the bridge of her nose.  I called Haiti Health Ministries immediately (this was Sunday at about 6) and they told us to bring her right over.  Dr. Jim looked at the cut and tried to tape it up initially but the tape did not hold.  Instead, Sophie had to get 5 stitches.  She was really tough, she mainly cried when the needle went into the cut and then while we held her down.  When Dr. Jim was finished, Sophie pretty much immediately stopped crying and just asked where the car was.  She did really well.  I think Jess and I may of had a worse time with the whole thing than she did really.  She still has the stitches in now, but they will be coming out on Thursday.  The truth is, what would have taken us hours in America took about 45 minutes and a short drive across the street.

So Monday came and we had Lener get one of the tires repaired so he could drive it into Leogane to get 3 new tires (we had just purchased one about a month earlier) and that went on until about 3 or so (he got the first tire repaired, but it was flat when we arrived so he had to go and get it repaired again).  After showering and getting the kids to bed and service finished, we (Jess, her parents, and I) were sitting around talking and I said, “It looks like we are starting off tomorrow with no problems.”  I will never say that again.  Less than 30 minutes later, our power went completely out.  Not only that, but our generator will no longer charge our inverter and the inverter just stopped working.  I had enough diesel to run the generator until the next day when I called a couple of electricians and they told me, “The inverter is bad.”  This is irritating because the inverter is about 5 months old and cost a lot of money.  The electrician is going into the store where he purchased it tomorrow to figure out the warranty issues, but I am not holding my breath and I will probably be making a trip to that same store in the not so distant future to try and make sure our inverter is not faulty.  I forgot to mention, at the same time the electricians were trying to get power back up and running, I had a guy fixing the a/c in our truck, Herwolson’s new guardian (his Mom apparently moved to Brazil) was asking if we could help him again, and we had about 4 other visitors that I will not even take the time to tell you about.  Just so you know, we are praying about the best thing to do for Herwolson, so stay tuned for a blog about that soon.

The last few days have been long, and we are learning to live together here.  In my next blog, I will tell you about the really good stuff.  Like how well Sophie is getting along, how Elijah and Sophie are both sleeping through the night, how great the kids have been, how excited they are for school, and how it is just right that we are back here.  But today, I wanted to give you a little hint at how frustrating and scary things can sometimes be, especially when your daughter needs 5 stitches in her head in a 3rd world country.