by our love.

Tonight I am having trouble thinking of a line to begin this post with. My thoughts are all over the place, so bear with me. Lack of sleep does that to you haha. Last night I spent the night in the cholera hospital [don't worry, I wasn't the patient or the nurse!] with baby Manny who has typhoid fever. His admitting problem was diarrhea, but then the medicines to stop it worked a little too well, so we had the opposite problem which won us another night in the hospital. Michelle had to come home to stay with her little boy, so I went to the hospital around 8 and stayed the night.

At first glance, the hospital looked very dirty and if I were a germ-a-phobe [which I'm not] I probably would have washed my hands raw. But once you're there for a length of time you realize that there is no way germs are living there because every little bit someone comes by with bleach water and douses everything down, including your hands and the soles of your shoes. My first thought was "what if someone is allergic to bleach?!" because all of the allergies are a huge concern in hospitals in the US, then I looked around and realized that that was at the very bottom of the list of concerns for this place.

Anyway... the night went smoothly. The hospital is one long room divided into 3 sections [not sure by what criteria]. We were in the 2nd section on the baby side which had about 15 cribs packed as tightly as possible, with a space just big enough for 1 cafeteria style chair between each crib. This was where I sat [which explains my aching tailbone] from 8pm last night to 11am today. Manny slept through the night and since we were just waiting on a stinky diaper, we didn't have to wake him to give him any medicine. Let me give you a breakdown in the major differences in this hospital experience and one America:
1. There was no air conditioner, just huge fans. We brought 2 of our own personal fans also. Thankfully, at some point during the night it cooled down so that we could turn the fans off and not be roasting.
2. The lights stay on all night long. Huge, gymnasium style lights. Good thing Haitian kids could sleep through a tornado, because between all the kids crying and screaming, people talking, and the bright lights it was as noisy as one.
3. At the top of the walls before they meet the ceiling where we in America might have glass windows, there is nothing. So the cool night air comes in=hooray! Every mosquito in Haiti comes in too=not hooray! haha. I literally killed 8 mosquitoes just sitting in my chair. My friend Erica let me borrow bug spray, which put like a force field around me, which meant I didn't get a single bite! That was until I decided I would be cooler without shoes on so I took them off, and then a mosquito bit me twice on the big toe [the worst!!] so I put them back on.

Manny slept through the night and I was able to get about an hour or two of sleep in also [sitting straight up or with my head leaned on his crib, but sleep nonetheless]. I took a couple books, my Bible, and my journal so between all of that the time didn't creep too slowly. And I got to love on Manny when he rolled around which made the whole night just that much better. Really quickly, I want to tell you about one 5 minute conversation that forever changed me.

First, I should tell you that no one in the hospital [staff included] spoke a lick of English. The conversations I had would go pretty much like this:
Nurse comes to bedside and wakes me up.
Me: Bonswa. [good evening].
Nurse: Bonswa. asdlfkjadfgoiaertnalkasndfoaifgaretoiufg [a lot of words that I did not understand]
Me: Mwen paller Angles. Mwen pa paller Kreole. Mwen regretsa. [I speak English. I do not speak Creole. I'm sorry.]
Nurse: (look of annoyance, checks chart, checks Manny, peaces out).
It would have been waaaaay funnier if I had had at least one other English speaking person to laugh about it with.

Anyway.. at one point I was chilling out reading my Bible beside the crib, trying to stay awake, when a nurse with a particularly sweet face came over. I said "Bonswa." Then went back to reading. She talked to Manny for a minute [he speaks Creole, as much as a 15 month old baby speaks]. Then she said something in Creole to me, to which I went through my statement about English only, sorry. Then she said "Do you speak French?" I was surprised to hear the English! I said no, I'm sorry. Then she said "Do you speak Spanish?" To which I said no, I'm sorry, and laughed sheepishly because thats really the only choice when you feel like the most uncultured person in the world haha. Anyway, she giggled back and I said "Do you speak English?!" She said "no, only a little. Is this your son?" I looked at Manny, who is clearly Haitian, then at myself, who is clearly not, and just said "no." She said "oh, are you from America." I said yes! I'm here until Christmas." That seemed to be as far as we could go. The nurse standing beside her said something and she said something back, back and forth back and forth, me just looking from one to the other like at a tennis match. They were looking at me periodically, obviously talking about me. I just stood and smiled awkwardly because what else can you do? Then she looked right at me said "You love Jesus" in more of a statement form rather than question. I shook my head yes, and then she smiled and walked away. I didn't see her again, but this seemingly purposeless encounter circled in my brain over and over as I sat and watched Manny sleep. Even today, I have gone back to it several times. It is one of the only times in my life that I have actually SEEN John 13:35 that says "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." This is a promise from the Lord, that our love will be the sign that we are His followers. And I now know that to be true! How beautiful!

It is now 11:26pm here in Haiti [we are on central time] which is relatively early if I were in the States. But here we are pretty much Haitian Grandmas and I should have been asleep 2 hours ago. So I'm going to go! Oh, I forgot to mention that Manny is sleeping in a port-a-crib at the foot of my bed tonight and he will probably be up around 6, so we'll see how that goes :) I hope all is well, and thank you so much for your prayers. They are literally priceless. I'll write again soon!