settling in (b)

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Today as I was returning to the compound with Nicole after gathering greens for dinner in the outer gardens, one of the beach kids (Pierre Richard) stopped us to say hello. This little encounter had me thinking about my first encounter with a group of the local children on Monday afternoon. The Carlin family and I went down to the beach to spend some time with "the beach kids" as we often refer to them. The Carlins had described some of them at different points in the past weeks. Others we all met for the first time together. The Haitian children often tried to engage me in conversation, despite the fact that my Creole is obviously poor and I struggled to follow or respond to their questions. Some of the older youth used the little English they know. One girl in particular was persistent. Mer-flur (sp?) wanted to speak with me and was disappointed that we were not able to find a mutual language in which to converse. Eventually we were able to get our names, ages, and a few minor details communicated with the help of her older brother Jubear (sp?) who works with the project some and knows some English. Pierre Richard is also their brother, and I had met both boys the day before. I look forward to speaking and understanding more of the language so that I am able to hold more full conversations.