Half and Half

Our day started out fairly rough. I ended staying up until 2:30am and we woke up fairly early to head to COBBA and Indigo Beach. COBBA is the Christian based orphanage that one of our translators, Jide, helps to run. It took us a very bumpy, hour long ride to get there. Some of the streets on the way were paved, but had huge potholes, some of the roads were gravel and kicked up a lot of dust as we drove along.

Here's a photo of what a typical street looked like on our journey.


We finally arrived at COBBA and the kids serenaded us with a Kreyol version of "If you're happy and you know it" but instead it was "If you're happy that the missionaries are here...". Then they sang a song that the translators helped interpret. Hoping to post it on here so you can listen. The gist of the song was even though they don't have parents they are thanking God because he has sent them us as their helpers. It was a very sweet song, made even sweeter by the children and the staff. After the songs the children and staff came to greet us with kisses and hellos.

We brought toys, clothes, diapers and hygiene products to them. It was exciting to be able to distribute the toys to the children and then play with them.

Here are a couple of pictures of the kids. They were very excited to see themselves in the pictures especially because my iPhone has the scroll function and they enjoyed scrolling through the photos.


This is Joanne. She was one of the older children who hung out with me at COBBA.


It was upsetting that after spending an hour with the children we headed down to Indigo Beach, which apparently use to be a Club Med. Although the children at the orphanage were in good health and the orphanage was in excellent condition it was obvious that the children wanted attention and never got enough. So I was very uncomfortable heading to a resort and would have been just as happy to stay and play with them all day long.

But the beach was lovely and I think I came back to the guesthouse with a sunburn.

A Haitian sailboat that came past while we were at the beach.