January 10, 2008

Yesterday was the most humbling experience to date. While helping building the toilet in Shada, one of the tasks we had to complete was carrying the rocks and sand from the street to the toilet location. There are no streets within Shada. In fact some of the passageways between houses are extremely narrow, maybe only one person across. Therefore, the small children and a few of us workers were asked to weave our way between all of the homes and carry large buckets of these rocks. It gets worse. The walk was about 2 minutes long after you were done weaving in and out. In addition, these buckets were huge! I’m talking 5 gallon water buckets, but instead of water it was rocks. There is no way any of the children nor I could carry these buckets with our arms, so we did it the Haitian way: WE CARRIED THEM ON OUR HEADS! It was so much fun to try this new technique that we have been seeing being used all around the city. Originally I was most concerned about the balancing, but it turns out this task is not the most difficult part of the process. The children gave me an extra shirt to loop around my head and for the bucket to sit on. The first bucket I have was about ¾ full. The children helped me hoist it onto my head. This was the most challenging task I have performed in a long time. My neck muscles were not prepared. It felt good to carry this bucket the “Haitian way” though because it humbled me and put me in my place. A lot of the people who see us working stop and stare, but this time it was different. As I walked by all of the women and men cheered for me for attempting the task and commended me for being such a hard worker. It felt great and I realize now how important it truly is to learn the culture and try to mimic it while working within a community. The children all knew my name after that point and the work became fun as we all toted buckets back and forth.
I am amazed at the ability of these young girls to carry such a weight. They are stronger than most men I know and definitely stronger than me. I can’t imagine the strain these children and women are put under to carry water from distant clean water sources. We hear stories of women and children walking for 5 miles with 5 gallons of water on their heads. I even had to use my hands to balance the bucket a little, but not these children. They would walk and talk and play and laugh all the while balancing perfectly their buckets. I am shocked, stunned and amazed.
Another interesting point is the fact that I was capable of carrying that load on my head when my arms would have failed me. I know now what to do if my laundry or groceries are too heavy. I’ll put it on my head as a little piece of cultural remembrance of my time in Haiti.