Page 72 - Keralite Magazine _new 1 copy
P. 72
KERALITE
2018
From swaying coconut trees to the littoral, blue sea, mother and father. Our house was quaint and had
it felt like I was more at home than ever. After nine sheets of plastic serving as doors, as well as a
hours of driving up rutted roads we finally reached latrine and more sheets to create a showering
our village of Thomas Élie. As we arrived children, space. Every night I took a flashlight and headed
adults, and the elderly all swarmed our cars, as if we out to shower, and I was able to look up and see the
were celebrities or special cargo. Our Haitian big dipper as well as a myriad of other stars.
counterparts then hosted an amiable opening
ceremony with everything ranging from singing to Despite the schedule being the same for the next
dancing. No time was wasted as we headed up to eight days, each and every day included di erent
the worksite right after the celebration concluded. and eye-opening experiences. I was able to freely
I’ll never forget walking up the steep incline and roam the settlement and saw over fifty people
then being able to look over the green, cramming into a house to watch the World Cup, or
mountainous, picturesque idyll. As the sun started teenagers participating in their own soccer
to set, we were dismissed to meet our new host matches. We saw monopolies and oligopolies in the
families. The anticipation was slowly eating away at hamlet, and how they learned to prosper despite
me as I was so eager to learn whose family I would dealing with a superfluity of natural disasters as
become a part of. My host family included a well as political unrest. We worked hand-in-hand
four-week-old kitten named Minu, five-month-old with the villagers on the worksite building the
baby named Lance, a ten-year-old boy named school for at least four hours a day, bonding and
Jamieson, a sixteen-year-old sister named Tina, two loving each other in spite of the linguistic divide.
goats named Gary and Gertrude, and our host Every moment from dawn to dusk we were
encompassed by young Haitian kids who wanted
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