Evening in the Garden...

One of my favorite late afternoon ambles leads me to one of the gardens nearby.  I have planted a few things there, to which I tend.  It is quiet, green, and cool...I often feel like Adam and Eve who went "walking in the garden in the cool of the day" with God, as it is a special place to pray.  My soul always feels closer to God when I am surrounded by His thrilling colors and ingenious creativity in sky, mountains, fauna, and growing things.


Imagine, then, my delight when I found this gem of a poesy on the first page of a rather curious little book. 

A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!

Rose plot,

Fringed pool,

Fern'd grot--

The veriest School

Of peace; and yet the fool

Contends that God is not--

Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool?

Nay, but I have a sign;

'Tis very sure God walks in mine.

~Thomas E. Brown

Regrettably, there are no rose plots, fringed pools, or fern'd grots in any of my little gardens--and I have no idea what "wot" means--but this is one of my most favorite little literary packages ever!

Say! I DO Like Green Papaya, Sam-I-Am!!

Obviously being so far out in the boondocks, adding variety to our diet can be a little difficult...especially considering the fact that the Plateau and surrounding areas are chronically plagued by drought.  This, combined with that universal challenge called "budgeting," often inspires us to be creative in inventing new dishes using available ingredients (preferable grown by us).  

And for me, I often feel keenly the relative absence of fruit and GREEN vegetables (I am frequently given to cravings of a huge bowl of fresh berries or an apple or kale or a green salad), so....

Voila! The latest creation: Green Papaya Salad with Roasted Vegetables

I knocked a green papaya (papay) off the tree in the back of the house and made it into strips with a vegetable peeler (apparently, this is a staple ingredient of a well-known Thai dish called som tum...just in case you like random information).  Then I added grated chayote squash (militon) and moringa (doliv) leaves and flower buds (from the garden...I foresee a nice long post about moringa in the blog's future.)  We were going to add cabbage (chou) too, but it didn't arrive in time from the market.  The "greens" were tossed with Haitian vinaigrette. 

This base was then topped with boiled potatoes (pòmdetè) and roasted pumpkin (jiwoumou...from the garden), onions (zonyon), and eggplant (berejènn), also drizzled with the vinaigrette.

The result: fresh, nutrition-packed, inexpensive, and tasty....although the green papaya is a bit chewy.  In fact, we ended up having to chop it up, as the strips were too long and difficult to eat. 

No One Else Can Come to My Office In Their Underwear

One of the most frequent visitors to the finance office is someone who doesn't even know the difference between a gourde and a dollar...although, she does sometimes try to steal dollars and run away with them!

She comes so often, I gave her her own "desk" and put her to work.

Those are very important financial scribbles she's making with those markers.

Keeping a clean work space is not one of her strong points.

And she takes liberties that others may NOT (and I repeat: NOT)...like coming to my office in her underwear and lounging on my desk.

Next thing you know, I'll be feeding her grapes.

I guess I'll keep her around though...just for laughs.

You might find it...

...hard to believe...

...but I actually do....

...get work done...

...really, I do.

And just to prove we can take at least one semi-normal picture...

What's with the Title?

So why Deep in the Earth Above the Clouds as a title for a blog?  While the blog was initiated to give friends and family a visual glimpse into my life in Haiti, I did not want it to necessarily be limited to that.  (Okay, okay…so part of it was also my repugnance to the idea of a trendy travel blog with some silly name, like “Krischelle’s Haiti Adventures” or “Frost in the Tropics”.) 

When I arrived in Haiti October 2010 for a year of teaching English, a very clear purpose God developed in my mind was that of learning to abide, as Jesus expresses it in John 15.  As that has developed over time, trees with deep roots have become a meaningful symbol to me. 

Birds also are significant.  Even as a child, I used to sit and look at the pictures in my grandparents book of birds as I listened to the call of each bird on the accompanying tape.  They hold a rather tender place in my heart, connected to family.  But more than that, over the past year or two a bird began to represent for me flourishing and freedom.  There is something about a bird flying through the air and bursting into song…like it has a joy in its heart that springs from doing what it was made to do (flourishing).  David said, “Oh, that I had wings like a dove!  I would fly away and be at rest…”  There are times I wish I could just sprout wings and fly away to some beautiful place...wherever I wanted.  Perhaps, that is escapist.  Nevertheless, birds have also come to be a symbol of freedom in my mind.  (Although, I have to smirk at the irony.  I mean, birds seem free because they can fly, apparently….but in that case, I suppose that a bird would find a fish to be a symbol of freedom….maybe I’m just over-thinking it.)

Over the summer, the two symbols came together in my mind as a sort of mantra: Rooted like a tree, free as a bird.  The idea being this:  The more we abide in Christ (drawing life from him, totally trusting him), the more truly free we become.  We may not be able to explain why or how, but it is then that we will truly flourish, growing into all that God intended us to be.

So while my purpose here is to open a visual door into my life on a small plateau in Haiti, there are deeper and higher things intertwining and encompassing it that inspired the title.

Happy 2012!

Happy New Year!  Today I will be eating traditional and delicious Haitian pumpkin soup while many others are consuming pork and sauerkraut.  Come to think of it, the sauerkraut would taste pretty good in the pumpkin soup, but you can keep your pork, thank you very much.

Here is how Nini and I greet 2012.  She looks appropriately apprehensive and I look like I'm trying to scare it away.

(Actually, this picture was taken right before the Christmas program.)