Wednesday, April 25, 2018

April 25, 2018: Traffic, babies, and Papillon!

God graced us with another beautiful day!

Our original plan was to visit the home for sick and dying adults and Mother Theresa’s (home for sick and dying children). So, we hopped on the tap tap around 9:30 this morning to head toward Carrefour only to find that traffic was BAD. Like, try four different routes and exercise patience for two hours, bad. Come to find out that there was a crane stuck on the power line; it made sense why traffic was a little crazy! I’m going to do my best to not complain about traffic back home ever again.

After realizing that we weren’t going to make it to Carrefour, we decided to go to Papillon. Papillon was created about seven years ago by an American who initially visited Haiti in 2007 to adopt a child who was put up for adoption by a family who didn’t have the financial means to care for them. This inspired her to create a place that created jobs for people so they can provide for their families - how cool is that!? Papillon is a restaurant/shop that started out with 40 employees and today now has 250+ Haitian employees on site and 50 offsite. Men and women who work there are provided with free childcare and preschool for their kids while working, which is also super amazing.

Once we had fueled up (on yummy pizza and frozen lemonade/smoothies), we got back on the tap tap  and went to Mother Theresa’s. Our group was able to spend time with a lot of kids who were looking for a little love, which is exactly what they got! We were able to feed them lunch, play outside, read, and hold the babies/children, which was a really impactful experience for us. It didn’t matter that we didn’t speak the same language; love is a universal language that can break down many barriers.

Blessings!
Amanda