New Life Children's Home

Bekah and I went to New Life Children's Home to do a caregiver's school to some of the workers there. We taught nutrition, dehydration, the Heimlich maneuver, positioning and stimulation, etc. New Life has about 100 kids and it is a beautiful orphanage.About 20 of the kids have disabilities. It's really a great place. It's a large compound with beautifully painted buildings, all the kids have beds, they are raising chickens, fish, and rabbits to eat, they have a vegetable garden, and a water purifying system.There is a nice kitchen and guesthouse and all the buildings have tile floors and electricity. You can tell that everyone there is there for the right reason and there is no shadyness going on with funding or supplies. It's really a peaceful place. If anyone ever wants to volunteer in Haiti, you should look into going there. It's $35 dollars a day to stay there and that includes breakfast and dinner. Anyway, we met a girl named Sarah there who is doing a lot of the administrative things right now. She is great. She was living in Florida and lost her job teaching school, so she decided to come to Haiti and work with disable kids for her church. She told us about and tent city they went to visit and had found out there was and orphanage in the tent city.There are 24 kids and one lady on some property with a little bit of barbed wire around it.Half the kids didn't have pants on and the orphanage is just one bigger tent with lots of little tents around it for the kids. When they showed up with food, none of the kids had eaten all day, and apparently they ate the leftover chicken soup for dinner the next day. Those kids wouldn't have eaten for 3 days had they not brought food. They are trying to convince this lady to move to some property they have closer to the town next to their church where they could have access to water and they could get them food. But for whatever reason lady doesn't want to leave her property at the tent city. So sad. I had never even considered that there would be tent orphanages. But with all of the people displaced, it makes sense.

On a happier note, Big Mac went to the embassy this morning to try for his 3rd time to get a student visa. He got it!!!! We are all so happy for him. He will be staying with Sandy and her family and go to Salt Lake Community to study physical therapy. On our way home from the orphanage today we drove through City Soleil. Up to a couple years ago no one ever went through there because of the danger. Apparently all of the head gangsters that used to live there are either in jail now or have died. I guess things in Haiti are actually improving. They will be announcing the election results on Thursday night. The two candadits are a Haitian pop star and a former first lady whose husband didn't help the country much when he was in office. This should be interesting.