Hello Everybody!
Well, seeing as this is my first entry, I'll start with a little intro bit before the true blogging begins - My name is Mike Kozik, and I'm a third year Biology/Philosophy student at the University of South Carolina. Currently, I am a week into a six week stay in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, living with a group of about 17 young Haitian men, teaching English, and volunteering at a nearby clinic. Hope Outreach International (their website) - the program that I am working with - operates both the clinic and the "Teen Challenge" program with which I am staying (More information on "Haiti Teen Challenge" can be found at their website, here).
As for my week - it's been amazing. Being taken from the airport to the place I'm staying at was probably the most striking things I have ever seen. I wish I had taken some pictures, but I was in such a state of awe that the thought didn't really even cross my mind. It was hard to describe the full effect of everything - the streets were mostly made of dirt and in a universal state of disrepair. Some of the buildings looked almost as though the same descriptors could be applied - crumbling concrete with old, worn out paint jobs. But one thing was clear, the damage made by the earthquake from last year was still visible almost everywhere I looked. I asked Lionel (spelling?), the person who drove me, if the crumbled walls and exposed rebar I had seen were from the earth quake, and he told me that many of the houses damaged by the earthquake were still damaged. A wall, he told me (if I'm remembering correctly), had fallen from the third floor of one house onto his house, practically destroying a part of it. The damage still has yet to be repaired. He said that not everybody was physically injured by the earthquake, but most still felt an emotional trauma. The tent villages, which were large enough to see on my descent into Port-Au-Prince, were unlike anything I had seen before. It's hard to describe - I'll try to remember to take a picture the next chance I get.
So far, I have yet to visit the clinic that I'll be working at. But staying with the guys at Teen Challenge has been an adventure in itself! Everybody has such a personality that it's just been fun to be here. Having been here for only a week, I really already feel kinda like these guys are my brothers. The language barrier isn't too big of a deal. Everybody's been helping me pick up on the Creole, and I've learned a lot. Once I got comfortable enough with it, I started teaching my English class - which, thus far, has worked pretty well. Because a lot of the guys can speak pretty decent English, I've mostly had them ask me questions about what gives them trouble. Otherwise, I've done a lot of vocabularly (via the classic point and say 'this is...' method) and pronunciation. I have my own room, which has been very comfortable thus far. Although, unfortunately, the pump that brings water up to the house lost its electricity, so I have had to bathe old fashion-style, with a bucket and a makeshift-tupaware scoop. The bathing part isn't too bad, but the toilet not flushing kind of is. Oh well! As for the schedule, we wake up every morning at 6 and go to bed at 9. Chapel is at 8:30 in the morning, with study time for the guys in between meals and their class on the weekdays. We play basketball everyday before dinner, either starting at 4 on MWF, or after we do house cleaning on TTH. I teach my english class monday-thursday from 3:30 to 4:00. The foods been pretty tasty - for lunch (diner in creole), we usually eat rice with beans and some sort of spicy curry type meat dish. Sometimes, for breakfast (dejeoneur, and I'm sure I spelled that wrong), we get spaghetti, which is awesome. Dinner (suppe) is usually either porridge or bread.
One thing is for sure - these guys love their basketball, and I'm getting pretty hooked as well. We play at least twice a day - either one on one, two on two, or, most frequently, around the world. The bad news for me is that every time I lose around the world, I have to do 50 push ups. So... Every time I play, I have to do 50 push ups. And I play usually twice in the morning and twice in the evening. Hahaha at least I'll be bigger when I get home! But I've been getting better every day - my friends have been coaching me with my shot and my dribbling, and I've actually beaten some of them one on one. Although, of course, all of the push ups help.
Anyway, that's all for this post! I'll try to post more frequently for the sake of lengthiness - this post felt like it must have been pretty long. But with all that's happened this past week, I might be too wrapped up in the excitement of the next to keep my word on that.
PS - The Cock that you should see behind this is named George, whose naming I am happy to take credit for. He's pretty great. Unfortunately for him, my good friend Johnny says that come winter time, when George is good and fat, he's going to eat George.
