Days 3-5:

Most of our bags did not arrive with us, so many of us only had what was in our carry-ons. We expected such a twist, so I at least had one change of clothes and necessities, but one change of underwear in the sweaty jungle can only go so far. Anyway, this little detail set the tone of our stay, as we grew more attuned to the Haitian principle of "degaje" which is best summed up by Tim Gunn with, "Make it work, people." Just go with the flow, do what you gotta do, rig it, whatever; just don't lose your cool.

We woke on Day 3, ate incredibly fresh fruit and hiked into the center of the village of Marfranc to get to work painting a school. My friend Steve and I focused on spraying the upstairs, which was bare concrete, with base coats of barely tinted paint, more like colored water, which quickly soaked into the concrete. To paint the top of the second floor's outside wall, I salvaged a long bamboo stick and taped it to a roller. Made it work. The others painted the several downstairs rooms. Because of the thin paint, this process continued for multiple coats over the next few days. It was hot, dirty, sweaty work, and we all loved it.

We had planned to make farther hikes up to some even more remote villages in the mountains to scout sites for a clinic and a school. But we needed a truck to take us to a distant drop-off point, and our host’s truck was broke, and the clutch we brought with us for him to fix it was the wrong part. So we stayed in Marfranc. Degaje. And it turned out wonderfully.

In addition to multiple trips to paint, we also paid a visit to the local nursing home, where we brought a different kind of paint, for fingernails. I didn’t like the idea. I hate nursing homes. The stench, the sounds, the sock-clad feet dragging under wheelchairs. The loneliness. But that’s not at all what we found. We found massive smiles. Clapping. Fresh air, zero stench. Laughs. Dancing. And dignity. Far smaller than any nursing home I’ve been to, and far more public. No one had their own room, just their own cot and bedside table, sharing two single-room, open-hallway barns, for lack of a better descriptor. One for women and one for men. No closed windows, no doors. No privacy. But also no beeping medical equipment. No sterility. And not as much senility in my opinion. Just lots of precious souls encouraging each other to degaje. We handed out plastic shaving razors to the men, and then we moved over to the women’s structure. And that’s where my comfort zone disappeared, thanks to Joline, our hostess with the mostest, who invited us to paint the ladies’ nails, because they love it. It was the little push I needed.

I painted a few ladies’ nails, the first one’s name was Ramon, a frail lady. She had pus running from her eyes and had difficulty hearing. But she held herself with dignity and a refined toughness that only comes from degaje-ing over a lifetime of hardship. She pulled my hand to her lips for a kiss of silent gratitude. And with that I imagined my late grandmother, with her gentle touch, and all the other mother figures in my life, and how Ramon had this aura about her that all mothers share, and she felt like my grandmother. She loved me and I loved her. All the ladies, maybe 30 of them, got their nails painted, including a young lady, maybe in her teens, who apparently had MS or a similar disability. She can only just lay in her cot, with zero response, only looking as the world spins around her. And Steve, perhaps our “toughest” team member knelt down and painted her nails to make sure she wasn’t left out. It was a beautiful day.