Life & TravelRebecca Shetler Fast

Life & Work Update

Life & TravelRebecca Shetler Fast
Life & Work Update

It's been an exhilarating whirlwind in our first two months officially on the job. Paul has been doing quite a few trips to remote areas of Haiti with our agricultural partners, while I have been getting to know current, and hopefully future, partners in Port-au-Prince. I am writing this from Honduras where we have gathered with our colleagues for regional meetings. While we have both been out of the office a lot this past month, we have also been working, along with our staff, to create a new blog to communicate about the work our organization, MCC, is doing in Haiti. We hope this gives you more context for our work. If you want to follow along, you can subscribe to monthly updates.

On a personal note, our little baby Madeline is not so little anymore, and turned 4 months old last weekend. My favorite time with her is in the early mornings, the roosters are crowing, the temperatures are cooler, and Madeline spends her first half hour of the day making drowsy cooing sounds from her crib... we call them baby dinosaur noises. It makes for a lovely wake up soundscape, even if the hour is earlier then we are used to!

www.haitimcc.org

www.haitimcc.org

Madeline practicing standing on a blanket made by her great-grandmother.

Madeline practicing standing on a blanket made by her great-grandmother.

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Madeline's First Tastes

It is a muggy August evening here in Port-au-Prince. The fan is fighting a losing battle to keep us cool as we wash dishes together at the sink. Madeline’s bedroom door is open, and we hear her quiet hiccups as she sleeps. It is hard to believe that this time last year we were cooking in our Pittsburgh kitchen, planning our baby’s birth in a country we had never before visited. Madeline will be 7 months old next week, and each day her little personality gets bigger. She is a warm and pensive little baby, who adores her sleep. Madeline has figured out that the world is best when put in her mouth, and this week mastered crawling. This month has also marked Madeline’s introduction to solid food, and our excited creation of her first tiny meals. Her hands down favorite flavor combination is beet watermelon puree, with Paul’s Massaman curry a close second. Her least favorite; her papa’s attempt at a spicy potato leek soup. As people who love to cook, it has been thrilling to see Madeline’s world expand with every taste. Dorky new parents that we are, we both sit with rapt attention for each new bite: there’s a squint of her eyes, a slight cock of the head, and a furloughed brow, her tongue slowly rolling the new flavor around her mouth…and the moment of decision: food, or not-food. Luckily for us, Madeline has all but once given our weird concoctions the benefit of the doubt. To the joy of first tastes.

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Madeline's First Tastes
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Food and Thoughts of 2016

We catapulted into 2016 in a new country, jobs, and language. Learning Haitian Creole together had moments of both frustration and hilarity. We practiced our new vocabulary at the maternity clinic, when two months after we arrived in Haiti, we became parents! Paul reflected about becoming a father to a daughter, pondering some of the global challenges that girls and women face. Madeline could not have a bigger ally in her proud papa. This year, our first as parents, we have felt deep gratitude and joy for our little daughter. Along the way we also started trying our hand at Haitian cooking, learning to make some of the iconic sweet, savory & spicy dishes we had learned to love. And through it all, our little baby kept growing, and so did we...

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Food and Thoughts of 2016
Life & TravelPaul Shetler FastComment

Praying for Haiti -- Hurricane Irma

This evening, Hurricane Irma, a category 5 Hurricane and one of the largest on record, is churning westward towards Haiti. The most serious of its effects will likely reach Haiti Thursday evening. Across Haiti people are praying for a miracle. While the eye of the storm is unlikely to make landfall in Haiti, its winds and rains are expected to bring tremendous suffering. In river valleys across northern Haiti, families are bracing for floods. On windswept mountains, people are looking out to sea, praying for protection. New parents are holding their children tight, praying that their roofs will hold during the storm. The farmers we work with across the Artibonite and Central Plateau are anxiously watching their crops, hoping they will not be washed away. We pray tonight for the safety of our staff, for our partners across Haiti, for the tens of thousands of people in the storm's path without protection or a safety net. We pray that in the months ahead, Haiti and her people will have the strength for the slow and painful work of reckoning and rebuilding. Just eleven months after Hurricane Matthew, we pray Haiti has the resilience to struggle back to its feet, once again. Please pray with us.

Life & TravelPaul Shetler FastComment
Praying for Haiti -- Hurricane Irma