Saturday Baseball - Monday Carnival

On Saturday I was going to write a nice short blog about how we try to make things as normal as possible living in Haiti. Normal, like baseball games on Saturday mornings with a handful of other families. I started to write about a fun filled Saturday afternoon doing family type stuff but never finished.
Sunday Parker wasn't feeling well so I stayed home from church with him and tried to get caught up on my growing list of things to do. Sunday night was game night, pretty normal. Minus the fact that the night air was filled with the sound of rara bands passing up and down the street as we played cards and ate popcorn for dinner.
We went to bed late Sunday night knowing we could sleep in a little bit since we are on spring break this week while the whole country celebrates Carnival. Carnival is a really big deal here. I have never been to Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras in New Orleans but I am guessing Haiti would be on the extreme end Mardi Gras Madness in the States. In preparation they build massive band stands to play very loud music, randomly close off streets with trucks full of speakers bigger than people for even more music creating even more of an already confusing maze for those who are trying drive here, they dress up in costumes and go to massive parades, hundreds of young people fill the streets while they dance to rara music moving like a flood up and down Delma all the way from Port to Pentionville at any given time. This too is what is normal here for Carnival.

Monday morning came around and we loaded up the truck for a beach day with the Hojo's. Again, normal spring break stuff.
Believe it or not everything was falling in line with the theme of my original idea to talk about how we are doing normal things here in Haiti. When off in the distance I see this guy walking toward us surrounded by little kids. He was dressed in a big jewel toned sheet, had a snake skin around his neck, some kind of shawl around his shoulders, a cowboy hat on his head, this scary mask on his face and he wanted all the kids to put their hand in his box to get a prize as part of the Carnival celebration.

When he said, it might be scary, all attempts of normal flew out the window.
Maddie wanted nothing to do with him. Caleb and Charmaine are teenagers, enough said. That left Parker. I couldn't imagine what was in the box? But, Parker had no fear and put his hand right in with no problem. He didn't start screaming or crying so that was good. He didn't jump back or freak out so it couldn't have been too bad. It turns out that there was a puppy and a frog inside the box.
Normal, everyday beach stuff!

So, maybe I should say we live in "pockets" of normal here in Haiti. Normal is kind of woven into what is odd, strange and unperdictiable at times.
This has become normal for us and most of the time I enjoy this kind of normal. We have gotten used to it and it seems normal. Infact, so much so, that playing baseball can seem abnormal. Strange but true!