Haitian Braids

I just returned, late last night, from a week-long visit to my mom's small orphanage in Bon Repos, Haiti, just a few miles north of Port-au-Prince.  My mom uses her teacher retirement benefits and, as she always reminds me, my "inheritance" to feed and care for sixteen Haitian children.  I took a lot of pictures while I was there and I have many stunning faces and smiles digitally captured.  I thought long and hard about how to represent this trip without revealing the individual identities of the children.  I wanted to respect their privacy but I also had a strong desire to show the beauty and individuality of these kids.  Since the majority of my mom's children are girls and haircare is a serious daily preoccupation among them, I decided to take and display images of braids and braiding to give you just a glimpse into the rich texture that is the culture of Haiti.  My own hair was braided and rebraided several times during the past week, with less-than-satisfactory results. Most of the children, during play, braided each other's hair or grabbed a doll for a more cooperative form of braiding.  

Bon Repos

In about six hours, I'll be waking up to catch an early morning flight to Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  My mom has a small orphanage in Bon Repos, which is only a few miles north of the airport.  I'll be there for a week and won't have a way to reliably keep up-to-date on the news or react to it by blogging.  One of my favorite things in this life is to grab my passport, stuff a few things into my backpack, and wander off to actually see parts of the world instead of just reading about them.  My only regret about this trip will be that I won't be able to share it with you until I return.  I'll be taking pictures and making notes for future blog posts, don't worry, and I'll miss writing new posts as much as you'll hopefully miss reading them.  We'll "talk" soon.