GOOOOLLLLLL!!!!! The universal word for joy :)

World Cup has arrived!!! so streets, buildings and even people’s clothes are decorated with their favorite country’s team flag or at least colors. In front of the place where our street pops out onto the main drag, the divider in the middle of the road is even painted green and yellow for Brazil, one of the favorite soccer teams here in Haiti. Further down Delmas (that same main street) someone has strung hundreds of yellow and green soda bottles across the road as a canopy and added Brazil, Argentina and Haiti flags. Sunday afternoon we met with a couple of happy crowds celebrating Brazil’s victory. A couple guys on a motorcycle with Argentina jerseys even were joining in the joy.

During World Cup we have heard that we should get lots of city power….meaning about 15 hrs per day!! We have still been trying to conserve power and survive on energy generated by our solar panels, but we were really thankful to have city power (EDH) for washing our clothes from the trip and all of the kids’ clothes that had gotten so filthy during our months away.

Wednesday morning I saw four guys messing with our neighbor’s power pole. This made me a little nervous since last fall someone from the power company came and just took our power meter even though I showed them the receipt saying that we had paid our bill. Maybe they had run out of meters and someone else more important wanted one??? Yet these guys seemed to be installing a meter, and one of them had a hard hat and looked official, so I did not ask any questions. Since our power went out right about that time, I suspected that those guys really had done something after all, but it was much more serious than cut wires. No sooner had they driven off in their EDH truck than George (Crismen’s husband who sweeps leaves for us) came and told Julie (our across the street neighbor) that a big truck had pulled the high voltage electricity wires, and that the road was blocked. The pole fell, but that was soon cleared out of the way. Now as we wait for power to be restored we are thankful for solar power which allows us to run fans and keep our refrigerator and MAF internet running.

(Just saw the guys working on several power poles!!!! Hopefully electricity will be back soon.)