The Quilt – Part 3
I love this picture. We bought
the t-shirt at a Baptist encampment up in the hill country from Petionville.
Petionville is the wealthier part of Port au Prince. The little compound has a
restaurant, a souvenir store and a small zoo. Roberta would occasionally load
all her kids into one of the large trucks, along with Charlene and me and would
haul us all up the hill to what they called “the zoo”. She would feed us all in the American style
restaurant after we had checked on the animals.
Our trip to the zoo was just one
of many delightful memories of our time in Haiti. We visited the country for about 24 years and we spent two of those years hosting the Estes
Church’s guest house for medical teams and other transient missionaries. While
there, we met lots of fascinating people, including Roberta’s friend Bobbie.
Bobbie was a retired education professor who wanted to improve the Haitian
educational system. She and Roberta worked out a plan and Bobbie would come
down every three or four months bringing along some of her former students, now
teachers in Tennessee’s school system. They formed relationships with teachers
and principals in some of the more promising schools and began to teach them
how to better reach their students with the material they wanted them to know.
Bobbie was hit hard by Roberta’s
murder. You can read her reaction and much more about Haiti in Charlene’s new
book "Roberta - Joy and Courage in a Clay jar Too Soon Broken"
