The Dryden Family to Haiti

We are the Dryden Family –

Benji, Kerri, Micah (13), Ethan (10), and Katie (8).

We are from Calvary Baptist Church in Flora, Illinois, and have been serving in Port-de-Paix, Haiti, for 8 years now. 

{You can follow Kerri on her blog.}

My husband grew up in Haiti since he was 15 months old.  So he already knew the language, understood the culture and loved the food.  That was a little intimidating for me at first.One of the biggest adjustments for me was getting used to the food that was available and learning how to do most everything from scratch.  For instance, if we want to have hamburgers or hot dogs, I have to think far enough ahead to make the buns, too.  We have no fast-food and very little pre-packaged food available.  This is actually something that I’ve really come to love.  We are all so much healthier because of it.

I thought I’d share about a few of the foods that we enjoy regularly because they are readily available.  We frequently eat fresh bananas, mangoes, pineapples,  and avocados.  In our yard we have passion fruit, guavas and whatever vegetables are ripe in the garden (right now it’s LOTS of okra).

One thing we all enjoy is fresh hot chocolate.  The cocoa bean is grown in the mountains near here.  We have a little old lady that comes regularly and we buy the chocolate (after they’ve taken it out of the bean) molded in sticks, wrapped in banana leaves.  We enjoy the finished product.

One of the kids’ favorite snacks is called a kenèp (not sure of the English translation).  It has a thin shell that you pop open.  Inside is a large pulp-covered seed.  The pulp is very sweet and juicy.  You suck all juice/pulp off and throw away the seed.  

Of course, living ¼ mile from the ocean brings us fresh seafood quite often. 

            

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 KIdZ kOrNEr

One of my kids’ favorite things to do is go crabbing.  Our yard is full of land crabs.  When it has been raining or it’s the full moon, the crabs are scurrying away from their holes.  Our kids take a bucket, a stick, and a flashlight, and go crabbing.  They hit the crab into the bucket with the stick.  Once it gets daylight, the crabs are back in their holes, so this is something the kids do after evening church services.  They’ll scout them out as we walk home from church.  Then they get their buckets and go hunt

                               

What do you do with them you might ask?  They end up on our dinner table!!

                                                                   

We also share them with our church family as well.  Sometimes the kids have caught enough for everybody in our church to have some.  

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