DJ

Last Thursday night we had dinner with DJ, your favorite translator from your Haiti trip. He had been in the States since the 4th of July so he came to your funeral. (In the guest book, he wrote his name out which is Joseph Didier and then he wrote DJ in parantheses). He was leaving the next day, so we caught him right before he left town.
   He was staying with a young married couple in Monroe, or actually LaSalle. I was excited because it was near Monroe where we went to Sonic the night before your accident. Anyway, we drove and drove because they lived way out in the sticks. When we finally found their house, on a long stretch of road across from a cornfield, Dad knocked on the door and waited a while. We were a few minutes early and then DJ said from an open window that he would be right out. Dad thought we woke him up or something, so we waited for him. He took a while and came out and let the dogs out, etc. He was in no hurry at all even though we had been waiting for about 10 minutes. This reminded me of "Haiti time"** which you told us about and we asked him about that later.
    He got in the car and said we could either go to Monroe Grill or Ruby Tuesday. We ended up going to Ruby Tuesday. He was about Carter's size, small but muscular. We had plenty to talk about-it wasn't awkward at all. We learned that he grew up an orphanage since he was 2. He said he lived with his mom, dad and brother before the orphanage but some doctor/missionaries to Haiti noticed that he was being hurt by his brother and that his dad was abusive as well. One day when his mom was at work, they took him to live with him. Soon, though all Americans had to leave Haiti for some reason (he's 25, so we will have to check what was going on in the country at that time). Anyway, the missionaries felt that he was safer at the orphanage than back at his own home, that's how he ended up there. He said because he was in the orphanage that he attended school and had one meal a day, which was better than what he would have had at home. There was a 38-year-old lady there from America who ran the orphanage (he called her "Mommy") and she spoke English, that is how he learned English.
   She died about a year ago, which really broke him up. He stopped going to church and started to drink, which chased away all of his friends. He even tried to take his own life by drinking a cup of Clorox but, by God's grace, someone was there and had him drink some milk so he could throw up the Clorox. (He referred a lot to God in a lot of what he said, by the way). After this story or maybe before, I asked him if he had any advice about how to deal with grief. He told us that the loved one we lost wouldn't want us to ruin our own lives and that they would want us to go on and do good things. He also told us that he found his real mom soon after "Mommy" died so he lost one mom and got another.
  His relationship with his real mom is ok and he is working with her to decide if he should come back to the States and go to school. (That's why he was up here this summer to check in on classes, etc. but his Visa wouldn't allow it). If he did that though, he said he would miss working with all of the non-profits he works with because he loves to meet people. We asked about his dad and he said he was a very bad man and died by being burned alive.
   We asked if he had any stories to share about you and your time there. He said one thing that stood out is that you never complained-not even once. That says a lot about you considering there were probably a lot of things to complain about, like long truck rides, the heat, carrying the heavy equipment, climbing the mountain, etc. He also said that if there was a choice to do an installation inside a home or outside, you chose the outside one because children would gather when the installation team was outside.
   DJ said that everyone would have time to talk in the evenings and one night he asked the group, and he asked everyone to be honest, if any of them would ever want to come back to Haiti. He said that your hand was the first one up. God bless your sweet heart, Hayden!

**Haiti time: DJ explained that if someone said that they were going to meet you at a certain time, that it meant at least a half an hour past that time or even up to an hour or an hour and a half