My Exercise Saga

Contrary to what most people said before I moved to Haiti, eating lots of rice and beans and Haitian food has not caused me to lose weight. First of all, Haitians use lots of oil and sugar in their cooking.  Secondly, most of the delicious street food is fried.  And lastly, they serve HUGE portions of rice and beans.  No matter how many times I tell Madame Jacquline, our cook, to give me half as much food as she gives the others, she doesn't remember.  I hate to waste food, I want to be a good example to the students, and I don't want to offend Jacquline, so I eat it every day.

BUT...

    

Recently, I decided I want to try and get back "in shape" and eat healthier foods.  Eating habits and exercise have always been a struggle for me, and its only gotten harder since I moved to Haiti.  I'm certainly not an inactive person.  In fact, I think its impossible to be lazy AND teach kindergarten in Haiti.   However, it is difficult to find time and a places to deliberately exercise here.

I've been skipping out on meals at the school.  I'm about 99% sure that Madame Jacquline thinks I've become anorexic overnight.  In reality, I've been eating a healthy breakfast in my apartment before the kids get to school.

Now, the interesting part off all this has been trying to find a good time and place to exercise.  I've had some problems in this department.  The first week of making healthy changes, I decided to try a program called "Insanity".  It is a series of DVD workouts that truly are insane.  Obstacle #1: I didn't have a good place do to the workouts because my apartment is too small.  I solved that problem by going into my kindergarten classroom after all the students and staff left to do the videos.  Obstacle #2: I didn't have any sneakers in Haiti.  (that shows you how often I run here).  I ordered some trail running shoes on amazon and had them shipped to a friend of a friend that was coming to Haiti two weeks later.  In the meantime, I didn't want to lose my motivation and give up on exercising.  So, I decided that I until my sneakers came, I was going to do the DVD's wearing TOMS as a substitute for cross trainers.  When in Haiti you must degaje (make due).

These are TOMS. 

Clearly that was a bad idea.  They kept slipping off my feet.  By day three, I had blisters on the bottoms of both my feet and I bruised my big toe.  Not to mention that insanity was really hard.  I decided that I better wait until I'm in a little bit better shape (and have proper footwear) before I attempt that again.

New plan: zumba in the comfort of my apartment.  I am not a highly coordinated person, nor would I ever consider myself a good dancer.  Let's just say that as I attempted to do zumba, I was very thankful for the privacy of my walls.  I'm sure the boys at the orphanage next door would have loved to see me try and follow the dancers on the video.  I'm fairly certain that I looked NOTHING like them.  Despite my lack of coordination, I enjoyed zumba.  However, I'm the type of person that doesn't feel like I really got a good workout until I am gasping for air, dripping in sweat, and completely exhausted...the zumba was just not cutting it for me.

With my sweet new trail running shoes in hand on foot, I decided that plan number 3 was to run.  Running, after all, is one of my favorite ways to exercise.  You wouldn't guess it by looking at me now, but I actually ran a half marathon just a few months before moving to Haiti in 2010.  It was, and still is, one of my greatest personal accomplishments, and I would love to run another one some day.  Now, let me clarify that I don't particularly enjoy running until I am actually in shape.  At the moment, I haven't yet gotten to that point.  I'm still in the "I think I might puke, my legs are burning, one minute of walking won't hurt me, I need water, why am I doing this to myself?, are you kidding I've only been running for 8 minutes?!" phase.

Getting up the motivation and courage to go running when you are out of shape is difficult even in the states.  So, just imagine how I was feeling trying to do that here in Haiti.  For the first run, I decided to go to my church.  It is just down the street from my apartment, and they have a good sized property.  A friend of mine suggested that I could run laps around the church property.  Like most places here, it has walls so I knew I could run in peace without the eyes of curious Haitians.  It wasn't a "bad" run per say, but after a few laps I was tired and bored and I knew that I wouldn't be able to tolerate running there very often.  

Several days passed and I simply did not have the free time to fit in another run.  Thanks to daylight savings, I had time to run today before the sun went down.  I still did not have the courage to run out in public, not because I felt out of shape, but because I knew how many Haitians would stare at me.  I truly don't know what I was thinking at the time, but I got the bright idea that I could just jog back and forth on the driveway at the school where no one would see me.  Again, I have NO clue what I was thinking because the driveway is really not that long.  Ten laps up and down the drive way was annoying enough for me to suck it up and go for a normal run out in public.

I left my apartment with my gate key in one hand, my iPod in the other hand, and my cell phone tucked safely in my sports bra (classy, I know).  Degaje.  My theory was that if I turn my iPod up loud enough, I wouldn't hear any of the Haitians calling me blan or making fun of me for running.  On a typical walk somewhere, I would say roughly 50% of the Haitians that I pass on the street either say blanc, stare at me, or make annoying cat calls.  I learned today that if I want 100% of both Haitians and blancs to stare at me, all I have to do is run and be dripping in sweat.  I mean honestly, you would think that I was dressed as a clown riding an elephant for as many stares as I was getting.  Oh, my life.

Somehow I managed to run for almost 40 minutes with out dying, although I felt pretty close to death.  While I was running, I passed several of my Haitian friends.  "Wow, you like to exercise?" they asked me.  When I replied, "No, not really but I have a "gwo vant" (big belly)" they got a good laugh.  When I was almost home, some of the neighborhood boys came running after me.  I was dripping in sweat, my face was red, and I was out of breath.  They thought it was hilarious when I asked them if they would carry me to my gate...I was only partially kidding.  Still, despite the fact that I was about ready to pass out, they complained that I didn't hear them knocking on the gate the day before and they asked me for some food. 

Besides being starred at and being chased by hungry children, there are other factors that make running here more difficult than running in PA.  #1- its hot...very, very hot.  #2- Its dusty.  Sweat and excessive dust do not exactly go well together.  I swear I was a darker shade of brown when I finished my run. #3 - There are no sidewalks on the less populated roads around my neighborhood. #4 - The majority of roads here are not paved and they are incredibly rocky.  Hence the reason I bought trail running shoes. #5 - Haiti is full of hills.  Literally the entire first half of my run was uphill, not even joking.  Let's just say that if I can commit to running (or any other form of exercise here) on a long term basis, it will be a miracle of God.  

My brand new, just out of the box running shoes

My brand new, now dusty and dirty running shoes after only TWO runs