Possibly my favorite experience with the kids was making ice cream with them. For whatever reason, I got it into my thick head that we should make fresh ice cream in Haiti. This turned out to be easier said than done.
Here are some good reasons NOT to make homemade ice cream in Haiti:
1. Haiti is located about 20 degrees from the equator, and temperatures on most days in Leogane range between 80-110 degrees.
2. You need ice for ice cream, in a country with little to no refrigeration and a tropical clime. Several large blocks of ice were needed for this “ice cream experiment”. Moreover, it comes in blocks, so the team had to break it up with ice picks. Yes, an ice pick in Haiti.
3. You also need cream for ice cream, which is really difficult to find. In fact, we ended up buying out Leogane’s entire supply of cream.
4. Ice cream salt, or “Gwo Sèl” in Kreyòl, is also almost unheard of in Haiti. It proved impossible to find, as well as caused much confusion amongst the Haitians I asked. No one seemed to know where in Haiti to find it; local suggestions ranged from the Discipline hardware store to the open market in Leogane to Port-au-Prince. It was easier just to bring a small stockpile from the U.S.
And let’s not forget to mention the problems that occurred. SURPRISE! Twice as many kids to feed, (and no more cream to be had)… The crank broke on the way down… We couldn’t get the lid to fit on… The aluminum ice cream barrel got frozen in place inside the wooden barrel… The plastic paddle froze in place…
In spite of all that was stacked up against us, the pros of making homemade ice cream did outweigh the cons. Some of the benefits included:
1. Michou’s eyes when she saw sprinkles for the first time. She didn’t know what they were. Can you eat them?
2. The enthusiasm for Magic Shell. –It was a pleasure to introduce it to others, because I love it so much, myself.
3. Everyone participated. -The girls mixed the ingredients; the boys cranked and had ice duty. The 3rd and 4th grade teachers, Mr. Jean Gilles and Mr. Francis Dort, took over when the boys were tired. The principal, Mr. Luxon, organized a repetition session to ensure the kids memorized the ingredients and, generally, bossed everyone around. The older girls from the orphanage helped to serve, clean up, but most importantly, to “remove” the paddle frozen in place by the ice cream. There was more “removal” of ice cream than anything else.
4. We witnessed about four miracles during the process. Just one example: there was enough ice cream for everyone, including the 50 schoolkids we didn’t plan for. That’s a lot of kids, about 100 total. I never saw 6 gallons of ice cream stretch so far. Everyone ate and was satisfied. It was like the Miracle of the Loaves and the Fish!
5. The kids loved the ice cream so much that they even made up a song about eating the ice cream. It went something like this: “La crème glace de Julie est bonne! The ice cream of Julie is good!” I will remember that forever… Music to my ears.
In the end, I hope that they too will always remember our amazing accomplishment, when we defied both the odds, (and practicality), and made homemade, hand-cranked ice cream on the equator, in a third-world country, in the middle of summer! Thank you, Jesus!