@birdingnut that sounds interesting. How did you come to be in Haiti?

@FrayedBear My American missionary parents went there to help build a radio station and I was born a few months later. My mom is apparently an intrepid person as my brother is only 11 months older than I am, and my oldest brother was five at the time.

My parents only had one-way tickets, and the other missionaries packed up and left as soon as they arrived!
Quite the adventurous sort of people. I'm not exactly a homebody, and I came by it honestly.

@birdingnut So you are the youngest of three! 11 months ... not long, my sister and I were 33 months and I suspect that I still resent her arrival as it marked the end of infancy. You would have been far too young to experience what is now regarded as a golden era in Haiti's history 1950+. Your record of the missionary radio station irks me as they moved into Australia about 30 years ago to envelop the country with their ghastly proselytising and happy slappy music ... if they played nothing but the wonderful works of Bach, Vaughan Williams, Vivaldi, Brahms, Handel, I may even listen to them. We used to have a rule in one company that an employee was never left in Darwin for more than 18 months. Perhaps Haiti back then had similar effect in turning people, even missionaries, troppo or alcoholic! Despite Haiti's economic dependence on USA for many it would have still been akin to venturing into the Amazon without a guide. Certainly people were mentally and physically tougher back then than they are now. I'm not quite sure how I am meant to understand your homebody reference honestly acquired or otherwise, it's not a word used by me.
PS. I appreciate your revised bio and photos.

@FrayedBear Thanks. I added a few photos of birds I've photographed to the profile. I was the middle child..two younger sisters. "Homebody" is a US term for a someone who likes to stay home, so I was making the comment that I'm the opposite.

My parents' moving to Haiti was great for me; I got to grow up in a tropical paradise, swim at the beach on Christmas, have horses and piles of exotic pets, plus allowed to do stuff most people never will do.

I was soon taking turns running controls as a radio operator, doing live music request shows, editing big reel-to-reel tapes we used back then, playing parts in hilarious dramatized shows, writing stories, drawing illustrations, singing on air in five different languages, accompanying various groups on piano, electric base, or skin drums. We also made two records, that included five languages, and did island tours.

@birdingnut To have done all that means that you lived there quite a while not only during the 50's golden era but also turbulent times. So how does a girl with all those privileges, advantages and evangelist parents end up being a spiritual secularist? 8)

@FrayedBear My parents were United Methodists, and liberal in many ways, as was our mission. My dad was a radio engineer, but had been a TV engineer before he went to Haiti., my mom was the program manager and had her own popular radio shows. The mission's goal was to help Haitians help themselves..people came from the US and built a clinic, schools, teaching farm, all intending the Haitians to take over for themselves, which they did, and the missionaries left. I just rode my horses and played with my friends.

But childhood MK (missionary kid) friends from other missions weren't so liberal, and it was their hateful memes on my Facebook page that was the last straw, although bad treatment by my US church when I was divorced had already convinced me to quit going to church.

@birdingnut Proving that in their eyes you were still a chattel and required to blindly follow patriarchal rule and dominance. What crap ... as bad as children being possessions - they are on loan and to be set free at the appropriate time unharmed. #$#%/=$%^& effing knuckle shuffling retards!

@FrayedBear You are showing your prejudice. In other cultures that is probably so but in Haiti at that time, most babies died, there was no medical help; people went to witch doctors who not only didn't help them, they'd keep charging them until their livestock was gone. People appreciated the mission school educations since that enabled them to start businesses and get jobs as teachers or professionals, and everyone loved the radio station..for the first time in their lives they could listen to world news in their own languages, hear local news, hear local musicians playing original music on the air, hear radio shows on health facts and hygiene, etc...most people kept their radios on as long as it was on the air. There was a second channel in French with more highbrow programs, jazz, etc.

@birdingnut I'm not talking of Haitians but of the inference from your divorce/ local church experience.
As for radio that sounds far more in line with what i would expect a community radio to do. Here the christian radios that have infiltrated are buying and broadcasting large quantities of American proselytising unwanted aural faeces supplemented by religious quasi elevator musak designed to hide the underlying subliminal messaging that also encourages addiction to the radio station and ideals espoused.

@FrayedBear That trouble with the churches had nothing to do with my mission. We were long gone. It was a local Christian church I started attending, and the MK friends who attacked me were generally from Baptist-type missions,

Oh arr, it were thee were it? I've got a mate who still dredges through the latest titbits on the internet. He repeatedly maintains that the evidence is that he was accidentally shot by one of his own running guards who stumbled.

like it matters now lol

@LeighShelton Some people have nowt better to do with their time.

I know good old humans @FrayedBear

Thanks. I was just wanting to share my story. Some folks evidently think my post is a repeat of others. Every story has its own unique tale.