I intended to keep a journal while I was in Haiti, but there never was a spare moment to write in the one I brought. When I went back to look at my journal, I had one full entry, and then a partial one that dropped off mid sentence. Now that I'm back, I am overwhelmed at the thought of trying to put into words all that I saw and felt while I was in Haiti.
Suddenly I'm back in the grind of American life, but I'm exhausted in more ways than one-- physically, emotionally, mentally. I found myself crying several times yesterday thinking of Haiti. It's hard to explain what I'm feeling, and I've even lived through a similar experience for a much longer period of time, so I can't imagine what it must feel like for those of whom this was a brand new experience. The only way I can do this is to start from the beginning.
After my 10-hour overnight layover in the Fort Lauderdale airport, I was finally on my flight to Port Au Prince. Since I hadn't slept at all the night before I fell asleep almost immediately. The plane was filled mainly with Haitians, one of whom was a young woman and her toddler-aged daughter sitting in the row in front of me. I woke up to a strange groaning and then people calling for help. It took me a moment, through my glazed sleepy eyes, to figure out what was going on. The young Haitian woman in front of me was having a seizure. The flight attendants frantically called for any passengers with medical knowledge. A middle-aged American man, and a young Haitian man responded, and together with the flight attendants, did their best to take care of the woman. What might have been a simple solution, was complicated by an obvious language and culture barrier. Every question had to be translated into Kreyol. My heart was pounding as I thought about the woman's daughter, who was being held by a stranger in the row beside her mother's. I couldn't help but think of my own daughter and if I were ever traveling alone with her and something happened to me. I didn't have much time to process the flight before we landed, the women and her daughter were taken to a hospital, and I was on my way through immigration to meet up with the rest of the team.
When all the team had arrived, we loaded up a large bus, and headed for Jeremie. Bryan and Lisa said the bus ride could take anywhere from 8 to 18 hours depending on if we got a flat tire, or if we had to stop for road construction.
So we took bets on what time we would arrive in Jeremie - winner got half of a bag of peanut M&M's.
Below: Leaving Port Au Prince Friday, January 10th at 11:45 am.
A market in Port Au Prince
It was quite the bumpy ride, even with significant road improvements, so I didn't take many pictures, but below you can see what most of the ride looked like.
We arrived in Jeremie sometime between 9 and 10 pm, and one of the team members, Cianna, graciously accepted her M&M award while throwing up from motion sickness. It was a tiring ride for sure, and since most of the team had only slept a couple of hours the night before, everyone quickly settled into their hotel rooms to get some much needed sleep.
The next morning, after some delicious chopped liver over noodles for breakfast, we set out for the market in Jeremie. On our way there, we passed this man, probably in his fifties, carrying two five-gallon buckets filled with water. He is one of many people in Jeremie who have to walk miles to get clean water. Some of the guys on our team offered to carry the water the rest of the way for the man.
Below: Part of the market in Jeremie. Motorcycles frequently drove through the masses of people.
The market was incredible. Masses of people congregated throughout the streets; motorcycles honking as they made their way through clusters of people moving shoulder to shoulder. Under primitive structures, people were selling various produce, while others butchered massive cuts of meat with machetes. We wove our way on narrow paths through the market, passing booths of food, clothing, and packaged goods. People were selling anything from wheel barrows of some sort of meal, to black and white, pointy toe, patten leather shoes.
The whole time that we walked to and through the market, I was accompanied by a young Haitian man, Fritznel, who was teaching me Kreyol. As we continued through the market, Fritznel began to tell me about his faith in God. He kept telling me over and over how he, and we, are nothing without God, but with God anything can be done. He told me about his faith in the power of prayer, and how we must pray all the time because that is how we come to know God better. What he was telling me was so simple, things I know in my head, but prayer is something I have been struggling with in my heart, and so his words hit me like a ton of bricks. I was so humbled by this young man's faith in God and his devotion to prayer.
To be continued... (if I don't do this in segments I will never get it done!)
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