Yesterday we got to travel out of Port-au-Prince to Gilliam's orphanage about 45 minutes by car. Once we maneuvered through the streets of Port-au-Prince we actually found a good road. The highway north of the city that runs along the Caribbean Sea. Even though it was a great road there were still many "Haitian Speed Bumps" along the way. In the U.S. we call them pot holes. I jokingly call them "Haitian Speed Bumps" as they truly cause all traffic to slow down—sometimes to nearly a full stop due to their width and depth.
Jean, our director for Healing Haiti, had arranged for a bus to travel to the orphanage with us. To my understanding in order to hire the bus, Jean had to meet the bus driver at a gas station so the bus could be fueled up and Jean would pay for it. We caught up with the bus at the gas station. In typical Haitian culture, the bus was brightly decorated on the exterior with fantastic Caribbean colors, words of adoration and praise to God and Jesus and paintings of people. We think it might be a bus that would be hired for a wedding as the scenes painted seem to depict marriage. On the bottom of the side of the bus were words like Love, Passion, etc…all in Creole.
When we arrived at Gilliam's Orphanage we were created in typical fashion by throngs of smiling, joyous kids! We walked into the courtyard of the orphanage and all the kids were wearing tie died t-shirts that they made last week with the mission team when they visited them. The lined up in a semi-circle and sang for us. It was beautiful and they all sang with the loudest of voices.
After the songs Gilliam had the kids line up from the shortest to the tallest—40 in all. The 2 shortest of the group were 2 of the cutest little girls. They then marched in line out to our wedding bus. I climbing in first and moved toward the back, immediately 2 of the smallest boys jumped into the seat with me—1 in my lap and the other on my side. The little boy on my side grabbed my arm and had me put it around him and pull him close. That's how we rode the entire 1 hour trip out to the beach. Near the end both fell asleep 1 on top of the other. It was so cute!
The kids continued to sing most of the way to the beach. Now it's hard to describe how the bus is. It's not a bus in our traditional sense of a bus. It's a bus, but it's more like wooden bench seats mounted on the back of a long diesel truck with a canopy over it. The overall room from the floor of the bus to the ceiling is probably no more than 4 feet. There were 10 rows of 2 sets of seats with an aisle in the middle. Each bench seat was no more than 3 feet long. We packed 40 kids, 5 adult members of the mission team and Gilliam and Noel from the orphanage in to the bus. Oh, and I had a burlap sack filled with sugar cane that some pushed through the window just before we left the orphanage at my feet. Cramped, crowded, hot and full of vibrant singing children.
When we arrived at the beach it was beautiful! The beach front is private and there's a gate with a guard to enter. You pay to enter and for the 40 kids and 9 adults it was roughly $350 U.S. We were able to occupy the only shelter house on this beach to set up for the day. AS soon as we set our cooler and boxes of food down, the kids were changing into their swimming clothes—the boys all had shorts and white tank tops and the many of the girls the same—certainly made it easier to keep track of them all. Our job was then to create the human line to prevent the kids from getting out too deep. For some of the kids it was the very first time they had not only played in the ocean—it was the first time they had ever seen it. The joy on their faces is indescribable. They ran and jumped and played and ran and jumped and played for nearly 2 hours before we had to slow them all down long enough to eat lunch.
After lunch they were all back in the water for another 2 hours. I don't know about the kids but all that time in the water certainly had me wiped out and sleeping well last night. In fact I was so tired I believe it was the very first night I snored on this trip. (some of you reading this won't believe me…. J)
One last note from the beach…we (the mission team) was a tourist attraction! What I mean by that is that as soon as we got the beach, there were a number of UN Peacekeeping forces on the beach. They were in full uniform complete with helmet and machine guns. They all wanted to have their pictures taken with the pretty women on the team and then they wanted their picture taken with Craig and me. Throughout the morning they were coming to our area of the beach and asking for more pictures. It was funny and they were all very nice. There were 3 groups of soldiers there—1 group from Nepal, 1 group from Brazil and the other from the country of Georgia.
As the afternoon ended, we had to load up and head back to the orphanage. Once again the kids lined up from shortest to tallest and then marched to the bus. I chose to ride back in the back of our tap tap (our Healing Haiti truck) so I could see some of the countryside. I'm glad I chose that as it seemed to be a different world than what we see in Port-au-Prince every day. The hillsides were lush and green, there were fields and fields of plantain groves. We saw a funeral process on our trip back as well. It was a line of people, all dressed in black and white marching along the roadside to the cemetery just at the edge of the town. There was a brass band leading the processional followed by the 2 coffins of whomever had passed away.
When we arrived back at the orphanage we were given a tour. We saw the girl's room first, then walked through the room that in the summer serves as the dining room and then we saw the boy's room. When Jeff, founder of Healing Haiti, found this orphanage none of the children had beds. Instead they slept on mats on the floor of the rooms. Today they all have bunk beds with foam mattresses. Healing Haiti did a fundraiser to be able to buy the bunk beds for the kids. They did it by asking everyone back in the U.S. to donate just $25 and by finding 100 to do so—these wonderful children now have bunk beds and now longer sleep on the floor. It was a great example of how a small number of people can donate just a small amount of money and have a HUGE impact in the lives of so many wonderful children.
We arrived back at our mission house just after 6:00 p.m. Tired, a little sunburned and as always, hot and sweaty. It's at the end of days like this that the lack of hot water makes no difference when you step into the shower. I long cold shower felt incredible!
Last night we had a dinner guest. It was Woodeman Joseph, a young man I will attribute to me making this trip. I met Woodeman when he was a guest of Darlene Colwell-Ellis in Dover, New Hampshire earlier this year. Darlene is a Keller Williams agent who attended my BOLD class in Portland, Maine in January and February of this year. Woodeman came to visit her and sat in on 3 of the days of class. He and I had a chance to sit during lunch and visit. I was able to learn a little more about Haiti and the challenges the people here face. Between meeting Woodeman coupled with the conversations I'd had with Paulette Carroll I knew coming to Haiti was something I needed to do. I'm very in tune that when God brings people into my life with messages I'm learning to listen to them and take action. This trip would be an example of that.
Woodeman speaks very good English and works as an interpreter for an organization called Partners In Development. He's also an entrepreneur and is working on creating businesses for himself. We had a chance to visit before dinner. I shared with him there was no way I could truly appreciate the challenges he faces working to start a business here in Haiti until I've actually seen the country. I now have some understanding of the difficulty anyone faces.
To share an example of this, Woodeman and I had been communicating via e-mail about a business idea he had to start and Internet Café. He shared with me his business plan including the needed equipment and start up budget. It looked like something I could help him with financially and it was a plan that made sense on paper. He then began to search for a space to rent for the café. It wasn't possible to find a storefront to do so. I couldn't understand that until I got here…store fronts don't exist in most of Port-au-Prince. Almost all commerce is conducted under make shift tents and lean to's in front of the rubble of the buildings that used to be the store fronts. An internet café couldn't survive exposed to the elements and dust of the streets of Port-au-Prince.
Jean had picked Woodeman up where the tap tap he rides brought him to the center of the city. After dinner I road with them back to that spot. It was just after 8 p.m. and it was dark outside. In Haiti, dark outside means dark outside. There's very little electricity available and as we drove through the streets of the city toward to the center, the only light I saw was from the headlights of the pickup truck or an occasional candle lighting a table of a vendor. Even though it was nearly pitch black, the streets were still teaming with people! This short ride was a completely different experience from the daylight trips through the city.
We got Woodeman back to the pick-up spot just as the last tap tap of the day was leaving for his area of the city. He was able to get on and we headed back to the house. Along the way I was able to question Jean on some of the Haiti questions I had. First, I asked if the streets were in such poor shape because of the earthquake in 2010. He laughed and said everyone asks that question. Apparently the streets in Port-au-Prince have been the same since they were put in. As Jean explained it there was no "master plan" for the development of Port-au-Prince. As a landowner decided to create lots he or she would simply plot the land and leave a space for a road. These roads truly remind me of the field road on my parent's farm…rutted and rocky where you could only move comfortably over them at the speed of a tractor. What's odd about the streets, however, is that every once in a while there will be 1 block where there's beautiful curb, gutter and asphalt—just for that 1 block and then back to normal.
We ended the day with Salsa Dance lessons from Jean. He's an incredible dancer and cleared space in the kitchen to teach those of us with enough energy left to learn the basic steps. I now know the Mambo, Cha Cha and Merengue….dancing with the stars look out!
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