Day One in Haiti

Wow, what a crazy day. Our goal on day one was to get from Santo Domingo, Domincan Republic to Fond Parisien, Haiti.

We started off by leaving Santo Domingo about 45 minutes later than we wanted to. Jacky, who is our contact on the ground here in Haiti, was not very familiar with Santo Domingo. So Mark used his maps application on his iPhone to navigate, and I drove. We made it out of Santo Domingo without too much trouble.

We stopped in Bani, which was about one hour into our trip, to get some breakfast. Everyone had chicken fingers and french fries from Pollo Rey (King Chicken). While we ate, the alarm on the car would randomly go off. Although we didn’t know how to use the clicker, because it was not clearly marked, we could always get the alarm to stop. When we were ready to leave, the alarm once again went off, but this time we couldn’t get it to turn off. A young man found a mechanic and 45 minutes later all was well.

We then continued on our drive to Haiti, and everything was going very smoothly until we came to a small community that was protesting because the water trucks had not arrived for a couple of days. They put tires in the road and set them on fire, so we could not get through. A military man was at the fire and told us to go down a dirt trail that went through the middle of a sugar cane field. So we, along with four or five other cars, began our caravan through the sugar cane field. After a couple of wrong turns, a motorcyclist came along and led us out of the field.

Once we were back on the main road we came to another road block, only this time some youth were throwing rocks at a car. A man from one of the other cars got out and talked with the youth, and they decided to let us pass.

When we arrived at the hospital in Fond Parisien, everything was well-organized and the doctors began seeing patients within 30 minutes of arriving.

Some other volunteers needed to get to another town called Miribalais. Mark and I decided to take them, and we spent the night at an orphanage in Miribalais. The orphanage housed over 70 children. The pastor who runs the orphanage is an incredible man.

There was a team from Texas at the orphanage. They were doing various ministries in the community and trying to complete the adoption process for 21 children and several families in the states. They are supposed to go to the Embassy today to find if the adoptions have been finalized.

All in all, it was a very interesting experience.