Haiti: Part de

Photo Cred: Roy Greensberg, impressive for hanging out the back of a tap-tap

Photo Cred: RG

The trash filled chaotic gob of humanity that is Port-Au-Prince was pretty much what I was expecting. The drive through the country side plus many side comments made from previous team members had me thinking we would arrive in Jolivert to a thatch roof hut and a hole for an outhouse. What I was not expecting was how beautiful the drive was (at least the first 2 hours of the 4 hour drive).

It's a total of 4 hours from Port-Au-Prince to Missions of Love, Clinique de Jolivert. To help you navigate refer to: MAP. The first 2 hours of the trip consists of a nice minimal bounce pavement drive north along the coast to Gonaives, this is also the majority of the distance we needed to cover. We stopped for a leisurely 3 hour meal in Gonaives, where Jil and I split 2 dishes: the shrimp curry and the cabrit creole with fried plantains. Amazeballs.

Cabrit! (Aka goat)

The next 2 hours would take us close to Bassin-Bleu (if you're still following the map) and were spent bumping, jostling, careening, and using a passenger bus as if it was an all terrain vehicle. It's not an all terrain vehicle if you were wondering. Before I could disown my ass cheeks as being part of my body we arrived in Jolivert!

Wait a minute... am I on the set of MASH?!
WHOA! Helicopter overhead! I guess this is my unmilitary account of the going-ons...

Jil and I were completely prepared to spend the next 6 days sans a shower and armed with 5 different kinds of baby wipes between the two of us. Shockingly enough there were several bathrooms and... wait for it... Internet?! We're in the middle of no where Haiti third world country and we have the inter web. One panoramic view of the mountains would we reveal no fewer than 3 cell phone towers. Electricity was only on for certain hours at night and the only way to know for certain if there was power was to listen for the tell tale hum of the generator. Showers are a gentle trickle giving you the feeling of being peed on, except if you were actually being peed on it would be much warmer. Sigh. But there were beds and lights and trickles and nets and those prehistoric vehicles actually did run. 

If you need to take anything away about Haitians, they are highly adaptive and put all of our mechanics in the states to shame. To shame.

I think I need a sound machine now that I'm home,
or 11 other people sleeping in close proximity to me...

XOXO

Kiki