Haiti is such a beautiful land, but yet such a poor country. I didn’t know that Haiti was the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere until I got here. Driving through the streets of Porte-Prince made me realize that in the past when I saw poverty and destitution on television it was almost as if I filed it away into my “oh that’s what poverty looks like” folder in my brain but never really thought about what it would be like to be walking, living, and breathing it. Seeing the people starring at me in the eyes and smelling the gut wrenching smells of city poverty made it all so real for me this week. Two years after the earthquake, there are still massive encampments of temporary tarp homes that were provided by some of the large aide organizations.
This month we are living in a town called Grande-Gove about 3 hours away from Porte-Prince. Our entire squad of 45 World Racers is living together this month. We are camping on the beach in our tents and working with a ministry called Mission of Hope International. They have a school of over 600 children K-12. Most of the children are from the surrounding area. The meal they get at school often times is the only meal they will have for the entire day. The church is rebuilding after the earthquake since they lost most of their buildings. Since they in the middle of building our team is doing a lot of construction this month. Lots and lots of bucket brigades of cement. These Haitian dudes are no joke, seriously they each do the work of like 3 normal human beings. The other day we unloaded 1,600 90lb bags of cement off of two semi trucks.
Between the Dominican Republic and Haiti I think I have seen more barefooted and naked babies and children than I have ever seen in my entire life, and I’m a nanny! My guess is that the reason is that there is so much dirt everywhere and if you are lucky enough to have clothes that clothes equals laundry, and for laundry you need water, which is a precious resource here. So the solution to that is that if you just let your children run naked and you only have to wash their skin and not their clothes.
Anyway, I love the work we are getting to do this month. I never really thought about that Haiti might be a place I fall in love with, but I really loving it here right now! The children with their dark brown skin and bright white eyes are so beautiful and they just melt my heart when they yell “ou, ou ou” at us which means “you, you, you” in Creole!
Mango trees surround our tent encampment, and they are my absolute favorite fruit. The first sentence I learned how to say in Creole when I got here was “Mwen game mango” which means “I like mangos.” Because it was the first thing someone taught me how to say I just kept repeating it over and over for the next few days and all my new Haitian friends started giving me mangos because of it. Not a bad first sentence to learn ehh! I am in heaven. Taking the canoe out on the ocean each morning to see the sunrise around 6:30am, before ministry starts at 7:30am, eating lots of mangos, the sound of the ocean lulling me to sleep in my tent each night, ministering to adorable little ones, and doing really intense construction. Man, I love this month!
