Beginning Perceptions

Well, it was a very interesting day as you might imagine.  I’ll try to touch the high points without going too far off into the weeds but there’s a lot talk about. Also, this is going to be pretty raw as I don’t have much time to edit it. But right now I feel like information is more important than quality.

The flights went fine, there were no issues there to speak of. I did meet a very interesting young man on the flight to Ft. Lauderdale.  He was born in India but grew up in America. We talked about all sorts of things and I was impressed with, at 27, how much more aware of his surroundings he was than I was at that age.  I liked him almost immediately.

We got into Ft. Lauderdale at midnight. My new friend said I’d be welcome to stay at his place. But since he lived 60 miles away I stuck with my plan to sleep at the airport. Seemed pretty reasonable, especially with a 5:30 boarding time the next morning.  That plan would have worked fine had I thought to bring a blanket!  I caught a little sleep here and there but I was just too cold and uncomfortable to sleep much.

I slept most of the hour and a half flight into Port Au Prince.  But as we were landing I got a decent look at the island of Hispaniola.  It was way more mountainous than I would have though.  There didn’t look like many good places to farm or even live – at least on our flight path.  The bay coming into PAP was beautiful and the water seemed very calm and clear.  On the north side of the plane I didn’t get as good a view of the city as I’d hoped but I did snap a couple of pictures. Certainly I didn’t see the kinds of organized city patterns that I’m used to seeing flying into first world cities.

The airport itself was fairly nice.  Apparently it has had a lot of renovation since the earthquake and seemed in good shape. The immigration process was organized, if a little unthorough.  Gringos like us paid a $10 entry fee that it seemed like locals didn’t have to pay.  There is an organization who helps arrange these trips who had said a driver would meet us there, but as we got our copious luggage (all supplies for the mission) – no driver.  The customs process was again pretty unthorough.  They searched a few bags making minimal effort to look at things.  We discovered that things that they had little interest in unwrapping thing to investigate but they did look casually at some lose items.  They happened to see some baby formula with an expiration date of literally one week ago that they confiscated.  Otherwise they sent us on our way.

Still no driver.

We wanted to camp out and wait for the driver but were moved along about 10 feet at a time through the egress of the airport.  We’d be in someone’s way and they’d finally ask us to move.  The further we went the more we got harassed by locals wanting to give us a ride.  They were fairly polite, but persistent.

Still no driver. We needed to contact someone. Fortunately my phone (T-Mobile) worked without a hitch in Haiti.  Texts are free and phone calls are only 20 cents a minute.  We called the numbers we’d been given but none of them worked.  I ended up texting my wife who, thank Jesus, was able to get a hold of the mission and get us some information.  The assured us the driver would be there soon.  He finally showed up about an hour late.  Island time, I guess.

As far as getting luggage from the airport to the car, I’ll just say that you either have to be rudely forceful in fending off the locals, allow them to take over despite your protests, or just resign yourself to the process.  No matter what you choose they’ll naturally ask for an exorbitant tip.

The road from the airport to the mission takes you through the north side of Port Au Prince.  I can’t speak for the entire city but I saw no “downtown” of any kind. The only decent structures I saw were a couple of gas stations that charged about double what we’re paying in Tulsa.  I saw a few auto repair shops and a couple of tiny walk-in stores.  But I saw hundreds of street merchants even though I was rarely able to make out what they were selling. The streets were crowded with people and driving was quite interesting. I think the only real thing one needs to master in order to drive here is the use of the horn.  Passing other cars was an intricate ballet involving a lot of honking, waving, swerving and adrenaline.  “Tap taps” (local public transportation) would stop in the middle of the street while they’d load and unload considerably more people, goods and livestock than they conceivably appeared to hold.  I’m not sure if the designing engineers of these vehicles would proudly smile with pride at the vastness of their safety factors or just be overwhelmed with a zombie-like confusion that their calculations were so far off.

The drive to the mission was about 2 hours through the mountains.  Very little sleep plus a suggested Dramamine caused me to sleep most of the way.  But what I saw I would describe as rugged and difficult terrain.  Whether in the valley or the mountains, there would be plenty of land with nothing on it, and then suddenly and for no apparent reason a crowd of shacks, broken down concrete structures and street vendors.  Who were all these street vendors selling to? You can’t just have an economy where each street vendor sells to one another!  I tried to ask the driver but my limited creole and his limited English were not enough to bridge the chasm of communication.  Trash was everywhere.  The road was littered with random junk and then shockingly often there would be small piles of garbage as if a garbage truck driver just said, “aw, the hell with it”, dropped his load and went home.  And periodically, though all the garbage, and ramshackle sheltering we’d see flocks of well-groomed and colorfully uniformed children presumably walking to or from school – at 11:00 am, it was a little hard to figure which.

All the trash really struck me. It’s something I’ve seen in other third-world environments.  Things could look so much better if people just cared to clean things up!  It’s obviously a cultural thing  – we try to keep our houses cleaned and decorated and our yards kept up on the general level of our neighbors.  If none of your neighbors care about any of that then you probably won’t either.  Obviously, though, there’s not the thought or knowledge of the health consequences of all the garbage.

Aside from Port Au Prince, the only larger town we travelled through was Hinche. It was nicer than Port Au Prince, somewhat cleaner and better quality constructions.  The road, frankly between Hinche and Port Au Prince had been surprisingly good but outside of Hinche it turned to gravel.  Fortunately the mission was just a couple of miles away.

As we approached the mission we encountered hundreds of blue-outfitted children, smiling and waving at us.  It was good to see and made us all excited to be there.  These kids didn’t know us but they knew big cars of foreigners meant friendly people that were there to help – and might even be packing a few toys or games for them!

The mission itself is “surrounded” (not sure if it is actually on all sides) by a 6 foot concrete wall.  The fact is, there are valuable things here that others would want to steal so a fence makes good sense.  There are a few guards (unarmed, of course) roaming the grounds at all times.  I’ll talk a little more about that later.

The rest of the day we toured the mission and worked out our plan for our clinic the next day.  And I slept a couple more hours.  The highlight of the strange day, though, was on the tour. Bingo, the guy running the day-to-day parts of the mission, showed us an area at the corner of the mission where they have fresh water available to anybody who wants to come get it.  No fee, no requirements at all.  Just 4 open spigots. Locals will travel miles to come get the clean water from this source.  We walked out into the village and met some of the locals. Many were kids and we had some fun together. They were daring one another to talk to us in English and I saw a lovely little girl – probably about 10 years old – and greeted her in Creole.  We said a few things to each other and took some pictures. I talked to a couple of boys and we slapped hands.  Brady – the other guy on our trip – was there too and he slapped a boys hand and then pulled his hand away in the classic 3^rd grade “you’re too slow” way and the kids just erupted in laughter.  Oh my, the universal conversation of children.  My guess is a well-timed fart probably would have the boys ROTDL (rolling on the dirt laughing) about that time, but that’s purely a speculation.

Much more to say and talk about but that’s more than enough for now.  Sorry, I realize this is way too long and poorly written but I want to get info out before more starts coming in.  I’ll close to say that I’m writing this at 5:00 in the morning because we are basically on a small farm.  And that story that us city kids are told about roosters waiting until day break to crow – that one’s false.  Will I get used to it or will I just go to bed earlier?  Well since farmers aren’t known to sleep in, my guess is the latter.  I guess we’ll see  by the end of next week.