Reflecting

I have been back from Haiti for two months now and thinking back on the experience makes me regret what I thought the entire time I was there.

I wish I wasn’t so negative. I wish I met more people. I wish I had known more Kreyol so that I may have communicating with others.

They gave me the opportunity to go back next summer and get a real job there. I might take it, but I’m supposed to go to law school in September which means I should take this opportunity to take an internship in the law field, build connections, because its all about who you know.

I still love Haiti and I still think Haitians are gorgeous. I wish I was worthy enough to see that I could live there.

Anyway, this is my last post here until I potentially go back next April. Until then… I’m sorry I suck at expressing myself through the written word.

Stuck in the mud

We got stuck in the mud! We were driving behind the car for Concern Worldwide on this really crappy road that goes back to our hotel in Mirbale. Through the front window I see the Concern car try to take on this small mound of dirt. Slowly they start to teeter to the right and land in this big muddy hole. The care was stuffed, 6 or 7 people. I thought the whole thing was going to tip over, but, alas it didn't, to my disappointment.

We spent the next half and hour or so trying to get the car upright. And by me I mean the 7 men we were driving with along with a local man with a hoe. It was quite hilarious.

Good times.

Back in the Central Plateau

We are now on Boukan Kare still entering information. I wish I had more to say, but since all of the friends left, I haven't been doing anything really special.

We finished working in Tomond in record time with only two of us entering the file information. I think I'm in love with the cashier, Roseline, from Tomond. She was so fun to be around, always laughing. Her mother made us lunch everyday, which was nice because we were told that we wouldn't be able to get food or water there.

We stayed in this really nice hotel in Ench where a number of foreigners have stayed, including all Fonkoze personelle and the delegation participants. It even had a pool! Not that I went swimming, of course, because the water looked very skanky. I did spend and hour each day reading poolside which was nice. Working in an office all day does nothing for your tan. I have to come back with some evidence I've been to a Caribbean country.

I met this nice man from Spain who is working in Ench for two years for Cruz Roja. He is staying in the hotel until he finds a house. He went in the water after assuring me that it didn't have germs, just earth which made it look dirty. I still didn't brave the sludge.

We are now staying in an even nicer hotel in Mirbale. It has airconditioning and hot water. Now, for the first time in two months I have slept through the night and felt clean doing it. It has a pool too, but no water. What are you going to do.

For breakfast we had this cornmeal mash which is the coolest I've come to Ramen noodles since college. It was pretty good. I still miss avocado sandwiches for breakfast. Those are the best. I am certain we'll have goat for lunch, so at least I can keep some sort of regularity in my meal choices.

Before work yesterday I was hanging out with a group of Fonkoze clients, waiting to meet with their credit agent. They admired my teeth and skin color and then offered me a baby. That's the fifth baby I've been offered. Maybe one of these days I'll accept and instead of bringing a puppy home to mom and dad I'll be carrying a Haitian child.

Here are some more pictures

Some children walking along a lake. This large man made lake is in the center of Haiti. This picture is taken from Canges, the city where Paul Farmer built his hospital. If you don't know who he is look it up! This lake filters through a series of dams and powers the entire city of Port au Prince and its surrounding areas. They even have fish here.

Half way through

Here I am at the half way point. August 1st. Megan left today on an early flight back to Omaha. We'll miss her, and now its just me and Lindsay heading south. I heard the South is nice, beautiful and calm. But for right now I'm locked in a "prison" in Port au Prince, people telling me I can't go anywhere because of safety. For now I can't wait to leave the city. I'd never thought I'd say that. Its just too stressful here.

The last days in Piyon were nothing too exciting. We said our goodbyes, leaving friends we had just made after a week and promising to call and stay in contact, but knowing that that is not really feasible. Its hard when you don't have email or any connection with anyone besides a phone. I wonder how people functioned without that stuff. Letters?

I think right now I'm just in a state of numbness. There is a huge part of me that wants to go home. Not because of the food or the city, but because I want my stability back. I want to know what time I have to wake up every morning. I want to have days where I don't have to wake up at all. I want to go to work, do what I have to do, come home and sleep or go out with my friends. I want a week where I don't have to travel 4-6 hours on a road that people shouldn't be on because they're rocky, dangerous, and slippery and you have to drive to fast and go over bumps so hard that by the time you get out of the car you can't even walk for the next fifteen minutes until you get your feet back. I want to know I'm not going around and doing all this work for what feels like nothing. I want a change of scenery without the tease of traveling to a new place only to find that the office looks exactly the same on the inside. I want to feel like I'm doing something.

However, I've resigned myself to the fact that I am here for another month and ten days. Its really not that bad. I'm lucky enough to be able to see things I probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to see if I wasn't doing this job. I think I'm just a little depressed because I might have lost the most important thing in my life since my childhood through no fault of my own and I cry every time I think of it (insert my silly attachment to material things, but with reason for the emotional value).

Also, I'm sitting here in the main office in Port au Prince, knowing I'll be here for a week and have nothing to do, but read, and watching the people working here talk online and email pictures and I think, what do they do all day that I have to go out and lose my vision entering all this freaking data into the same computer. Ah! Please tell me I'm doing some sort of good in the world. I need to talk to more loan clients.

I here. I'm still smiling (most of the time) and you all know how I love to spend my days reading. And MySpacing. And eating.

They won't let me upload my pictures. I don't have access on the computer to the USB port.

Oh! On the up side! Let me just tell you that sugar cane is the most amazing thing in the world. It is the perfect candy bar. However, my dentist would not agree. Eating it is like brushing your teeth in sugar water.

So I'll be on the internet a lot for the next week. Hopefully I can take and upload more photos tonight. Send me love!

In Piyon

We are here, settled in Piyon, where this friendly blanc set us up with wireles sinternet on Megan's laptop, which is especially nice of him.

We made it back safely from the Dominican Republic after being grabbed this way and that on the Haiti side of the border. We finally had to jump on a motorcycle and get out of the mess. But we mad eit back to Twodino where we spent two more days before hitting the whiplash backbreaking road to Piyon.

In Piyon, we are staying in this religious brain washing camp that makes really good canned corn.

As requested, here are some more pictures.


This is a fisherman who just came out with his catch. We walked to the coast from our hotel only to find that only fishermen hang out there so we had to coger un taxi to swim.

Another picture of the beach. We had the best Bacalao to this little beach cafe. I can't get enough now. Though I can't find it in Haiti either. So I guess its back to goat.

This is Megan with Mari, the duena of our hotel who took us shopping our first day and showed us where we could use the internet. This picture is taken in our new outfits before we went out dancing.

Ok! Now that I have internet I hope I can share more pictures.

Love!

The end of rest

We´re going to Piyon next! That is, of course, after we attempt to cross back into Haiti. I probably won´t have internet or phone and I can´t get the pictures online because I´m at a public internet cafe and I´m very tired from being in the sun all day. What and intereting blog, huh. Oh, also, I can´t find the question mark.

I´m sorry this can´t be more interesting, but my time is running out. More later.

Crossing the Border

So, after days without internet in Twodino, entering tons of information, Megan, who is a friend from Fordham and working with me in Haiti decided to do what a number of Haitians do every day to work and shop and live: we crossed the border into the Dominican Republic. And let me tell you, its not as friendly as one would have expected. Wink wink.

We crossed today, Friday, market day, where hundreds of Haitian citizens go to and from buying things from the DR and bringing them back to sell in Haiti (many with loans from Fonkoze). We drove to the border town, Ouanamente, with the help of our new friend Father Hughes, the priest who resides at the parish where we are staying. After he heard the children's confession he took us to the border.

When we arrived we saw a number of people organized into a coming and going line by the UN troops from Uraguay freely crossing into the DR without any sort of passport check or immigration. So, we thought, this should be easy, right? Wrong. The Haitian police immidiately saw our "white" skin and clothes and decided to pull us aside. There we had to go through an immigration process (which took a while because the officers were on lunch break when we arrived) and then have our bag searched by the seediest man who I think just wanted to feel our underwear. On top of all that, they wouldn't let our priest friend cross with us because he said he was coming with us, not that he was there to shop like the rest of the Haitians. Fiasco.

And then I think, what do people have to go through to come to the US and I realize I have it easy.

We finally got across and was aided by a Dominican immigration officer who took us to the bus station. Everyone else hear has been really nice, taking us around. Don't tell my Dad this (as he reads this), but we didn't have a hotel arranged when we arrived so the cab driver had to take us to one. But we're ok, being taken around the city by the hotel owner who is this really nice mother of two. We have been shopping and we're going dancing tonight.

I'm sorry I have no pictures. Hopefully I will soon.

Until then!