So I went much further into the interior of Port-Au-Prince today – with a guy I met this morning named Enock. He was a very nice guy; he spoke Creole, and French and a little bit of English. It’s surprising how much language that you have studied comes to you in a situation like that. We were able to communicate quite well… only once did I need help from Alix (our hotel manager who found Enock for me) – when I needed to find out how long until Enock got back. It actually wasn’t as scary as I imagined, I ended up driving with my windows down, mixing with the people – sometimes even talking with them at stops (mostly to say “No I don’t want to buy <whatever they were selling>”. There are people standing on the streets selling everything in Haiti – even Air. We had to stop to have a guy start up an old rickety generator to pump air into the tires of the car I was riding in.
He was supposed to wait for me at the Embassy, but he received a call and had to leave – at least he got me a note telling me that. When he came back though, he seemed very anxious, and his car was stuttering and it appeared to be out of gas. I asked him, “Ou bwenzen Gaz?”, and he (knowing that i could speak more French than Creole) rattled off a few paragraphs in French – I didn’t understand him, so I just said a quick prayer – a warrior prayer. I made it back ok.
The trip into Port-Au-Prince was heart-wrenching… so many times I almost lost it. These people are so beautiful, not only in physical appearance, but in their spirits. The air is so thick with poisons, burning plastic, rubber, most cars pouring out black smoke, it makes your lungs burn and ache, you feel like you are suffocating, not only under the heat itself, but under the weight of the noxious fumes. You try to breath light, which only makes your oxygen starved body cry out for more and make you breath all the harder. My lungs are in pain… how can these people live like this?
Everywhere there were school children, going to school, uniformed, playing, laughing, while all around them were hungry bellies, and putridity. Trash heaps piled everywhere, people emptying what looked like slop water out into the streets. All around were colorful signs painted on the walls, painted on billboards, i don’t think i ever saw a single bare wall, the murals were amazing; and yet, what kind of hope is there for these people?
A life expectancy of 50; breathing in constant poisons, scrapping to feed families on a little less than a dollar a day. I couldn’t imagine eating the food being sold and prepared in the market places. I saw people filling old gas cans and bleach bottles with water – I wonder if they would drink it… something makes me think so.
The buildings were unbelievable, as you drove down the road, you could look over the ‘cliff’ of the road, and see two-three stories of buildings that went down into the ground and two or three stories that went up into the air… knowing that when storms come in Haiti there is massive flooding, it’s no wonder so many people die, in a town with millions of people, many living below grade…
I ache to save my children from their future here in Haiti… I ache to help those left behind in anyway I can… I also had to spend a small fortune to get into the embassy ($60 US dollars for a 3 mile drive) – and I have to go back tomorrow… so I’m paying about $10 US a mile…. I didn’t have all the paperwork I needed… into the belly of the whale again tomorrow, but Junior and Chris are going with me this time…
The trip to the beach was just as scary… sometimes reaching 70 miles per hour in a 14 seat van that had 28 people in it, no buckles, roads that were for the most part dilapidated and falling apart (although there was ALOT of rebuilding since the last time we were here from the hurricane the previous year). Sometimes there were pits and ravines on either side, the roads crumbling into them, and we would swerve around going 60 mph. Quite a few times we went head on to an oncoming car, at 60-70 mph, and the driver would swerve just at the last second. Haitians are AMAZING, AMAZING, AMAZING drivers… American would likely die quickly on the roads over here… I SWEAR we grazed so many pedestrians, and they didn’t even blink…
Imagine, driving through your town at 70 MPH while 2-3 year old children play in and on the street, and they just blink and eye and slide out of the way of the vehicles that do not even attempt to slow down.
Apart from the noxious and poisonous fumes, I saw dead donkeys and dead cows along the road…
The ocean, however, was beautiful. Mountains in the panoply surrounding the ocean, mist, bright blue ocean, sandy beach, wildlife everywhere… but it took us 2 hours to get out far enough that the OCEAN was safe enough to play in…
On another note, we found out that our daughter has a heart arrhythmia, please pray for her that it is not very dangerous – she is going to go for tests in a couple weeks, and then will go for a second opinion in a few weeks after that. We also found out that our beautiful baby boy not only had malaria, but his GI infection was causing him to have bloody stools and he had dropped so dangerously low in weight, that they had to give him a feeding tube… after a second round of antibiotics he finally seems to be getting better… Chris and Hal and the HIS Home staff, are amazing people! Chris was so worried about our son that she used skin contact therapy to keep him with us…
It makes me weep; I want them to come home with us … I want them safe… Please pray for our children, please pray for this country, please stand up and do what you can to help. I don’t care how these people look on the outside, and how well they seem to be taking their “lot in life” – these people HAVE to be hurting on the inside; they HAVE to know that this isn’t how life is supposed to be. Why should they have to wait to die to taste the riches of life that God has given? Why? My 16$ pizza would feed a family of 6 for half of a month… God, send your warriors!
And please, while you’re at it, heal my lungs, because I feel pain at each breath, and I can’t get the smell of poisons out of my nostrils.
Signing off in Haiti on Wednesday, May 20th, 2009.