Guest Post - Our First Full Day in Haiti

November 8, 2012
We woke up this morning at 6:00 a.m. to the smell of Will's delicious pancakes. At 6:30 we were out the door, ready to hit the road. Once outside we saw that Jason was having trouble starting the vehicle. The battery seemed to be the problem so we tried to boost it, but with no luck.

Jason called another MAF pilot to see if we could use the Pathfinder, a spare vehicle, which was fine, so we left Arnold behind to take the old battery out. Then, Rosalyn, Joel, Bryanne, Jason and I walked a few blocks to pick up the other vehicle.

The street was filled with Haitian kids going to school in their clean white uniforms. Each of them were dressed better than we ever dressed for school!

Arriving at the MAF pilot's house Jason jumped in the Pathfinder and tried to start it but it's battery was dead too! This was not our day.

After boosting the Pathfinder battery and picking up Arnold, we were on our way to the airport. Jason drove in first gear the whole way to prevent the vehicle from stalling. 

After a bumpy ride through the busy city we arrived at the airport with reconstructed posteriors. Jason's first flight was scheduled to depart in 9 minutes.

Jason introduced us to Dieucon an MAF driver and then left to prepare for his flight. Dieuson drove us to the job site. On the way we made a few pit stops to pick up supplies; we bought rice for the feeding program and enough water to last us through the day.

Driving through the city breathing in the vehicle exhaust, we appreciated our clean air in BC. Most of the cars here would not pass Air Care :)

When we arrived at the job site around nine o'clock it was already thirty degrees. It was tiring being in the heat and humidity, especially since we were not used to it.

It was sad to see the conditions the people were living in.

Working with a Haitian Construction team we quickly got to work building a home.



At 12 o'clock we walked from the job site to Dieuson's house which was right beside the church. We relaxed in the "cool" church and handed out lollipops to the kids while we waited for the food.

Dieuson's wife served us a macaroni salad, chicken and lasagna. We had a hard time deciding what would be safe to eat as Jason and Will had warned us about eating uncooked food.

After lunch we visited an orphanage in that area. When we arrived we handed out lollipops to all the kids. The lady that ran the orphanage begged us to come back the next day with clothing, and we assured her we would.
She then got the kids to sing us some songs, they even sang to us in English.

When the day was over, Dieuson dropped us back off at the airport. Jason drove us home from there. While we were driving home we got stuck behind a water truck that was losing quite a bit of water as it drove uphill. We tried to drive uphill behind it but it was too slippery and the Pathfinder eventually stopped and started sliding downhill. Jason purposely slammed into the curb so that we would stop sliding downhill. We moved to the dry side of the road and safely made it up the hill and home.

We were welcomed with the smell of nasi and peanut sauce, along with salad and garlic bread. It's hard to get homesick with such delicious meals!

Martha Kuipers