I have so much to blog about…like stuff from the beginning of May…but all I want to blog about is the trip to Haiti we just returned from. It’s not that the other stuff isn’t important….it’s just that Haiti is on my mind.
First of all, all I can say is what an incredible experience.
We stepped off the plane into the Haitian hot. Truly, it wasn’t that hot…I was expecting worse…and would see some of that hot toward the middle of the week we spent there.
We were picked up in an Old Army Truck and rode in open air haitian style through Port au Prince.
It could have easily been overwhelming to travel through the streets of Port au Prince for those that hadn’t been there, or to any third world country, before. The conditions we saw there were very similar to those that I saw when I traveled to Honduras in 1999 following Hurricane Mitch. Tent cities, lots of people, lots of cars, and yes, a lot of garbage too.
The organization we went through for this trip is called the Hands and Feet Project.
You can check out more about the organization and their misssion at www.handsandfeetproject.org or by reading the book “Hands & Feet” by Audio Adrenaline
They are a pretty amazing organization. And they are doing some pretty amazing things for the children they have living there.
I was first touched by their sponsorship program…you can choose to sponsor a child from either of their locations, and once that child becomes fully sponsored (10 sponsors at $30 a piece), the cost of raising them at the orphanage is covered, as well as a savings account started for that child so that once they reach the age where they age out of the orphanage, they’ll have money already set aside to start their lives on their own in Haiti. It’s called the Dream Fund. Powerful word…dream.
And then I was touched by their plans to help the kids prosper more than just providing them a home, and a savings account. They’re also working on building a third location – atop a mountain no less, to help teach these kids a trade or skill once they get a little older to turn them out as a productive member into society.
We pulled in to Hands and Feet in Grand Goave…and were greeted with this message on the way in.
James 1:27
New International Version (NIV)
27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
We arrived on Saturday, June 16 around 5:30 and spent the evening getting acquainted with the staff in Grand Goave and had a brief orientation of what our week would look like, and then we were free to check out the place and spend some time with the kids there.
Sunday morning we spent at church. We walked about a mile to the Mission of Hope Church for their morning service. Even though the service was in Haitian Creole…there were still familiar tunes we could pick out from the praise songs, and with the help of a couple translators sitting among us, we got the general message of that morning’s service. Sundays are a day to rest or just hang out and so after we walked back to Hands and Feet, we all got ready to go to the beach with the kids. We all piled onto the back of the army truck…when I say all, I mean the 10 of us, the 30 kids, and some of the Haitian staff…and drove to the Mission of Hope beach house (where missionaries serving with the Mission of Hope stay while in Haiti). We swam or waded in the ocean with the kids, and then sat down to a wonderful lunch prepared by the staff at Mission of Hope. It was a very relaxing, peaceful afternoon.
Most of us spent the rest of Sunday afternoon avoiding the rain by napping or reading in the missionary housing at Hands and Feet before walking to church in the rain for their English service. This service was less attended than the morning service, but it was great to be able to worship with people in a language we understood, singing songs we knew…with a few lines of Haitian Creole mixed in.
The walk back from church that evening was frightening. It had stopped raining, but was pitch black. Having no street lights, so we found ourselves walking along the side of the road only being able to see our path when a car drove by. And you know, if you’ve ever been there, you don’t really want to be anywhere near the road when cars are driving by…they go very fast and very close to each other. It also isn’t a secret that I’m not a fan of the dark, and I was very thankful to have kids from Hands and Feet on either side of me, holding my hands to guide me back to the orphanage. We made it safely back, and I can just imagine the look of relief on my face we finally turned off the road.
Monday morning brought the start of the work portion of our trip.
Originally, when I signed up for this trip, I wasn’t honestly sure of what we would be doing once we arrived in Haiti…I knew that we would be helping the directors of the Grand Goave site with whatever they needed help with. They had a list of projects for us, ranging from light construction to painting to sewing to helping with kids crafts. It was nice to be able to find something on the list for everyone’s specific talents.
Our group had a great balance…we had some that were skilled at construction, so as they constructed, we painted, and we had some that were more interested in hanging out with the kids and playing soccer or cards or even the guitar with them. The task I chose to take on first was sorting through the donations our group had brought with us for the orphanage. Our group brought 9 full sized suitcases with us packed full of things to donate. We brought everything from shoes to clothes, to over the counter medication, to a nebulizer and some albuterol, to cake and pancake mixes.
After we finished the task of sorting, inventorying, and organizing the donations into their supply closet, called “the depot”, I settled into a nice sanding and painting routine for the rest of the day. I’m not going to lie, I did about whatever job I could that allowed me to be in the shade. I took great pride in the fact that on the 2 and a half hour drive from the airport to our destination, my skin did not turn pink…at all, and I had every intention of keeping it that way. What a miserable trip it could have been had I sunburned on the first day! It was nice to have intermittent rain showers throughout the first couple of days, keeping the temperatures down into the 80′s. The week before it had topped out close to 100 degrees daily.
We had noticed on the way to the beach that first day with the kids, the rack on “the deuce” (our army truck), was rusting and left a beautiful rust colored tint to our hands, and so tackling that project was high on our list, knowing we’d be riding in this vehicle many more times during our week-long stay.
A few of the other projects taken on throughout the next few days…painting, constructing windows, shelves, sewing curtains…
To be continued…with Wednesday, a day of rest…