Today we were on the bus by 6:30am, and headed off to
Pignon. We were on our way to meet with
an organization called Haiti Outreach.
The bus ride was about four hours and the last hour and half was a dirt
road. During this last stretch we also
had to cross several small rivers. Fortunately,
they were pretty low and we were able to cross smoothly. We arrived at Haiti Outreach and met with the
founder, Neil. He started the
organization about 20 years ago and the main thing they do is to dig wells in
communities in Haiti. They also support
other projects such as building schools, etc.
In order to have a well built in your area, you have to
write a letter to OH and have several people from the village sign in support
of a well. Then OH will visit the
village to meet with the community and determine if they are a good candidate. One thing OH really focuses on is making sure
that the projects they do will be maintained long after they leave. In order to do this, each well gets a guard,
who is paid to guard the well when it is open.
Also, people in the community are trained to fix the well if it ever
breaks. This way, they are not relying
on outsiders to come and get the water working again. After talking to Neil for a while, we headed
off to lunch. We ate in this woman’s
house, who uses the first level as a restaurant. We couldn’t all fit, so some of us went and
ate in her actual home. For $3 we all
got a massive plate of rice, this delicious bean sauce, meat of some sort (I
did not eat it and can’t tell you what it was… probably goat), and a soda. It was so good! The bean sauce was this thick dark stuff that
you poured all over your rice…. Yum.
After lunch Neil asked us if we wanted to walk through the
village market. We agreed because we
have driven through several of them, but not been able to see on up close
before. So we drove over, lined up, and
he led us through the market. It was
pretty intense. You could tell some
people were irritated that we were there, I got flicked with water, a lot of
people came up and demanded money, most of us saw a pig being slaughtered… Like I said, intense. Fortunately, I did not see the pig because
Ang warned me just in time. Thanks,
Ang! After the market we walked over to
a local rum factory. It was actually
pretty interesting. They had these big
vats of molasses that were bubbling away as they were fermenting. They even let us try some if we wanted (I
passed). I didn’t take my camera through
the market (for obvious reasons) so I didn’t have it in the factory. After that, we headed to one of the well
sites and checked it out. It was really
nice and it even had a chlorine dispenser hooked up to it.
At that point it was pretty cloudy and we knew we needed to
hit the road. Neil told us that if we
got stuck to let him know and he would set us up in his guest house. So off we went. Olin seemed a bit nervous about the water because
he was hauling ass. It was crazy! It started to rain pretty hard and the roads
became almost like rivers themselves. It
was very nerve-wracking and we were sliding all over the place. When we got to the first river, it was pretty
big! We got about halfway across, and
got stuck. We were all panicking. Most of us honestly did not think we were
going to make it. And then the bus
tilted far to one side. It was pretty
scary! But Olin is a genius and managed
to get us across by backing up to one side and then plowing through. After that we were all on edge, but the further
we got, the slower the rain got. By the
time we got to the next river it was barely even raining. We were lucky! We got home at about 7pm, ate dinner, I
showered, and now… Here I am. Off to bed
I go!
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| Sunrise, from the bus |
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| Haiti Outreach |
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| Chlorine dispenser |
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| Everyone with Neil |
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| The road/river |
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