Haiti, Day 5

Today we didn’t leave nearly as early as yesterday, which was nice.  Got up, got dressed, ate breakfast, and was on the bus by 8:05am.  Today we headed to a nearby town and met with a woman named Carla.  Carla has lived in Haiti with her husband since the 1980’s.  They came on a short humanitarian trip and decided to make Haiti their home.  They run an organization and live up in the mountains.  Anyways, in order to get there we had to take a long and crazy bus ride.  The roads here already are pretty awful, but when you add the rainy season, they get even worse.  Driving up these super steep roads is pretty scary!  I don’t know how our bus driver does it, but he keeps so calm.  We got stuck once and it was pretty intense.  It took quite a few tries to get us out and was pretty nerve wracking.

The bus could not make it all the way to the house, so we had to take a bit of a hike to get there.  Once we arrived we were met by Carla and taken up to her house.  We met all of her neighbors and one of them had a little kitten!  I held the little guy and he/she was so adorable!  So then we spent a few minutes in her home and then went outside and sat in a little bungalow so we could get to know each other a little better.  There were several young Haitian men with her that were all so nice.  They told us about themselves (through Carla because most of them didn’t really speak English…) and then we went to Ya-Ya’s (that was his nickname) house, which was short hike away.  I nearly died a few times because the rock was wet and I am pretty klutzy.  Then we had to cross a stream and I wasn’t too talented at that.

Once we got to Ya-Ya’s house, we met his family and all sat under the shade of a big tree.  Then they proceeded to give us some Creole (or Kreyol) lessons.  It was so awesome!  They taught us general phrases and greetings and we all had to practice.  It was a lot of fun.  Also, there were all these animals wandering around near us.  We saw another kitten, some baby pigs, different types of baby chicks, and a puppy.  It made me happy because I love animals!  We had been there for a while when we realized it was past noon.  When we left the bus, Olin (pronounced Olay, our bus driver) told us to be back by noon because it was supposed to rain and if that happened we would get stranded.  Because of this, we had to take off a little early.  It made me feel bad because some people in the neighborhood were making us lunch and we couldn’t wait.  We took off and about half way to the bus it started pouring.  But a little rain never hurt anyone.  We got on the bus and left pretty quickly.  A few (terrifying) minutes later we heard honking behind us.  This is not unusual because everyone in Haiti honks.  Anyways, Ang & I are in the back and turned to look and it was two guys from the house on a motorcycle.  They motioned for us to pull over and had packed up our lunch and brought it.  It was so adorable!

After bidding them Au revoi, we hit the road again.  The trip down was much faster than the trip up, but it was still intense.  So we got down the mountain and it was earlier than planned since we left early so we decided to go shopping.  However, due to standard crazy Haiti traffic it took us like two hours to get to the market.  And once we got there we had to just leave.  We got back to the compound, hung out, ate dinner, and now here we are.  Tomorrow we are going to church in the morning and then head to the market.  Well, I’m off to bed.  I took a break from writing my blog and got acquainted with Lars, a construction guy staying on site.  But now, it is nearly 11pm so I best be off.  Au revoi!

Kitty!

An example of how traffic gets.  This is in the middle of an intersection.