The lack of posts on this blog is the product of failure to upload. Apparently there is a 100 mb limit to how much one can upload or download on this internet service, and after that has been reached, we get penalized with super slow service for 24 hours. So, I haven't been able to get many photos up, and combined with being busy helping Mom and running around town with her groups of visitors, this blog has not quite turned out to be as informative as I would have liked.
Since I don't want to wait forever to upload any photos, I want to just write down some of the things I have done since I got here, and then when I get back to the States I'll put up all the photos I've been taking. Some of them are very good, really, but we'll just have to wait. Sorry.
I arrived March 1st and immediately went to the UN base near the airport with my companions who went there for a cluster ngo meeting. I rode up to Gwo Jan with them since they were staying at my parent's house there, and the next day went down to Port-au-Prince to see the effects of the earthquake. Those photos actually made it up on a previous post. March 3 was my 31st birthday, so since Mom needed a break and wanted to treat me to something special, we went to Jacmel by public bus for two days. Her friends Erin and Christian from Alaska had invited us to stay with them in their rental house by the beach.
When we got back, we started separating all the supplies that had come in with previous visitors and myself, as well as gifts of cash, that Mom distributed to the community of Gwo Jan. The next day, March 6, we picked up a group of visitors from the airport and brought them up to Gwo Jan for the week. They consisted of Dave and Pat, two professors from a college in Pennsylvania, Diane, a pastor from Washington D.C., and Lamont from Brooklyn. While they were here, we visited a tent camp on Delmas 31 where Dave donated some money to build a latrine, we went to Fond Parisienne to see the site of a future school that a Haitian pastor wants to build, we visited the grassroots coalition in Port-au-Prince, and we went to Leoganne, the epicenter of the quake. Then Lamont got sick, and I believe I described all that in detail so I won't go into that again except to say that he is safely back in the States in a hospital in Ft. Pierce, where he was told he had developed pneumonia on top of everything else and they still don't know what is wrong with him.
Lamont and Diane got on a plane on Tuesday the 16th, and Mom picked up another group of pastors visiting from San Diego. They brought money and medicine, and so we visited several tent cities where they generously donated to build latrines and showers. It is unbelievable and disgusting to me that people have been living for so long without any toilets or showers. There are organizations here doing stuff, but I think it's just that there are just too many people that have been displaced by the earthquake that it's difficult to cover everyone. Who knows.
Anyway, while Mom took the pastors around town in a rented van, I drove behind in the family car. My first time driving in Haiti, very exciting! It's totally different than the States. It's more like rally racing really, with hundreds of other cars. You have to be fearless and defensive at the same time, and watch out for potholes, dogs, people while navigating streets that have no posted signs. You really have to just read what other drivers are doing and tell them what you're doing with eye contact and laying on your horn and hand signals. Extreme attentiveness is needed at all times. A piece of cake. Well, it wasn't the first time I've ever driven in Haiti, but the last time I was 15 and I crashed into a police car, and I won't go into that, except to say that my parents decided at the time that I shouldn't get behind a wheel after that until I was safely out of the country.
Today, Friday, the pastors have taken a flight to Port-de-Paix to distribute medicine and won't be back until Tuesday. Mom has been able to have a breather to catch up on her emails. I've been helping her with her new laptop that I came with, which is a Mac. It's been hard to ever get anything accomplished during the day because there's a constant flow of people who need to talk to Tantka (Mom's nickname meaning Aunt Carla).
There's also been quite a few people sleeping here on and off during my stay, not to mention the group that was here last week and the week before. The pastors are staying in a hotel downtown though. Most of the people who stay over are friends who spend half the time in camps down in the city and come up to visit and organize and have meetings, or in the case of the members of my parents' band, come to rehearse and play music. Our more permanent residents who live in my parents' guesthouse are Dieula and her two daughters, son-in-law, nephew, and three grandchildren, who we've known for 25 years now, who came up after the quake, as well as a young couple with a three-year-old, and another family of three members. They all contribute by taking turns cooking, cleaning and washing laundry, and helping Mom run other community organization activities with the visiting groups that stay here. The first floor of the house is used as a communal area, to watch tv, use the computer, have youth group meetings, band rehearsals, and make art, as we have two resident artists, Nadjee and Mona, who have decorated the walls and lined the porch with their paintings and sculptures. There's very little privacy and a lot of different upbringings living together, and sometimes the stress levels are pretty high, but it's still a great place to live and work considering the alternative.
I have four more days before I leave, and I'm getting sad thinking of my departure. This experience so far has been amazing, intense, profound, and a major kick in the butt, and I'm constantly astounded by the will to keep going and the tenacity and spirit of the Haitian people. I am seeing this all through my adult eyes now, instead of the memories of my childhood, and I am realizing that I don't know very much at all.
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