Got home safely around 5am. Slept til 3pm.
Rest of the team is home as well, except Rezac, but he met up with his road trip posse.
This was a fantastic week. I will have more update to some, but here’s some highlights:
Sat. May 8th:
-traveled to Port-au-Prince, that’s a whole new experience. Got mobbed leaving the airport, then had to push back through the crowd a couple hours later to meet Bruce.
-Picked up some awesome batteries while in Port.
-Traveled to Grand Goave. The destruction in PAP is beyond what I could imagine. Building collapesed everywhere. The presidential palace crushed. Imagine standing on Pennsylvania avenue and looking across the lawn to a White House that is absolutely destroyed. Unreal.
-Many tent cities still up. People everywhere. Terrible roads, lots of traffic.
-Met up with the Edme family (Mission of Hope Directors), a group from Sirona Cares (CA based team, works with Biodiesel agriculture and other projects)
-got settled at the beach property in our tents. discovered an abundance of fire ants the hard way.
Sunday, May 9:
-traveled to Les Cayes to pick up materials and our Haitians (Smiley, Jude, Pezo)
-switched from the box truck to the Land Cruzer due to flat tire before the trip.
-broke down near Miragoane. Had no translator with us, so had to call Amoce to translate between me and our driver, Miguel.
-finally switched to our vehicle for the week, the Diahatsu dump truck. w00t!. This thing was awesome. Stood for the entire trip to Cayes with Tyler and Rezac.
-Loaded up materials in Cayes. Picked up Smiley, Jude, Pezo.
-Played soccer with kids at the Brad Reddick School.
-Started travel back to Grand Goave.
-Sometime around dusk, Bruce lost his glasses when the wind blew them off his face. Thankfully, 4 of us were able to run about 1/4 mile back the road (with Tyler almost falling on his face) and pick up the glasses before they got ran over or anything. God definitely was with us there. Only a small chip out of the glasses in the end. Bruce would have been blind without them.
-Got stopped by police carrying Uzi’s to check our papers.
-The last 45 mins of the trip were in pouring rain that hurt cause we were in an open bed truck going 45 mph. Also, we were shivering from the freezing cold since we were all in shirts and shorts. Terrible feeling.
-Settled down at the beach property for the night. Gave Smiley, Jude, and Pezo some dry clothes out of our stuff cause they were soaked through and accidentally left their stuff at the orphanage with all our supplies.
-All in all, just an epic day in paradise living the dream.
…more to come later…
