summing up haiti

wow, i've been busy the last few days and i am can tell that i'm not going to remember every little detail about the rest of haiti so i'll try my best.

one of the mornings i was awoken by john grabbing my foot. he said, brent get up, you're going back to the dominican. i said, "when?" and he said right now. startled i stumbled out of bed as john continued to give me directions. i was going so i could call in to tim krause with john's cellphone. i was going with our security guard jose. he was picking up food to bring back for us. this was a day where da jabon became a free trade area. the border of haiti is kinda expanded to include the city so haitians can go there and buy and sell. so with john's phone and the money for the food i set out with jose and we quickly got a motorcyle taxi ride to the border. that in itself was an experience. three men on a motorcycle through crazy streets. i liked it though.

da jabon was packed, and most of the time i either had jose's arm in my hand or the other way around. he said a few times i need to hold onto you for your protection. lol. what an experience i tell you. jose speaks some spanish, i speak almost no spanish. we rented a guy with a wheel barrow and he followed us around to get ice, bread, spaghetti, and five live chickens tied together by one foot each.

i ended up not being able to call tim but it was okay because jackie was able to call back in ouanamenthe.

we played soccer against the haitians in the evenings everyday. we had a vbs at the church again, then on saturday we had vbs at another church deeper into the city. that was crazy. it was such a small building and it was so hot. and there were a bunch of teenagers that were interested in stealing some of our stuff so i had to stand guard.

we also had our soccer camps everyday after lunch. those went well. some of the kids were really good at soccer.

on sunday me, romano, and marisol were coming back early and the team was heading to a beach resort to spend some relaxing time. coming through the border was much different this time though. many guards bribe their superiors to let them work the border because they don't get paid well and they can try and force people to give them money to come through and even people who are allowed to come through they try to get money out of them. they didn't mess with me really because i'm an american and i had my passport. and they didn't say anything to marisol because she's dominican, but they gave romano the hardest time. especially the guard at the gate on the bridge. romano told me that they make you argue and waste time or pay and you can go. romano has papers and whatever that lets him live in the dominican but he says that he doesn't have to show that guy. they only people he really has to deal with is customs but there are like 4 other lines of guys that try to mess with him.

well finally we get through and go up to customs and they have to stamp my passport but it costs ten bucks. in american money. i only had pesos. so romano took my pesos and went back across into haiti to see if he could exchange for dollars. which left me with marisol and no english speakers. i finally saw romano again but the guard this time really wasn't going to let him across. he handled him quite roughly and at one point grabbed his gun. romano told me he wouldn't have shot but was just trying to be intimidating. he would have hit him with it before shooting him.

after worrying for romanos life for a few min. romano finally got through and another guy stopped him and tried to get him to pay. he finally got through him and we payed for my passport. then walking through the arch a group of guys stopped us and tried to get him to pay again. then after threatening that we would go back to haiti and get my money back they just let us through. oh man. crazy.

we then ate at the restaurant that we had chicken at before and we hopped onto the bus that came back to santiago. i spent the trip discussing language, the dominican, haiti and girls with romano. then we hopped in a taxi and made it back to hoya del camito where the mission houses are.

i spent the rest of sunday relaxing and i went to romano's soccer game. he's part of a sports outreach and since it's soccer it's almost completely haitians. dominicans are baseball people. and some like basketball. but not so much soccer.

all three of the teams were at a beach somewhere so i got to relax.

monday went by with not much to do either. then the teams came back at night. i got to meet up with the haiti team and it was good to see them. we went to bon (bone) which is the ice cream place here. then night time and they left at like 530 in the morning on tuesday.

i spent tuesday with hannah the other intern cleaning the dorms to prepare for the next team that was coming that night. then we collected all of the clothes that the team left behind and moved them over to the washingmachine which is in like a junkyard type storage area in an area that G.O. owns. we then tried to wash, rinse, and hang up as many loads as we could.

the new team arrived on tuesday night. also another intern, rebecca. this new team will be doing construction in the hole.

the "hole" is a big junk hole type place. i'm not sure how big it is across but the city just throws its junk into it. and people started building houses in it because they wouldn't be charged to live in a junk yard. G.O. has a church down there which feeds around 40 kids their only meal of the day. the girls' basketball team went there to help feed the kids one day when we were here last year in august.

i'm spending this week not with the team, but with will because the next week is a big basketball week and we have to get prepared. it's going to be a lot of work and really long days but i'm very excited for it.