Arriving in Jacmel - July 2010

Continued from yesterday. The team has arrived at the airport in Port-au-Prince and are ready to depart for our drive to Jacmel.  Even though the two towns are only about 30 miles apart, we were told the drive could take "2 to 5 hours" and that car sickness was a real possibility...

July 10, 2010
6:30pm local time (coinciding with US Central time)
Jacmel, Haiti - rooftop of the Loving Light Hotel

When we got to our vehicles, we divided into two old vans.  I sat in the first row back next to the window.  As predicted, it ended up taking 4-5 hours to get here.  There are "rules of the road", but they are NOT the US rules.  Basically people drive as fast as they can on either side of the road and honk when they pass (or want to pass) a pedestrian or motorist.  There are lots of scooters and people walking. When I learned we'd be going to Jacmel, I did a search online to see pictures and found a youtube video of "the road to Jacmel" which was a video out a car window.  I watched it and thought "that isn't really a big deal", but came home with a new respect for the craziness and my own short video. This is actually not the "road to Jacmel", but the road from the beach back into town on one of our last days there.  We are on the back of a tap tap, which is an open truck with benches in the back.  Eric's response was the same as mine before I was there, so it obviously doesn't truly show what it was like, but here it is...

Lots of people were in the streets trying to sell things.



Wild dogs, goats and cows were randomly walking around, even in the urban areas of PaP.  Lots of waste and garbage.  The smell went back and forth between smelling like fried carnival food and a port-o-potty.  The amount of garbage was unbelievable.  There were people everywhere: walking, sitting, bathing, selling things. The earthquake damage was so extensive that even seeing it in person it was hard to comprehend.  It made my brain stop working to try to take it all in.



A woman in Jacmel getting water out of the sewer



 It was very hot, probably 90F and humid with no air in the van.  We ended up basically stopped for about an hour in Carrefour and I had pretty much sweated through my clothes by the time we got going again. 

We also passed quite a few tent cities on our drive through PaP and Carrefour.  These ranged in size from a few tents to true "cities" of tents.  A few of the larger "cities" we saw had port-o-potty stations, but many don't have any resources at all for sanitation or clean water. 

Once we made it through Carrefour (a suburb of Port-au-Prince), we crossed a small mountain range on a very "interesting" mountain pass. It was wide enough for 1.5 cars/vans but accomodated 2 way traffic as well as an almost constant presence of people walking or sitting on the side of the road.  The mountain area was very beautiful, like other tropical islands.  It made me think a lot about how close Haiti is to the United States (1.5 hour plane ride) and how much like Hawaii it COULD look there, and yet the history of Haiti has been so troubled.  Some pictures from the rest of our drive to Jacmel. 



Our hotel, the Loving Light Hotel, is on the main street to Jacmel.  Apparently it is a safe place.  There is usually water and electricity, but there was no water when we got here.  There was bottled water available in the lobby even when there wasn't water in the bathrooms. Even when there was water in the rooms, it wasn't potable.   I am sharing a room with a double bed with Patti.  There is basically only room for our bags and to walk around the bed.  It is tiny and mentally the biggest downer so far.  I guess I was expecting my own twin bed.  Oh well.  Patti seems nice enough. Our only room light bulb is burned out.  I ended up spending about a half an hour that evening stalking the hotel manager to get him to change our light bulb. 



Loving Light Hotel







 

Beautiful rooftop view

Home



Hotel Roof Deck



We had a little time to unpack and then met up on the rooftop deck.  You can look down and see quite a bit from up here.  We had dinner made by women from the church.  It was white rice with a stew type soup (boulet) - potatoes, some kind of red meat, seasonings.  It was my only real meal all day and it tasted WONDERFUL. 



We had an orientation that I thought was pretty lame.  I don't remember most of the people's names.  8 of the 14 people who arrived today are from the same church in Texas, and pretty much everyone just said, "I want to help and meet people."  I don't know, maybe everyone was just tired.  There wasn't much guidance and I still only know that tomorrow we will have church all morning.  Apparently last week it was hot enough inside that one of the team members passed out. 

Evening debrief

I got to borrow someone's phone to call Eric.  He is disappointed that I probably won't be able to call again.  I just wanted him to know that I am safely here and he doesn't need to worry. 

Man, it is HOT. I am HOT. Did I mention IT IS HOT? If I had my own room, I would go to bed now.  Almost everyone else is sitting together talking out on the dark balcony. I should go join them.

That evening, before I realized the bug situation, I got 4 of the 5 bug bites I suffered during the trip.  I had super max bug spray - I think it was 45% DEET - and figured I'd put it on multiple times a day, which I did. But I was thinking about mosquitos and didn't think about ants on that first night.  I ended up with 4 ant bites on my foot/ankle. They itched like crazy but didn't hurt. 

Another thing I didn't mention on that first night, we were actually blessed to have AIR CONDITIONING on and off during our stay. How pampered were we? The air conditioning switched on sometime mid-afternoon (while we were out working) so we'd come back to a nice, cool room. The air stayed on until somewhere around 2am and then switched off.