Let me tell you about our two day vacation...
(I use vacation loosely here..)
We left for Jacmal early yesterday morning. Patrick, one of the boys in the house (he's such a star. he is one of those teenagers that you look at and think ...oh yeah, he gets it) took us up to Trinity House. Trinity House is the third house in the St. Joes network. It is also a boys home that keeps young men ages 8-18. A bunch of the boys at Trinity lived here at St. Joes pre-quake. They didn't get much damage in Jacmal, so a lot of the boys will stay there until the rebuilding is done.
So the three of us caught a van-taxi. Man, I am so so thankful for Patrick, Port-au-Prince is a really crazy place. It's so busy and the streets are ridiculously confusing. We had to transfer vans three times before we got to the main van. You know those big church vans that comfortably fit 15 people?! Well, our van was smaller (a bit bigger than a family mini-van) and had EIGHTEEN daaaamn people!! And did I tell you that Jacmal is over three hours away (if your van doesn't breakdown) and on the side of a super steep mountain?!?!?! Oh boy!
Once you get to Jacmal, it's so steep and narrow that you can't ride a car. Our (only) choice?! A motorcycle. When you ride a moto-taxi, you are riding on the back of a scooter. With up to five people. And no helmet. On a road that is full of loose gravel, massive rocks, steep hills and tons of other traffic. NO HELMET! I'm a nut when it comes to brain safety. Patrick got a moto and Blake and I rode together. We got a super cute French-Haitian. Everytime he went too fast, I'd squeeze his belly and say ...non... Ha. Totally worked.
I want to write a separate and super-detailed blog about our experience at Trinity. Overview; post-quake, there are 25 boys living in the house. All boys came to the house either by abondonment or from living on the street. There is also a school and a chapel inside the building. After the quake, there was a little damage to the house, but quite a bit of damage throughout Jacmal. The boys converted their soccer field into a tent city. I think there are about 150 people living behind the house. Also, they made a make-shift school for all the tent city kids to attend.
When we got there, we talked to a few of the boys and started playing a few board games. Slowly, more kids started showing up. More in the detailed blog.
Blake and I were in the assistant directors room for the night. There were two twin-bed bunkbeds. Time for bed, we get into separate beds. We had a fan in our room. Also, Haitian windows don't have screens, so anything and everything can just come on in. At 1am the power goes out. It's 100 degrees out still. Something with a tail cruises past my face. (lizard!!!) Scared, I climbed into a twin-bed with Blake. Sooo freaking hot. We had bugspray on, but had to have the sheet completely cover us cuz of all the mosquitos. The sheet was soaked with sweat. Some man in the tent city was blasting Jay-Z til three am. A mouse ran through our room around 330am. And another lizard joined his friend a little after. At 4am, a cat and a rooster got into a bloody fight under our window and then all the roosters friends had a mourning service until 5am. Not to be left out, some random goats came under our window and started making music with the roosters. At 530am one of the boys went and woke up all the other guys by shouting in their faces. Ask me how well I slept?! Also, while we were wide awake, cursing everything, we heard a clicking sound. This morning, we found a huge crab (Jacmal is right on the ocean) just cruising around our room.
Man, I do not like animals.
This morning, Patrick took us down to three different beaches. It was so gorgeous. Some of the pictures turned out really great.
At noon, we decided to come back to Port-au-Prince. On the way to the bus hub, our moto taxi broke down. And after we stuffed 19 people in our van, the radiator overheated and we had to sit on the side of the road for 35 min. Please don't forget how much we stand out, we don't speak Creole and it hasn't been under 100 degrees since we have been here...
Once we got into town, the traffic was so, so bad. After it was all said and done, it took us almost 6 hours to make a 3 hour trip. When the three of us got to the front gates, we all took a deep breath and walked inside. First step in, a monster rat runs through the dining room. Right now, it's storming crazy heavy and we are eating saltine crackers.
I'll say this; any boy that still loves a girl after her not showering for days, full of bugbites, scared of a motercycle, and doubled over in sickness because of the food; he is a keeper.
Photo blog coming next. This blog application is rotten for adding pictures.
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