On our first trip to Haiti in 2011 my daughter Bethany and I spent some time journaling each night, and then sharing our writings with each other.
The following series of posts are the images and excerpts from our original journal entries, walking you through each day of our experience – beginning with day one…
Journal Entry – Saturday July 30, 2011
How do you even begin to capture it in words?
Couldn’t see much today – but what you could see certainly got your attention.
From the sky, coming in to land at the Port-au-Prince airport, you start to see it…and then it gets closer, and more real.
A city of debris…a city of tents…a city with millions of people standing, huddling, talking, living…wherever they can.
As we drive the short stretch from the airport to Visa Lodge it’s pouring – no, more like hammering – down rain. The violence of the kind of thunderstorm you only see in the tropics in the middle of summer.
And yet people stand, lining the streets…throngs, crowds of people. Most notably, simply going about doing whatever they were doing before it started raining – walking, riding bikes, standing, milling around in great crowds. Several people standing around three tents – probably their only home for the last 20 months – pitched in what looked like may have once been a basketball court or a small parking lot. Children – looked like anywhere from age 3 to 13 – playing in the streets.
All of this as it’s thundering, lightening, and hammering down rain.
To capture the incongruence of it…is hard. Why, I think, does everyone seem to be going about whatever they were doing – outside – amidst a torrential downpour?
I assume it must be because they have no other option. And certainly no “indoor” option.
We take things like basic fundamental “shelter” so, so for granted. As a given.
For the people here, basic shelter – someplace to get out of a torrential downpour – is not a given. For the vast majority, that would be a luxury.
Meeting the team, hearing the stories of how everyone has come to this place, that was all very cool. The feeling that you are part of the single most important thing going on in the universe on July 30, 2011. That kind of feeling.
Tomorrow should be interesting. Tired now.
