World Haiti Ouest Fermathe

Prince of Peace Trip to Haiti 2012

You can't get there from here Feb 11, 2012

When we started off on today's adventure Barry said, "you realize you can't get there from here". The truth of the matter is that you have to drive out of the city and around, then back towards the city to get the short distance to our destination. When we were making our loop we came upon a huge area of land that has been cleared and row after row of cement houses are being built. The first section of the land that they are building the houses on has over 100 little 3 room 400 sq ft houses. The houses have a small living space and 2 small bedrooms. The kitchen and bathroom are on what I would call the front porch. Most people here prefer to have an outdoor kitchen because it is too hot to cook in the house. Even here at Tony's they do all of their cooking in an outdoor kitchen even though they have one indoors. The thing I find interesting about the little cement houses is that just a short distance down the road there is a large area of similar houses, only larger, that they built in 2003 and stand empty. They said they remained empty because people did not want to move that far out of the city because they could not work there and would still have to find a way to get back into the city to work each day. And now they are building another huge field of houses right next to that one! The hope is to move the people that are still living in tents out into these. I can't help but wonder if this has been a well thought out plan. Our next stop, and our actual destination was to see the school at Rigaud. This is another one of the Star of Hope projects, they are in the process of building additional buildings on to this school to include pre school and secondary. Even though school was not in session I was amazed how many students were there. They said they were there to do extra work on their studies. Doing well in school is so important to the students and their families. Then we walked a block down the street to the church. The church was heavily damaged by the earthquake and Barry and Tony came to deliver the news that someone has offered to provide the funds to build them a new church. What an amazing gift! Next stop was the Star of Hope office where Tony and Barry took care of some business and the 3 of us were able to make phone calls home to our families. It is hard to believe the temperature at home is in the low teens and here it is low 90's with high humidity (feels like 101). If you could pipe a little of that this way it sure would make sleeping tonight much easier. Next, up the mountain we went. Going up this mountain was much different than the mountain to Dano. Dano was very rural and hard to get to. This drive was mostly paved and is the area the wealthy of Haiti live. Picture driving up a winding curvy road in the Rockies with people parked along the sides and everyone passing whenever and wherever they choose, even on the curves! At one spot we had to back up as far as possible because we couldn't fit until the "log jam" of cars opened up. Maybe dodging goats and pot holes wasn't so bad after all. We stopped at the Baptist Mission of Haiti at Fermathe to have lunch on the mountain. Next Tony took us to a lookout area from where you can see the entire city of Port Au Prince, that is, if you are not above the clouds on a very cloudy day. On this day we saw.......clouds. It wasn't a complete loss, we had the opportunity to bargain with a few vendors to buy keepsakes. Haggling over prices is not something we are accustomed to but we quickly got into it. Heck, Jennifer even bought a few things she admittedly didn't even want but got caught up in the game. Our last stop of the day was to see the Palace and the Cathedral. Both of these buildings were obviously beautiful buildings but the earthquake has left them both a pile of rubble. How sad.

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