To see this chapter with full pictures please click here
I apologize for not getting back to writing about Haiti lately. There is so much still to write about. To be honest, in these past 5 parts posted thus far I’ve only just begun.. I may hop, skip and jump a bit from time to time as I continue to write about our trip to Haiti.. I will try my best though to stay relatively on track according to how our trip went in terms of a time frame. That being said, I suppose my writing of this Haiti trip in itself is symbolic of a common cliché we shared during our stay in Haiti. That is, everything was a fluid situation. More on that in a moment….
We left Windsor at about 10:00am on Monday morning the 15th of February. Everyone arrived at a central location within the city at Devonshire Mall to board a Windsor Transit Bus to head over to Detroit Metro Airport in order to catch our departing flight which would leave for Florida around 2 in the afternoon. Once we landed in Florida around 5:30pm, we would prepare for our connecting flight to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.
When we arrived on the island of Hispaniola which is shared by both Haiti and the DR, most of us didn’t know what to expect. Only a few had travelled on Humanitarian Aid trips as medical staff. The rest of us were in for a shock. Actually, I suppose in many ways even Denis, Ben & Amy who all had previous humanitarian aid experience in other 3rd world countries went through some shock seeing the devastation left by this horrible earthquake. The day’s travel duration went pretty smooth checking baggage, getting through customs and security checkpoints and all… We arrived a bit late in Santo Domingo. It was close to midnight by the time we departed the plane and met up with Joe who would be our guide for the duration of the 10 day humanitarian trip.
From the airport, we boarded into two extended vans that took us to another Dominican Republic city called Santiago where we would stay overnight in a guest house before departing early the next morning for Haiti.
Joe had us up pretty early. It was just after 6am when we heard his voice from outside our rooms calling out to wake up as he knocked on each door of the guest house. By the time we had reached the gust house in Santiago and settled into our rooms it was close to 2am for most of us before we fell asleep. So getting up at 6am, especially after being a bit jet lagged from travelling all day the day before our nights sleep felt like a mere cat nap.
As we all gathered for breakfast at a nice outdoor café not one of us was exempt from feeling sleep deprived. Some of our group had stayed in one guest house and a smaller group of about 4 of us stayed at another a few blocks away because there had not been enough rooms available at the one guest house. We all met for breakfast at a restaurant somewhere in between the two guest houses.
Mind you, we were also still adjusting to the nice weather conditions having just flown in leaving behind a bitter cold Canadian winter to land in a warm tropical paradise like the Dominican Republic was something we would all just have to try to quickly adjust to… Ummm, actually, it took all but about 5 minutes after un-boarding the plane the night before when we arrived. Seriously though, I think by this time though both our physical bodies and our mental mind states were in confusion as we tried to adjust to all the sudden changes in the last 24 hours.
After breakfast, everyone headed to their rooms to quickly pack up to be ready on time to leave for Haiti.. And then we waited… and we waited… lol… And we began to learn about Haiti time.. In essence, not sure if there really is any.. Things just move accordingly without dead lines or the stress of meeting certain time frames. And at least in part, that is where Steve McDougall’s little cliché “Everything is a fluid situation” originates from. We heard these words often. Several times a day! And every time a bus or tap tap would not show up, or we waited a few hours for our departing bus to travel a far distance, or a plan would change, and then that new plan would change 20 minutes later, only to have it changed again 10 minutes after that, we were reminded again and again, “This is a fluid situation”
There were no guarantees is what it meant. Everything we planned had to first be understood that we may actually be planning things in vain. Everything had to be played by ear, one step at a time for things change rather quickly in Haiti.
Next stop- Haiti…
