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Showing posts from July, 2020

When Everything Broke

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I flew back into Haiti last Tuesday after spending one week in America. It was a much-needed week of refreshment after having ten staff members living on site and keeping the girls inside for several months when the virus first started spreading. Tuesday came and went yet my luggage did not. Wednesday, Thursday, and then Friday went by before finding that 46lb suitcase filled with supplies for the ministry. A trip to the airport is an all-day adventure. Roadblocks from gangs robbing vehicles and throwing rocks, insane bumper to bumper (or hood, or passenger side door) traffic from no one obeying 4-way stops, and police with automatic weapons making sure we have a driver’s license every few hundred meters down Route 9 caused for delay after delay after delay. Finally, I got my luggage and after 4 days back in Haiti, I felt like I could finally settle back in and spend time with the girls like I had just arrived. Little did I know what was in store for the next week. It a weird “what i

The First Few Seasons

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Once upon a time I moved to Haiti. It was August 2013 and I remember that first day like it was yesterday. I had just turned 22. I moved in with a Haitian family whom I didn’t even know their names. They had a two-story cinderblock cemented house. It was beautiful on the outside; a sidewalk lined with seashells to the backdoor with the scent of flowers that overtook the path along the way. The husband, wife, and their two young kids lived downstairs and my quarters were upstairs. That first night was like no other. I had two rooms, a bathroom, and a front and back porch. The back porch overlooked a giant mango tree, the front porch overlooked highway 1, a busy highway that goes North and South along the island of Haiti. Across the street was a junkyard/repair shop and a tire store where you could get air put in your tire for 5 cents. Before moving to Haiti, I grew up sheltered and shy. Danger or risks weren’t in my vocabulary. Third worlds didn’t even exist in the map in my brain.