Canada Day and our first day in Haiti

Sorry, I know you were expecting Jana, but it's Todd here.  Meet the team.  It's Jana, myself and Yvette Bradley who lived in Haiti for 6 months as a child.  She was keen to return and with help from her friends at the RCMP detachment was able to bring all sorts of goodies for the outpost here and for the children in Haiti.

We arrived in Haiti this morning after a busy 24 hours of travel.  Our Canada day started out by getting up at 5:30am and getting packed and down to the Duke Point Ferry.  From Vancouver we flew to L.A. and then caught a night flight to Maimi.  I was looking forward to a Dunkin Donuts coffee, but it was so early they weren't open yet :(

Arriving in Haiti (me in jeans), the weather was warm and muggy.  It hasn't been smoking hot ... yet.  Looking down from the airplane at Port au Prince, you can see the lack of urban planning.  Many communities have rusty tin-roofed houses organized in no particular order, and the tent cities visible are worse.  There are a few glimpses of order and structure but not many.  Driving from the airport to "eglise evangelique quadrangulare" (Foursquare Gospel Church), we passed streets lined with cinder-block walls, semi-crumbled buildings of all descriptions, drivers of cars and motorcycles weaving in-and-out wherever there was space on the road.  The numerous pedestrians had to watch themselves very closely.  One piece of whimsey were the brightly painted "tap-taps"; the pick-up trucks with canopies over the box for passengers.  Most store-fronts were pretty low-key, and there were no back-lit signs, and many businesses looked more foreboding than inviting.

Today we didn't do any heavy lifting; rather, we unpacked, got settled into the "big house", had a nap and then toured around the area to get our bearings.  Since Jana was here in March there have been some  nice developments.  At the church there had been no tilapia in the ponds.  They have only a few larger breeders, but a whole bunch of 3-4 inchers; and while we couldn't see them there were about 300 hatchlings.  Mike Davidson, you'll be happy to know that the algae-and-fish-poop laden run-off is being diverted to nurturing several of the plans adjacent to the ponds.  They are working in earnest to grow enough bananas, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, papya, mangos, etc. to become self-sufficient and be able to sell the excess.  The church building that had arrived in a shipping crate while Jana was here last is now erected on the concrete pad, and looks fantastic!!!  When you walk into the church it's about 10 degrees cooler than the outside.  This is because of the open doors and windows and insulated roof.  Nice.

Visiting the tent city was kind of surreal.  They've made home-made power-poles and strung whatever wire they can find and splice together to bring power to their tents.  A lot of things are done here with short-term gain, because they can't afford long-term solutions.  Many of the residents in these tent cities lost their homes in the earthquake (which wasn't near the magnitude of Japan's) and with 80% unemployment have no prospects to rebuild what they had.

We've had great conversations about where Haiti is and what kinds of future people want and can achieve.  We're going to decide on some projects tomorrow that will contribute to improving some lives. The conversations will go on.  I'm not repulsed by what I see, but I sure am proud to be part of the Foursquare efforts here.  They're working hard to make a difference.