An amazing group of media, IT professionals, agriculture scholars and the talented guys from PowerSecure met at the airport Sunday morning at 5am to depart for Haiti. The day couldn’t have started off any better- check-in was a breeze, we found out the Mura fundraiser raised $600+ in funds and the Duke football game sales raised $1700 for HFHF. We landed safely in Port au Prince around 10am and only had a few hiccups to get thru customs.
And since you may have caught on that I love my food… I’m going to go ahead and tell you about the meal I’ve been dreaming about since my last trip in May. Vierge always prepares lunch trays for the groups arriving at the airport (see photo). This is seriously some of the best rice and beans I’ve had in my life; I don’t even like beets but the beet/potato salad is killer, and the goat is definitely bangarang. Nothing can compare to Vierge’s cooking!
The drive from Port au Prince to Zorange is probably only 70 miles, but it can be a ~6 hour journey. We have several ‘first timers’ on this trip and we were teasing them that this was shaping up to be one of the easiest car trips to date. Since the earthquake, so many roads have been paved and smoothed out. The cars were running smoothly- we even had air conditioning and fabric seats! Honestly, I was truly worried we were spoiling the newbies rotten. The weather was even beyond dreamy. The air was cool and crisp because several storms had rolled through.
Consequence of awesome weather due to storms: swollen rivers. Car #2, driven by John Brown, got STUCK in the river! The team came together, unloaded the car, walked across and pushed the stuck vehicle out of the river. Every time we would cross over the river, Elade would say “oh, car #2 can make it- ITS NOT THAT DEEP.” We’ll let John Brown tell you whether those spots in the river were ‘that deep’ or not. 🙂 Ten hours later and MANY more river crossings, we arrived safely in Zorange and crashed in the brand new dorm building (thanks G for laying that solid foundation!).
More updates coming soon- we’re excited for Monday to start and work on the generator, computer lab and media projects. Kristen from our media team will be blogging as well, telling you all about her experiences as a first time traveler!
– Tara Z.