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| From Haiti - Jeremy's Pics |
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| From Haiti - Jeremy's Pics |
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| From Haiti - Jeremy's Pics |
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| From Haiti - Jeremy's Pics |
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| From Haiti - Jeremy's Pics |
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| From Haiti - Jeremy's Pics |
Before you watch these videos a few disclaimers. Go ahead and make fun of our unintentional fake Dominican and later Creole/French accents. They get better as the week goes on. Also, these videos were mostly shot from a moving SUV in crazy traffic so they aren't very steady and the conversation in the background reacts to the traffic. The videos are in 720p and streaming from Vimeo.com so you should be able to make them full screen and it be very crisp.
Bani from Jeremy Sanders on Vimeo.
Vincinte Noble from Jeremy Sanders on Vimeo.
The crossing was packed with vehicles and people. There was a market right at the border and people were buying and selling food to take into Haiti. It took about 45 minutes to get across the border, but we weren't stopped or questioned at all. We didn't even get our passports stamped, they just waived us through. There was also a big UN troop carrier with a 50 cal mounted on the front that was a little intimidating, but all of the military we ran into just let us move forward without question. The road on the other side of the crossing was a very bumpy gravel road that was cut out of the side of the limestone cliffs by a river. Once free of traffic we stopped to wait for the other vehicles to catch up as it was impossible to stay together in that mass of people and trucks at the crossing.
This one is a little long, but is all my footage of the border crossing into Haiti which was quite an experience.
Border Crossing from Jeremy Sanders on Vimeo.
One notable image was that of a single man in a canoe with outriggers loaded down with probably 10-15 50lb bags of rice paddling it down the river towards Haiti. He wasn't making much progress, but I guess he was determined. Maybe a sign of things yet to come…
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| From Haiti - Jeremy's Pics |
We thought that we were seeing poverty in the DR. Poverty in Haiti is so much worse that it is not even comparable. As soon as you reach the first town the smell of the third world greets you strongly. There are tent cities everywhere. I asked Dickens if those were earthquake refugees? He said that they lived like that before the earthquake. Another thing we noticed was that the gas we bought in Jamini must have been pretty low quality. All of the vehicles reported a loss of power and rattling valve trains. The trip from the border into Petion-Ville was about 3 hours which only covers 35 miles. The images of poverty and earthquake damage were striking as we rode into town. I think they speak for themselves.
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| From Haiti - Jeremy's Pics |
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| From Haiti - Jeremy's Pics |
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| From Haiti - Jeremy's Pics |
We made it to the church about 2:00 I think. The "street" that the church is located on is a very steep dirt, gravel, and sometimes concrete road. When we got out of the cars and looked around, I was amazed that this was what these people were living in. They were very happy to have us there. We quickly unloaded and assembled a team to go to St Marc to get the food. The medical team was going to sort the medical supplies and get ready to open the clinic the next day. I left Jeff in charge of the rest of the group to get our other supplies and gear situated and to start talking to the people of the neighborhood. We met Chasnel Raymond (referred to as Raymond), Josue's brother, as well. Dickens got a guy named Michel to drive our lead vehicle and the others followed. He is a professional driver and it was a fast ride into St Marc trying to keep up. Richard had his second flat tire on the way. I stayed back with him and we worked on getting it fixed. We had a jack, jack handle and four-way, but couldn't get the jack high enough to lift the tire. While he was under the truck, a water truck came by spraying the road and soaked him while he was laying in the dirt. After that we discovered from some local guys that there was a tire fixing stand about 100 yards down the road. It had just enough air in it to drive it that far and we were able to let them fix it.
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| From Haiti - Jeremy's Pics |
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| From Haiti - Jeremy's Pics |
Alex and crew proceeded to the port. When he got there about 5:15PM, the guards said it was closed, but took him to the ship. The guys on the ship took him to a room and said to wait there while they talked to the captain. The room they left him in was full of other guys from the ship. They asked him if he was new on the boat, and he said "pretty new!" One of the guys he met was Roy Dixon. He is from England and runs a non-profit getting aid into countries. He had an ambulance full of medical supplies that he was trying to get to a team of doctors, but couldn't get it through customs. They customs people told him he needed an NGO (non-government organization) to consign it over to in order to get them to release it. Through that search he met the guys at YWAM, Youth with a Mission. They have a large base in Saint Marc headed up by a guy named Terry Snow who has been in Haiti for 17 years. Tom was his contact there and after Alex told Roy what we were trying to do, Roy said he would try to get us connected with them as well to see if they could help us get the food off of the boat.
Once Richard, Mark Turner, Josh, and I caught up with Alex at the port, Roy jumped in the SUV with Josh and me and we rode the few blocks to the YWAM compound. St Marc is like the Wild West. All of the roads are dirt, and there are motorcycles zipping by everywhere. The dust just hangs in the air. When we got to the YWAM compound, a guard opened the gate (more like metal blast doors) and let us through. We waited around for a while for Terry or Tom to become available. While we were waiting I called Elise to see what he thought we could do. He said that we could go see his cousin Wally at customs tomorrow and we could probably pay a little bit to get the food released. When I relayed this to Roy, he was pretty adamant that we not pay tariffs or bribes to get the food released. He said that once one organization does that it sets a precedent that harms all of the other Christian organizations trying to get aid into a country. Tom from YWAM was able to talk to us at 8PM. He went through the process of getting a shipping broker to handle the paperwork and file it with the government in Port au Prince to get your supplies released. We explained that we did not have time to deal with all of that, that we were only going to be there for a week and had to get the food so that we could distribute it. I talked to Elise and he said that we could go see his cousin Wally the next morning at the port and see what we could do. He was going to drive up and be there by 7AM. Then we went with some of the YWAM staff to a local restaurant to get some dinner. The place we went had hamburgers, pizza, and other various American foods, so I ordered a Royale Cheeseburger with Bacon. It has to be the nastiest hamburger I have ever put into my mouth. I only ate two bites of it and couldn't eat anymore. The patty was about one eighth of an inch thick and was burned to a crisp. The bacon even tasted bad. I think that this has to be the first burger in my life that I have ever not finished. I went ahead and ate the fries.
After dinner we were going to drop Roy back off at the port since he was staying on the boat. He jumped out of the car and walked over to the guards to try to get in. Well, the guards evidently had decided to give him a hard time and wouldn't let him back through the gate. Roy is kind of a hot head so he just kept getting more and more wound up. He was going on and on about how the problem with Haiti was the government and how they hold up everyone trying to help their people. He then threatened to call Fox News, CNN, the BBC, and anyone else who was listening and tell them that they were responsible for suffering in Haiti. Of course the guards didn't understand a word of English and he might as well have been yelling at a brick wall. After a few minutes of this, one of the Haitian YWAM guys that was with us jumped out of the other vehicle and ran over there to see if he could help. Once he started translating what Roy was saying that just made the guards madder. Evidently the Haitian word for the f-bomb is the same as it is in English. Somehow through all of this Roy convinced the guards to let him back to the ship, and we headed back to YWAM. YWAM lined up some bunks for us to sleep on and had some towels and stuff for us to use in the morning. I talked to Alex for a few minutes and then headed up to bed with some Ibuprofen. My neck was pretty tight from all the car riding and stress of the day and I had a raging headache. As I laid on the bunk on a thin air mattress with a sheet over it, I prayed that God would release the food, but that I also would be content with His will if it did not get released. I prayed for the safety of our team and the success of our mission to show the love of Christ to those in desperate physical and spiritual need.
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