Today was spent on a bus. Our goal for today was to gather up some food and water to bring back to our village to pass out; we also wanted to see the destruction in Port-Au-Prince with our own eyes.

 

 

The day started with driving a few hours into the middle of nowhere. Literally. Then, when we got to the middle of nowhere, we turned left, down this small gravel path. Please note: Large bus + small gravel path = no bueno situano. Finally, in the distance we saw this school, standing all alone in the desert. Next to the school was a huge circus tent. As we got closer, we realized that no one was actually in the school building, but rather, under the tent. Since the earthquake, there seem to be few people brave enough to enter a concrete building. I don’t blame them. Long story short, the man in charge of the school had American contacts who were sending him more food than he knew what to do with, so he offered to let us have some to give to our village. So we loaded up almost a half-bus-load of food supplies, and then headed into downtown Port-Au-Prince.

 

 

 

 

Now I start to see the earthquake’s wrath and destruction. Building after building; home after home; one after another. One building would have some damage, then another would be completely demolished. Then another would be completely fine, right next to one that is now a pile of rubble. The way in which the earthquake chose her victims is completely mind-blowing; it doesn’t make sense why a completely destroyed building would be sitting next to a building that appeared unfazed by the 7.3 quake.

 

 

 

 

The earthquake suddenly became real. This really happened. Seeing people hobbling around without limbs that were recently amputated made the earthquake real. Seeing hundreds of thousands of people displaced, now living in homes made of tarp and tin, this made the earthquake real. It really happened. People really died. This is more than just something we all watched on CNN. It really happened.

 

 

 

Probably the most emotional time for me was when we passed a grocery store called The Caribbean (pictured above). This was one of the first “American” markets in Haiti. Before the quake, it was huge, five stories tall. Now, it’s no more than a pile of crushed cement and cinder-blocks. Our Haitian friends told us that there are more than 300 bodies still trapped under the rubble, left to decay in an accidental mass-grave. They also said that the smell of death and rotting flesh was so putrid that the locals had to pour gasoline on the rubble, just to overtake the smell. Imagine, driving by a pile of rocks, know that there are 300 people dead underneath; their consequence for going to the grocery store on January 12th at 4:53PM.

 

 

We ended the day by somehow weaseling our way into the Samaritan’s Purse compound to get free bottled water. Apparently, after the majority of the U.S. Military pulled out of Haiti, they had millions (literally) of bottled water left over that they donated to Samaritan’s Purse. Our team leader, Frank (who has a way of getting what he wants ) somehow convinced a few Haitian Policemen (holding shotguns) to let us into the fenced-in compound. When we drove in, we found that there were literally millions, possibly billions, of bottles of pure water just sitting in the sun, going bad because of the chemical that the sun puts in the water when it sits for too long. How ironic: here, a country who is literally dying because they don’t have clean water to drink; yet, there are too many bottles of water that they don’t have a way to distribute it.