October 29th to November 2nd

When we got up on Saturday morning we helped to decontaminate the taptaps and then headed for the road with our packs. We managed to get a taptap to a town just outside of  Cabaret but had trouble finding any that weren’t “roof seating only” for the ride in. Thankfully a pickup truck that was just driving past pulled over to pick us up ad took us all the way to Susmatla where the orphanage had been moved! Terry and Charlie continued on their way and I met Kenley, Richardson, Maria and  Rony not long after that. Kenley had been to the Markey and bought bananas and candies for the kids. We stayed for a few hours to check out the new site. The kids look great and the place looks promising!

Richardson Kenley and I headed into PAP via tap tap and managed to get lost (not a great thing to do in PAP as you can imagine) but we found our way to Grassroots ok and settled in with some mangoes and avocados from the market.

Kenley and Richardson left for home about 8 and I was asked by one of the security guards to come along to the club with them. I obliged :) I’m sure you all know the feeling that everyone is watching you when you’re dancing... well dancing there took it to a whole new level! We left with some difficulty at about 2 am (which is apparently when the party is just getting started) and headed through a police checkpoint where the driver was asked to get out, as he was being searched my friend Luchio assured me that they were just making sure he had put on clean underwear today and that it wouldn’t take long. After that all the guys in the car were asked to get out… seeing as I was the only female there I was left sitting alone. Apparently this is quite a regular thing and is mostly just to establish their authority.

I spent most of Sunday with a group called Give Love who are developing composting toilets. A fantastic was to give not only arable land but also deal with sanitation issues! I met Kenley, David and Nonu for a buffet lunch at a local hotel and then later that day I went back to their house in Petionville for a dinner that Luchio had promised to cook. Turns out that Luchio wasn’t quite sure how to make rice let alone a full dinner so I taught him to make a pilaf with what they had in the fridge (apparently he’s been making it every night since)

On Monday after the camp clean up I went out to the market with one of the security guards where we got some spices and rice and headed for his house to cook beans a rice the Haitian way :). He lead me through a maze of homes in the tent city no larger than 1.5/4 meters. We finally arrived at his home (which was made from scraps of wood, tin and tarps. He proudly gave me the tour and then handed me the Pilon. I “piloned” the spices while Jozef  put the rice on. He taught me tons of Kreyol while we listened to reggae and waited for lunch to be finished. Lunch was so good!

We hung out there until about 5 when I had to get back to start packing up and saying my goodbyes.