The Final Days in Haiti

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday morning I woke up in my little two man tent at 3:15 AM. I made sure that Bry was awake in the tent next to me, visited the sanijohn, washed up and then headed over to the humvees. The 82nd Airborne was heading out on their daily rice drop mission and we were translating for them this morning.

I jumped in the humvee with Sergeant Burds from New Mexico, PFC Roberts from Texas and PFC Atkins who was our Spanish speaker in case we needed that (which we did). I thought how jealous Jace, Parker and James would be that I got to ride in a military humvee. We all headed over to each pick up our four rice trucks just around the corner from our base at another army base. Once each convoy had their trucks we split up to our two rice drop locations.

When we arrived I got right to work directing the Haitian drivers. The third driver was a "tet mato" and ripped off one of the gates to the hospital's courtyard. I love how Haitians respond to anything. No big deal they said, we can easily fix it. The 17 workers that had come to help unload the trucks got to work right away, two trucks at a time. I obviously couldn't stand there and watch, so I jumped right in and to the Haitians' surprise started chucking 80 lb. bags of rice along with them. Haitians love it when a "blan" (white guy) works with them. They're always surprised at first because in their country, although the country freed itself from slavery 206 years ago, they're still exists a very real master/servant relationship between the haves (less than 1% of the country and lighter skinned) and the have nots. To keep them motivated I started a competition with one of the faster workers to see who could unload more bags of rice.

I can't remember the last time I was performing heavy labor at 4:30 in the morning and sweating like a monkey but it was great fun. We unloaded the four trucks in an hour and a half and then escorted the trucks back to their warehouse down on Delmas 3.

Once back to camp I thought I might take a quick nap but didn't want to waste my last day in the country (or so we thought). Good thing I didn't because a group of three other older RM's were heading north to the beautiful Moulin sur Mer beach, just south of St. Marc.

The five of us jumped in a tap-tap driven by two members from Croix des Mission and one hour and 40 minutes later we were in a tropical paradise. Moulin sur Mer is a gorgeous colonial style resort with Caribbean colored waters and excellent food. We enjoyed a relaxing last day taking a salty bath in the sea and eating our last Haitian meal. The entire time I was in Haiti I wanted to drink a papaya shake and couldn't ever find a place clean enough to make it. Today I finally got my wish, a very befitting gift on my birthday. For the past 12 years I've tried time and time again to recreate this Haitian delicacy at my parents’ house. Every time we visit my parents my mom buys papaya so we can make shakes but it has never turned out as good as I remembered them in Cap Haitian. Finally again my shake and I were reunited. What a beautiful reunion it was.

At 2 o'clock we packed up and hesitantly left this beautiful paradise that is much more representative of Haiti as a whole than dirty Port-au-Prince. I wish more people could see this side of Haiti. We arrived back in camp at 3 PM ready to pack up and head to the airport but to our surprise everyone told us that our departure had been delayed a day. At first we thought they were playing a trick on us but then we realized it was true. We had packed up all our tents and blankets that morning but fortunately President Mardy hadn't picked them up yet.

When we realized we weren't leaving we jumped back in our tap-tap with a few additional friends and headed down town to see the Champs des Mars and the national Palace. I had not seen it yet in person and it was a surreal sight. We drove by the 200 year old national cathedral and it was destroyed but for a few exterior walls still standing. A piece of Haiti's history gone. We then drove over to the palace and witnessed an eerie sight. The national palace, very similar to our own White House, was destroyed and rendered useless. Rebuilding will take months if not years. There have been rumors that the seat of government will be temporarily moved to St. Marc while they rebuild PAP.

We then climbed the 100 ft tower of eternal flame across the street from the palace and witnessed the destruction from a commanding view of the city. From this view the 2 million homeless Haitians in the city was breath-taking. The palace is surrounded by open public plazas with statues of Haiti's forefathers and heroes. These public squares have now been turned into shanty towns with thousands of people living under sheets and tarps, some lucky enough to be in a tent. A sea of humanity. At that moment I imagined what New York or Chicago or LA would look like if its residents were forced out into the streets and I wondered how we would handle it differently. As bad as we think our government agencies are at responding to disasters at least we have those agencies. Haiti has nothing and these people are left to fend for themselves. We headed back to camp after that and reconstructed our tents for the night and hoped we'd fly out the next day.

THURSDAY (the real final day)
This morning we woke up after being soaked by rains during the night. I didn't sleep at all and I at least had a tent. What about the hundreds of thousands of Haitians who did not? I remembered back to the first week of work when I discharged an older gentleman with a brand new cast on his broken arm and the doctors parting advice was not to get it wet. His daughter looked at me with desperation in her eyes and said we have no home and no tent. How do you expect us to do that? We didn't have any tents at the hospital to hand out to the homeless. The fear in our group is that if tents are not provided quickly to the people many will suffer from or die from diseases brought on by the ensuing rainy season.

We began packing up camp again and drying out all of our wet articles and then a group of us headed up above PAP to show some of the docs beautiful Haiti. Above PAP to the east are the mountains that eventually lead to the Dominican Republic. It is also where beautiful green farm lands thrive, where the wealthy live because the climate is much cooler and it’s where President Monson, as a young apostle, dedicated Haiti for missionary work.

We visited Kenskoff, played with local children, joked around with adults, sucked on sweet fresh grapefruit and visited the Baptist Mission which was established at the beginning of the last century and is still a thriving self sustained community with a hospital, bakery, school, church, zoo, and artisans shop. Once we finished there and the docs had bought some souvenirs we headed back down on our bumpy tap-tap ride. Once back at camp we finished packing up the last of our items for Pres Mardy to pick up for his orphanage. We loaded up the LTV's, waved goodbye to the 82nd on our way out and then arrived at the airport around 7 PM.

Our Sun Country Airlines charter jet arrived was allotted a 9 PM landing slot by the airport authority and it arrived shortly thereafter. Cheers went up when the plane landed and within an hour we had loaded the plane and were leaving Haiti. It was a bitter sweet moment as any moment like this is. We wanted to stay and continue helping because we knew how great the need was, but also knew we couldn't stay forever and because of the conditional on the ground all governmental and non governmental agencies had reduced their deployment times to 2 weeks in Haiti. We didn't want to press our luck even though we knew the Lord had been watching over us. We arrived at Orlando at midnight, went through customs and then waited for TSA to check all of our checked baggage and finally we were in our way to SLC at 4 am. Two cheeseburgers, fries, a coke and a cookie later we were in SLC.

Media was at the Jet Center, family, and other group members that had left earlier were there too, and it was an emotional overload. Two weeks of hard hard work now came to an end and we were reunited with loved ones that had sacrificed for us to go on our "Mission of Mercy" as it had been dubbed. Thank you to everyone for your prayers and support financially and emotionally. Our work has just begun. God bless you all and the Haitian people as they rebuild. I have so many more thoughts and pictures I hope to share with every one soon.
Kenbe lafwa e pa pedi lespwa!

If you want to see the real resilience of the Haitian church members, visit http://www.ldsmag.com/churchupdate/100202church.html
It's an amazing depiction of their strength, optimism, and courage.