It’s 10:30 pm and I’m sitting in the guest house at Healing Hands for Haiti headquarters on Rue John Brown in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The building is beautiful with barrack-style accomodation so I’m sharing a room with 5 other girls. This was the only building to have survived the earthquake of last year.
It’s 10:30 pm and I’m sitting in the guest house at Healing Hands for Haiti headquarters on Rue John Brown in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The building is beautiful with barrack-style accomodation so I’m sharing a room with 5 other girls. This was the only building to have survived the earthquake of last year.
Both flights (Tor – Mtl and Mtl – PaP) went exactly as planned with departures and arrivals on time. We had checked in four huge hockey bags full of hand sanitizer, exam gloves, marketing brochures, backpacks and toys. Thankfully, Eric and I had done a good job weighing them because they all came in under the maximum allowable.
As we began our approach to the island, the cottony clouds parted to reveal the rugged, mountainous terrain that Haiti is known for. Obviously absent was the greenery of trees or foliage one would expect to see in such a scene. The mountains were brown and almost resembled a gravel pit or construction site. From the air, nothing looked too bad. Once we were on the ground it’s a different story.
We were met at the Port-au-Prince airport by Gail and Fiona and we travelled with another team from Boston on the HHH van back to headquarters. That journey will forever be embedded in my memory. There were piles of rubble in some places, but my fellow travellers who had been here before said that it was vastly cleaner than on their previous visit. The streets were lined with vendors selling all manner of wares – clothing, artwork, motor oil – in remarkably difficult conditions. I snapped pictures wildly along the route in hopes of somehow capturing this overwhelmed feeling. I was at a loss for words.
You only get one chance to experience something like this for the first time. Although I had been to less-than-wealthy countries before, the impact was profound. It’s bigger here. The poverty. The destruction. My adventure really begins when I walk into an orphanage tomorrow with a medical team and try to document how Healing Hands really helps.
To all my family and friends who are reading this, thank you so much for helping me do this. This kind of trip has been on my bucket list for as long as I can remember. You made that happen.
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