We love you Haiti!

Hey y’all – these are the North Carolina girls (Kim, Emily, and Grace).  It’s our last night here, and our turn to write the blog, so here we go!  Tonight it rained and it was wonderful – like nature’s air conditioning in the sauna that is Haiti. 

Haiti.  That has become so much more than a noun to us this week. We’ve gone from the lowest of lows in Citi Soleil to the highest mountain tops that Haiti has to offer.  Rather than delivering water today, we shopped and bartered with street vendors, enjoying the view of Haiti from above.

This experience encompasses one of our words of the week: Two-fold.  Haiti is easily the most beautiful place we have ever seen.  The landscape is mesmerizing and the people are absolutely gorgeous.  Yet it is one of the most destitute places in the world.  Older women staggered to the truck with buckets, desperate for water and struggling to carry what little possessions they had. Naked children climbed out of metal shacks littered with trash and ran to us with arms wide open, screaming, begging to be loved.  Children found cracks in the water hose and put their mouths to it, hoping that drips of water would reach their tongues because they had no buckets to fill. 

But these children also laughed.  They smiled and squealed with delight as we played ring-around-the-rosy and London-bridges. We giggled along with them when our Creole was less than perfect. They braided our hair and we sang songs.  The women’s smiles lit up their face when we offered to help them with their buckets and give attention to their children. 

This country and the people that inhabit it are hard to explain because you cannot understand the intense beauty of these people unless you see it for yourself.  They are beautiful.  They are not trash, or useless, or hopeless or hardened – they are not what surrounds them.  But they are also not beautiful because of what surrounds them.  Being surrounded by trash and desperation and not having food and water does not make them beautiful.  They are beautiful because of what is inside them.  They are beautiful because they are humans just like you and me.  They are beautiful because they have passions and fears and hopes and dreams.  They have things that make their eyes get hard and empty with rage.  They have things that make those same eyes squint and well up with joyful tears.  They are people, and they are stunning.

            This is Haiti, a land of both great beauty and great sorrow, two-fold in a sense we weren’t really expecting. And we hate to leave it for both reasons. 

We also hate to leave our amazing team.  Minnesota and North Carolina are not as close as we would have hoped, so this is really tough.  We are going to miss:

-       The Fabulous Dana and his pink fingernails

-       Bob the Machine

-       Lois and her amazing love story (way better than ‘The Notebook’)

-       Abby with her Rapunzel hair and her dub-smashes

-       Our photo model, Kelly, who always wears her heart on her sleeve

-       Stacy (Grace’s long lost sister) and her blue skull tattoo (too bad she doesn’t take naps…)

-       Lisa W. and her mafia ruthlessness paired with her quick-witted one liners

-       Kimberly, and her matching wardrobe (and because she’s Emily’s older sister….duh)

-       Maddie, the baby of the team, who knows no language barrier

-       Jill, our team Mama, who is always taking care of everybody else

-       Tara, because she’s the cooler version of Emily (and she can jump rope in Citi Soleil)

-       Jeff, for his incredible gift of music (“Hey Jeff, do you know a song…I think it’s called Deep?”)

-       Lisa, the ultimate tour guide, for her encouraging smile and her willingness to help in any way.

WE LOVE YOU HAITI AND WE LOVE YOU MINNESOTANS!!!