June 2015, Day 7: driving through the mountains back to Port-au-Prince, Gertrude’s orphanage for the abandoned special needs kids

Loading up, and rolling out of Jacmel

The final morning in Jacmel involved a lot of tired people trying to load their possessions and themselves into vehicles as quickly as possible.  We had all given our all over the preceding week, and it was showing at this point.  Thankfully, many of us had packed the night before, so we just got to play “how can we tie down luggage atop vehicular roofs in such a way as to avoid dumping possessions over mountaintop edges,” a high-stakes game indeed.  Spoiler: aside from a moment when a suitcase dangled off the side of the Toyota (once we were off the mountain, thankfully) – we got there, all people and luggage with us and accounted for.

The IL team in the van; the OSU + me team in the Toyota. Luggage to spare.

A final photo of the group…

Steven, Pastor Marky and his wife Sydney, and the team

… and of Steven with his Haitian co-conspirators, so-to-speak…

Nathan (left), Sydney, Steven, Pastor Marky, and Emmanuel (or Mannu). An administrative and leadership team to die for!

… and we were off in our convoy of two.

We left the way we came, through a gate proclaiming JACMEL, on the only arterial road between Jacmel and Port-au-Prince:

JACMEL! [and advertisements]

Traveling through the CRAZY Mountain Passes to Port-au-Prince

Soon after passing through the GATE OF JACMEL (I don’t know why, but the font for the sign made me read it like it was being yelled!), we began to get a great final (re)view of Haitian scenic gems… as well as a daytime education/baptism by fire in “you can apparently go faster than you think and not die, while driving in the mountains!”

One of the mountains, as seen from the mountains!

Just one important note: all the photos in this section were taken with my Pentax DSLR camera through a tinted car window while the car was moving in uneven lighting on a very hazy day.  I can’t believe these photos came out as good as they did!! 🙂

… I am such a sucker for offroad vehicles in river-crossing scenes. Its like they set this up for me to photo as we drove by!!

I find it poignant that on our trip out through the natural beauty of Haiti on the way to the corrupt capital of Port-au-Prince… we still were confronted with governmental corruption and mismanagement, even in the middle of no where.  This bridge was a civil engineering project designed to withstand future earthquakes or tropical storms, to connect the main road between Jacmel and the capital, to the mountaintop communities outside of Jacmel.  The money, however, was profoundly mismanaged and so on one end, the bridge simply stops.  On the other end, the last small portions of funding were apparently put into fill gravel, to make the road (roughly) reach the bridge.  So, in fact, this bridge goes to no where.  Such good intentions, sufficient initial funding, and then political corruption and mismanagement led to the entire project being a waste:

This bridge which leads no where, just outside of Jacmel. Designed to connect the main Jacmel–Port-au-Prince road to the mountain communities, this is how it looks as of last week, utterly useless. It is a professional and safe civil engineering project, which ran out of money as the government mismanaged the donated funds.

Even with the hazy conditions, the view from the mountain roads was fantastic

People who never before got car sick definitely found their stomachs turning at points, along the severe curves and corners to the road through the mountains.  The Haitian driving culture of using your horn to let others know “I am here/I am coming this way” was VINDICATED fully on these curves, where you cannot see around corners and the road is often *JUST* 2 cars wide… not a lot of margin for error, particularly not with commercial trucks and vans barreling around the corners in more than one lane at a time!

This is the best photo I got to show off JUST how sharp some of these mountaintop corners were. Steven tells me that this skimpy guardrails are a relatively new addition, which is INSANE given the sheer drop

A good shot showing that the deforestation of Haiti is literally turning the earth there brown over time, as topsoil is carried away from wind and rain alike

We eventually made it through the mountains and drove back through Léogâne, into the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, and eventually to the international airport.  We pulled to the outgoing flight drop-off point, and in the span of maybe 5 minutes unloaded 12 people, their various luggage and personal articles, and closed the cars back up.  I don’t know where we summoned the energy and intensity from, but I suspect that traffic causing the IL team to arrive at the airport VERY close to their departure time… had something to do with it!

A Hi Lift jack mounted on a roof rack, a snorkel, and more offroading gear on someone’s normal daily driver in an urban area. These are the sorts of mods I am doing to my Subaru!!

Steven, Nathan, the OSU WonderTwins and I went off to the American restaurant of Haiti, Epi d’Or.  The food was all very expensive and very rich, but OH so deliciously unhealthy at the end of our trip.  Satiated with fries, donuts, and pizza… and the full cake we bought and brought with us to our lodging for the night, for which we then departed.

Arrival to Notre Maison, an orphanage in Port-au-Prince which rescues abandoned special needs infants and raises them

We arrived at Notre Maison, which I will interchangeably call Gertrudge’s, where we would stay for the night.  Put in simple and stark terms: Haitian culture in general does not allow for special needs or developmentally disabled infants.  In Port-au-Prince, they are routinely left to die atop trash piles across town.  A local woman named Gertrude decided this was not acceptable, and so she began to walk the trash heaps looking for infants left to die; she brought them back to the orphanage she began; and started to raise them as her own.  A doozy of a story.

The sign in the kitchen of Notre Maison.  Please, go and read about their work… and consider donating towards their operating costs and amazing work at their website

At this point, my brother had been leading teams in Haiti for 4 weeks and was exhausted; I had been up past 1:30am the night before and was exhausted; Nathan was exhausted… so we stumbled into the oven-like bedroom at Gertrude’s, popped the window vent slats to get some of the hot wind in, and passed out at 2pm, in the heat of the day, for 2 or 3 hours.  It takes a certain level of exhaustion to pass out in 100+ degree heat, in a growing pool of your own sweat, with daylight shining in your eyes… but we had all managed to qualify for it!

A gorgeous view from the roof of Gertrude’s in the 100+ degree heat

Per the posted rules and out of my own disposition, I didn’t take photos of any of the kids (in some cases, now adults who have spent their entire lives at Notre Maison).  Those can be seen on their website.  The night, therefore, was spent entirely in conversation with, of all people, a sister of one of the IL team members we had spent a week with, who interns at Gertrude’s!  We talked about the ups and downs of international development work in general, and the specific difficulties of working within Haiti.  A nice analytical closing evening to a week spent working with and for those Haitians we were lucky enough to meet and befriend; and many more besides.

The courtyard and main entrance to Gertrude’s

The rooftop tables at which we met and chatted with the interns at Notre Maison, and tried to cool down in the winds off the sea

Gertrude lives in this yellow home; while I didn’t get to explore the whole orphanage compound in my short stay there, it was a very Byzantine layout

The trash-filled property next door, which used to be used by a man to burn trash ~20 hours per day, throwing billowing clouds of soot into the orphanage. Have I mentioned how much I wish I could change Haitian cultural attitudes about burning garbage?

Steven, Nathan, and I. Friends [Romans? Countrymen??]

The night began to drop, we headed to the bedroom where the really new AC unit had been running full blast for ~3 hours to try and put a dent in the stored heat and humidity in the room… and was still struggling to get rid of them, though it was noticeably less miserable in the bedroom as compared with the outside.

It was a mostly sleepless night, for the first part saw us too hot and sweaty/sweating to fall to sleep.  At some unknown point the AC had cooled the room enough to be able to pass out.  After that, of course, the AC continued to cool the room and we had passed out in boxers alone due to being so warm… so we froze!!  That made for a tired day of departure and travel the next morning – the story of which shall get its own blog post, so stay tuned for ~The Exciting Conclusion~ to this trip!!!