Open The Eyes of My Heart Lord

Saturday June 29, 2013 9:35 pm

Backpacks are slung over shoulders, suitcases are all in tow (all marked with matching bright green duct tape for easy recognition) and we step out into the sunlight in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Following a man from MOH – also in a red shirt, conveniently enough – we are led across a busy Haitian street to an old school bus. All our luggage is thrown onto the back and we file in through the front door, rather haphazardly.  

Okay, I’m going to be candid here. I’m a white girl who grew up in basic suburbia all my life. This was a definite culture shock, as I’m sure it was for others in the group. Clusters of dark Haitian natives congested the streets, all speaking a language I couldn’t make out. The heat consumed everything. Within seconds, perspiration was glistening along our foreheads, reaching into our hairlines, soaking through the backs of our shirts as we rested against the brown leather of the school bus. There seemed to be no relief.

And the smell! Personally, I couldn’t decide whether it was foul or just plain interesting. Sometimes it was sweet and smelled like a campfire while other times it was simply questionable. Emily deemed it to smell something like the after-reek of fireworks. Regardless, it was definitely something new and different.

I think that if I tried to drive here, I would surely get myself, and any other passengers, killed. Having said that, I give mad props to our driver. From what I could tell, there seem to be limited, if any, traffic laws. By the sounds of the car horns, you would think you were somewhere in NYC. They were a constant background to all conversations. However, unlike in NY, the horns in Haiti are more of a “I’m here, I’m coming, I’m going to pass you” kind of communication, rather than the rude traffic alerts of the Big Apple. But seriously, it was more like a roller coaster than a bus ride. We were within centimeters of slamming into other vehicles on multiple occasions. Scenery was flying past us on either side way faster than I think it should have and we came dangerously close to the side of the road repeatedly, but hey! We lived to tell the story!

Speaking of scenery… Has anyone ever read Paradise of the Blind by Duon Thu Huong? It’s a translated novel from a Vietnamese author. Throughout the novel, Hang narrates her life story, and as she narrates, readers might pick up on the reoccurring contrast that is produced by her inner conflict. There’s a constant and conflicting amalgamation of the beautiful and the filthy. This isn’t as random as it seems, I promise. I noticed this same confliction as we drove through Haiti. There was trash everywhere, cluttering the streets, the greenery. Shacks were set up out of sticks, straw, sheets of plastic and whatever else could be quickly fastened to erect a dwelling out of the natural-disaster-burdened landscape.

Yet for all of this, it was beautiful. The people of Haiti dress in clothes much like ours, filling the area with vibrant colors. Gorgeous trees with flowers the likes of which I have never seen before are sprinkled everywhere. Intense orange flowers spring out of trees surrounded by poverty and trash while bushes of vivid pink blossoms entwine with the barbed wire at the tops of walls and crumbling buildings. There are little trucks here covered in crazy circus-like decoration with people hanging off the sides- riding like this must be quite the circus act as well, with the type of driving I’ve seen…

Anyways, to quickly wrap up our past couple hours: We arrived at main MOH campus and dropped off all our donations. Talked to some people, took a quick look around, warily watched the guards with the shotguns and then re-boarded onto our crazy bus. Off to the newest campus.

So this is us arriving at the main campus, looking good for the last time, unloading all the suitcases.

This new campus is set between the mountains and the ocean. Beauty is surrounding us on either side. Not that we could really see much as there was a haze over everything, but you can just tell. The dorms (well, at least the girls’ dorm- the guys can speak for themselves on this one, but I think we’re pretty equally housed here) have ten beds in each room, making for twenty bunks. There are also three stalls for toilets, four for showers and four sinks. This might be a miscount on my part, and I am sorry for providing the wrong facts, but I am not getting out of this mosquito netting to check, sorry.

We ate dinner, which was surprisingly tasty, drank from gigantic glass bottles of pop (the amount of Coca-Cola that we’ve seen here is incredible) and then eventually got around to this big plastic bubble tunnel thing (I’ll come up with a better name for it later) in which we had a few praise and worship songs, prayed, and got our orientation run-down. Overall, it was a very long, but very enriching day. I personally cannot wait to see what is in store for us over the next week.

Hopefully the Lord is opening our hearts to the world around us, as we sang earlier. Keep us in your prayers!

-Katie Coming to You from Haiti (Finally)