Haiti Trip, Part 1

Travel (Tues/Weds), Arriving in Haiti(Weds)

The last weekend in February, my sister and her children came to visit, and helped me pack for the trip. It was a crazy weekend of trying to fit as much as possible into the limited luggage we had. We had 3 plastic rubbermaid-type tubs already full (and within a few lbs of the weight limit) of donations, leaving one suitcase to check and our two carry-ons and personal bags. This to carry all of our clothing, food, medication, and diapers, bottles, clothing and formula/food for the babies. Did I mention how hard it is to pack for two children you've never met, and whom you have very little idea what sizes they are? (Actually we ended up being pretty good guessers though.) Sunday, Amy went back home, taking Kaylen with her for about 12 days. After lots of hugs and kisses, we finally got Kaylen in the van, and they headed off.

Monday Jock worked, and I finished up some last minute things, before leaving on Tuesday morning. We got to the airport, and checking-in for our flights and getting through security was pretty un-eventful, despite not getting assigned seats until we got to our gate. We waited nearly two hours, but then were told we might not get on the flight (even though we weren't on stand-by - we did have guaranteed seats). Apparently there was an earlier flight cancelled to Chicago (due to bad weather), so their crew had to go on our flight to get back, making our flight really full and nearing the weight limit. However, at the last minute, we did get boarding passes and made it on.

We were delayed getting out of Des Moines, so we literally were running through O'Hare to make our connection to Miami. We made it though! We got to Miami on time, got our luggage and made it to the hotel around 7:30 pm, starving and extremely thirsty from spending the entire day on flights where you only get a tiny glass of something to drink. We chose the hotel restaurant because it was easy and we wanted something quick. Boy, was that a mistake! It was a half-hour before we even had a waitress stop by that we could ask for water. Then it was even longer to get our orders put in (despite having long known what we wanted). Horrible service! You'd think with 4 employees standing around and very few patrons we could have gotten better service! The food was good, but with the poor service, it shouldn't have cost us a fraction of what it did - and on top of it, they automatically added the gratuity! Anyway...

Wednesday morning we were up early, had a wonderful buffet breakfast at the hotel, and were off to the airport. We got our bags checked, and got through security quite easily again. We waited for a couple hours, and the other people we were traveling with arrived, so we visited with them while waiting. It was nice meeting several families I'd read about or read their blogs, or seen pictures of, etc. I think our flight out of Miami left pretty close to on time. I took a few pictures out the airplane window - I've never flown over such beautiful land/water, so I had to. It was the beginning of the emotions for me, kind of setting the stage... (The first two below are over the ocean somewhere between Miami and Hispanola, the others are as we were coming in to land in PAP.)


Upon arrival in Port-au-Prince, we exited the plane, onto a stairway on a truck, and onto the airplane parking lot - no tunnels there - although I think I heard they are working on building one. We waited a few minutes for some others from our group, but then were quickly herded inside - I guess they don't like people just standing there for security reasons. We got easily through passport control/immigration. Yeah! Our first stamps on our previously blank passports! When we were through those lines, we went out to the baggage claim. We were approached by a man, asking if we were looking for Linda. After he said it the second time, I understood him, and said yes. He directed us to the pile of luggage he and his team had started pulling from the carousel. (We'd marked our luggage with pink and yellow ribbons so they were easy to identify.)

When we had everything (and everything did arrive) on carts, we proceeded through customs. That was quite the experience. They randomly asked people to stop and they looked in the boxes. One of ours had powdered milk in it with no expiration date on it, which was an issue for them. I just told them I didn't know, that it was new, and mostly played dumb like I didn't understand him, and he let us through. We were last in line, so by the time we had gone through we couldn't see the rest of our group. (Moral of the story - don't be last in line!) So we just proceeded outside, and then we found the rest of our group. We were held up briefly by a couple other men who tried to stop Jock, but one of the FHG security men came back and ushered us through. We also got stopped for them to help us with our bags, and since we were told not to let people take our bags, we resisted. However, we later found out that they were with our group. It was a little nerve-wracking, but we made it through, and met the rest of our group, got on the vans, and were driven away to our hotel.

Once at the hotel, we waited in the restaurant area (with cold fresh water) while Linda got our room assignments for us. We then had just a few minutes at the hotel, before going to the orphanage. It was a nice hotel, but not like hotels in the US. There was a couple main buildings (restaurant, conference rooms and a few rooms), and then several little two-room villas. We were in one of the two-room villas. Our room had a king size bed, a bench and a couple chairs, a desk and dresser, closet, air conditioner, TV, and a bathroom (no tubs in Haiti - shower only). It was clean, and once we turned on the air, very comfortable. The one cockroach we saw was large, but he didn't last long once he met Jock's shoe. I did also see a gecko crawl across the wall a couple times, but otherwise, no problems with creatures.


When we were all back up at the parking lot, we went to the orphanage. We basically all stood on the front porch, and Linda brought our children out to us. At the first sight of a family united, I lost it. I was crying from that first moment - even though it wasn't my child for what seemed like forever - just with anticipation of seeing Elijah and Josephine. I had moved out of the way a bit off to the side, so it was a bit before Linda came out with Elijah. When I saw that little face of his (confused as he may have been), the world just stopped. I quickly made my way to her, and I don't remember too much of what happened next. Jock was taking pictures, and I just stood there holding him close to me, kissing him, and telling him, "Mama's here", and "Mwen renmen ou". Linda gave us a bit of time before she brought Josephine out, which was nice. And I think at some point, I handed Elijah to Jock before that.


I'm a little vague on the details for the rest of the day, but I think we let Elijah and Josephine spend another hour or two in their baby rooms, while the men and the women split up to get organized for the work that was to commence right away the next morning. After our planning for the next day's work was wrapped up, we had a few more minutes of free time at the orphanage before heading back to the hotel. Jock and I decided to leave Josephine at the orphanage that night because she was wheezing pretty good, and had a bit of a cold, and we didn't want to expose her to all the traveler's germs quite yet. So, we had the first night to spend with just Elijah. I think that was a good decisions anyway, because Elijah was a bit more uncertain of what was going on. I wouldn't say he was scared as he wasn't crying or scared for us to hold him. He just was maybe more reserved and a bit confused with what was going on. He warmed up to us fairly quickly those first couple days, and that's when we got the awesome smiles and giggles out of him!

When we got back to the hotel, we cleaned up a bit, then met up with the group for dinner and devotions. The hotel restaurant had pretty good food, for which we were fortunate. They had really good freshly-baked bread - like french bread loaves here in the states only skinnier. We had chicken spaghetti (which Elijah liked), and creole spaghetti (with ham bits) for the first night - because they were recommended by friends who'd traveled there before. They were good choices.


After dinner and devotions, we were beat, so we headed back to our room to get ready for the next day (me), and collapse (Jock and Elijah - actually Elijah had fallen asleep during dinner.)
Watch for more trip pictures and stories in the next few days...