Bright

Today started as many of our mornings here, with a brilliant blue sky.  It energizes our team with the brightness and hopefulness that a new day can bring.  A new beginning.  A new chance to help someone. A great way to start out a new day of service.

After a wonderful breakfast, we left to visit Rebo coffee.  It was great to grab a fresh latte while supporting a local business. Many of our friends who have visited Haiti before asked us to buy them some coffee here. As a result, we left with several bags of coffee beans.

Our next stop was the Haitian History Museum. Our guide led us through the museum and showed us some incredible artifacts, including; the anchor of the Santa Maria (a ship sailed by Christopher Columbus) and the bell from the first Catholic church that was built in Haiti.

2010 Earthquake Memorial

After a brief tap-tap ride we visited the mass grave in Titanyen from the 2010 earthquake.  In this quiet memorial, we heard from one of our interpreters about his experience of that day.  Because he only went to school on Monday-Wednesday-Friday, he was not in the basement classroom when the building collapsed.  Other people, who knew nothing about earthquakes, ran into buildings when the first tremors hit believing they would be safer there.  We have memorials in the US to mark when we have tragedies have happened.  But truly imagine losing 3% of the countries’ population in a single day. That would equate to over 7 million people in the US. There was no one in the city of Port-au-Price that was not grieving in the days following.  The beauty and quietness of this memorial was truly moving.

Nearby is a group of elderly people that we visited in their homes.  We washed their feet, spreading lotion on their hands and feet and painted a few nails.  It was wonderful to visit and pray with these people in their homes.

After our full day, the team ended our traveling at Fleri Pizza.  Fleri Pizza / Bakery was created to support the local people, giving them jobs and a sense of community.  The pizza was delicious as well as the plantain chips and salsa.

The day ended as most do here, with a thunderstorm and a tired group. We look forward to a new day of bright and hopeful skies tomorrow.

Kevin Tollefson