Today was a great day! It started with the best cup of coffee I've ever had, and not just because I was tired. Our guide had told me about how good the coffee is in the rural parts of Haiti, and he was right. It's much thicker (not watery) and has a very smooth taste. If I could have coffee like that at home, I think I would drink it everyday.
We drove over an hour and a half to our first shoot location, which was in the town of Thomassique. And by drove, I mean off-roaded on their rock roads. To call them dirt roads would not do them justice, because they're not as smooth as dirt roads. They're rocky and very uneven terrain with many streams and mud puddles. It took a lot of concentrated effort to not bounce around in the car and get carsick in the morning. By the afternoon, I was used to it. Our first shoot location was an educational health clinic where World Vision provides Health Ed to the local mothers of the community. They learn things like how and why to wash their hands, the importance of tracking health of their babies by weighing them and measuring their growth, breastfeeding, and many other things. They also provide vaccinations and supplemental vitamins like Vitamin A. It was quite an overwhelming setting, because of how packed it was with people, but so cool to see mom's learning and then teaching their kids.
For lunch we went to a hole in the wall restaurant. And by hole in the wall, I really mean a hole in the wall. And by restaurant, I mean nothing like any place we would define as a "restaurant" in the US. Both Dave and I had THE item on the menu which was goat and beans with rice. We both ate less of the goat and more of the beans and rice. 🙂 BUT we tried the goat! A highlight of our lunch was a tall, cold bottle of Coke.
Our second shoot location was a youth program in a small little village outside of Thomassique (or maybe it was still considered part of Thomassique). It's an empowerment program for teens to learn, ask questions, and grow in ownership of their community. The thing that stood out about this location was the loud pigs and chickens, since we were meeting under a tree in the middle of houses. At one point Dave and I looked at each other with a look that said, "Are they actually killing a pig right now?" Because that's how loud the pig was. But thankfully, no pigs were killed while we were there.
We're staying at a "hotel/guest house". We actually found out that we are staying in the home of the hotel's owner, in one of their rooms. We have electricity (via a generator) and running water! As we were driving to our hotel on the first night we had no idea what kind of accommodations we would have, and so seeing electricity (not to mention wifi!) when we pulled up was very exciting. We were also excited to see we had a shower! Getting the shower to work was quite a challenge, and different than our showers in the US, but we got to get clean! And we're SO thankful for running water.
