An emotional day

What started out as a simple trip to the grocery store, turned into an emotional drive through Port au Prince. Dorothy and I left to go to Giant grocery store in Petion-ville. I had never been to that part of the city before. It's a nicer area with large stores and big buildings. Because it is so nice, Dorothy said there is a higher risk for kidnappings, which have become a lot more common lately. So, we kept our car doors locked on the way there.

Although I have only been in Haiti for a week, I was in shock at the grocery store. I felt like I was suddenly back in the United States again, except for the fact that everything was written in French. Giant (different from the US chain) is a two story grocery store...with an elevator! It seems like an oasis in the middle of a desert. It is basically like an American grocery store with name brand foods. It's very different from the other grocery store that Dorothy took me to last week. I haven't been homesick yet, but I've definitely felt far from home. It sounds silly, but I didn't feel so far away from home while we were in the store. Haiti suddenly didn't seem so bad after all. Then, we decided to take the long way home and explore....

The rest of the day is so incredibly difficult to describe. I didn't have my camera along, and it's probably for the best because there is no possible way that pictures can properly show the things that we saw. No words can describe what we saw as we drove through the streets where nearly 300,000 people were killed, but I will do my best. We drove to the place Dorothy was when the earthquake hit, where her car slid from one side of the road to the other and then back again. We passed dozens and dozens of pancaked buildings and crushed homes. We drove right past the President's palace, which is completely destroyed and still continuing to crumble more and more each day. We saw roads still closed and covered with debris. We passed both the national cathedral and the sacred heart cathedral which were destroyed in the quake. Every street that I looked down, I could see tent after tent. Many buildings hung precariously as if they would crumble at any moment. I thought Dorothy was going to be sick as we continued to drive, and I didn't even know what to say. I just looked around in complete astonishment. I knew that Port au Prince was still in bad shape, but the part where we live, it is not nearly as bad. Although I've been living here a week, I suddenly felt so sheltered. We drove right downtown and past the bay. I can't even describe the sights that we saw....it was too much for words. People going to the bathroom on the side of the road because there is nowhere else to go, people sleeping in the middle of the sidewalk, families living in shacks made of scraps of rusted tin, pigs and goats roaming the streets looking for food, little children knocking on our car windows begging for food, people walking the muddy roads without shoes, trash and debris everywhere. We were close to Cite Solei, supposedly the roughest part of PAP, where there is complete poverty and violence, so we decided to go home. We had seen so much...too much for one day.

I took these photos a couple days ago on the way to the hospital. Imagine these pictures as 5th Avenue in New York City:

In comparison, the things we saw today were like the worst slums you can imagine. I think that even the poorest homeless people in the United States have it much better than the people we saw today. Here I am, in the midst of it all, seeing it all firsthand, and I still can't wrap my mind around it. We went from Giant grocery store (comfort, pleasure, convenience, and a taste of home) to compete and utter devastation and poverty. It was like just as soon as I started to feel comfortable, God ripped me back into reality because that's what I asked for: a broken heart for the poor. And the poor are here, right in front of me, everywhere I look.


Be thankful for absolutely everything, everything, everything that you have. Even our garden sheds are much better than what most families are living in. Praise God for your food, homes, furniture, clothes, electricity, clean water, beds, shoes...everything. And pray for those who have nothing.