In Leogane!

Hi everyone, I finally have reached Leogane, and have better access to internet. We have a 3G stick that plugs into our computer to get internet, but we have to share it between the 7 of us, so we don’t get too much internet time. The past few days, we’ve been travelling and getting oriented to the country. On Thursday morning, we met with a guy named Jean Marc, a pretty wealthy Haitian. He owns the company which is building Family Health Ministries’ guest house in Leogane. He took us to a country club-type place for lunch, and it was really nice. Then we walked down from the club and saw a refugee camp, and a few UN soldiers. It’s not really clear what the UN soldiers are doing in Haiti, but walking through the camp was a cool experience. It’s crazy that there’s a refugee camp just a short walk away from a country club.

Then we went to Jean Marc’s beach house, which is just south of St. Marc’s beach. It was beautiful and we definitely got spoiled at the beginning of the trip. We swam and had our orientation there. Jean Marc has a nice big boat, so all of slept on the boat on Thursday and Friday night. On Friday, we had more orientation and we also met Jean Marc’s wife and their cute little baby boy. They also brought the US ambassador’s wife and daughter and we got to talk to them. The ambassador’s daughter goes to UVA! She’s a rising junior, but didn’t know Nikita.

On Saturday morning, we left the beach. We went back to Port-au-Prince to do some grocery shopping, then we came to our guesthouse for the summer in Leogane. The guest house is really nice. It looks like it could be a house in the U.S. We are definitely fortunate to be living here for the summer. I share a room with the 3 other girls, and we have one bathroom.

As I’m writing this, it’s Sunday morning, and we’re all just blogging/journaling/reflecting. The food is pretty good here and the rice and beans are really good. They also cook lots of vegetables and make a lot of their spices from scratch. Our cooks work all day long to prepare our three meals, because they have to wash all the vegetables carefully and they have to make a lot of things from scratch. I have had a lot of down time so far, and it’s pretty boring because there isn’t much to do and we can only talk to each other so much. It’s kind of hard, not being connected to everyone whenever I want to be, but hopefully once our projects start and we have more things to do in the next few days, I won’t think about that as much.

I hope things pick up soon. That’s all for now!