Hi Everybody!
This is Alec Hill, a just graduated senior at SAS, blogging about our trip from a hotel in Petit-Goave, Haiti. We are about to take off for a three hour drive up into the mountains to the farming community of LaFond, where we will be staying for the rest of the journey and building/digging latrines for the kindegartners. Doing this will mean the kids have to walk less far to go to the bathroom, allowing more time for actual school, as well as helping reduce the risk of cholera.
The last 24 hours have been pretty crazy. We arrived at the airport around noon yesterday, and were immediately set upon by around a dozen men trying to carry our bags and find us a taxi and get a dollar or two out of us. At a gas station five minutes down the road, it was the same story. Basically, it seems like a large portion of adult males in Haiti are without employment, and must find some money by selling sodas on the street, or small bracelets. The traffic laws in Port-au-Prince are also basically nonexistent. It took us around 2 hours to get out of the city itself, and the rules of the road seem to be that if you honk and you go for it, it's yours. The effect of the earthquake are still very visible: roads are torn up, massive piles of gravel and rubble everywhere, and in what used to be parks are massive tent cities. Everyone gets their water by pump, and most people seem to live in these small tin-roofed shacks that are stacked on top of each other right up to the edge of the road.
Okay-that's all I've got for now. Much Love.
