Byenveni nan Ayiti

We made it to Port-au-Prince!

The team just finished our get-ready-for-the-week meeting after a wonderful dinner prepared by our hosts. We're spending the night at Jules' house. He'll be our guide during our time in Haiti and one of our interpreters in Plain Matin.

His house is quite nice. It's about 45 minutes from the Toussaint Louverture International Airport, where we flew into P-a-P. The house is walled off from the street by a block and barbed wire fence. We enter by way of a big, red iron gate. There's a living room with a TV, a big open porch overlooking the neighbor's house, a dining area (no appliances), three guest bedrooms, and a real bathroom with a shower, sink and flush toilet. Although, we can't let the tap water fool us because it's not safe for our delicate American stomachs...

There's no air conditioning, but with the open balcony, glassless windows and a number of fans, we're getting enough of a breeze. Which is good because it was 97 degrees when we got off the plane.

The airport was madness. Jeff (our Haiti H2O) leader said it was more controlled than usual, which says something. The airport staff grabbed all of the luggage as it came down the conveyer and tossed it in a massive pile on the floor. Fortunately, we had several of our people right up there with them grabbing our luggage before it could be tossed aside and buried. Otherwise, I saw porters charging travelers to retrieve their bags from the sea of suitcases.

Jeff warned us beforehand that this would happen and that we were to stick together and not let anyone outside St. Paul's and Jules and his men to touch our bags under any circumstances. This both improved and complicated circumstances, as we weren't always sure who was with us and who wasn't. Most talk between Americans and Haitians went like this:

American: No mèsi! Go away!

Haitian: I'm with Mr. Jeff.

American: Oh, okay. Sorry. Thank you.

But we all survived the experience with no real trauma and - more importantly - with all of our luggage intact and accounted for.

However, after the airport came the driving. Let's just make one thing clear: There are no traffic laws in Haiti. You drive wherever you have room, at whatever speed you like, passing whomever you want, whenever you want. And you don't wear a seatbelt. It started out harrowing, but I quickly grew to love it as I realized a) Jeff is a pro at navigating Haiti, and b) Haitian drivers are far, far nicer and more cooperative than American drivers. Also, there's basically just one main road connecting all of Haiti.

Carsickness, on the other hand, seems eminent with all these rapid twists and turns. Good thing I brought Dramamine...

Haiti looks like nowhere I've ever been before. There are people everywhere in the road trying to Frogger across or to sell bottled water, food or trinkets through the car windows. One man caught us as we were temporarily gridlocked and washed our windshield despite Jeff's constant, "No, no, no!"

People lined the road everywhere, hawking whatever they had. There is no national sanitation system, so trash is in the streets - some of it burning - making for a pretty horrendous smell accompanied by endless dust and smoke. Naturally, in the midst of this, our air conditioning conked out, so we were forced to drive with the windows down and experience what Jeff referred to as "the real Haiti."

But I digress... Our first order of business after arriving at Jules' and unpacking the trucks (followed by a scramble to claim beds), was to go for a walk around the neighborhood with Beauty. Everything here seems to be just cinderblock dwellings. There are dogs and goats and chickens in the street. I saw a car with a pile of dead roosters on the roof. We met Jerry, the dog who lives on the roof of Jules' house. Haiti's Parliamentary Election is planned for Sunday and we saw many campaign posters, although there's doubt the election will take place because no one knows where or how to vote.

We returned from the walk hungry - and just in time for an amazing dinner. We ate spicy chicken wings, fried plaintains, rice and beans, avocados, potatoes, and passionfruit juice. (Also clean, bottled water for our American stomachs.) I remembered to take my malaria meds at dinner and I only suffered a mildly upset stomach.

Right now it's still so hot, everyone is debating whether it would even be worth it to shower, as this is our last chance before we return to this house late next week. The general consensus is, No showers. I'm sitting at the kitchen table, right by a fan that's not helping very much. The neighbors seem to be having a party and the music is jammin.' I just noticed Jules has three decorative plates on his kitchen wall depicting Italian place settings with plenty of vino. These plates are really speaking to my heart.

Anyhow, I'm getting tired, so it's probably time to call it a night. Our plan for tomorrow morning is to be back in the van by "9ish" to begin our four-hour drive to Plain Matin (where we've been promised it's cooler).