We started today at the deconstruction site. Hammers were pounding when we arrived at 7:30. Pretty much the same crew as yesterday with the addition of some of the younger kids helping to remove the debris. They were carting it off and dumping it in the streets, the same as everyone else.
The girls were all doing fine at Marie’s with a good looking peanut butter bread and juice breakfast. They seem to fairing well despite the chaos and destruction around them. Shawn and I hung out with them a little this evening before we left—a bit crazy but fun.
We took a walk with Marie around the neighborhood which was really the first time she has seen more than the area immediately around her. Destruction is clearly everywhere with little pattern—well built houses on the ground in rubble, flimsy block building standing next to it. This was all throughout her neighborhood. We visited a doctor and his wife who house is completely gone, living a tent, with nothing but rubble around them. Small tent cities where neighbors have gathered to sleep together were seen in several locations. I had my CNN baseball cap on so people wanted to talk with me and help them somehow. Requests for college funds, food, new homes, prayer, etc. I told them I would help with prayer. Marie is very sad and distraught over all of the loss. We may try to take her into PAP in a few days so she can get a bigger picture of the devastation. Not sure if she will go.
There is a “rumor” that there is free land being “given” away not too far from here. It is a business man who said people can but their tents up there temporarily—but it turned into a free land giveaway rumor. Thousands were walking there maybe 10 miles from here. We drove there and people were staking out their piece of land—probably no bigger that maybe 15 by 15 feet, probably smaller. Both sides of the road were busy with people coming and going to check it out. Many of the work crew had gone to stake out their share. I believe it will be a temporary Refugee camp vs. the “landowner dream” many Haitians had. Marie did see some of the many collapsed buildings along the way, again no pattern to the destruction. She gasped at the collapsed ABC Market as she knows people who died there.
We walked down the road to see Marie’s brother Para Lou who was badly hurt when a security wall fell on him. His face and head were badly injured but he has healed fairly well. Two young children died in that same collapse. It was Marie’s neighbor who saved Para Lou and unburied him from the rubble. He was playing dominos in his familiar place along the wall.
The work crew destroyed another third of the roof today and by tomorrow the concrete roof should be broken into pieces with only the rebar remaining. They may begin to bring the rebar down tomorrow as well.
Shawn and I are doing well. We are staying down the road from Marie’s at Hope House and Debbie, a missionary in Haiti is feeding us well. We get one cold shower at the end of each day while the generator is running. No electricity since the earthquake—there rarely was before the quake. The people have all been very nice. Peace remains in the neighborhoods we have been in.
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