When we landed in Port au Prince, Haiti, we had been told that it would be a complete chaos and to expect the worse. Mentally prepared and walking with a forced self-confidence attitude, we get off the plane and the first thing I hear is music. Fun atmosphere and loving people greeting us from the plane on our way to the custom counter where the lovely ladies jocking and having a good time let us into this unknown country. We were the only visitors and everyone else on the plane was local. So we did not have to line up. We went straight through. (well, after filling out our green declaration card with only one pen between the six of us, it took a while…)
Our luggage was already there when we got to the carousel and we hired porters to take care of our 12 suitcases duffle bags filled with soccer balls, sheets, clothes for the kids, construction tools, etc. We got stopped by security who did their due diligence and searched our suitcases only to leave us go through with a huge smile when they realized we were bringing all these blessings into their country to work in an orphanage.
We all jumped into an old big truck and started our way through Port Au Prince’s traffic… So far, I had be pleasantly surprised at how seamless everything had went and how civilized it was. The people in Haiti are really nice, friendly and I frankly felt pretty safe.
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t is true that it was quite desolating for the eyes as the ‘decor’ was really run down and the streets are covered with garbage. There is a big problem in Haiti as there is nowhere to put the garbage. So people simply put it everywhere on the streets and don’t pick it up. It is dirty and it smells of course but they don’t seem to mind. They had their market set up on top of piles of garbage and they are all selling something that they either made or grew up in the mountains. 
Every time we would stop, some people would come to the back of the truck trying to sell us something.
We got to Grand Goave about an hour and a half later and got greeted by kids and the community just getting out of church, walking to us with smiles and grabbing our hands to shake them and give us their blessings and welcome wishes.
We quickly got right in the community with the kids who surrounded us with attention and love, giving us their hands and asking us to take them in their arms, holding us tight and craving affection in exchange for their cutest smile! We thought they were trying to ‘charm’ us, until I realize a few days later that they were not putting on a show. They are just simply happy, all the time, laughing, living a very simple life, with nothing and wearing these dresses made of a pillow case and running barefoot around the school-slash-church-slash-home. We had just arrived, and I already knew we would have a great time ahead of us, coming in with the intention of helping in making their world better and somehow realizing that their world was already good, even great, probably more loving and definitely more free and more filled with genuine collaboration than ours in America.
Vraiment un super texte résumant votre voyage. Tu devrais le faire en français et le mettre sur Facebook, pleins de gens du Québec ont vraiment hâte de lire ces commentaires