Haiti: The Sights of Port au Prince

Today, I have decided to show some pictures of Port au Prince. I did not get very many because we were told not to take pictures when our bus stopped; we could greatly anger people if we did. So most of mine were taken while the bus was moving pretty good (which wasn't very often).

The first photo is a view from the airplane and the second is the airport. What you see is what you get. The PAP airport is like going back in time. The airport was a crazy experience.

After you depart the plane, you get on a bus (see it under the tail) and ride to a very hot and crowded warehouse room to go through customs and collect your bags. You literally feel like cattle. The room is very hot and there are about 8 lines for all 150+ passengers to go through. Once you get through immigration, you go to the one and only baggage carousel (this was new as of 1 week before our trip) and collect your bags. However, they only let them circulate once and if you are not there, which you are probably stuck in line, they chunk your bags into pile and then you dig for them. After you collect your bags, you have to fight off airport porters because if they get your bags, you don't get them back unless you tip them.

Keep in mind that there were 30 of us and we had 37 checked bags to collect and we all had two carry-ons. Once we finally got ALL of our luggage, we headed out. This is where I freaked out. Once you get outside you are separated from the public by a chain link fence but they are all standing along the fence begging, yelling, and following. We saw children fist fighting, adults in heated discussions, and pretty much pure chaos. It got really scary when the fence ended and you had to walk down the middle of a Haitian human tunnel. It seemed like there were hundreds of people yelling, grabbing at your luggage to help, or just begging for money.

Honestly, I was scared out of my mind and overwhelmed. Eventually, we made it to our bus and headed out. Just so you don't think we were left to the wolves, Brent, our leader, and a couple of his translators/bodyguards were guiding us though.

Tent cities. We saw numerous tent cities. What caught me off guard was seeing families inside of them. We generally only see the masses on the news but to drive by and see children inside, women topless bathing, or families trying to cook outside of them really hit me hard. You see life and that is something they don't show you on TV. Don't forget, people live in these. There is NO privacy, sanitation, space, boundaries or sense of ownership. These people have squatted on land out of desperation and this is now their life. This has been there life for almost 7 months.

When we arrived it was raining and you should have seen the water and garbage running on the ground, flowing through these homes. Garbage! That's another thing, there is garbage everywhere! In piles, in the gutters, on the sidewalks, in rivers, in dried creek beds, in the trees, everywhere you look you see it and smell it.

Street markets, everywhere! Everybody sold something, even if all you had was a bottle of soda and an old pair of shoes.

Earthquake destruction.

We all had a good laugh with this graffiti.



Overall, it was a shocking and eye opening day for all of us. It's funny because when we first arrived everything seemed so depressing, hopeless, and a little scary. By the last day, it was completely different. I saw the people and the city through a new set of eyes. We all did.