Sou BIS

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Back in Port au Prince. I have just spent the past five days for a ti visit up north in Passe Catabois. Leah and I weren’t sure if we could hack it, trying to make our way north to see everyone in such a small amount of time. But north we went on the bus via public transportation aka the cheapest way we could find. This is an experience probably everyone in their lifetime should have. A school bus, a little pimped out (a lot), with maybe 80 people packed in. The way up there is maybe 120 miles, and should take about 4 to 5 hours but on the way there we broke down, of course, so it took 7. Leah and I planned this thing well. We didn’t drink anything all morning because we knew the bus wouldn’t stop at the local McDonald’s for a bathroom break. When we started getting dizzy sitting in our seats I thought maybe it was time to drink something. Hehe. It worked. However, our bus driver stopped a lot at the demands/yells of the Haiti women saying, mwen gen pipi!! So stop we did and everyone’s irritated and saying, oh man, not again…look the white girls haven’t peed yet! So I told them our plan: we didn’t drink anything! Everyone was laughing, so that was good.

At any rate, the experience was so good. The road is paved up to Gonaives, which is halfway, but after that it’s your normal gravel/clay/potholes/river crossings of a road. I now understand why people fight to not sit in the back of the bus because you’d be hitting your head on the roof every minute or so. Life is so tough here. It’s everyday life for the Haitian and for us, you adapt or go home.