Kim Priore

Today I had a very Haitian day.  It started out at 4:45 this morning.  Jephthe and I had discussed yesterday the possibility of me going along on his ride to Cap Haitien to pick up his dad from the airport.  Cap is 40 miles from Pignon but it takes about 4 hours to get there because the road is sooooooooo bad.  There were some last minute questions as to whether or not there would be room for me in the car, but I never got a definitive answer.  So I figured, I’ll be up at 5 (the time he said he wanted to leave) and be ready to go.  I hear him up and around, but he doesn’t come knocking.  I sit there for awhile till about 5:30 when I decide he’s most likely left without me and there wasn’t room, crawl back into my bunk but stay dressed just in case.  About 6 I finally decide, he’s definitely gone by now, and I get undressed again, and take the contacts out.  6:22 a.m. I hear “My Keeem? Are you ready?”  GL.  So we’re up and at ‘em.  Then I started timing, and it was literally 7:30 before we left Pignon.  That my friends is a Haitian morning.

The road to Cap is unbelievable.  I did it once before, in the back of a truck.  We went in a Jeep this time, and there were 5 adults, two children who DEFINITELY should have been in car seats, and one girl of about 10 or 11 maybe, on my lap.  Britney Spears has nothin’ on us, y’all, THIS is country.  It’s impossible to sum up the ride in one word, so here are a few:  terrifying, bone-jarring, exhilarating, breath-taking, exhausting.  My favorite are the parts when you round a bend and think, why, the road is completely gone.  And then you realize the car is going RIGHT THRU THE RIVER.  This was a lot less scary when we did it in a big truck.  I could have reached out and touched the water, I’m not sure how we didn’t stall out.  I told Jephthe that in Boston people pay a lot of money and call this a Duck Tour.  He thought that was pretty funny.  Then we’d come across these enormous mud puddles, and he’d either charge right thru with no way of knowing (in my judgment anyway) how deep they were, and I’d think “this is it we’re going to get stuck” OR he’d sort of skirt the edge of this really deep puddle, and I’d think “this is it, we’re going to tip over.”  This happens…roughly every 5 feet.  For four hours.  I said lots of Hail Mary’s, my Nana Mella would be proud.  (Mum you can leave that part out when you read to Nana Phyllis.) 

The thing about this drive is it also features some of the most breathtaking mountain vistas I’ve ever seen in my life, and I don’t even have pictures, because the road is too bumpy to take any.  But my deep thought for the day is, if you only focus on how rough the road is, you miss the beautiful view of the bigger picture.  Ok that’s it for my Jack Handy moment.

Anyways once in Cap it was a lot of driving around and waiting and sweating and driving around and waiting and sweating and driving around and waiting.  And sweating.  Have I mentioned the sweating?  Because there was a lot of it.  We dropped someone off at the Hotel Mont Joli, so I got to see that again, and ate at the Lakay restaurant where my team ate last time, the site of the infamous Mambo #5.  Sometimes it’s fun to re-live memories, and sometimes it can be hard.  Particularly when people were a part of them who aren’t in your life anymore, or who aren’t there in the same capacity they once were.  So that was actually a little difficult for me.

We finally arrived back in Pignon circa 8:00 this evening.  The ride home featured me jammed in the back seat with 3 other women.  One of whom was Jephthe’s mom.  “Ma’am Sidoine” as she is known, is like the matriarch of this clan which boasts 9 children, many of them pastors, and grandchildren too numerous to count, spread across Haiti and the US.  She’s amazing to me.  I treat her with the utmost deference.  She was now seated on my lap.  Awesome.  BUT…I got to shower tonight, and it’s amazing what a difference being clean can make.

So that’s all from Haiti tonight folks.  Prayer requests are, that I would be able to pin Jephthe down on the information that I need for Bright Hope and make good use of my remaining time here, that I would continue to be able to build a relationship with his wife Mitou who is really sweet and shy and her English is limited.  Asking direct questions is not a part of Haitian culture, they tend to find it really jarring when you do that and they don’t do it to you.  So I’m still trying to figure out how exactly you get to know a Haitian.  Ha.  I’m also processing some stuff in my personal life, just in terms of relationships and learning to let go of some things, and I could really use prayer for that as I seek some closure and peace.   At the same time not wanting it to dominate my thoughts either. 

Miss you all and love you all tons!  Thank you so much for the emails…my internet time is so limited and the connection so slow that I’m not able to answer them all but receiving them when I log on is a big encouragement! 

Love from Haiti, Kim