After 18 long hours of travel, including trying to sleep in the Miami airport (that was impossible-- the seats had armrests so you couldn't lay down and they kept announcing the time over the loudspeakers every few minutes) we arrived in Haiti. From the air, Haiti is beautiful. Green, lush mountains, surrounded by crystal blue ocean. But when you land you see the devastation and the utter poverty.
We were ushered off the plane and through customs. No problems there. And our checked bag full of presents and shoes for the orphanage was waiting for us at baggage, thank goodness. As we exited the airport a man asked for our baggage ticket and we realized we had thrown it away. Oops! Luckily he knew we were stupid Americans and he just checked our names to make they matched the tag on the bag.
We walked down a covered sidewalk with men trying to take our bags and lead us to their taxis. We had to keep saying no meci! They were quite persistent, but the worst thing you can do as an American is get a ride from a taxi driver. You must know the person picking you up. We knew a driver from the guest house would pick us up, we also knew he has a habit of being late. So we stood on the sidewalk, conspicuously white and American. Every few minutes another man would approach us and Ask if we needed a ride. One man was quite persistent, he kept telling us our driver had forgotten about us but he would be happy to take us where we needed to go. Of course even if our driver had forgotten, which we were hopeful he hadn't we had no idea where the guest house was. We were totally helpless, praying that Franc would eventually show up. An hour and a half later a man with a sign saying "Baur" walked up to us. Thank goodness! We were on our way.
We are about to head to the orphanage now, so I will post more when we return!
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