Day 2 in Haiti

So now I'm outside our house/apartment that we moved into today (and we'll be staying here for the remainder of the trip) because there isn't any internet indoors. It's raining now but I'm keeping dry and the rain has weakened somewhat from what it was earlier tonight (there was thunder and lightning as well).

Today we woke up around 7:30 AM at John Engle's house, had breakfast, and went on a hike up the hill that John lives on. About a mile up the road, 4,000 feet above sea level (John's house is 2,000 feet above), we stopped at the site for a future learning center. John and Haiti Partners have planned to build a learning center, which will essentially serve as a hub for the entire community, where students will learn and play, and where the remainder of the community will be able to meet and spend their time.

Once we reached the site, a group of local Haitians began to form and watch us eagerly. After a few minutes during which John explained the project to us, over 25 local community members had joined us. Now, these people essentially came out of nowhere, and into the middle of nowhere. There were no buildings, no towns or anything of the sort nearby. However, the people were interested enough in the prospect of building a center which will progress their community and allow them to enjoy further development, that they came out to spend their time with us.

Above is a video of John Engle, myself, and a local member of the community named Fitu, speaking about the exciting opportunity that awaits. We recorded several more people speaking of what they believe the most glaring issues and needs of the community are, and we will upload the videos later (the internet here is a bit shaky and we were unable to upload all of the videos right away). People were eager to speak their mind and have their opinions shared, and their advice is appreciated and valued, as they are the people who truly know what is most needed.

Following that, we bid farewell to John's family, and went to Daniko and Mryse's (the directors of Prodev) house for dinner along with Sharon Ramon (who works with Prodev with building curriculum, recruiting teachers, and more). All three of them are inspiring and will surely be enlightening to work with as they are all glowing with a passion to help the impoverished people of Haiti. They reiterated to us that it is important to understand that although the recent earthquake was devastating and made the situation here worse, there was constant struggle and poverty beforehand. The earthquake has essentially illustrated pre-existing problems to the international community, and has sparked an interest in helping that has been needed for a long time.

During dinner, we also began speaking about the details of our project in partnership (OneLove & Prodev). We brainstormed several preliminary ideas, but are not completely sure what we are going to do yet. Tomorrow we will surely have a better sense of our plan after our endeavors. Speaking of which, tomorrow will be an interesting and busy day; we will be visiting an orphanage, spending time in schools, which are in the tent-cities, and getting an overall feel for the Haitian schooling system.

That's all for now, I'm off to bed. Today was busy and tiring, but it was an awesome experience nonetheless. Be sure to check out our twitter page (twitter.com/OneLoveAdvocate) as we'll be updating it throughout the day, and also report back to the blog for more videos, pictures, and posts. Thanks for following us on our trip thus far!

One Love.