Even More of Haiti

Welcome to Part II of my series on the different parts of Haiti I have the privilege of visiting. This installment documents a trip taken a few weeks ago for the very important purpose of…some R&R!  🙂

My friend, Marie (a nurse practitioner with Haiti Health Ministries), and I took a little overnight excursion to Jacmel. Remember the map from last time (see the last entry if you need a refresher)? Jacmel is almost directly across from us on the southern coast of Haiti.  I was surprised that it was only about a 1.5 hour drive to Jacmel.

The waters of Jacmel are a little rougher since that side of the island is exposed to the open Caribbean Sea (as opposed to the more protected waters of Canal du Sud on our side – part of the Golfe de la Gonave, the largest gulf of the Caribbean Sea in the Antilles).

There is a new, beautiful boardwalk in Jacmel…

…lined with all kinds of amazing mosaics!

Jacmel has some beautiful French/Creole architecture! – a little reminiscent of the French Quarter in New Orleans. The fact these older buildings are standing leads me to believe that perhaps this area was not hit hard by the 2010 earthquake.

I took this one for my mom – she loves cool door photos. 🙂

Jacmel celebrates 2 weekends of Kanaval (Carnival) in February. Here you can see some of the decorations.

We caught this group making a music video for Kanaval.

Here is the gorgeous place we stayed for the night. Our room was the top left window in the building on the right. The room itself was nothing special, but the view was amazing!

The pool…of which we took advantage. 🙂

The outdoor bar

The restaurant

Marie, as we waited for our lunch

And best of all…the view!

After lunch, we went for a swim in the hotel’s own little bay. The water was a bit rough, but great. Later we drove to a nearby beach that was big, had nice sand, and lots of people. When we got back to the hotel, we took another dip…this time in the pool. 🙂

After a little time reading pool-side, the sun began to go down…so I moved to a better vantage point to to catch the show.

My vantage point 🙂

After a yummy dinner and a good night’s sleep, we decided to head to Basin Bleu the next day before heading back. It was quite a process trying to find a route through town…with Kanaval preparations and Sunday market blocking the streets. And then we had to drive across a river bed and up a mountain, so we were thankful for a moto guy who led the way. We arrived to this scenic area.

Basin Bleu is a series of 3 main basins, or pools, of crystal blue water filled by waterfalls.

On the hike up to the basins, we stopped in this small cave.

Amazing tree roots growing out of the rock near the cave

Basin #1

Basin #2 – each one gets deeper

To get to the third basin, you can swim across the 2nd…or hike up and over. The rocks on the way down are slick, so the guides are there with a rope to help.

The final basin – 75 feet deep!

So fun to jump in! And refreshing!

Me and one of our guides over by the falls. He dove in from the big rock above us. I wish I could have shimmied up there the way he did!

Swimming back to meet Marie. Marie and I swam around a bit and then crossed over to basin #2 which we swam back across. What a great experience!

On our drive back, we got this great view over Jacmel – God’s creation never ceases to amaze me!

More of Haiti

In the last couple months, I’ve had the chance to begin doing something that I’ve really wanted to do – see more of Haiti!

First, let’s get you oriented with a map of Haiti.

I live in Gressier. See where Port-Au-Prince is? Go west, and you will quickly see Leogane. Gressier is just before Leogane. It is somewhere around 25 km from the airport, and yet it typically takes about 1.5 hours to drive. 🙂

I already had the chance to visit Thiotte when we went to the coffee plantation. Do you see Jacmel on the south coast? Go east of there, and you will see Belle-Anse. If you were to continue pretty straight east about 2/3 of the way to the border of the Dominican Republic, you would come to Thiotte. That drive took us something like 7 hours! Crazy…but cool!

So, a little over a month ago, Astrit, Evaldo, and I visited Pignon. To find Pignon on the map, look for the red dot to the north of Port that says Hinche. Pignon is northwest of Hinche. That was about a 4-5 hour drive.

The reason we visited Pignon was to finally meet one of our partners, Caleb Lucien. Caleb and his family have had a long relationship with the Evangelical Free Church of America. He has helped us out in some big ways during the 4 years we’ve been in Haiti. And we try to return the favor when we can. It was so good to finally meet him face to face (rather than just speak with him over the phone or via e-mail) and see the ministry that he has in Pignon.

Pastor Caleb’s ministry is called Hosean International Ministries. One of the primary parts of that ministry is running this school. Here you see the primary school building.

And part of the secondary school

The school has an excellent computer lab.

And a great big space for the kids to play, including this wonderful playground.

Here Pastor Caleb is handing out some candy to the kids after school.

After the tour of the school, Caleb took us to see the businesses he is getting started. Currently, about 70% of the funding for his ministry comes from the States and 30% from Haiti. In the next 10 years, his hope is to flip that around…and start an endowment to provide for his school in the future. This is his newly started cement business.

And this will be a gas station…and later a gym next door and a “sports bar” above. On this same land, he will eventually build some office/retail space to rent out.

Next, Caleb and his wife, Debbie, invited us to their home for a delicious lunch. We got to meet their youngest daughter, Lydia – the first Miss Teen Haiti ever! They also have 2 older kids who are at university studying.

…and some other “family” members, including this big baby!

After lunch, we went out to Hosean’s camp. This camp is full of kids on every school break; is used for spiritual retreats for kids from the school during the school year; and is also a great spot for a variety of conferences, seminars, and trainings (pastor, marriage, etc.).

More of the camp. We stayed in upstairs in the building on the right.

The soccer field at the camp…and the amazing view!

Part of the reason we went to Pignon when we did, was to meet these people – more Brazilians! Carmen, the woman in the middle, is serving with Hosean for 2 years…and, God willing, even more. The other 4 are a team who came up from Brazil for a month to help with some construction. Was a fun time for Evaldo and Astrit to connect with some other Brazilians!

While we were visiting, we took a little side “field trip” to a waterfall in the area. Beautiful!

Here you can get a little idea of the beautiful blue water.

And some of us took a refreshing swim. It was pretty cool! We also hiked up to some of the basins/pools above these main falls. Very fun!

The whole area is more beautiful than I was anticipating (I thought it would be much more dry and desert-like.).

You can see that we had to pass over some mountains to get to and from Pignon.

And we drove along what I believe is Lac Azuei, the largest lake in Haiti (according to Wikipedia, ” It is a saline lake with a higher concentration of salt than the sea water and harbors numerous fauna such as American Crocodiles and American Flamingos.” Now I wanna go back and see those!).

I am grateful for this opportunity to have seen more of this beautiful country and meet more of the amazing people God has serving here! More to come!