Lets go back to December, which seems forever ago....
The election results were released right before I was suppose to leave on the 9th, and things turned ugly in Port, tires were burning, bottles were flying, as well as bullets and tear gas. People in general were not happy with the election results calling them a fraud, because it should have been Manigot and Martelly not Manigot and Celestin like the results came up as. Because of all the rioting my flight got cancelled, and as soon as we booked another one, it we get cancelled, it went on like this all weekend. Finally after about the third or fourth time, we decided enough was enough and made plans to get to the Dominican Republic. Even though our plans were pretty vague. We knew how we were getting to the boarder, we knew we had a ride on the other side, and we knew there was a bus. So we went with it, know and hoping it would work out. Also at this point in time, none of us had tickets yet. So on the 12th we were all ready to go. Our ride arrived around 5 am, and we loaded up the bags into the back of the truck, piled in, and drove off. We went through an area in Port that I had never been through, and on the hillsides of the highway there were tents, hundreds of thousands of them, making up the main tent cities of Port au Prince. It was heart breaking to see this, especially 11 months after the quake. Then on the roads right in front of us were the reminders of the rioting that took place the week prior, were tires were burned then pushed to the side. It wasn't long after we left port that we made our way closer to the boarder. Right before you cross the boarder, you literally drive through a lake with caves on the other side of you, that Haitians are hand digging with a little pick and axe for the gravel.
The boarder is its own experience on its own. And the goal for the boarder workers? To get as much money out of you as they can. The first stop is at a police station where you have to go through a gate and they ask you for money. Then you drive a bit up the road and stop at the Haitian customs building, were Dan and Gary took our passports in to be stamped, so we could "leave" the country, and where they try to get more money out of you. Then you drive to the Dominican side where before you even cross over they scam money out of you, where they ask you to pay for you tires to be "cleaned for all dirt so you don't track in cholera." Then once again Dan and Gary headed into the customs building on the DR side with all our passports to get them stamped and to pay the entry fee, where they yet again tried to up the entry fee price and extra 10$ a person. (And in either Haiti or DR customs some one managed and extra $40 canadian that I hid in my passport folder). After taking our luggage into get inspected, we came out and found the missionary that was picking us up and taking us to his mission for the night, or so we thought. Our original plan was to catch a bus in the middle of the night and go to the airport which was another 7 hours away and have a pastor pick us up at the bus stop and take us to the airport. But the missionary had a better idea, he has a medical student group from the university at Santo Domingo heading back a few hours after we got there and had room for us and our luggage in their bus at no charge. We went with that idea. We hung out at their mission for awhile and tried to get through with american airlines to change our tickets, but due to bad weather in the east in the states we had a hard time getting through, eventually my mom back home was able to change my ticket at no extra cost, and the others decided to chance it when we got the the airport. We then boarder the bus then took off through the country side of the DR. In Jimanni where we started out, there was quite a Haitian population being so close to the baorder, and the cement houses looked very similar, except they were more finished looking. But one of the main differences as we drove through was the forestation. In Haiti most of the tree are cut down so people can burn them for charcoal to make some money so the hillsides are very bare, unlike the DR where it is very green and full.
Haiti on the left, DR on the right |
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