Jeremi

So about a week and a half we were approached by our leader John and he told us we were going to a town called kai for about a week, then it started to kinda fall through. On Friday of last week he told us we were going to a town called Jeremi and were going to start doing the footing for the wall  surrounding their soon to be church.  They had already started their wall but spent the entire budget for the wall on seventy feet of rock footings. They were using a technique which is extremely popular in Haiti but it is super primitive and very expensive. The four of us were going to Jeremi to start the new footing and wall and at the same time teach the Haitian how to finish it once we left. But we had to get there first, Jeremi is 10-12 hours away from Port-au-Prince. The Jeremi church project was perfect for us, so we were excited. We were soon to be dropped off in Jeremi with a couple tents and our packs.
 The trip ended up taking us 2 days and the first day was fine but it was crammed. There were 8 us total, 5 in the cab, 3 in the bed of the truck. The first day was fun until we ended up in the middle of a mini- rainstorm,  the three guys in the back got completely soaked. The next day we had to go through the mountains, none of us had ever been through there. Not anyone. Not even the drivers, they usually fly to Jeremi. Me and Gabe and our translator Emanuel were in the back and it rained for alot of the day, this rain caused land slides on the mountains. So for about 2 hours we were literally dodging falling boulders and rocks, it was one of the craziest things I have ever done but we must have had God's hand of us because not a pebble landed in our truck, when a boulder easily could have. So after a long hard second day of traveling we finally made it to Jeremi and it was beautiful. Jeremi was the most tropical, beautiful place we had ever seen. There was still trash and all that stuff but there was much more trees and plants and we were right on the beach. So they dropped us off and headed back home the next morning. Over the coarse of the next few days we started digging footing and getting all the rebar and forms ready for concrete. This method is nothing like what they do in Haiti... so they obviously didnt like 4 white boys showing them how to do things... but in reality we knew and they didnt. Everything is so primitive there, no electricity, everything is done by hand, so bending rebar and mixing large amounts of concrete was pretty tough. By the end of the week we had most of the first wall done and 2 awesome Haitian men trained on how to finish it. It was so sweet being able to teach those guys something so valuable and practical. John had told us that he was thinking of flying us back to PAP because the roads were so bad, but then he had a change of heart and told us that he was going to have a driver come get us on Saturday. Friday morning rolled around and we were getting ready to go to work, when John called us and said we had to be at the airport by 12:30. We went to work and stayed as long as we could, the morning consisted of us sitting back and watching these Haitians build the footing and the wall alone. We got to the airport and our plane was waiting for us, our pilot was the first white person we had seen in a week. We jumped out of the tap tap with our bags in hand and we hopped in the prop plane and thirty minutes later we were in PAP. It was definitely nicer than a 10 hour drive. Being in Jeremi and living so simply was an awesome experience and we have a new found respect for that way of life. We are really going to miss our family in Jeremi, they were so sweet and so much fun to spend time with. Hopefully we will be able to head a lot more time there.