Third Day in Haiti

Today we toured Grace Children's Hospital in downtown Port au Prince.  It sustained a great deal of damage in the earthquake.  They had to send all their children home to their families because the hospital wards fell in the aftershocks.  Fortunately, everyone had escaped the buildings in time.  Besides being the premier children's hospital in Haiti, they also offer TB and HIV testing, medication, and guidance.  Their clinics are being conducted in damaged buildings and tents, but all is organized and orderly.

Next week they will open their first children's ward.  Presently, there are only 5 children living at the hospital and we met them all and gave them each a "Comfort Doll" stitched by ladies of the Upper Valley, New Hampshire.  The children seemed very pleased with them!

Next we headed to the Presidential Palace.  You have all seen it on TV but it is even more shocking in person.  With sadness, I must report that all the beautiful parks around the palace are filled with tent cities.  It is a painful sight.  We stopped at the downtown Methodist Church on the College Bird Campus.  The sanctuary building appears unscathed but many classroom buildings fell and are now cleared away and replaced by temporary classrooms or tents.  School begins soon.  Many schools just finished the spring semester in August due to the delays of the quake and are starting up in October this year.  

The streets of downtown Port au Prince are filled with vendors and thousands of pedestrians carrying wares for sale.  Yet almost all of these people who have no home but a tent, are clean and neatly dressed.  How do they do it?  It takes a great deal of pride and effort and hope to keep up appearances under these conditions.

Then our trusty driver and van headed up the mountainside into the country and agricultural region.  Our destination was the Baptist Mission which was started just after World War II as a place for artisans to sell their work.  Up, Up, Up, we went stopping just short of the clouds.  We bought lunch at the restaurant there and ate overlooking the terraced hillsides.  It was a lovely view after the devastation of downtown.  If only every Haitian could find a home in these hills!  

Tomorrow we head back to our work site at Croix des Mission where the congregation and hired workers labored all day while we toured.

Sharon