Friday, March 30, 2007
When I woke up this morning, it was only 6:30AM, but everyone was up and about. It was probably because they were leaving today, and so they were preparing, but I decided to get up also, although I only had 4 hours of sleep.
Last night my right foot was beginning to swell near the ankle, and it hurt quite a bit. The medical doctor gave me some anti-itch cream, but it was still swollen and hurting this morning. So the acupuncturist used a little suction machine to suck out some blood out of my foot. It hurt a lot when he punctured hundred different places on my foot. I don't think it's better yet, but I'll have to see.
Today we did some sightseeing. Because of my lack of sleep and my painful right foot, I wasn't in the mood for it at all. We stopped by at a street corner where they sold souvenirs. Some of the team members bought paintings and small figurines. It reminded me of Kenya when I had to bargain for souvenirs myself. But again, I wasn't in the mood for anything.
We drove up a small hill on the south side of Port-au-Prince, where we could see the entire city. It was pretty cool, but I was surprised by how small it was. On the way down, our tap-tap broke down, so we got off and walked around for a while. Some of us stopped by an artisan's shop where they made sculptures from solid wood. It seemed that they had the entire family working. I was quite impressed even though I was still feeling sick and tired.
When the car was finally fixed, some strange kid jumped on our tap-tap with us. Before we knew it, the car was moving and an argument broke up among our Haitian guys and the boy. Everyone was shouting and I had no idea what was going on, except I guessed that the boy was one of the people fixing the car. We realized that we had left two of our team members behind (they were probably still admiring the wooden sculptures), so we stopped the car immediately. Couple of the guys ran back to get the two behind, and one kept arguing with the boy. People were shouting here and there. It was a bit chaotic. Apparently the boy wanted more money for what he did. I don't know what he did or how much we offered him, but what we offered was obviously not enough. From the argument (not that I knew a word of it, but the fact that they argued), I could tell that what he demanded was way too much. Finally, some stranger interfered and convinced (or more like threatened) the boy to just take the money and leave. So that was quite an event.
We stopped by the restaurant (the one we always go to. It's more like fast food without the "fast" part, but quality is "fast food") for lunch. The place is right across the street from the airport. At the airport, only the passengers are supposed to go through the security check, but apparently the foreigners can just go though even if they're not passengers. So Pastor Baek and I went in but the Haitian guys stayed back. Some guy tried to go through behind us, but the security guard grabbed and shoved him back forcefully as if to pick up a fight. However, Daniel, our driver, was able to go through. When I asked him how, he told me that he just talked to the security guard. His older brother is an policeman, so I suppose they know each other or something. We said our goodbyes, and they were gone. Soon I was back at House of Love to be greeted by hugs from the kids.
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