Day 3: Belaire

No, not like Fresh Prince.

Today we got to sleep in a bit and had a lazy morning. Bill Dawson, Field Coordinator, had to run one of the mission corps girls to the hospital to have her ankle x-rayed. (No fracture, luckily.) When they got back we loaded in Bill's SUV, cozy as usual, and headed to downtown Port au Prince.

Heading downtown let us really see a lot of the devastation from the earthquake. So far we'd seen some, but not as widespread as downtown. It's really surreal seeing all these destroyed buildings, broken walls, and piles of rubble still around over 6 months following the earthquake. Even the presidential palace is in ruins (next to last photo). Here's some photos.

We arrived at the Belaire Church of the Nazarene. We hauled our gear up to the second floor. The church was three levels: the bottom, or basement level was a school for children, though today they were not in session. The main, ground level was a church with seating for 350 or so. The upper level was a balcony that wrapped around the room, leaving the middle open.

On the balcony were three main sections. One side was a pharmacy where they stocked most medicines, one side was a waiting room, and one side was a checkin space for patients along with 2 "exam rooms" and one wound / trauma treatment area. The entire time we were there more than 50 people were waiting to be examined.

I walked around with LeeAllie and got b-roll shots of the clinic and church while Jonathan and Matt headed up to the roof for some great views of the city.

Jonathan took his shirt off.

Once we'd seen it all (and gotten pretty toasty), we headed back to the car where Bill was nice enough to buy us all Cokes. They do taste better in the bottle, no doubt - though we did have to return the bottles before we left.

We drove around a little bit on our way back to the campus. Once there, we got some b-roll of the area, Bill talking, the entrance, some leadership training, some crafts Haitian kids had made following the earthquake, and animals being fed.

The rest of the afternoon we spent being lazy, catching up on internet, logging and transferring footage, and debating the finer points of healthcare reform and capitalism in the Bible.

For dinner, we were asked to join the Work and Witness team who had been here all week for a traditional Haitian meal. It consisted of chicken, goat, plantains, beans and rice, squash, avocado, and that Haitian staple, french fries. It was all very good, and we met some nice folks from the Seattle area.

And that's about it. We're back upstairs doing some prep work for an interview tomorrow, sweating while typing this blog.

So until tomorrow. We're headed to the beach! (LeeAllie tells us we need to be more enthusiastic about things. Hence the exclamation point.)