June 20th, 2011 :: text by geekodeen

:: Haiti 2.0 Day Five ::

LES CAYES, HAITI — The rain in Haiti will not let up.

The rain, like tragedy in this country, is relentless. Unforgiving.

It doesn’t care if you want to get things done. It doesn’t care if you live in a tent on the wrong side of an incline. It doesn’t care if you have a house that has walls with holes the size of a grown man.

Many Haitians loathe the rain. It piles more problems onto a life already full of it.

There is no way we and the rest of the Global Family Philanthropy volunteers will truly be able to understand how much rain complicates life for many Haitians.

So there wasn’t much complaining today.

Again, we weren’t able to do much of anything really in contributing to finish the new GFP building and property. But at least we were able to spend more time with the GFP children.

So no, there were no complaints.

Not even when we went with a group that attempted to drive to a school Global Family Philanthropy is thinking about sponsoring.

After a 20 minute drive a long a narrow and rocky road, we never got there. We had to stop three-fourths of the way because a sizable stretch of muddy road blocked our path. It looked impossible to get through, getting stuck looked to be the only result if we decided to drive ahead. And with two deep, full, flowing water banks on each side of the narrow one-lane road, there was no way we could turn around.

We did eventually take a chance, but as we drove a few inches in, the result was predictable. The car swerved to the left, inches from the water bank. But luck was with us, it wasn’t stuck.

So we put the car in reverse and backed out in the rain for a little less than a mile, trying to avoid reversing right into the water on each side of us.

We reversed for about 10 minutes until we got to a clearing where we could finally turn the car around and put in on drive.

Complaints? No, it’s all part of the Haitian experience.

There were no complaints even when we were heading back to the hotel at the end of the day and almost never made it.

The GFP volunteers split up in two groups, one was headed to the children’s hospital and the other, our group, was headed back to the hotel.

But we stopped five minutes from our hotel in the pouring rain with one volunteer close to tasting her lunch five hours later. The other group’s car broke down. We had to turn around.

As we were racing back, we past them. There was the other group, some still in the car, others behind it trying to push it through the showers.

So our driver and a local friend-of-GFP, Junau, used two ropes (more like twine), to tie the cars together in order to tow the other. In another predictable result, after the first two speed bumps, the rope snapped. It would snap again. And again. And again. Each time the rope and the distance between each vehicle became shorter. Each time, the amount of minutes to getting back to a dry place became greater.

A trip that normally takes 20 minutes became two hours in the rain.

Unforgiving. Unrelenting.

But there were no complaints. A mere inconvenience is not tragedy.

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Read more of eeko studios’ daily posts from Haiti, here.