“Healing Haiti” trip reveals different world

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This January, I was blessed with the amazing opportunity to travel to Haiti through an organization called Healing Haiti which has been aiding Haitians for over eight years now.  With the aid of private sponsors as well as local sponsors, the Maple Lake Messenger and the Maple Lake Lions, I was able to join the Calvary team and spend one week volunteering in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
On Monday, January 19, we flew out of Minneapolis and into Port-au-Prince. The flight time was long, but so worth it; when we got off the plane in Haiti it was as if we were in a totally different world. Haiti is dry, crowded and poor. The streets were filled with people and the ditches with garbage. At first I think it was hard to see and even harder to imagine living in such conditions, but by the end of the week I found myself wishing I could stay.
On Tuesday we began our volunteer work. We traveled to a Home for Sick and Dying Children where we nurtured, fed and played with the babies and toddlers who resided there. From there we went to Gertrude’s, an orphanage for children with special needs. The children here were older and much more playful; they were ecstatic to have people to play with on the playground in the backyard.
The majority of our third day in Haiti was spent in the poorest slum in the world: Cite Soleil. As we drove up the children began to chase the truck chanting “Hey, you,” and surrounded us as soon as we stepped onto the street. All they wanted was to be held and that was something that we could grant them. While others worked with the water truck, filling the residents’ buckets with water, a few of us spent our time simply giving attention to the malnourished children who needed us most. Of all the places we would go on the rest of the trip, none would compare to Cite Soleil. There people lived in homes that were smaller than my dorm room and most made out of tin. The houses were nearly stacked on top of each other and the streets were lined with the people who call this place home.
Our next day in Haiti was spent outside of Port-au-Prince in Titanyen. Here we visited elders from the community, one of which, Marie, was 105 years old. After spending time with the elders we traveled to Grace Village, a Healing Haiti orphanage where we got to meet and play with the children living there. 
Day five in Haiti brought us to Carrefour where we visited a Home for Sick and Dying Adults. While visiting, the men and women split up. The other girls in the group and I went upstairs to the women’s floor and gave them manicures and pedicures while the men stayed downstairs with the male residents. After spending time with the residents of the home, we returned to Cite Soleil to do two more water stops. Experiencing it for the second time was a lot less shocking and I realized that Haiti had truly begun to grow on me.
Our final day of volunteering began early Saturday morning. We drove back to Grace Village where we picked up about 30 of the orphans and loaded them  onto a bus and brought them to a beach about an hour away. Most of the children had no clue how to swim, but they were so excited to be there that they just grabbed life jackets and jumped right in. We spent the day at the beach and finished the night playing soccer in the streets with the boys who lived near the guest house where we were staying. 
Sunday was our final day in Haiti and it was a day of relaxation. Rather than serve in the poorest and sickest areas, we got to see the amazing parts of Haiti. We traveled up the mountain in Port-au-Prince for lunch. From the restaurant we could see all of Port-au-Prince below us; it was absolutely breath-taking. We finished the day with shopping and traveling around the city and the next day we had to leave to return home. 
My experience in Haiti was one that I will not soon forget; it was an experience that made me into a better me. I hope to further my personal growth by returning to Haiti and continuing the work that we began.
However, none of this would have been possible would it not have been for my sponsors, especially the Maple Lake Messenger and the Maple Lake Lions. So many thanks to both those and my private sponsors who helped me get to this point and to everyone else who supported me and has taken an interest in my journey. I cannot wait to see where life will lead me next.
 

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