Day Three - Cite Soleil

Words of the Day…Speechless, Honest, Reunited, Sweet, Progress, Future, Complex, Present

Hello from Angela and Krista!  Today was our first Water Truck Day in Haiti.  It was Krista’s first Water Truck Day ever and visit to Cite Soleil (the poorest slum in the Western Hemisphere).  Healing Haiti is the only organization that is delivering water bucket-by-bucket for free.  Many people in Cite Soleil have to walk for many blocks, 2, 6, even 12 or more to get a bucket of clean water. In Cite Soleil if you drill a well, you hit salt water, so there is no access to clean water. People in Cite Soliel live on less than a $1 a day.  Healing Haiti delivers 3 loads of water by truck per day, six days a week, 52 weeks per year. 

Being my (Krista’s) first time in Cite Soleil, I came with an open mind of what I would experience. I expected myself to be very emotional, but I was surprised to find myself joyful because the children I saw today were so full of joy and happiness.  I am still finding it hard to put into words the experience of the day.  It is hard to find the right words that would do justice to all the sights that I saw, sounds that I heard, smells that smelled, touches that I felt, emotions that are in my heart. That is all I know right now, but in time I know I will be able to express more clearly all details of this hard and beautiful place that has forever made a mark on my heart.

Driving back into Cite Soleil this year I (Angela) felt the same overwhelming magnitude of the poverty that I felt the very first time that I laid eyes on this place.  It takes my breath away every time to see the endless rows of tin houses and undressed children running after the tap tap.  But when we got to Hope Church (Healing Haiti’s church/school) in the middle of Cite Soleil this year, so much had changed since last year.  There was a brand new clinic completely up and running that was barely in the beginning stages of construction last year when we were here.  They are treating anywhere from 75-100 patients/day.  There is a new sewing pod that is providing jobs for the women of Cite Soleil.  We got to tour a new innovation lab that is bringing the latest in learning and technology to the children in Cite Soleil. Everywhere we looked we saw change and progress and hope.  One of our leaders made the comment that some day we will come back to deliver water and there will be no more children running in the streets of Cite Soleil because they will all be in school.  What a beautiful thought!  I hope I am there to see that day! 

Tomorrow we head to Rebuild Globally, Grace Village to see their new Innovation Lab, and to Dios Special Needs Orphanage to love on some sweet children!  Pray for us and we continue our travels.

Krista and Angela