Wow. It's hard to summarize just how incredible this trip has been the last 5 days. Leading up to our trip the team had only met via Zoom, so it was a pleasant surprise how natural our team connected within the first few hours of being together. Since that point, it feels like we've become a family: bantering back and forth, laughing until we're in tears (possibly due to a lack of sleep), helping and encouraging each other out without question, and the list goes on and on. Today at dinner, while talking about our favorite moments of the trip, we kept coming back to just how wonderful it has been to have such a close-knit group.
Today (Saturday), we started off the day with a long, but beautiful ride in the Tap Tap to a town called Cabaret - a smaller town past Titanyen (where Grace Village is located). We got the opportunity to spend our morning with a local community playing games, connecting with the locals, loving on the kiddos, and a few of us even got our hair braided :) Honestly, we didn't know what to expect with this visit as no team members had ever done this activity on previous trips. We were overwhelmingly surprised by how much we loved visiting this community. A couple of amazing takeaways: the kids were extremely helpful and supportive of one another (making sure everyone had a snack, one girl gave a younger boy her own pair of shoes to wear, and a sister continually cared for her upset, toddler brother). The other thing was just how inquisitive and curious these kids were. At one point during a session of frisbee throwing, a few girls were learning different frisbee throwing techniques from Dennis by changing their hand position to match his. Lastly, a young woman gave us a heartfelt goodbye by gifting us with a few fresh Mango's - something I have never experienced in Haiti before. To cap off this portion of the day, we took a short walk through some farming land and neighborhoods to eventually arrive at a beautiful peninsula overlooking the turquoise waters of Port-au-Prince Bay.
Next Stop: The Haiti Deaf Academy. It's hard to put into words just how extraordinary this place was. Meredith and Keith (the local directors of HDA) gave us a tour of the compound and the history of how they came to Haiti and have served the deaf community for the last 4 years. In Haiti, deaf kids and adults are actually considered a burden to society (many times called "bebe" (baby in Creole) because they can't hear). We titled this blog "curious minds" because the kids of HDA wanted to know everything about our lives. We spent a good chunk of time answering the plethora of questions they threw at us (with Meredith graciously signing and translating). They asked a variety of questions that in our normal day-to-day lives may seem mundane to us, but to them they were the most intriguing - things like "where do you work? How many kids do you have? How many times have you been to Haiti?" They rattled off question after question - curious, attentive, and wide-eyed. Their responses to our questions were also hilarious (like praying for Marina to have patience "waiting" for her future boyfriend :)). It was an experience like no other.
We ended the day back at the guesthouse chatting, laughing, and sharing our unique perspectives on the day. We feel eternally grateful to have experienced the beautiful country of Haiti and all it has to offer.
- Ellie and Marina
