Haiti: Fortress in the Sky

[summer of 1986] Let me give you a little background before I get into the actual site. I went to Haiti, nineteen of us flew into Port de Prince, and stayed at an orphanage for a few days (slept on a blanket, on the roof top, swatting cockroaches); then got some Jeeps, and went into them mountains, it was during the summer so it was miserable hot. I had two main objects; first to go up to an area where there was a little village and help put in the foundation for a medical clinic. The local doctor, local in the sense he was 20-miles away, would not come to this village until there was clinic. So anyhow, I helped build the walls, doing some masonry work, and touched up the concrete slap putdown for the floor. The roof would have to wait.

After a few weeks up there, lying on the floor of one of the three churches that were there, other than that, there really were no accommodations, my work was completed. People slept in shanties, on the floor with mats. So in Rome you do as the Romans do, so did I.

On my way back to Port de Prince, I stopped at what some call the 8th wonder of the world, Haiti