Monday, October 6, 2008

Images of Gonaives

The UN lining up several thousand women for rice distribution.

Giving out the last bag of Flagyl - a very sad moment for us.

Refugee camp on the way to Gonaives

Crossing the river JordanA lot of the children we saw were scared of us because we are white. This girl came in shrieking at the top of her lungs, "I'm going to die, I'm going to die! Jesus! I'm going to die!!"

After long days of work, we would collapse on the floor and revive ourselves slowly with soda and the food of the Gods: tablet. Tablet is a Haitian cookie made of peanuts, ginger and some sort of sugary taffy that holds it all together. I adore tablet! If you've ever been to the beach with HFC, then you probably tasted some on the ride home.
The whole city is trying to remove mud but there is so much - where can they put it? It just keeps piling up in the streets as people remove it from their houses and yards.

The hotel that we stayed in.

Many people in Gonaives are living on their roofs because the insides of their houses are full of mud. This means that when it rains now, they and their belongings get swamped.
Ever heard of trench foot? A lot of people had fungal infections on the feet from having wet feet for the past month, but this lady was definitely the worst. Her feet were rotting away, literally!





This is the orphanage where the Gonaives kids I have been caring for used to live. When the flood came, they went onto the roof, but the water came over the regular roof, so they were forced to go onto the tiny roof of the hut you see in this photo. I have no idea how they fit 27 children on that little roof, but somehow they did.

Pastor Genada's church - 3 feet of mud inside and out. The water reached 14 feet in this area of the city.
My feet on the first day of exploring the city.

2 comments:

Macro Guy said...

Thanks for these Kez! We're praying for you... are you still in Gonaives? or back in Port-au?

Emily Grace said...

oh my gosh, Kez.