Tracking Ed Monroe as he travels to Haiti and other exotic(?) places

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Tuesday March 24, 2009 early morning

Hello from the third floor balcony. The breeze is nice here this morning so I escaped from my usual computer station to enjoy the breeze, the rocking chair, and the sound and smell of the sea. It is very cloudy in the East so I doubt that I will see the sunrise. I think that I may have skipped a report to you. I just looked over my blog and fail to see a report for Sunday. I will blame it on the rum and coke that I drank at Ti Moulage.
So, on Sunday we had a very nice prayer service on the veranda. They even convinced me to lead a song. I tell you this team is nutty! After a great pancake an bacon breakfast that was cooked by our fearless leader, Lynn we relaxed until it was time to go to the beach. I got a new appreciation for Larry Shank. He taught me how to prepare a team for the trip to the beach and so we had the coolers filled, the opener attached to the cooler, some extra wash-ups, garbage bags, and cups for mixing the rum and cola. Thanks Uncle Lar!!! I did forget to bring some cigars. The road to Ti Moulage was much different than in years past. Just East of Cyvadier there is a large hole in the road. A few miles further on is an area where there must have been a lot of run off as the part of the road has washed away and it is about 3 car lengths of rough road to cross. I thought that was bad until we reached the next one and it was worse. Almost 75 % of the road near the Ti Moulage area has washed away leaving a narrow passage to the other side for one car or truck to pass through. There are several large boulders visible so you would know that it had to be a tremendous amount of water to cause those large stones to crash into the roadway and wash it away. There was no sign of large chunks of the blacktop road in the ditches. Having encountered little road damage on the route from PAP two weeks ago, and seeing no visible damage to the Cyvadier area, I was not really seeing the destruction that this area had during last year’s hurricane. The trip to the beach sure opened my eyes and my mind. How many people lost their lives in this area from that storm? Now I understand why it was so hard to get supplies from Cap Haitian in the North all the way down to Jacmel here in the Southern part of Haiti. The reports of many roads being washed out no make a lot more sense to me.
Okay, back to the beach we go. It was not very crowded again this trip. Shopping wise we had T Shirt lady of course. She had a new selection and one had J’aime on it so we got a bright yellow one for Jaime. I’ll tell you a bit more about that in a moment. Zech enjoyed going from vendor to vendor for his treasures. Dr Jo bargained with them in French. I had brought some ones and fives but did not have enough to make change for every one. And, yes, I did not shop but you expected that. I have more than enough Jacmel t shirts and art works at home. Dinner was excellent as usual. The lobster was cooked to perfection. Interestingly, the food costs for the meal were $ 13.00 per person and that, to me, is a real bargain for what we had. Yes, the fish heads were still attacked and if you flip over to my Picasa album you will see Jaime in his new T shirt doing a dance with a fish skeleton. Unfortunately the clouds moved in and we returned to the clinic in the rain. Thank goodness that we were in our swim wear. On the way back, however, we did something very American. We stopped at Joseph’s Cyvadier market for two loaves of bread for the next day’s lunch menu of grilled cheese sandwiches. I got to run in and have Joseph put the bread on FOTCOH’s tab. The rest of the evening was spent in socializing and yes, I stayed on the roof too late. The end of the story of Jaime’s t shirt is the dye around the neck area ran down and ruined the shirt, I think. I have not seen it since Tracy took it to try to wash out the stain. Speaking of laundry, this team has it done early and often has it stashed in one of the two girls rooms by the time I finish work. So I have to ask one of them to rescue my clothes. Thanks Tracy, I am sure the Jodi will not mind..
Breakfast time for me.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

how do we flip over to your Picase album? I have never seen it and would like to do so today.

Chris