Leaving

Thursday morning we woke up at about 3:30 to leaved at 4. Believe it or not, but it was still very dark at 4AM. I've never seen a sky as amazing as we saw that morning! The weather had been a little downcast while we were there, so there was only one night we had been able to star gaze. This early morning sky blew us all away. There was literally no ambient light anywhere, the stars were so bright, breath taking. Any other time, I would have loved to simply stand beneath the stars and wait for the sunrise, but instead we grabbed our bags that were ready from the night before and loaded the bus.

A few men from the village were going to accompany us for the day. Everyone was pretty quiet. Even though we were all pretty awake, there wasn't really a lot to say. Every once in a while, Actionnel would start singing hymns. The words were in Creole, but the tunes were familiar. At one point, he chose "Amazing Grace."

As the sun came up, we all started to get more talkative. We weren't leaving the way we came, so the drive was new for all of us. We drove through the mountains, which was beautiful. We got a little glimpse of what Haiti was supposed to look like, the moisture in the mountains is the perfect environment for the jungle that used to cover much of Haiti.



The drive for the most part was pretty uneventful. We got to the border and got through fairly easily, there was a very long stretch of about 20 minutes when we were separated from our passports, but for the most part everything was pretty easy. The officials at the border let our Haitian friends walk us to the bus station. We waited with them for about 45 minutes and then our bus left.



As we started our long bus ride across the country, stress that had built up the last few days slowly began to lessen. You could see everyone starting to decompress. The Dominican really is another country compared to Haiti. They definitely still are in need in a lot of their country, but there is an infrastructure and access to things like building materials that is not at all present in Haiti. It's unbelievable to me how an arbitrary line in the sand, drawn hundreds of years ago separates two different worlds.