Pignon, a Bumpy Ride

I love being back in Haiti.  As the blog coordinator, I usually blog a couple times during the week to keep people informed.  However, this year I knew I was going to a new town in Haiti, and I wanted to save my blogging to relate the experience.

First and foremost, Michigan roads are nothing compared to Route Nationale #3.  It is basically like US-23; not as busy as I-75, but a major road that runs between big towns.  We drove south out of Cap-Haitien through Grand Pre, Dondon, and Saint-Raphael before getting to our destination, Pignon.  Once we left Cap, there was pavement for only short stretches in the 4 towns.  The rest of the ride was swerving from one side of the road to the other, slowing climbing through trenches, fording deep puddles that used to be bridges, and just bouncing all over the place.  I kid you not, Lynne said it was like riding a wash board, but 100 times worse.  For a time I was worried that Janet was going to get whiplash from how much her head was going from side to side.  It was 2hrs 45min one way to go about 50 mi.  It was quite an adventure and one I will not soon repeat.

The Haiti Clean Water team had made a new connection with a team in Pignon that uses the same filters that we have been installing.  The woman, Gaylene, who runs the Pignon filter team just happened to arrive in Haiti this week, so we arranged a visit to see her, her team of Haitian workers, and the “facility” that houses the water project.  It is important to develop these relationships because it helps in so many ways.  Gaylene’s team of Haitian workers were just as friendly and helpful and understanding of our communication problems as our team in Cap-Haitien.  It was so great to meet them.

The water project itself, Rivye 2020, is still in the beginning stages.  The workers have had their training and have installed 38 filters in house south of Pignon.  Their “facility” is larger than the one we have and they have built it in a way to be able to expand in the future to have mission teams stay at the site.  Also, a new well was being dug to provide water to wash the filter components.  Currently, they are purchasing drums of water.

We got to share lunch with Gaylene and her team.  It was great.  We had spaghetti.  BUT, the sauce was a chicken marinara with some kind of spice.  Interesting as it was; it was really good. (At lunch we joked about probably having spaghetti for dinner, AND WE DID, so funny.)  We spent the rest of our time just talking with Gaylene about some of her struggles and experiences and we related some of our own.  I definitely got more from our conversation today than anything else so far this week.  We loaded up and bounced our way home.

Vince, Bethel Baptist