Lately Kt: Chaos

This past weekend was the Spiritual Retreat for the Sous Espwa staff and the missionaries from the Dominican. A group of 17 of us left Thursday morning for Barahona, a city on the southern coast of the Dominican. Early in the morning we departed (7am) and it took an hour and a half to get to the border. However, when we we got to the border we waited in line...and waited, and waited.

8:30am, only the beginning of our day

Some Dominican guys came to help us cross. They lead our caravan of three vehicles right past the long line of cars waiting outside the gate. They directed us through the gate; we were now on the Haitian side of the border. Thursday is market day so that meant there were masses of people set up selling in the border area and many other people going back and forth across the border with purchases...in tap-taps, motorcycles and large trucks. The area inside the border was gridlocked. There is no other way to describe it. It reminded me of those small square picture puzzles where you mix up the tiles. Then in order to get the pieces in the right place you have to shuffle, reshuffle and shuffle them again. At one point I got out of the vehicle to get something from one of the other cars. I turned around to go back, made it to the front of the car but then a big bus and truck boxed out our car. I was stuck in front of the vehicle because there was no room for me to get between the bus and the truck, let alone get the side door open. Eventually the truck and the bus moved and I was able to get in.
We had to park our cars outside of the first building so that we could all go in and get our passports stamped (exiting out of Haiti) and pay money for each of our passports. The Haitian part of the border was staffed by people who spoke Creole. Jenny was able to communicate with them concerning the paperwork and fees. Then some of us got back into the vehicles and we attempted to get a spot back in the mass of cars. We waited and waited and waited once again. Half of our group walked ahead with our passports to the next group of buildings on the DR side. They had to get the passports stamped once again (for entrance to the DR) and get the vehicle paperwork straightened out AND pay a whole bunch more fees.

All the kids and I :)

An hour or so later the vehicles finally made it to that group of buildings which were only about oh, less than a quarter mile away. Then the Dominican people that were helping us directed us into a couple of spots to park. They had to direct the traffic around and away from us just so we could get into the open spaces. We all got out of the cars once again and went to another area to do something. I'm not even really sure why we had to get out, but we went up to this window and showed our faces with our passports.

Finally we had all the paperwork and passports taken care of. This time everyone loaded back into the vehicles and we made our way into the traffic once again. We were stuck for another hour between semis and trucks, waiting to get out of the gate. At 1:30pm the gate on the DR side opened...to our excitement there was a wide OPEN road ahead of us! I am quite sure everyone breathed a huge sigh of relief. From 8:30am -1:30pm we were at the border. It took us FIVE hours to cross over! (It only took the group 3 hours to cross during market day last year.)