Visiting Haiti

Every so often, I’d like to share a little about what it is like to be in Haiti from my personal perspective. The other day, I was answering the question about why it takes so long for an adoption to be completed in Haiti. One of my responses was “the Haitian Attitude”. I used dining in a restaurant as an example. After I was finished sharing a snippet about that, I had to chuckle to myself. There is nothing quite like dining in Haiti. It’s not that the food is so unusual (though chicken spaghetti or hotdog spaghetti are a little different), but rather that a simple meal can take an obscene amount of time… [more]

Flights to Haiti just got cheaper: PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Discount carrier Spirit Airlines will offer flights between Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Haiti's capital beginning in March, the airline said. The Fort Lauderdale-based airline will have three flights per week to Port-au-Prince starting March 22 and will offer daily flights starting in May, Spirit said in a statement. Spirit's one-way fares between Fort Lauderdale and Port-au-Prince will start at US$93, according to its Web site, compared to US$255 for American Airlines flights. Barry Biffle, the airline's chief marketing officer, said in a statement that the new service would give the 250,000 people of Haitian descent living in South Florida "a new low-fare option for travel." This is fantastic news for us traveling adoptive parents. It will also benefit humanitarian volunteers, ex-pat Haitians, and… [more]

July 15, 2006 continued from Part Three... When we got back to the hotel, I asked the director of Talley's orphanage, Harry (who was our driver that day), to tell Georgia that she was going to be in Talley's orphanage. I asked him to tell her that we were her parents and that we had come to visit her, and would come back another time. Georgia burst into tears. It was the most emotion I had ever seen from her. It broke my heart. We ran to our hotel room, getting wet the whole way. I was crying. Georgia was crying and holding onto me tight. In our room, I got her calmed down… [more]

July 15, 2006 continued from Part Two... On the way there, we stopped at a roadside market and a few families did some drive-by shopping. I was holding one of the lady's baby girl and she pooped on me. By the time we got to the new orphanage site, she had pooped all over her mom and my leg and tummy. In Haiti, these sorts of things barely phase ya! I just wiped myself off with lots of wipes when we arrived at the new orphanage. The truck Tim was in got a flat tire and some of the men fixed it in the grassy yard of the new orphanage. We took… [more]

July 15, 2006 continued from Part One... Our adoption coordinators immediately went to work weighing the kids and taking photos of them. I was so impressed with how hard they work and how much effort they put into every little aspect of our adoptions. After the kids were weighed and got their photos taken, they were given a lollipop. They loved it. The kids were playing with the adults, climbing in and out of the pick-up beds, and playing soccer. They all looked really healthy and seemed very happy. The nannies came out and were asking which babies/children belonged to which parents. They seemed so pleased to be able to meet us. They… [more]

July 15, 2006 This morning we were up and ready to leave by 10 am to go see Talley's orphanage in Petionville. We waited in the restaurant for almost two hours before the drivers came to retrieve us. Most of the group went, and so they arrived in two pick-up trucks. One had a king cab and so a few of the moms and a dad sat in the cabs with babies, while the older kids and the rest of the adults piled into the beds of the trucks. There were 28 people going (including the children and the two drivers). It was rather snug. Personal space etiquette goes immediately out the… [more]

July 14, 2006 continued from Part Two... We got back to our room around 11 pm. I was getting Georgia ready for bed and decided to tickle her. She started to half-smile. I was so excited! I kept tickling her and blowing on her tummy. She went from smiling to laughing. I was in heaven! What a beautiful sound it was to hear my sad little girl laughing! I wanted it to last forever. I felt so happy and relieved. Up until that point, she was very withdrawn and unresponsive. We were afraid something wasn't quite right with her, but when she laughed--I knew she would be ok. Oh!… [more]

July 14, 2006 continued from Part One... The girls had a little nap afterwards. Actually, we all had a little nap. When we got up, we went up to the open-air restaurant to visit with the families who were there. We had Georgia walk, which was a slow, arduous process. She can barely walk. She had difficulty walking up steps, so Tim carried her. We hung around for a long time. Georgia pretty much sat in Tim's lap the whole time, gazing over his shoulder, or looking at her Barbie. She did not make eye contact and was very shy when people would pay attention to her. At one point a Haitian man was… [more]

July 14, 2006 We slept in a bit this morning, and lied around playing with our girls. Our room had a twin bed and a double bed. We pushed them together to make one mondo bed. The girls slept on the twin up against the wall, and I slept right next to them (on the crack) and Tim was next to me. Having the beds like that made it easy to have a large, clean, soft place for the girls to play and Talley to crawl around. Georgia never moved from where we placed her, so I guess having a big area was less necessary for her. Whenever we ordered room service, we ate on… [more]

July 13, 2006 continued from Part Two... We were at the orphanage for a very long time. It was so hot! There isn't any air-conditioning or even fans. Tim wasn't feeling too great and had to use the bathroom. He finally ended up having to use one without running water (they pull water from a well-type thing and carry it in buckets to flush toilets and other uses). A little two year old boy was in the bathroom and he would not get out, so Tim had an audience while he used the bathroom. I had to guard the door, because people kept trying to go in. I was… [more]