Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Sunday morning as I got out of bed everything
seemed to ache. I went into the bathroom and sat down and had pain where I’ve never felt pain before. No I was not sick with some jungle illness. In fact it was self inflicted. You see Saturday we went on a great adventure and 8 of us climbed into a pickup truck and headed off across the Island. We were on the only road on Google Maps found on La Gonave. This is the best road on the Island. Well as most of you know 8 people don’t fit in the front of a pickup truck. So Robin and Maddie sat up front with the driver in the air conditioning. The rest of us sat on benches in the back of the truck. What a great time we had seeing the different parts of the island. We had a picnic by the beach and drank coconut juice and the kids swam in the “Caribbean ocean”. We traveled all the way to La Source which is three quarter of the way to the end of the Island. So that is about 20 miles. It took us 3 hours to get there. At one point a horse passed us. I’ve been on several farms and have driven on many tractor paths, they are like I 95 compared to parts of this road. I have a friend here who went into the mountains he said it took them 5 hours to go 20 miles and they got passed by a man walking. How we take for granted the roads we have even if they do have pot holes. So this was my reason for my pain. 6 hour of bouncing in the back of a truck with 90 degree heat.
So here we are, with it taking us 3 hours to drive 20 mile on “good” road and my friend Caleb 5 hours to drive 20 mile is it any wonder that our Hospital is only accessible to one third of the Island. Caleb got a quote from a civil engineer on building a nice two lane paved road going 60 km across the Island. One million dollars per kilometer of road, times 60 km equals Sixty million dollars. Anybody want to pay for this project? So our emphasis is going into the unreached areas with healthcare and community development. We soon will need to buy a vehicle to help transport medical teams and get training teams to these areas. A good strong 4x4 will cost forty to fifty thousand dollar. That is much better than sixty million.
If you like remote areas and love to help people La Gonave is a great place to come and let God use your skills to bless and bring hope to the poorest of the poor in Haiti.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Robin,
    I would love to do a painting of this photo, If its ok with you. Could you send me a copy of it to my email, the larger the file the better the painting.
    Lori

    ReplyDelete