Cap-Haitien

Well hello everyone!  As promised we went dark, but fortunately the internet is working just well enough to try to share our adventures here in Cap!  We hope everyone is doing well wherever they are.  Jehovah has definitely taken amazing care of us our entire trip, but especially once we arrived in Cap.  We've had a few bumps this month, but it looks like everything is looking quite peachy now.

Anyways, back to the good stuff! :) Cap-Haitien is the second largest city in Haiti, and quite different from Port-au-Prince area.  As a lovely sister visiting from France so perfectly described it, there is a certain ambience here (and for our English speakers tuning in, that essentially means there is a certain vibe here.)  The pace is slightly (and only ever so slightly) slower, the language and accents a little different, the style of the city different, and oh, the ocean breeze a wonderful difference.

There are four missionary couples that are now assigned to Cap, and as we mentioned, we had the privilege of staying with them in their beautiful missionary home.  The missionary home and where we are staying now is in a territory just outside of Cap-Haitien proper.  Service has of course been excellent, as the company of our brothers and sisters here in Haiti.  The congregation we are visiting is Imperial, with 120ish publishers and an average meeting attendance of 240.  I'm sure you can all see the potential just in those numbers!

Alright, alright, enough talking, on to the good stuff: the pictures.

Adam posing on one of the picturesque streets in Cap.

On the Boulevard, across the street from an oceanfront Kingdom Hall!

Enjoying a nice lunch with Jules and Sabrina, 15-year missionaries
and our new family. We love them so much. I think we were all separated at birth.

A tap tap loaded down with banane yo (plantains).

Adorable kids making breakfast and clearly one
of the little girls was excited to pose for the camera.

How come nobody told us that we would all become
mountain goats while out in service?!

Our brother and sister discussing a Bible verse with a householder.

The territory with a lovely view of the Caribbean.

FINALLY!!! Adam got t go surfing and make good use
of his troublesome surfboard - worth the hassle of course!

Sabrina is a rock star at the market. Watching her negotiate
has been the highlight of our trip - well other than the amazing
experiences we've enjoyed in service... :)

Jules with his butcher.
Jules loves his butcher - look at that smile!

Welcome to the meat section of your local Safeway.

Dinner!!!!

Adam barbequing the beef filets we bought from
the cow leg in the picture above. So delish!!! 

We've been having the best time here in Cap, and are excited to show our pictures from visiting Labadee! We send you all huge hugs and can't wait to share more!

On the road...

Hi everyone!  We can't believe it's already December, and that our week here at the missionary home in Cap-Haitien is coming to an end!

We ventured through the country with the Casavants to cross the border into the Dominican Republic.  This was not a trip we were necessarily banking on happening, but we're glad it did.  For one, it was nice to spend a couple of days relaxing on the beach, and it was equally nice being in a country that feels like home...

But we missed Haiti the whole time we were there!

I'm afraid we can only upload a couple of pictures - coming to Cap reminded us we are in a third-world country as the internet connection and cell connection are not as fabulous.  Our next stop is staying with a Haitian family so we're probably going dark...and we'll really be reminded we're in a third-world country.

On to the pictures:

FINALLY! About 30 minutes outside of Port-au-Prince we saw
proof that we were on an island! And the color of the water
proved we were in the Caribbean! Yay!

At the summit of our first mountain pass,
making our way north to Cap.

This is Luc.  He and his adorable wife are special pioneers in a little
mountain town called Plaisance.(the name totally fits - such a sweet little place).
There are two of 12 publishers in a tough territory full of vodou.
We had lunch with them in their cute little house surrounded by banane trees.

Our delicious lunch of fried banane (plaintain) and poul payi (local chicken),
picklies (spicy cabbage slaw) and my favorite, fresh jus grenadien (passion fruit juice)

This is how cassava is made.  Cassava is root vegetable that is widely used
in Haiti.  You take the root and grate it.  Then you squeeze out the sour juice, which
I believe to be toxic from what I've been told.  Once grated, the cassava is spread out in
a circle on a griddle over charcoal (pictured above).  As is cooks, the excess is brushed off, and then
the cassava is removed from the griddle to be gobbled up by all of us.  SO GOOD! We love
cassave douce, which has sugar, cinnamon, and coconut added to it.

Approaching Cap.  See the mountain in the middle? Look really close,
See that rectangular box, that looks like the Arc?
That, my friends, is the world-famous Citadelle!

Items are still transported by donkey and cart here in Haiti.
But the funny part? This picture was taken as we were driving on the main
highway here in Haiti.  The equivalent of I-5.

THE BORDER:

Oh the stories we have about crossing the border from Haiti into the DR... I was afraid to take pictures because, well, it's illegal back home, but the "security" of this border was frankly laughable.  Appalling in that it was equal parts corrupt and equal parts ridiculous.

To leave Haiti and enter the DR in a vehicle is not for the faint of heart, nor for the weak.  I personally recommend doing it only if you insist and only if you plan on having a martini afterwards (or during, we don't judge).  I am neither confirming nor denying that bribes occur frequently at the border but at the end of the day are useless.  The next time we cross, I plan on videotaping the whole thing.  It was that ridiculous.  

We waited for TWO HOURS to get papers for the car signed.
Apparently is takes two people to do the job of one person.
And apparently they need to take lunch at two different times.
Just revisiting this make me want that martini I was talking about....

Once we crossed the border, we stopped at ate at a sketchy chicken stand (I'm still shocked we all didn't get sick!) and then happened to miss where the highway was.  So we took a dirt road through beautiful DR countryside (which is far cleaner and far better organized) and ended up crossing a river in our car.  I wanted a picture, but everyone used up all of their patience at the border...understandable.

So after a total of about 10 hours of driving, through mountains and rivers and dirt roads, we made it to Puerto Plata...and FINALLY made it to a beach!

We spent our five year wedding anniversary in a place we never imagined we would visit, on a trip we had always dreamed of taking...couldn't ask for more.

As always, we send our love and thank you for joining us on our journey and for your wonderful comments - every little taste of home makes everything that much better.

Derniers jours en Delmas

Warning: the following contains a boatload of pictures.  We find them very funny, so we hope you enjoy.

Adam and his favorite service partner, Sister Peyant. 

This is a house on the same street where we meet for Sunday service.
The front door is seven inches away from an eight foot deep by 30 foot long hole.
Our brave faithful brothers are doing a return visit on seven inches of dirt.

This is the new, almost-road leading to Sunday service.  It's been like this for a year.
As you drive up to park and then walk into the neighborhood, you have to look down
to make sure that you don't park in a bottomless hole that is not marked nor covered.

Adam in front of a typically colorful tap tap.

This huge leaf was triple the size of me and covered in dew drops.

Getting to Sunday service is a challenge.

Dinner!

A still-functioning electric pole.  Look closely. It's levitating.

Hoping this bread fruit won't fall on me.

Preaching in a lottery store.

Here comes a tap tap.....

......loaded with live chickens.
Doesn't get any fresher than that.

We lost power for a couple of days to find out that someone had disconnected
our power to mooch off of us.  Guy and his neighbors used a wooden ladder
and bare hands to reconnect the wires.  Totally safe and definitely to code.

Pooped after a long few weeks of service.

Our lovely stay at the Casavant's (a.k.a. the Four Seasons Haiti) ends this evening.  Our first month here in Haiti has been busy, loud, quite dirty and definitely awesome.  Cap-Haitien, here we come!

Kenscoff

Our first week with the Casavants included a nice little trip to Kenscoff, a little mountain town about 40 minutes north of Petionville.  Petionville sits at the foot of the mountains where Kenscoff is hiding from the hustle and bustle of the greater Port-au-Prince area.

Adam getting his shoes shined outside the door, after a long day in service.

See that little ramp with a truck on it? That's a car wash.

There are three basic forms of transportation in Haiti: the tap tap, the moto taxi and car taxis.
I'm relatively sure death follows a ride on a moto taxi.

Behind me is a colorfully painted portion of Petionville.

After we drove through the center of Petionville, we began our long climb up the mountain.  It was so beautiful - so lush, so green.

Haiti is beautiful.  Ayiti or Haiti in English, is actually an indigenous word meaning
"land of high mountains" - a very fitting name.

On the climb up, through various little villages, we passed by hundreds
of children leaving school.

Views like this almost made me forget how stupidly hot it is here.
The nice thing about Kenscoff was the temperature: 80 instead of 95.

Here's the Kingdom Hall in Kenscoff.

The climate in Kenscoff was very different - we climbed several thousand vertical feet to find a place similar to home - lots of pine trees and grass, and a nice cool breeze.  I would have taken more pictures, but the higher up we got, the more stares we got - let's just say that in Petionville we stick out, but in Kenscoff we look like aliens.

After a nice, peaceful trip to Kenscoff, we came back down to the real world:

Yes, friends, behold a truck piled 11 feet high with unsecured bags of stuff.  Barreling down the road and swerving to avoid killing people. Tilted at an angle defying gravity.  Welcome back to the big city I suppose.

This week is our last in Petionville.  Next Monday we're headed to the Dominican Republic for a wedding.  Apparently it will be quite the road trip, so we're excited.  But fear not: more crazy pictures to come, including the promise of how nutty getting to the Sunday service arrangement is and how meetings are a source of sheer entertainment and proof that people are flocking to Jehovah's organization.