Children's Lifeline

After landing in Haiti around noon, the Camp Kivu team made our way through immigration and the Port Au Prince airport. Many Haitians welcomed us, some by playing music and others by trying to grab our bags and carry them for us. We then took a bus through Port Au Prince and north up the coast of Haiti to Archaie. As we drove through the outskirts of Port Au Prince, we saw a lot of small crammed tents with plastic-like tarps as roofs, the homes of people who were pushed off the streets of Port Au Prince after the earthquake. Many strong stenches came from this area, called tent city. When we arrived at Children's Lifeline, we had lunch and we went on a tour of their facilities, which include a school, a cantine (kitchen/cafeteria), a church, a soccer field, a medical clinic and a warehouse that holds all the donations. The volunteers live on the second floor of Lifeline's school. We also took a short walk to the top of a hill where a glow-in-the-dark cross stands overlooking Lifeline. Then one of the Lifeline leaders, Spring, showed us the village that surrounds their ministry. The children in the village immediately and excitedly ran to us, holding our hands and smiling, most of them with bare feet and some of them without any clothes on at all. The children were swimming in canals, like man-made streams, which are used for their bath and cooking water and also act as an irrigation system for some people's farming. It was amazing to see how willingly and confidently the children came to you just wanting to hold your hand and hang out with you. That night, we ate a great dinner cooked by two Haitian women, and some of the girls got pedicures and manicures by two other Haitian ladies.