After breakfast, on Tuesday, we all quickly piled into the big white truck. Our typical 10-15 minute drive to the work site ended up being over an hour. It turned out that a truck had lost control of it's breaks, crashed into a bus, and that bus killed 29 people and injured over 65 others. We all couldn't believe that so many people could be killed and injured from a car accident but unfortunately in Haiti people line this main street so their were many targets for this bus to hit.
Since we hit a lot of traffic, we got a late start to work. Starting around 830-9ish we all worked hard bringing buckets of rubble up and down the hill. It's crazy to me that everyone on the team shows up everyday with a smile and so much enthusiasm to start working. Although it is hard to start work again after a stop for a bread, tea/coffee break, everyone finishes out right to the end!
After getting back to MCC, we all took showers and drove over to Amy's apartment. Amy is a coordinator for the Irish non-governmental organization CONCERN. While CONCERNS main goal is to work with the poorest of the poor in Haiti, Amy focuses on building local capacity for peace, training on peace, and peace-building. When we arrived at Amy's apartment I was astonished by how beautiful it was. The balcony of her apartment overlooked a large portion of the city as it stood on one of the highest areas of Port-au-Prince. The apartment was also lined with paintings by Jean Louis Maxan, a Haitian artist who actually talked with us at the apartment, who described himself as one of the top 50-100 artists in Haiti. I wasn't surprised to hear this as one of his paintings, depicting the earthquake, took up a whole wall and was filled with beautiful vibrant colors. After the artist spoke to us, we ate plantain chips and other local Haitian snacks and began to talk with Amy. Many of her initiatives focused on creating dialogue between gang members, private sector members, local community members, and the elite. Through introducing people, CONCERN hopes to break bridges to get all classes of different communities to work together to solve issues. I found Amy's work with gang members very intriguing. I kept questioning why any gang member would care to make peace with the rest of the community members or why they would want to be seen in public when the police want to arrest them. Through listening to Amy (and from our reflection later that night) I realized that gang members are just people who resort to violence because they feel they have no other way to provide money for education, food, and a home for their families. When gang members are involved in peace-building activities they can be willing to give up the violence if they find they have an equal place in society as everyone else. Amy ended with telling us some "Tips for a Young Peacemaker" which i and we all headed back home to MCC for dinner, reflection, and some good late night games.
**Take a look at Amy's blog: http://thegeographyofsoul.wordpress.com/
****Article on Death of over 29 people in Haiti on Tuesday
http://www.capebretonpost.com/News/Canada%20-%20World/2012-01-17/article-2866965/Haiti-official-says-death-toll-in-truck-crash-climbs-to-29-dead-67-other-injured/1
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