A Family Mission Trip to Haiti: Haitian Roads and our travels to Pignon

The roads in Haiti are mostly dirt and gravel. There are some paved roads in towns and villages, but primarily you will find very rough roads that take you just about through anything including some pretty good sized rivers! We had quite an adventure making our way out of Port au Prince and North towards Pignon.

These very colorful buses/trucks are seen everywhere in Haiti and are called Tap Taps......they are like the local version of a city bus. People and often times large loads of a variety of things including chickens and goats are transported all over in these. Usually you will see people on top, hanging off the back and crammed inside in order to get a ride somewhere! Conner tried counting Tap Taps as we were driving out of Port au Prince, but where he got to 50, he gave up! They were really fun to see because of all the bright colors and creative paintings from top to bottom!

The housing shown here is just a few miles outside of Port au Prince and has recently been built in order to begin to provide housing for those who lost their homes in the earthquake. These apartment buildings are in high demand and the lines of people outside are hoping they might be able to get on the list to be placed in an apartment. There are still well over 200,000 people living in tent cities around Port au Prince and have been in these tent cities since the earthquake in 2010! My mom's last trip to Haiti was in 2011 and she felt very positive about the progress that has been made in this city and she didn't see nearly as many tent cities as she has in the past, so she felt very good about our drive through the capital. The need for housing in still a high priority, but is also a huge challenge when the poverty levels are so extreme. So, these apartment buildings were a very positive sign of a step in the right direction for earthquake recovery. Haiti is in the process of paving National Highway #3 which will be the only paved highway running North and South from Port au Prince to the northern coastal city of Cap Haitian. The paved part of the highway has now extended to the city of Hinche which is about 1/2 an hour South of Pignon. So, we were pretty lucky to have paved roads for the majority of our trip! The highway has been a work in process especially since the major earthquake that struck Port au Prince in 2010. Having a paved road has really been a blessing! The mountains of Haiti begin to rise shortly after leaving Port au Prince and are just beautiful! The roads have been cut into these mountains and have many winding turns and steep areas with a grade that probably wouldn't meet any code in our country, but they have been able to have a paved road and that's a great start! I really had no idea of the beauty I would see while driving to Pignon.....Mountains and Mountains and beauty everywhere we looked! Along with the beauty was a great deal of poverty and poor conditions. Many people live right alongside the highway (I mean...right alongside!) Homes are often made out of mud and branches or if you are able to afford it, cement block. Roofs are usually tin or sometimes just a tarp. This was very eye opening for the boys to see as we were driving. People walk right along the sides of the highway as well to get from town to town and from place to place. Women carry large amounts of water, food, wood either on their heads or strapped to their backs. Shoes are usually flimsy flip flops if they have shoes at all. That was heartbreaking to see as we were out in the middle of nowhere driving through the mountains and we would see people walking and walking and walking. Definitely a different way of life than we are used to. It makes you feel so blessed for those things we just take for granted such as running water in our homes, highways that are maintained, and bridges to go over rivers instead of having to navigate through them! Once we got to Hinche, we were pretty exhausted! The boys had fallen asleep and and our drive, which was only about 45 miles or so had taken us 2 1/2 hours.

Now, the fun was going to begin. Our paved highway was now at its end. We would continue on for the last half an hour on a very roughed in road that would take us to Pignon. They are beginning to cut in a road and level out a road that will be paved eventually, but for now, it's just dirt. Our dirt roads here in the US are still maintained pretty well and would be the envy of people in Haiti!! The rough road was quite adventurous, we were really shocked our luggage made it strapped down on top of the van! We drove through large ruts, around deep holes and through rivers