Blog post by Nicole Vulcan…
“I feel like I keep saying O my god,” David says as we round another bend in the Limbe marketplace. True, there is lots to lament upon in this place where soiled discarded shoes mix with old animal horns and a gooey black muck, all very near thin mats where young and old sell beans, rice, used clothing and little bags of Dominican chips.
We’ve been in Limbe now a few days, and have rarely left the Noramise compound. Inside its gates lies a mini Haitian paradise, in the form of clean, dirt free floors (thanks to Rosedanie’s no shoes policy), a tidy yard with fruit trees, shady places for sitting and Lunise’s vegetable beds (one of the caretakers of the house, who recently attended the first-ever Haitian permaculture training in Port-au-Prince), as well as good fresh food and comfortable beds. Yes, showers are by and large taken with a bowl of water flung over the body, and the toilet flushed with buckets, but there ARE toilets and a clean bathroom, which is a far cry from the amenities available in the huts we passed on the road to Limbe.
And, a far cry from the church where we stayed on the team’s first trip, which lacked the basic amenities named above and stood just outside the marketplace. Back then heaps of trash, worse than now, burned in fetid piles. That’s why I had to smile a little when David made his comment, since now, thanks in part to the efforts of Team Noramise, there are no longer piles of burning trash, but instead only smears of trash here and there. Overall, I see improvements in the situation here — in the marketplace, in the accommodations for Noramise volunteers, in the general feeling of hope that pervades the house and the people who are part of the organization. I am heartened by progress as the journey continues, though we all know there is so far to go…
