Cover me...I'm going in

5, 4, 3 ,2, 1….Its Show time! Got no sleep. My daughters are fast asleep in their beds. My in-laws are in our bed. We are on the floor on an air mattress. Looking at 2 hours of sleep and then off to the airport. I barely slept. We got up and got ourselves ready. At the very last minute I couldn’t find two important things. My prescription Eye GLASSES and my pillow!!! We searched High and low at 4 in the morning…we even got my mother-in-law up to see if she had any clue but to no avail. Gotta call it…okay. Leave it. So out we go, TO HAITI, with my old broken glasses. The ones with one arm. Great! I am not going to let this get to me. We have way too much to accomplish in this one day. Of course we get to the airport and everyone is like…awwww your glasses.

We get to the airport 3 hours early and it seems we didn’t have enough time. The place is packed with travelers, other groups and the lovely customer service of JFK airport. We have to do a self check in first….THEN…we can check luggage…all twenty-eight bags! God please be with us. All of us are lined up, looking dapper with our nice blue Hope Worldwide Shirts, texting each other in the line, looking for updates and holes in this faulty system. We see a group of Asian volunteers with bright RED shirts that say “Jesus loves you” in Creole. Jezi Remin ou. They are all checking in together. Some quick thinking and fast talking and we are checking in together as well. We get an agent who seemed pretty nervous about having to check in 2 groups in a row. We were so meticulous about making sure each bag weighed exactly 50lbs. We even used inactive counters to re-weigh our luggage and negotiate some quick switch-a-roo to make them exact. The agent was so anxious about getting us on the plane on time he actually stood on the scale with the luggage. Every piece of luggage was coming in at 240lbs, 230lb…so we figured he was about 180 or so. We got a free pass on the luggage and God just ushered us on through. From there we had to run to our gate with only moments to spare. When we got to our gate the first thing we hear is an announcement looking for volunteers to give up their spots!!! And they were looking for 14 volunteers. $400 cash per person and a night in a hotel. A tempting offer any other day. But we had no time to spare. Did I mention we were a group of 14 by the way?! Oh no you don’t Satan! For those of us still waiting to get on, I urged everyone to conger up the NY in them and get pushy and make our way to the front of the line. We all got through and on the plane.
We have an uneventful flight and make it to Haiti. It had only been 5 months to the day that I had been in Haiti but 15 years since I had flown into the Toussaint L’overture airport in Port-au-prince. I had no idea what to expect. I was tipped off by good friend Andy on what the possibilities were but I wasn’t sure. We get off the plane and walk through a gate not the tarmac…hmmm…that’s new. Then there is a small local village band playing at the end of ….an escalator! Whoa…that’s new too! I was beaming with pride. I looked to my husband and said…Welcome to my country. Welcome to Haiti. We look down the escalator and there is an officially badged man with Katty Velez on a piece of paper. I didn’t see it, someone pointed it out to me. I know at that moment we all felt so relieved. We were off to such a great start. We make it outside and there is a nice bus waiting to take us to “baggage claim”. The gentleman escorts us through the next phase of getting our luggage and making our way to our vehicles.
We get off the non-air conditioned bus and we walk into what can only be described as a convection oven. It was a giant ware house type structure. Large and spacious. There were fans blowing everywhere but it was hot as ________. (You fill in the blank). It was the hottest place I have ever been to. I have NEVER sweat before like I did that moment. The sweat was dripping from my temples, down my face, pooling under my chin and then dripping on whoever and whatever…everyone was. This was the BAGGAGE CLAIM. So standing still you are sweating this bad. Now you want me to go and find 28 pieces of luggage at 50lbs each? Girls were not exempt. We were all at that turnstile pulling, dragging, swinging and grabbing luggage. We had to count the luggage every so often to know how many more we were looking for. How many!? 15. okay 13 more? Ugh… How many?! 20 okay…eight more….How many?! 23…5 more all the way to none more. Wouldn’t you know it…we found every piece of luggage in this luggage hell. That nervous agent didn’t do so bad after all.
Our dear Hostesses Marlene Berthelot and Pastor Jessie Pierre were both there to meet us. It would be our first times meeting face to face.
We get to our hired vehicles and there is no truck. We were expecting a big truck to take us and our luggage in one shot. INSTEAD, we had 2 vehicles. We had to hire a man on the spot to take the rest of us who didn’t fit. 3 vehicles, more than a ton of baggage, and 18ppl. If you ever saw an episode of the twilight zone (new or old version)…that very moment we were driving away would be the portal to the twilight zone. We were all in la la land. Snapping pictures. Ooing and aaaaing at everything…group pictures galore…We were on a head on collision course with something I dare say would change our lives forever. 5 days in Gressier, Haiti.