Day 4 by Alysha Gagnon

Day 4 ~Alysha Gagnon

Today was a day filled with adventure and work. This morning, Hunter Fortuin, Kiki, his daughter Katie, her friend Mackenzie, and Mick Evans went for a run. We rode over to Cormier, past the burning piles of trash, which we knew more about thanks to Kiki's presentation. We arrived at the village and piled out of the car.  Kiki proceeded to leap up a 5.5 ft hill with no issue and set a fast pace for our jog.  He was mountain goat like with his ability to scale the sheer hills without slipping!  Occasionally we would stop and he would point out some land mark and introduce us to a new Haitian proverb.  A really memorable one is "Deyi mon gen mon" which means "behind mountains, there are more mountains." That is so true! We thought we got to the top, but there was a taller mountain just around the corner.  This was not an easy run, but the view was worth the effort, Hunter was able to get a couple panoramic picture to share at some point.

The 6 of us returned to the hotel with enough time for a quick wash and breakfast of various potato like tubers  and sauce before loading into the tap tap to head to the school.  The ride was an experience as always! Especially at the end, we went up a hill that was probably a 75 degree angle.  It was insane! We then met our tree planting partners for the day and started the trek to their houses to plant the trees.  Though we had a very strong language barrier between most of us, we were able to get along fine and had a great time.  At the end of the hike back up the hill to the school we took pictures and exchanged contact information.

We went to the planting fields and planted another 100 or so trees we the farmers, braving fire ants and slippery slopes to do so. There were only a couple wipeouts and everybody is fine.  We headed back to the hotel with the waning day light and ate a fabulous meal of conch, fish and plantains, followed by dessert, some flavor of ice cream that I could not identify.  We broke off to talk and have fun.  Aft lots of laughter and deep philosophical contemplation we retired to our rooms... My roommate Lizzie and I got to bed at about 1am! Not the smartest decision as we needed to get up this morning!