I have been to Hell

I have a lot to say about various things we did today, but it is after midnight and I am just now getting to sit down ... and yet some things must get out before I sleep.

I couldn't really take pictures from inside the tap-tap, so I will have to do my best with words. Chris took us to the beach today. Ok, not in the traditional sense, but we did have lunch-ish at a resort. Anyway, it was about an hour out of town, so we had an opportunity to see more of the countryside. We saw a lot of the same shantys and huts as we see in town, but less dense, and perhaps less desperate because there were definitely gardens and things. Haiti has primarily been deforested, so the landscape is pretty bleak in most places. At one point, we passed a huge expanse that was mostly rubble and a lot of garbage. They burn their garbage here, so there were sort of smoldering places here-and-there, and a goat eating who-knows-what, and a single man scrounging for, well, anything worth finding. My mind went immediately to the valley Gehenna outside Jerusalem from which we get our images of Hell.

We did take one detour on our way to slunch, and that was to a mass grave. This one grave holds half the victims of the 2010 earthquake, so over 100,00 people. The crosses were erected on the first anniversary. There are no poppies growing in this desolate field.