During my time in Haiti, we did a LOT of driving around. The village is located outside of Port au Prince. You get to it via regular paved roads and then via a bunch of bumpy dirt roads. The drive into Port au Prince was always interesting.
Left, in this photo, you can see a graveyard area. It is just a small plot of land on the side of the road, next to it are homes that people live in and/or businesses. Can you see the crypts? The blue one houses about 9 caskets. Did you know that the dead pay rent? Yes, they do...or rather their relatives pay the rent. There have been occasions where the rent was not paid and the caskets were evicted. Fortunately, I only heard about that and did not see this.
Funerals are very elaborate. I saw a couple of them while in Haiti. I was told that the families spend a small fortune on the funerals, sometimes there are even "professional mourners" that are paid by the family to attend. The funeral processions that I saw reminded me of New Orleans' funeral processions, you can really tell the French influence.
I took this photo from the balcony of a house where Barbara went to demonstrate one of the water purifiers. These purifiers are amazing. A wealthy person in Florida has donated lots of money and purchased lots of the purifiers. (I will post more on the purifiers later.) Only organizations that are charitable, such as orphanages, community schools, communities, hospitals, etc. get the water purifiers. They are not allowed to sell them or sell the water and must provide water for lots of people.
This is taken in downtown Port au Prince's business center area. Haiti is a land of contrast, I saw horrible poverty and lavish rich people. Part of Port au Prince is dirty and another part is beautiful.
I saw a lot of Wycleff Jean's people in downtown. (If you don't know, Wycleff is a Hip-Hop artist who has Haitian roots.) He is using his money to put people to work. He has clean-up crews who go and pick up trash throughout the city. (I know that I have some good trash photos here somewhere...I will post them when I find them.)
Here is another photos of downtown, there is an area that has a lot of people fixing cars, selling car parts, etc. It is really chaotic.
Another photo of downtown. You can see some vendor stands on the side. People sell their wares on the stands and behind them are buildings with businesses.
