Haitian Road Crisis

The following photos are all from last October. The team from Chattenooga Tennessee that was here then can relate very well to this story. We need prayer for the state of the roads in Haiti right now. Hurricanes Gustave and Hannah have National Route 1 from Port-au-Prince to Cap Haitien impassable. There are at least four bridges out along the route. So, all the traffic that needs to get between the two towns is coming through the Central Plateau. Sadly, the Plateau National Route 3 is no more than a (sometimes) 2 lane dirt/mud road. This is the rainy season and the hurricanes dumped large amounts of rain here too. And the road was not intended to take the volume of big, overloaded trucks that are passing through here now. All that spells trouble. And trouble we have. Please pray. The following story will illustrate the problem.

I just spent the last Thursday and Friday in meetings with community leaders and representatives from World Vision Port-au-Prince. World Vision (WV) is doing the prior investigation preparatory to hopefully come to work in our area. The WV reps spent both Wednesday and Thursday nights in Hinche, south of us, and came to LaJeune (the next area north of Bohoc) for the meetings both days. Both days they were late due to trucks being stuck in the road between Hinche and Bohoc.


Here is the road coming up the Caiman ravine from Pignon toward LaJeune last October. You can see the water in the drainage channel on the right. Thursday afternoon there was four to six times that amount of water that was flowing in the road between LaJeune and Bohoc as I was on my way home from the meeting.

Yesterday (Friday) morning, before I went to the second meeting, I gave HAFF's driver Elizert the funds to go to Hinche to buy milk for the children in the milk program and to buy various types of vehicle fluids and bits and pieces that he needs to keep the vehicles going. He called me yesterday afternoon to tell me that he was in Colladere sitting in the truck unable to continue since there were 2 trucks stuck in the road. And he said that even if they could get those trucks out, there was a big container truck overturned at the bottom of the hill leading south out of Grand Latanier.



This photo taken last October in Cayahond shows an area not too far from where the container truck was over turned. Elizert said that if he could get past Colladere and get to Mer Soley (between Colladere and Cayahond), he could leave the truck with World Vision and find a way home, even if he had to walk part way.
In this photo, taken at the same time as the previous one, you can see that even last year, with less rain and mud, there was a truck stuck in Cayahond which made it necessary for the team from Chattenooga to leave the HAFF truck and walk the rest of the way to church. Walking in that kind of mud and still managing to get to church clean is a real challenge!
This final photo shows the Chattenooga team coming back through the mud from church to the truck. Thankfully, Elizert drove into HAFF just before 2 pm today. They had been able to move one of the trucks in Colladere and so folks were able to get around the other one. And they had been able to wiggle the container enough for small trucks to get by. And yet another large truck was so stuck that they ended up having to build a by-pass path around it so vehicles could get by!

Elizert said that 2 more days of rain, and the road to Hinche will be impassable. According to Accu-Weather, we have a week of rain forecast starting tomorrow.

But these aren't the only trouble spots. I wrote last week that the back road from Cap to Pignon through Ranquite was fine and that the only boggy spot was in Bahoncy. Well, that spot on Thursday made Kristie and Jean Jean Mompremier have to take a long detour for them to get home from Cap.

People have heard that there is a company that plans to come and ameliorate the road to keep it open. It needs to be done. And it needs to be done quickly.

And getting back to the men from World Vision. They had to spend last night in their truck on the other side of the same blockade as Elizert. I think a report will be getting to people in Port-au-Prince that something needs to be done. And that episode should reinforce for them one of the obstacles to development in the area. There are no reliable roads for getting goods and services into the area.

It isn't even easy for those traveling on foot. I was told that yesterday in the market, a woman selling chayote squash had had to cross 2 rivers on foot with her load to get to market. The rivers were so swollen that she had to pay 200 gourdes at one river and 150 gourdes at the other for someone who knew the river to carry her and her squash across. That just increases prices in the market even more than they are already. Please pray.