Day Six!
Second to last day! We are so sad that we have to leave soon but the experience has been so incredible we know we will never forget it. We started off the morning by doing a tour of Fort Jaques! As a club we have been reading a book on the complete history of Haiti ("Haiti the Aftershocks of History" by Laurent DuBois) and it was incredible to see the places we've been reading about first hand. Haiti was the only successful slave revolt in history and we have found that so much of their strength and resillience, as well as their difficult political situation, echos the history of the country. That is why we found it so important to get a complete history of Haiti before coming. Afterwards we went back to old SOPUDEP to talk to some of the leaders of SOPUDEP For Life. This is a club out of SOPUDEP created by seniors of SOPUDEP to find funding for the SOPUDEP seniors to go to college. Our club raised $2,000 for the club and we are so proud to say that next year we will be sending another SOPUDEP senior to college. You can read all about our college funding program on our Donation's page -- it is one of our main goals! Hearing Hindy (the club's president) speak was so incredibly powerful. When asked about whether one of their programs that sends younger students to grade school serviced kids outside of SOPUDEP, Hindy responded beautifully, "The goal is not to save Cap Hatien. The goal is not to save Delmas. The goal is not to save Petionville. The goal is to save Ayiti, because we are all Ayiti." Afterwards we went to SAKALA! This is an organization run by an incredible man named Daniel Tillias. SAKALA is located in Cite de Soleil, the poorest and rumored most violent slum in all of Haiti. In order to change Haiti and the world's view of Cite de Soleil, and to keep young boys and girls off the streets and out of gang violence, Daniel created SAKALA. It is an enormous community garden, soccer field, and school. The garden is completely self sustaining and they use the plants to help grow the garden even further as well as feed the students. They have several soccer teams of boys and girls (they were even able to send one of the girls to the Haitian national team!) and EVERY year we play them and EVERY year we lose! But we came close -- only one goal short! Granted this time we had Daniel, Kenny, Billy and many other friends of Rea's to buffer our team! At night we came back for our last dinner alone with the family (as tomorrow night another amazing service group will be here!). The food as always was delicious and many tears were shed. Everyone said their piece about what the family and trip meant to them (with some translation from our good friend TPaul!) and as alwaus they responded with so much love and support. To all our families at home, we love you so much, and our hearts have all grown a bit bigger here to make room for our Haiti family. We have one day left and we hope to make every second count!
