Okay, we went out for just a few minutes to go to the market...
I now know the meaning of "flash floods." It was raining really hard but the roads actually didn't seem to bad when we left. By the time we came back 20 minutes later, they were nearly impassable.
My heart broke as I saw a house flooding-- probably about 2 feet of water in it. A woman came out onto her porch, went back into the house, then came back out with her child (probably 3 years old). She put the child on her back with nothing else in her hands, closed the door to the house and just started walking through the thigh-deep water. I don't know where she was going. I don't know if she knew. She just couldn't stay there.
The roads to the orphanage are flooding now, as are the neighbors houses. I want to make sure you understand we are safe. We are still significantly higher than them, the foundation is HUGE and very strong. Something very serious would have to happen in order for us to be in any real danger.
So, Danny tried American Airlines for us this morning as there is NO way we are going to be able to get to Port Au Prince tomorrow. Yeah, first they told us they couldn't do anything because the storm went through two days ago. We tried to explain that really wasn't the case. We told her what we saw and that we were seeing driving rains and houses under water. She (her name was Delores) said, "well, our screens show that things should be fine by now." Danny said, "I am looking out of my door right now and it is NOT fine. There is no way to get to the airport." Delores then said, "Well, it's not really my concern if it's flooding there or if customers can get to the airport. The storm policy refers to the plane's ability to land."
She told us that she could change it to Friday with no penalty, but we were more interested in either Saturday or Monday to give it a little more time for the roads to clear, but she said that we'd need to pay $1000 to do that.
Danny then asked to speak to a supervisor and she said, "No one's allowed to talk to supervisors."
Really Delores? If no one is allowed to talk to supervisors what do they do all day??? In the end, we changed it to Friday, and hopefully we can call back tomorrow and change it again but apparently the policy is only one change per ticket, so we may have to pay-- in the scope of things, it's just not that big of a deal. We will not try to make it unless we know it's passable. But seriously, if what is happening here in Haiti were happening in the US, there is NO WAY they wouldn't work with us. Do you honestly think that when houses are washed away and roads are washed away, when there is no access to airports that we couldn't get our tickets changed without cost. But here, there is no media coverage. At one point Delores said there were no confirmed deaths in Haiti... let me tell you something people, that's just NOT true.
We just got word that the American Embassy is reporting that conditions will be like this for three or four more days, so... who knows when we'll get home. We know we are safe here, so we just plan to stay put until we are sure it's safe. Apparently the American Embassy and American Airlines need to get on the same page.
I am going to upload pics now, so I will post an update when they are uploaded-- it may take a while. Unfortunately, Leann's camera got fog in the lens and we couldn't take very good pics with it and I think our camera got water in it too so some of the pictures didn't come out at all-- just totally black.
The dampness is getting in everything... our computers are starting to act wonky, as well as the cameras, so I'll just update as long as we can.
