That’s us…we, the Americans, are formally known here in Haiti as “blancs” to those we pass by while driving.  A word that I probably hear several hundred times a day.  I tell you this because today we had an amazing opportunity.  Today we crossed the river that several of the kids who attend the school at Coco Beach have to cross each day.  And in crossing the river and walking down a path we became the first blancs to ever go into that village.  A village so remote that most of them had never seen a white person before.  So cut off that they have no medical aid or food supply.  A village that, when it rains, is completely surrounded by water and stranded until the tides recede.  We met medical problems so intense they were hard to stomach.  Mental illness that was so misunderstood it blew us away.  We entered into the lives of some of the most hidden people in the world.  And what did they have to say?  In our interview with a woman who just gave birth there in the village with no medicine or even a doctor we asked her (and the rest of the village, as they all gathered around us the whole time) if they were Christians or if they practiced voodoo.  They were all silent for a second when an older man stepped forward and said something in Creole.  Allen turned to me and said, “He says, Of course we’re Christians!”

Wow is all I had to say.  They have no food, and when it storms are trapped there for days with nothing to eat.  Their nearest water source is a 10 minute walk.  They don’t even have a doctor…but what they do have…a church.

We saw today a place that no one else in the world has ever seen.  I’m still blown away.