We had a 5am wake up call from our Spanish speaking driver Jobanny. He is my CEO’s partner and a very helpful individual. Despite our language barrier, we all get along quite well. It’s now time for us to make our way to the Haiti border.

After the earthquake struck, the border was wide open for anyone to cross over and bring supplies over to Haiti, since the airport was closed.

As we depart for our journey it’s extremely dark, however, it begins to lighten up very quickly as we continue to drive. I have a sense of appreciation for those who live in the Caribbean. Although resources are scarce, they always seem happy. Its amazing that people in the U.S have an abundance of  technology and resources yet we never seem at peace.

Jobanny says that it’s a 4 hour ride to Port-au-Prince, 2 of which is to the border and from the border another 2 hours. It’s a peaceful ride the rest of the way in Dominican Republic, minus the bumps and cows on the road.

As we begin to reach we are hit with traffic. In the last couple of weeks the border has begun to go back to the standard regulations. One being that they open @ 7am and close @ 7pm. It’s now 8:15am central time and there is no sign of us making it over anytime soon. My co-workers and I begin to take pictures of the line in front of us not yet grasping how far we truly are from the border. Luckily, Jobanny seems to know someone everywhere so they began directing us to a shortcut to jump the line.

As we drive through a field alongside the original line, we are graced by the presence of a Canadian helicopter which let out a few reporters. As we began inching towards the border, we realized a lot of the traffic is due to a market place setup at the border for Haitians to come and shop for supplies. Unfortunately, the merchandise was probably double the actual worth.

After about an hour or so, we finally made it across the border and begin our journey into the heart of Haiti and the epicenter of the devastation, Port-au-Prince.