"Blancs! Blancs!"

After waiting several hours for George and his uncle to run a few errands before we boarded the ship, we finally made our way to the dock, which was about three to five miles away from the cafe. Our driver, who obviously must be in the New York City Cabbie Hall of Fame, was more than pleased that Port Au Prince currently had no traffic laws. How bad was his driving? An armed UN soldier motioned for him to slow down. Did he? Or course not. He just kept honking, swerving, honking, and passing everybody and anybody.

On the way to the dock, there was rubble from the earthquake all over town. Many of the Haitians' home were made of cinder block and were poorly constructed, as such, when the earthquake hit, their homes simply fell down. But the saddest part of the whole thing was that rather than move to a new location, the people who lived through the earthquake (230,000 died), chose to live in the rubble pile. So there they sat, on top of their former homes, with absolutely nothing to do.

But then in the midst of the rubble piles I saw something unbelievable. If we had not been driving at the speed of light, then I would have taken a picture of it. At first, I didn't believe my eyes. Right smack dab in the middle of all the rubble was a building that stood intact. It was no bigger than a telephone booth, but it was standing. And it was open for business. What type of business was it? Lotto. That's right, Lotto. (Apparently Susan is faster than the speed of light, for she got a picture of the Lotto store--see above.) I couldn't believe that even Haitians, with all that they have gone through, could believe that they might hit it big and life would be great. Such is the power of deception.

As we turned down the road to the ship, the locals began to shout, "Blancs! Blancs!" as they began moving out of the way of our vehicles. I would quickly learn that "Blancs" was Creole for "whites." "Beep! Beep! Beep!" our driver incessantly honked as he literally shoved his way to the front of the line. I presumed that the driver was going to drive his vehicle onto the ship, and that is why he was honking at all the people to get out of the way.

But then I learned that the driver was simply getting us closer, so that we wouldn't have to walk so far with our luggage. It seemed quite rude to me, and I grew concerned that the locals would not take kindly to us "Blancs" honking at them to get out of the way.

To my surprise, however, the locals didn't seem to care one bit that we had cut in line. In fact, when we got out of the vehicles, they quickly grabbed some of our bags and started loading them onto the ship. Now, mind you, I had no clue where our bags were going, but at least they were going to be on the ship . . . somewhere.

To say that we were being submerged in the culture was an understatement. "Drowned" would have been a better choice of words. Be that as it may, we were led to our "cabin," which had six beds (three bunk beds). Believe it or not, we had one of only two cabins on the ship. The rest of the people would be on the deck (rain or shine).

When we got into our cabin, I thought of the Hampton Inn commercial where the woman looks disgustingly at a hotel bed that she views as deplorable before dawning a Hazmat suit to get into bed. "What a joke," I thought. Suddenly, America's ridiculous standards came to mind. Susan and my bed was about 2 1/2 feet in width (see Tyler's in the picture) and had not been washed in a long time. If the Hampton Inn lady had been there, then she would have keeled over and died on the spot. Before long, roaches were coming out of their hiding places, a rat or a mouse ran into the room, and before the night was out, our friend Josiah would come to feel the unique sensation of a roach crawling up his nose in his sleep. Susan could relate to him, for a roach tried to cozy up in her ear. Regardless, I saw the cabin as a refuge from the sea of humanity. Yes, this was a surprise, but it would be the most memorable night of our lives, bar none. We would spend 12 hours on this boat and arrive at Jeremie around 5:30 a.m.