Sights and Sounds in Hinche and the countryside

Random street scenes and sounds in Hinche and countryside:

• A team of oxen pulling an old man in a cart filled with hay
• Two men forcefully hauling a gigantic slab of ice (as big as the halves of two refrigerators) in a cart
• Naked children playing behind barbed wire, delighted as Adam blows them bubbles
• Two UN police cars blasting by us on a dirt road, kicking up dust--in fact, UN vehicles everywhere
• Two burly guys, blancs, nationality unknown, jogging through the streets of Hinche looking as out of place as we did
• Children in school uniforms the color of Easter eggs: bright blue, vivid green, lemon yellow, and tangerine orange.

• A woman pushing a giant wheelbarrow full of garlic through the packed and dirty Hinche market over uneven rocks
• The sound of a goat kid bleating, bleating, bleating for its mother while it perched in a niche on a grave marker in the town cemetery
• The bones and skulls (human) we found scattered around the crypts in the cemetery
• Going with Pere Walin, Philip, and Julian to the Eben-Ezer BBQ in Hinche and encountering two blancs from the new NGO Center of Hope who greeted us like long-lost friends (Pere Walin knew of them and hopes to cooperate with them for technology for St. Andres.)                                      
• Going to the town orphanage, home to about 200 children and visting on the girl's side, while little girls, many clad only in underpants, called out eargerly "Foto, foto!"
• Watching a giant black pig roll about in the mud while his buddies rooted around the trash heaps on the banks of the river 

• Noticing "Aba Kolera" banners posted across country lanes urging handwashing for health safety. (Pere Walin says that cholera hit Hinche hard and that there are still cases in the hospital, although the frequency is declining.)