Day 7… Business as Usual

On Friday, the border opened to Haitian business people and consumers in Dajabon.  The people flooded across the bridge into the DR, just like every Monday and Friday.  They had come to make what they could to support their families back in Haiti.  There was little room to walk and someone trying to pick your pocket around every bend.  It seemed like chaos, but to the people there, it was business as usual.  They were selling clothing, shoes, knick-knacks, and more, anything you could think of.  We looked on in amazement at all the people and the transactions taking place.  People shoved and yelled and we were stunned.  We wanted to take pictures just so we could explain what we were seeing.  A woman yelled out something to the effect of “this is a place of business, not a tourist attraction”, in Spanish.  And it made us all think how serious this all was to these people.  It was their way of life.  They came every Monday and Friday just so their families would have food in their mouths and not coming was not a choice.  What we saw as something completely out of the ordinary, was indeed completely ordinary for them.  We shoved our way back through the crowds to the bus and there were children small children selling on the street.  One boy, told us he was only eight.  He was alone and his mother was back in Haiti while he was at the market trying to sell some roasted nuts.  This was very much real for the people of Haiti and the DR. In essence, we were just tourists on a vacation, that was the reality.