[caption id="attachment_1172" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The Haitian-Dominican border."]
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Getting into Haiti, we didn't have much trouble. We flew in to the Dominican Republic, and met up with a nice man that was happy to make the 12 hour bus trip to get our group to Port-au-Prince. But, it turned out, getting back out would be more difficult.
On our way in, we approached the border and entered the first gate, which took us out of the Dominican Republic, but not yet in to Haiti. We entered a kind of purgatory between the countries, which was "the border." We put all of our passports into a bag and Sister Brise took them into an office for approval. We didn't get charged anything to enter since we were disaster relief, our matching Big-Bird-yellow t-shirts couldn't be missed, got our passports stamped, and slowly made our way through the gate into the dusty Haitian countryside that precedes the bigger cities.
Leaving Haiti was a different story. It started out the same. We made our way through the gate exiting Haiti and entered the stretch of land between the countries, parked the bus, and gave up our passports. Let me say, letting your passport out of your sight in a foreign country is extremely unnerving. It seemed like things were taking a little longer this time, and we were all relieved when Sister Brise finally boarded the bus and we began our trek through the gate into the Dominican Republic. We had no sooner passed through the gates' threshold when the bus heaved to a stop again. We were all kind of bummed, we had already been stopped for over an hour and were anxious to get back on the road. The door creaked open, and a shady looking Dominican man stepped in, with a hard look on his face.
[caption id="attachment_1174" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The gate into Haiti."]
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It appeared that he wanted to know who was in charge, and Sister Brise (who was fluent in Spanish as well as Creole, thank god) stepped up. Their discussion quickly turned heated, voices were raised and arms and hands were flying in gesture. This man, it appeared, was not fucking around.  And neither was the gun in his back pocket.
So I did the only thing I could think of to do: whipped out my camera, set it on video, and started recording. I tried to make it perfectly clear that that was what I was doing, holding it out in the middle of the aisle, and staring hard at him as if to say "try something, buddy, this will be on YouTube in a second." I was trembling in fear all over, but trying not to show it. It didn't take him long to notice me and my camera.
- The first time he looked at me, he did a double take. The second, irritated look he gave me had me wondering if this was the best, or the worst, decision I had ever made. He then seemed to make a big production for the camera of picking up a random passport and taking a close look at it, as if to verify that it was valid. Realizing that my passport was at his mercy, I began to kiss my beloved American citizenship goodbye. A few minutes later, he looked at me and my camera again, this time with a ten second stony stare. He looked truly angry this time, and the tension on the bus thickened. I'd seen a third-world hospital, now I began to wonder how it would be in a third-world jail cell.
- Then, to my absolute horror, he began making irritated arm gestures in my direction. I thought about the gun in his back pocket, wondered if it was loaded or not, and decided, with my free hand, to start texting some friends and family that I loved them and would miss them, in case anything happened. This was probably the most terrifying moment of my sheltered life. Here's a clip.
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[caption id="attachment_1175" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The gate into the Dominican Republic."]
[/caption]Finally, several minutes after my poor camera had run out of memory, and I was merely holding up an empty threat, hoping the dude didn't notice that the red "recording" light had turned off, the dude gave up and got off the bus. We all breathed a sigh of relief, and Sister Brise explained to us that the man was demanding $30 apiece, yet had no credentials proving he was who he said he was. She said that she held her ground until he finally left. That lady is pretty hardcore.
