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Leap Global Missions – Haiti 2017

At 3:45 on a Thursday morning, I got up, put on the clothes I'd laid out the night before, gathered the bags I'd packed the day before and headed to the airport. I was tagging along on a five-day medical mission trip to Haiti with Leap Global Missions. After chucking my car into the Park 'n' Fly, I showed up at the terminal, found a person with a Leap t-shirt and said 'hello.' I hadn't met anyone who'd be going on the trip prior to that morning, but thankfully people who give up their free time to help kids tend to be pretty nice.

We were all instructed to bring only carry-ons because our checked bags were reserved for large plastic crates full of medical supplies and equipment. Sometime in the six months after the trip was booked, American Airlines changed their rules to only allow two checked bags per passenger, which meant that about a dozen crates of supplies wouldn't be coming to Haiti with us. Not the best thing to find out two hours before your flight.

Half of us had already left to wait in the security line, which was surprisingly long for 6:00 a.m. on a Thursday, so those still at the counter were left trying to figure out what to do. Important things were switched between crates or stuffed into carry-ons while the truck that had just left was recalled to pick up the remaining cases. Those of us in the security line only half knew what was going on, and we heard someone might get left behind; it was a mess.

But everyone made it on the plane, and we landed in Fort Lauderdale (which is to Miami what Love Field is to DFW, it seems) after a couple hours plus the time change. During the layover, people found food, charged phones, and Kristin held a meeting on what the gear snafu would mean for the trip. I'm happy to report that ultimately no one failed to receive treatment because of this. It sounded like most of what was left behind was paperwork, which I think actually received a cheer. Our flight out to Port-au-Prince was delayed by an hour or so, but it gave us a chance to introduce ourselves. Some of us were new, but many had been on multiple trips with Leap in the past.

We landed in Port-au-Prince around 4:00 p.m. or so, and I'll admit that I was pretty bummed to have an aisle seat on that flight. Both sides had the window shades down, so my first glimpse of country number three was through the airport windows. We made our way to a separate ticket counter off in the corner where each of us had to pay ten dollars to enter the country. We then went through the regular customs line, got our stamps and went to collect our crates.

Cliff, our local fixer, met us at the terminal. My impression of Cliff was and is that he's who LL Cool J has made a career pretending to be. A brief but animated conversation in Creole between Cliff and airport officials got us and our luggage out the door, where his team loaded everything into trucks. There wasn't time to check in at the hotel first, so we headed straight for the hospital.

When we arrived, we walked into a packed waiting room filled with parents and children who'd travelled who knows how far and waited who knows how long to see if these American doctors could help. It was a bit overwhelming, but I pasted on a smile and tried to stay out of the way.

The first night would be evaluations. What are the issues and can they be operated on in the next three days. Surprisingly, it wasn't a madhouse. The people were patient, but also rather stoic. In Guatemala, a smile and wave was almost always returned. Here, I got a lot of stony looks. It took some getting used to, but then, they all had something more important on their minds. Our translators for the trip were a group of high school students from the wealthier part of the city. They spoke to each other in English, but spoke Creole to the patients. They really did a great job, especially having to translate some of the more difficult medical terms.

Two things stuck out most to me on this first night. One was being in the room with a child who had some, to me at least, complex-looking deformity. Dr. Beres, one of the surgeons on the trip, looked over the child and casually told the translator, "Yep, we can fix that. Can she come back tomorrow?" Of course I know that surgeons can fix all kinds of things, but it was somehow more impressive to hear it first-hand. Possibly because I can only imagine how relieving that casual "sure thing" was for that mom to hear.

The second thing I'll keep with me was one of the final patients of the night. A mom brought in a baby boy to Dr. Cone and Dr. Hall – two plastic surgeons who were there mainly to repair cleft lips and palates. The baby didn't have the strength to lift his head or move his arms and legs very much. Dr. Cone told her through a translator that he believed her son had Down's syndrome, and that there wasn't anything they could do for him surgically. The woman nodded with a weak smile and left quietly. That got me. Who knows how far she'd come to wait for hours in a waiting room, hoping against hope that these doctors could help her son. They couldn't, and it was just as simple as that. 37 children would end up getting surgeries, but not him.

Cliff's wife prepared too much food for us that night, and we took turns eating in an upstairs room at the hospital. We had chicken, goat, rice and beans, pasta and plantains. We weren't going to be exploring Haiti outside of the hospital and hotel on this trip, so I was afraid I wasn't going to get to try any authentic Haitian food. I did, and it was great.

Driving to and from the hospital was an eye-opener. The streets and houses weren't that different looking than the poor parts of Guatemala I'd seen just a few weeks prior, but it felt different. Less safe. I'd received a stern warning about not wandering off on my own prior to the trip, but it turned out not to be necessary; I felt no compulsion to do so. It's not that I saw any violence or anything specifically scary. I saw women sitting on the sidewalk selling fruit. Kids walking to school. A man with an ancient sewing machine making shoes on a tiny table under an umbrella. (That was a cool, "Did you see that?" moment in the van.) Even so, it just felt more dangerous there. And that doesn't mean that it was.

We stayed in a nice hotel that, unlike in Antigua or Guatemala City, was in stark contrast to the neighborhood immediately outside the gates. There were an odd number of men on the trip, and I ended up with a room to myself. This was probably a good thing for everyone because I had to back up my files and charge batteries every night, which always kept me up too late. The room smelled like sweat, the towels were scratchy and the lights made no sense. But for noticing these and every other first-world problem, I was quick to scold myself. Ha, beat you to it.

The next three days were basically identical: rudely startled out of REM sleep at 6:00 a.m., breakfast buffet at the hotel, rides to the hospital (in two shifts), fourteen hours of surgeries, then rides back to the hotel (in two shifts). The first two days ran behind schedule for various reasons, which kept some of the crew there until midnight the second night.

I've never had surgery (outside of having my wisdom teeth out) or been in an operating room in the U.S., so I had no point of reference for what I was seeing. (Well, House M.D., but that doesn't count.) Apparently, there are a lot more rules and paperwork back home, so it's fun for surgeons to come on these trips and actually practice medicine without all the rigamarole. (Bonus points for using that in a sentence.) I got to see (and photograph) quite a few surgeries, including a baseball-sized tumor removed from a two-year-old boy. Before the trip, I didn't know how I'd handle it, but it really didn't phase me. I realized that I can't have sympathy pains for a patient who's anesthetized; if they don't feel it, then I can't pretend to.

The scrubs Leap were going to bring for me to wear were among the items left behind in Dallas, so I borrowed a pair from Dr. Cone who said they might "fit kind of young on me." I also borrowed a Mickey Mouse surgery cap from Dr. Granberg, who ended up letting me keep it (possibly for hygienic reasons as much as sentimental). Dr. Beres said I'd never go back to real clothes, which I did, but scrubs are pretty comfortable anyway.

There were plenty of times over the course of these three days where I felt tired or hungry or sore, but it was sort of pleasantly humbling to realize that the same was true of everyone. Never mind that I had the least important job on the trip. It was also an exercise to stay attentive and creative after my shots started looking identical a day and a half in. The light in the hospital was great, which helped, but people in masks and scrubs start to look the same pretty quickly.

There was a little hallway between one OR and the recovery area where we had stacked all our crates of supplies. Between a diffused window on one side and shiny white tile on the other, it was readymade for the kind of lighting I still find difficult to create artificially. I first noticed it when people were walking through, and I got a few of them to stop for portraits. I think it's got that Dutch painting thing going on, and I'm pretty happy how these turned out for just being natural light. And I just used the black side of a five-way reflector as the background.

The surgeons managed to make up some ground on the fourth day and, to everyone's surprise, finish on schedule. We had a team dinner at the hotel planned for that evening at 9:00, and not everyone was convinced we'd all be there. We were, and it was nice to unwind with everyone a little. I say that, but I think I was the first one to slip out and go to bed. The night before, I'd had a great conversation with Dr. Cone over a local Prestige beer, but that night I just wanted to sleep. The next day, we had about an hour to pack up the last few things at the hospital before heading to the airport.

We flew into Miami, went through customs, said goodbye to those whose home wasn't North Texas, and killed some time at the TGI Friday's by our gate. It was funny watching everyone finally run out of energy after doing such a good job keeping it together for five days. And it was nice to get in a few more 'so where'd you grow up's with some really nice people before we parted ways. It kind of felt like youth camp – spend a week with a group of strangers, become great friends, become Facebook friends, and maybe we'll see each other in a year. Another trip, someday, hopefully.

So here's another text box at the end of a blog that's supposed to wrap everything up. It was a great trip. It was tiring but rewarding. I know this is what I want to do with my life. But I think I've spent a lot of time explaining what the trip was without explaining what it was about. This kid has a sweet smile that's still there and growth in his cheek that isn't anymore because a group of doctors and nurses came to Haiti and said, "Yep, we can fix that." And that's what Leap is all about, Charlie Brown.

Guatemala Street View

In March, I got to go back to Guatemala with Edify, an organization that promotes education around the world. This time, I was accompanying a group of men and women who'd come to visit some schools, meet some teachers and see the work Edify is doing first-hand. While I was mainly there to photograph some of the kids in the schools we visited, I of course shot a lot more than that during the trip.

The day before we left, I was able to pick up a new Fujifilm X100F camera, which had just been released. I was really excited to get it in time for this trip, and a lot of the shots in this blog are from that camera. Fun bonus: one of the guys on the trip noticed it around my neck and gave me the nickname "Fooge," which stuck for the remainder of the trip. I'm good with it. And I'm really happy with the image quality and size of the camera, etc. Whatever, this isn't a review.

Driving around the last time I was in Guatemala, it stressed me out that I was missing so many great shots outside my window. This time, I tried an experiment. I set a really fast shutter speed, then just pointed and shot as we whizzed by in the bus. I didn't know if I was getting anything usable at the time, but I was pleasantly surprised with the results.

The purpose of these shots was really just to be able to go back and look at some of the scenes I was missing as we drove past. It's been really fun getting to study some of them: the street vendors, women making tortillas, raw meat hanging in windows, an entire family on a motorcycle. I especially love the ones where they caught me looking. Our big white bus stood out in some of these neighborhoods anyway, so I'm sure some dumb tourist snapping photos wasn't any big surprise to them.

Anyway, enjoy this bus tour of Guatemala – at least the areas near Guatemala City, Antigua and Villa Nueva. I know there are a ton of photos here, but these are only a quarter of what I shot. And you can click on any of these to make them larger. Cheers.

I love this one. The look on the little boy's face belongs in a Caravaggio painting.

Guatemala 2016

Two years ago, I was working at an advertising agency when I applied for a writing position at a nonprofit organization. I figured I could do the same job but with more meaning. During the course of my interview, they asked me what my dream job was. I had thought of the answer before, but I'd never said it out loud. "I want to travel and take photos."

It's two years later, and I've just returned from taking my first international trip to Guatemala where I filmed a video for Edify, an organization that supports Christian schools in poor areas around the world. I had two travel companions for the trip: Scott Rhoades works for Edify, has been to Guatemala before and speaks a little Spanish. Being first in height, age and communication between the two of us, he was always introduced as "Scott Uno," and I, "Scott Dos."

Johnny Gonzalez works in operations and HR at our church. His parents are from Guatemala and he speaks fluent Spanish, so he was kind enough to come along and translate, correct Scott Uno's pronunciation, suggest good food to eat and even carry my camera bag far too often. Muchas gracias.

We took the three-hour flight to Guatemala out of DFW on a Tuesday afternoon. It was dark as we flew into Guatemala City, and the pilot announced that the glowing red thing out the window (which Johnny was kind enough to give me) was an erupting volcano. Awesome.

Guillermo, our driver for the week, met us at the airport to take us to our airbnb in Antigua, which ended up being an hour and a half trip due to heavy traffic. I didn't mind seeing my second country slowly.

We dumped our stuff at the house and had dinner in the open-air courtyard of a restaurant called Los Tres Tiempos, which was just beyond the famous Antigua Arch, the history of which no one knew. I don't remember what my dish was called, but it was stewed beef in a tomato sauce that had clearly been cooking for a good, long while. Johnny called it his favorite thing, and I don't tend to argue with statements like that. It was delicious; Guatemalans have comfort food down pat.

The following morning, we would be heading to the village of Villa Nueva to film at an Edify-supported school called Le Muel. Their school day runs from 7:00 a.m. to noon, and we wanted to be there in time to film parents dropping their kids off. So we said 'buenos noches' and set our alarms for 4:45 a.m.

Guillermo picked us up in the van promptly at 5:30 on Wednesday morning, and we began a winding, bumpy drive through the mountains. As the sun rose, I was able to see some of what I had missed in the dark the night before. Lush, green mountains, small towns, and too many 250cc motorcycles to count. Also, Guatemalan drivers are super aggressive by our standards; near misses must be the norm because I didn't hear a lot of honking.

The Santa Isabella II neighborhood of Villa Nueva, Guatemala

I've seen poverty, even South American poverty, on TV. I even re-binge-watched Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown before my trip. It's not that Villa Nueva was different from what I was imagining, it's that imagining can never be as impactful as seeing. It was dirty. There were piles of trash by the street, rust, rocks and rubble. Buildings were made of cinder blocks and corrugated metal. Some of them were painted. The power poles had more cables running off of them than seemed safe or reasonable. People reached through iron bars to do business with shop owners.

It was beautiful. And I mean that in the true sense of the word. If you were to look through my photographic history, you'd see that I've always been drawn to run-down things. Rust. Decay. Evidence of humans, I always called it. I told the guys later that I felt like I had missed 10,000 good photo opportunities, but I did my best to soak it up with my eyes.

We arrived and met Eddy, the school's founder and owner, along with his son, Mario. Le Muel, as it's called, is a private Christian school where children from elementary age to teenagers attend for, I believe, around $20 per semester.

I loved watching the parents bring their uniformed kids to school, but I was shooting video and didn't take any still photos of it. The teachers were lined up outside to greet the students, who would kiss each teacher on the cheek and say, "Buenos dias," before going inside. Some of the parents dodged my lens, but most of the kids returned my smile and wave. Did you know that Guatemalan children have an unusually high incidence of cuteness? They do.

After the bell rang, I was told I had free reign of the school and could go film whatever I wanted. My introverted tendencies gave me pause, but, hey, I'm the bearded American travel adventure photographer man, and I'm not scared of people... Yeah! Let's do this!

So I walked around and filmed students in their classrooms and they didn't bite me. In fact, they giggled and made silly faces for the camera while I smiled and said 'hola!' and 'buenos dias!' in what was probably the whitest accent they'd ever heard. They always smiled back, so maybe I was saying it okay.

After a little more filming, we were directed to a small upstairs room, where a teacher and a few of her students were preparing breakfast for us. I gathered that it was essentially a home economics-type class, and the students were dressed in traditional Mayan clothing. That breakfast was one of the highlights of the trip for me. Not only because it was delicious, but it was humbling to be honored like that for being there.

We had eggs-over-medium with black beans, bread, fried plantains, fresh papaya and coffee. There was sour cream for the beans, sweet breads (essentially cookies) to dip in the coffee and bowls of diced tomatoes and green chilies for the eggs. When I reached for the green chilies, every Guatemalan in the room jolted like I was about to touch fire. After assuring them repeatedly that I actually like spicy food, I covered my eggs in green stuff, secretly worried about how hot it was going to be. Turns out, not hot at all. Like at all. Give a white dude a little credit...

After breakfast, which was accompanied by three students playing the marimba, we walked over to a fenced-in courtyard where P.E. class was in session. After filming children running various forms of relay races, Johnny came over and told me that the band was ready for us.

I assumed we were heading to film a music class inside the school, but as we rounded a corner, I saw a full marching band, in uniform, standing at attention in a parking lot. Some locals had gathered to see what was about to happen. As with breakfast, I felt humbled that they were making such a big deal about our being there. Plus, I had kept them waiting, so I got ready to film as quickly as possible. I gave the thumbs up, the conductor motioned, and the band started to play.

They asked to take a photo with me, for which I was, of course, teased.

While I was filming the band play, two things happened that I had to be told about later. First, a few shady-looking locals were apparently eyeballing me and my camera gear. Eddy had a security guard there with us, who picked up the bag I'd set down and eyeballed them back as they left. Thank you, sir. Second, Johnny and Scott separately noticed that there was just something different about one of the girls playing trumpet. They later mentioned it to Eddy, and he asked them to tell her that.

Her name is Adriana, a beautiful 16-year-old who looked 12 to me. She's been at the school for three years now, but before that, Eddy found her drinking and doing drugs on the streets of Villa Nueva.

At age 13.

Eddy invited her to the school, where she began learning the trumpet (she's already really good at it), hearing the gospel and being cared for by a man she said seemed mean at first, but whom she now knows is really loving but strict. I've heard stories like hers before—wayward youth makes good, etc.—but seeing her and hearing her story in person had a huge impact on me. In fact, I think Adriana was the highlight of the trip for me. She gave me a lot to think about, and I look forward to hearing about great things from her in the future.

A couple weeks before we arrived in Villa Nueva, a huge rainstorm flooded part of the town. Several houses were destroyed and eight people died, including a young boy who was swept eight miles downstream. I could only overhear some of the translation, but he might have attended the school. Mario, Eddy's son, drove us to a place where we could see some of the cleanup underway. As if I needed further reminding that I don't actually have any problems in my life. But then, I probably do need it.

At noon, the school let out and I began filming an interview with Eddy in his office. I'm looking forward to seeing the translation of that interview so I can know what he said. (This trip made me wish I hadn't taken French in high school and college.) I do know he has a real heart for these kids, though. No one needed a translator to see that.

We went back to Antigua that afternoon and had another delicious meal in the courtyard of another restaurant that Guillermo suggested that I don't remember the name of. Johnny recommended a traditional dish called pepillan, which was chicken stewed in a thick, dark sauce made from roasted pumpkin seeds and chilies – the kind of food that makes you sigh.

I didn't know what to expect for the weather in Guatemala (because I didn't bother to Google it beforehand), but it was around 60 in the morning and got up to around 80 or so in the afternoon. It was nice. Kind of southern California-esque. Also, it was their rainy season, but it never rained on us while we were there. Answered prayer, that.

After a brief rest at the airbnb, the boys were kind enough to wander around Antigua with me, even though we were all pretty tired. One of my favorite things to do is to walk around cities and just look at everything, and exploring a particularly old city in a different country is, unsurprisingly, even better. I brought a wide-angle lens and shot from the hip a lot (that is, without looking). It's fun because though it yields a lot of blurry, unusable shots, I ended up with a few fun surprises.

We walked to the town square, which was fairly crowded with locals, tourists and people in traditional clothing selling various things. Scott Uno was searching for good coffee beans to take home, which were surprisingly hard to find in 'Guatemala Antigua' itself. He eventually found some, and Johnny picked up some sweets to take home. We began wandering back to our beds, me many paces behind the other two, who weren't preoccupied with photo ops.

As we got back to the airbnb, we saw lightning in a big bank of storm clouds off in the distance. As I braced myself against a telephone pole and pointed my camera in that direction, I began explaining to Johnny that I've never had any luck shooting lightning. I've never bothered to do long exposures with a tripod and all that, and shooting lightning handheld is basically impossible...

We rose at 4:45 again the next morning and repeated our journey through the mountains to Villa Nueva and the Le Muel school. I needed some additional B-roll of Eddy interacting with parents, and we wanted to try to interview Adriana on camera. We had run out of coffee filters at the airbnb, so we stopped at a McDonald's (of all places) on the way to get some coffee. I decided to wait in the van with Guillermo. 20 minutes later, the boys came back and said they had to wait for the coffee machines to heat up. As we drove away, we all discovered the fast-food coffee we'd just waited 20 minutes for was cold. Still, it speaks to how great the trip was if cold coffee was the lowlight. Thankfully, Eddy hooked us up when we got to the school.

After filming the kids arriving once more and Eddy interacting with the parents, we were able to interview Adriana and another student named Alex, who is interested in computers, networks, and other technological things I don't understand. Real people with real dreams getting real opportunities because of a school I didn't know about in a town I've never heard of in a country I never thought about. I'm not sure what that means yet, but we all spent time thinking about it.

Eddy, owner of Le Muel school in Villa Nueva, Guatemala

After shaking hands and saying 'gracias' a lot, we loaded into the van and headed off to another school in a town that I think was called Cuidad Quetzal. (I could be wrong; I don't speak Spanish.) Silvia, the school owner there, is from Argentina and moved to Guatemala with her husband as missionaries. Her school is in a particularly dangerous and gang-infested area of the country. Even Johnny's dad told him via Skype to be careful when he told him he'd be going there.

When I saw Silvia, I thought she looked like a nun. She's white but doesn't speak English, which threw me off a little. But she's tough. When gang members tried to mark their territory near her school, she got in their faces and told them to unmark her territory and get out. And they did.

One of the things that sets Silvia's school apart is that she accepts special needs children, whereas other local schools do not. Around half of the 33 students at her school are special needs, and Silvia is continuing to learn techniques for helping them.

Again, I'll have to wait for the translation to find out what she said on camera, but I later heard that her goal is to raise up students who can stand on their own two feet (literally; I watched her lift a boy out his wheelchair to help him exercise his legs). After her interview, Johnny said he felt like he'd just talked with an angel.

The sash signifies that David is the top student at Amigos de Jesus school

We left Cuidad Quetzal and headed to our hotel in Guatemala City. Our return flight was scheduled to depart at 7:30 a.m. Friday morning, so we made plans to catch the 5:00 a.m. shuttle from the hotel. After showers and naps, Karla, an Edify employee who lives in Guatemala and works directly with school owners, picked us up for dinner and a debriefing at a very nice steakhouse in the city. The area we were in was in stark contrast to the towns we'd just visited. I wasn't in those places long enough to experience culture shock, either in Guatemala City or upon returning to Texas, but it was different.

So what is the wrap-up statement? I don't know. I loved it. It was beautiful. I met some lovely people. It was tiring but a success. I was challenged and inspired and probably changed. A lot of people predicted that I would catch the travel bug when I left the country for the first time. They're probably right, because I can't wait for country number three.

Dove Hunt: Valley View, TX

35mm: Get Lost 2016

In May of 2016, I packed up the Subaru and set to wanderin' over 3,300 miles through West Texas, New Mexico and Colorado. Here are some 35mm shots from that trip.