I was just looking at the site stats for our blog and noticed that people have been finding our blog by searching “Asshole husbands and how to kill them”.
I was wondering if maybe Allison was writing some blog posts that I didn’t know about so I decided to google it myself. I mean if Allison is writing blogs about how to murder husbands I should probably read them. I was expecting to find our blog several pages deep in the internet jungle, however, when I looked it up we were the first thing that popped up online!
I should probably take this opportunity to encourage people against slaughtering their spouse. Not only is homicide illegal, it is also unkind.
Also, if you do plan on offing your husband, you really shouldn’t google it. Anyone who has ever watched the ID Channel knows that!
Let me start by saying the last story about the passports has a few fallacies but I won’t go there…
Josh and I really do enjoy being in Haiti.
We feel like the country has a lot more to offer than making Americans feel good about themselves by helping Haitians. When we came in 2010, we got to visit Jacmel. This time around, we’ve done a few trips around the Port-Au-Prince area. Even so, there’s so much more to see and do than we’ve seen or done. We decided to be proactive and create a Haiti Bucket List to keep us from being lazy and never experiencing all this place has to offer. So, we got together with our friend Kelsey and our friends Josh and Chandler, sat down with a few drinks, a notepad, and a guidebook, and got to work.
And let me just tell you – our bucket list is amazing. It involves owning a donkey, camping on beaches, and sailing to Tortuga to look for pirate treasure. Yes. Pirate treasure. You are all welcome to be jealous and/or come join us.
Right after we wrote the bucket list, Josh and I had a day off. Kelsey had a free day as well – lucky for us because she also has a car named Stuart and a complete mastery of the Creole language. So Kelsey, Josh, Joseus (her boyfriend), and myself hopped in Stuart the not-so-trusty truck. I say not-so-trusty because he has a bad habit of catching on fire and his starter is going bad, but that’s neither here nor there.
We’d decided to check out a place which had been growing in infamy since living with the Salvants – Boobie Falls. Now, the real name for this place is not – afterall – Boobie Falls. It’s actually called Saut d-eau (pronounced Sodo) – a hotspot for Voodoo activities and bathing. The Salvant kids have not-so-affectionately nicknamed it, however, because the bathing leads to seeing “lots of big Haitian boobies.” Yes, that’s a direct quote. And if you google Saut d’eau you will, in fact see lots of big Haitian boobies.
After praying over Stuart multiple times and making sure we had a butcher knife to use in lieu of a starter and a few gallons of water to put out fires – we set out. Along the way we gained another adventurer. Kelsey and Joseus’ friend, Serita, who is a very sassy lady around 50 years old. I can only hope that I am such a great adventurer in my 50’s that if I was standing in the market in a nice dress on a Monday and saw some 20-somethings I knew, I would also hop in the car without much thought.
On the way up the mountain, Stuart struggled. We were being passed by semi’s while all praying out loud. Not being passed by semi’s in a dangerous way, but in more of an embarrassing way. The best part of the whole trip might have been the drive.
Where we live down in Santo, all the houses are surrounded by walls. It’s extremely dusty and usually hot. For a bunch of people who love the outdoors – it’s not an ideal situation. As you go up in the mountains, walls disappear and you start to see gardens, fields, and green GRASS! It’s utterly refreshing.
Once we got to the town of Saut d’eau we were all enamored. The roads were not only free of potholes but they were painted with yellow lines AND HAD REFLECTORS. There were even signs to let you know there was a dip in the road. We were ready to move.
Once we got to the entrance of the falls we did a little haggling on the entrance fee (non-Haitians were 200 gourdes which we talked down to 100) and headed down. The whole place was surprisingly park like. There are steps that lead right down to the little pools at the base of the falls. Before you reach the falls, there are little changing rooms and benches. We spent the afternoon freezing in the water and having a picnic.
Josh was clearly excited about the waterfall – thus all the pictures of him looking excited.
Craziest of all…there were no boobies. We must have gone on a slow day. There’s a lot of superstition and religious activity surrounding the falls. There’s a yearly pilgrimage laced with Catholic and Voodoo themes because the Virgin Mary appeared in a long-ago cut down palm tree. The waters supposedly have healing powers as well, though I didn’t feel anything but cold when I was there.
After Serita hired someone to give her a massage, cut her tea leaves, and bring her water (girl supported the Saut d’eau economy for sure) we took a lovely group picture and headed back.
Of course we said even more for prayers for Stuart though we felt pretty confident in his abilities by now. Although we took one small wrong turn, we coasted down the mountain right as the sun was setting.
I feel pretty good about crossing Boobie Falls off the list. If you come to Haiti I’d definitely recommend the trip as long as you don’t mind an hour and a half drive out of PaP and the possibility of the falls living up to their name.
Allison and I had a great time visiting friends and family in the States over Christmas. Since my family lives in Nashville and Allison’s in Alabama we split time between the two states. I actually flew back a week earlier than Allison to replace the main drain line on our house in Nashville. My first day back it snowed. It was quite a contrast to the heat of Haiti and Living on a boat. I sat outside in the snow in some gym shorts and a t-shirt for about 30 minutes. It literally felt like the heat was steaming off my body. I like to imagine that I looked something like Hans Solo being brought out of his frozen carbonite chamber.
After a few weeks of catching up with friends and family it was time to pack up and head back to Haiti. We were in South Alabama flying out of Talahassee Florida. Our flight was supposed to leave at 7:00am which meant leaving Alabama by 3:00am.
We started packing our bags about 8:30pm. Around 9:00pm Allison’s Dad says “Don’t forget your passports”. We looked everywhere.At 9:08 we call my parents in Nashville and asked him to check in the suitcase that we left stored in their garage. At 9:10 my dad calls back and informs us that he has found our passports 400 miles away in Nashville. Thankfully my sister and brother were at my parents house and offered to meet us halfway. We arrived in Birmingham at midnight and booked it back to Allison’s parents house to arrive at 2:58am. Since we were planning on leaving her parents house at 3:00am there was just enough time to take a pee break and load the car with our stuff. We arrived at the Talahassee airport just in time for our flight to be delayed 4 hours.
Just in time!!
It still isn’t quite agreed upon who was responsible for the lost passports. I think that it was more of a joint effort and Allison blames it completely on me. We had two suitcases while we were in the states. One had our winter clothes in it, and the other had Christmas presents and other random things. When we were in Tennessee someone set our passports on the nightstand. I had a horrible vision of us driving to Alabama and leaving them there. So I thought “I’ll set them in the suitcase, that way we know for absolute certain that they will get to Alabama.” Before leaving we decided that we didn’t really need to bring a whole suitcase of winter clothes. Allison went through the suitcase and got everything we needed to take to Alabama out of the suitcase and packed it in the one we were taking with us. I knew there was something important in the suitcase, but I couldn’t quite remember what it was. I probably asked Allison three or four times “You went through the suitcase and got everything we need??” After a few times she got annoyed that I was asking the same question repeatedly and I shut up and forgot about it. I guess you can take that information and place blame where you feel most appropriate. Feel free to leave a comment letting us know what you think. I’m sure Allison will have some interesting words that she will be writing in the comments as well.
The Tinii 