City Slickers

As part of a plan to improve Northwest Haiti Christian Mission’s main orphanage, the organization relocated most of the orphans from Port-de-Paix (city) to a new facility in a rural part of the Northwest zone. The idea is, it builds character being in a place where you grow your own food, draw your own water, and learn to live more simply. I think it’s a great idea.

They made the big move yesterday, and Erika and I tagged along with a few other missionaries. It’s roughly a two or three hour journey from the main campus where we’ve been staying.

It was a long and tiring but productive day, despite moments when neither of us felt we had any productivity in us. Erika shot a host of orphan portraits for sponsors, and I pulled out the “white-sheet studio” again. I had planned to spend the night and shoot some “day in the life” scenes the next morning, but it didn’t work out and, to be honest, I didn’t mind getting to come back and sleep in my own bed.

We made some nice portraits of a few townspeople. I always enjoy photographing people in more rural areas of Haiti, who have been less “Americanized” in general and visually are more representative of the country’s roots.