A wrought-iron gate on a bone-dry dirt road marks the entrance to — or escape from — Haiti. The border crossing at the town of Jimani is about 40 miles outside of Port-au-Prince, and on Friday, a long line of people stood outside the immigration officer's office.

Tractor-trailer-sized trucks carrying cargo sat motionless on the side of the road, waiting to go through Customs.

The Etang Saumatre, a lake saltier than the ocean, shimmers a bright blue off the side of the road. For many who took off walking out of Port-au-Prince, the lake must surely drive home a cruel cliche: water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

It is at the border where the first tangible signs of the earthquake are visible. On either side of the road, chunks of mountainside have sloughed off, leaving a concave landscape.

The tour bus carrying missionaries, doctors, and some media is getting warmer, when earlier the air conditioning had kept it comfortable. The bus driver laughs; air conditioning will only go so far.

"Santo Domingo, frio," he says, pretending to hug himself and shiver.
"Aqui," he adds, "muy caliente."

Soon, the small towns on the outskirts of Haiti's capital pop up: dusty towns with low-slung concrete buildings and corrugated metal roofs butting up against each other.

"Estacion gasoline," says the bus driver, pointing to our left. A folding table is standing by the curb with about a dozen one-gallon containers of gas.
A steady stream of what look like hay wagons heads in the opposite direction, away from Port-au-Prince. They are buses, spilling over with people headed out.

In Crois des Bouquets, the bus hits traffic. This is seen as a good thing, members of Norwich-based Haitian Ministries say. Traffic is a hallmark of life in Haiti's capital, where it is not uncommon for a two-mile drive to take a half-hour.

Closer to the heart of the city, the signs start popping up: "We need food." "We need help." "Please we need help food and water."

The heart of Port-au-Prince is, oddly enough, not as bad as we thought it would be. Perhaps the reason is because the images of rubble are the only images we've seen for more than two weeks … but this is not a city entirely reduced to rubble. Markets and beauty salons are open; for every chaotic pile of concrete, a dozen more stores and houses are standing whole.

Up the sidewalk from where the tour bus lets us off, a naked man is rummaging through garbage. He seems oblivious to the city noise and the traffic around him.

After a quick and impressive bit of finagling — our Range Rover turned out to be inoperable — the Ministries' staff finds a ride to our home for the week. The house belongs to a friend of Paula Thybulle, who runs an orphanage the Ministries helps support. A wall that lined the driveway's left side has crumbled, but the rest of the house is intact and solid.

The house manager at the now-destroyed Haitian Ministries Mission House, Suzette Jean-Baptiste, is already here when we arrive. She and the Ministries' executive director, Emily Smack, grab each other in a tight hug, and Jean-Baptiste cannot speak for a moment as she chokes up in reply to Smack's question asking how she is.

Sunday, the Ministries staff will visit the Mission House's injured cook at the hospital; the orphanage that Thybulle runs; and the Mission House itself. Sunday should prove to be a long and emotional day, but also, perhaps, the first day toward real rebuilding.