The Road is flooded and the hotelier is a taxi driver

Posted by theglevin on October 27, 2011 · 5 Comments 

The First Week.

The Road is flooded and the hotelier is a taxi driver. The kids all stare as they walk. I’m literally off the grid and beyond the bridge. I had lobster my second night. A girl just walked by in a Seattle Mariners hat. It’s Michael Vick v. Peyton Manning on the futbol field across the way. Two tiny piglets graze with impunity in the muck of the deserted market while the sheep tied to the post gazes longingly. Yesterday in the street an old man in a skirt showed me the wound on his penis while asking for money. Today a woman tried to sell me an old beaten up rubber basketball for $50. The beauty of the landscape and the poverty of the people are equally breathtaking. Bienvenue a Haiti.

Forget proverbial, the literal end of this road

Transit

It’s humid here and the mosquitos are EVERYWHERE. The rain has been heavy and has made it difficult to get supplies and people (including me) where they need to go. Proper physical infrastructure is a beautiful thing; life is hard without it (We should all be thankful for the little things – like the roads we are TAXED to maintain). My arrival in Port Au Prince was without complication, if you consider an hour drive through tent camps, extreme poverty and scenes that could only be viewed as chaotic, through a ‘red zone’ to a seemingly random corner where our driver locked us in the car and made it clear we were not to get out, and then proceeded to change our money on the street, uncomplicated. As I stared with mouth agape, welcoming myself back to the ‘Global South’ we passed the national basketball federation. I was too dumbstruck to grab my camera; I just smiled an imbecilian smile as not a minute later we drove passed a child in a Steve Nash jersey. Welcome indeed.

After the successful exchange of a small wad of crisp clean greenbacks for a much larger (40 to 1) wad of tattered, nearly disintegrating, browning gourde (pronounced goo-d as in food), we proceeded to Port Salut. The drive was beautiful and enlightening as the hours allowed me my first proper introduction to the team I’ll be working with here, as well as the opportunity to sample the delight that is Haiti’s own ‘spicy peanut butter’. The imported ‘Cap ‘n Kid’ (made in Louisville) on the breakfast table each morning serves as a reminder that local industries, even when readily available, are far too often ignored in favor of more prestigious imports. Frustration. Buy Local (Especially when it’s better)!

The end of the driveway

Port Salut is a particularly beautiful place. Between the beach, the hills and the proximity to mountains beyond mountains, it has the features you’d expect from a tropical Caribbean paradise that it could be. A French ex pat has set up a pair of hotels with good restaurants and the NGO crowd gathers there to enjoy it. The national unemployment rate is estimated at 40%. Approximately 80% of the population lives below the poverty line. Nationwide, 75% of homes are without access to electricity. It is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. My second night here I had a beautiful lobster and a few excellent rum cocktails with French, American, Canadian, Spanish and Haitian fellow travelers. Life is funny, and sad, and unfair, and beautiful.

Some interesting projects are afoot in this region and thanks to a UNOPS office here Port Salut has become a base and a nice enough place to get stuck when a river refuses to be crossed. The scenery is epic and well worth exploration.

The falls

Our local fixer, and budding adventure guide, Yanushka, led us trekking into the hills to the local waterfall. Donkeys, artists and plantation estates shaped the canvas that our party wheezed and whined across. The waterfall was smaller than I imagined it would be, though I no doubt underwhelmed it as well. I was soaked from the climb and the water was chilled to perfection. The falls’ pull created a model pool for swimming in place, and the rocks behind it made a great grotto. The scene was idyllic. Not until five days later did Allison, our fearless leader, mention that she had a moment of panic in the falls picturing us all contracting Cholera. That could have tested the bounds of ‘no such thing as bad publicity’ for the organization.

After four nights in Port Salut we got word that the water that had swallowed up the road to Les Anglais was now low enough to safely cross. So cross we did. Just like that, quick snap. An hour drive with six of us packed into the world’s smallest suv, along an incredibly beautiful coastline, with the top down, good tunes blaring and incessant speed humps our most persistent obstacle, until the end of the road that is.

sweet ride

A literal dead end where the Taiwanese decided no further highway was worth building. We discussed our options; a four hour hike on a hot day at midday or a bumpy and treacherous hour on the back of a motorbike.  As we gathered our possessions, thoughts and wits about us, a large truck filled with building supplies and hangers on appeared, bouncing down below the highway, beginning to cross the rocky pathway. We flagged it down, and after some haggling jumped aboard for the wild ride ahead. An hour hanging on to ropes above us as we bounced around on stacks of plywood below. All the while the local passengers kept their eyes peeled to our every move. Joel announced to all that his nickname, in Creole, was ‘I’m crazy’, while Alki tried to get the group to sing a song. I focused on not getting splinters in inopportune places.

The truck got us as far as it could and then it was time to cross the river on foot. The water was only knee deep, but the current was firm in spots. To ‘ensure our safety’, and in so doing demand a gratuity for the ‘service’, we were forcibly escorted across by locals.  Our team of four and entourage of more than twice that garnered our fair share of stares as we paraded through town. The streets themselves were tidy and orderly, with modern street signs intact and solar street lights dotting the path. If only the quality of life inside the homes had advanced this much since the English left the place. Ponderous, hungry, wet and tired we entered Magazen Eneji Pwop and the uphill battle ahead.

Across the river, into town, on my way...

Filed under Haiti