How to summarise three weeks of Haiti…the roosters (@#$%@!!), the colourful clothing, people carrying heavy loads in wheelbarrows and on heads, maneouvering your way around traffic, the potholes, the garbage, the resourcefulness of people, the heat, the smells. I quickly became attached to the core group at GRU- meals and nights on the back porch were a lot of fun!
Yesterday, rather last minute, and rather unexpected for Haiti time, Ton found out that Blake, a volunteer, could operate a backhoe, so they went across the street to Jedco to ask if they could borrow a backhoe- the owners wanted to ensure that Blake could operate it, so he hopped in, passed the ‘test’ and they let them bring it over to the compound- no rent, just had to pay gas. I say it seems like a non-Haiti story, because there always seems to be a wait for everything here, or a long complicated discussion, but in this case, can we borrow it, yes, and twenty minutes later, Blake was digging out a trench for a drainage system.
We stayed up later than I’m accustomed to last night (all of 10:30 or so), visiting the Hole in the Wall. My head told me this morning that I should have drunk some water in between sips of rum! I don’t particularly even like rum, but drank it freely while I was there.
My hair seems to have drawn a lot of attention. Today, the little girl from the Hole in the Wall reached out through the window to touch my hair , and a couple of Haitian women from Grassroots did it too…a couple of times people told me they like the colour of my hair, and they said ‘You must hear that all the time!’, to which I said- no, never. Tell me again?!
Jesse & Chrissy, the two folks who took water filtration systems on a donkey trek to a remote ‘village’ went back to another village yesterday, which had been hard hit by cholera. While they were there, they experienced a bit of political games, as one fellow who is vying to become the leader of the village after the elections directed them to go one way, and then the actual leader caught up with them later and almost booted them out of the village because they had listened to someone else. Strange. You get used to the peculiarities of how things operate after awhile, such as not being able to get hydro to the building site until the security guards feel like it. Jesse was saying that delivering water filtration systems is one thing, but we have all seen first hand that people are doing dishes, laundry, bathing, etc. from water they will drink. He said that clean water containers is an issue- you can filter the water all you want, but if there isn’t a dedicated sterilized container to house the liquid, you have defeated the purpose.
One thing that was interesting about their trip (and I’ve read about this a bit since I’ve been here) is that in some of the communities afflicted by cholera, people don’t know why deaths are occurring. Once upon a time, I suppose (um, quite a long time ago!) it would have been common to have people dying, and not know why, but in this day and age, it’s hard to imagine that this can still happen. In a country that has a strong voodoo culture, with lots of superstition, it’s not surprising. That, paired with the fact that remote villagers may not have any form of electricity, and even if they do, I don’t know how prevalent education about cholera is on the radio. Some people showing up at the cholera clinics are insisting that the water is poisoned, or that the government is trying to kill them, or that foreigners are the cause of it.
A bit earlier, I remember getting a bit frustrated, maybe even ticked off, that Jean Louis & Annio weren’t cleaning up the jobsite. I would buy them a pop at the Hole in the Wall, and come back later and the empty bottles would be on the ground…yet the recycling for plastic was just behind them! I put my foot down and brought out a garbage bag, and told them to straighten up the wood pile, etc. However, after thinking about it for awhile, it is a cultural difference. There is garbage everywhere in Haiti. I don’t know what it was like pre-earthquake, but there are dumpsters at street corners that are overflowing, nevermind the garbage that is just everywhere. When I went to the airport in Port au Prince today (which is an adventure in and of itself!), when I was checking in my bags, I noticed all kinds of garbage on the ground. The attendant who took my bags took an old tag off my bag, crumpled it in his hands, and threw it down at his feet, where there were many more of them.
I’ve talked about the roads a bit, and unfortunately, I didn’t get photos of this, but the potholes are enormous! Driving is quite an art of dodging big holes, which often means swerving into the lane of oncoming traffic, or squeezing really close to a parked or stopped vehicle. The car horn is a driver’s most important tool, apart from good reflexes. When you’re driving along, and a car doesn’t move over for you to pass, or someone tries to run in front of you, or a taptap stops plum in the middle of the road, you lay onto your horn as you speed up past them, and it’s several seconds long (seems like minutes, actually!). Today when Alex came to drive me to the airport, we had to turn left onto the airport road from our laneway onto a very busy road. How did he do it? Why, he just merged forward, despite the fact that traffic was moving, and somehow, the sea of traffic parted and we made our left turn. I remain most impressed with his driving. I’m not sure I would want to drive in Haiti. I’m way too Canadian in my polite driving style, and not nearly aggressive enough.
The other night, when we went out to the club, our taptap driver proceeded (for several kilometers, I might add!) to drive on the wrong side of the road- in those instances, you just have to trust that somehow you’ll get out of it alive. And we did.
The skyline above the clouds from the plane is a beautiful red that seems to go on forever. So pretty.
So, the airport story. Last night Andy gave me a primer on how to navigate the airport in Port au Prince. He told me of his departure earlier in the month, where the lineup started outside of the airport, and how if you wanted to get to the front of the line, you could pay one of the guys in white shirts $20. It sounded complicated ande unnecessarily disorganized (like many things in Haiti!), so it was a relief when they dropped me off to see that the lineup didn’t extend to outside. However, once I got in (after fighting off the Haitians who want to help you carry your bags inside, for money of course!), there were some really crazy lineups happening. The lineup snaked around a very small room- literally snaked. People coming in with luggage kept bumping into us as we stood in line, and the line really wasn’t moving. I think I got off lucky, as we were only in line about an hour. At some point one of the guards told us to leave our luggage there on the side, and not take it through the snake line- which seemed like a weird thing to me, given how tight security is in other airports around the world, and the number one rule is to never leave your luggage unattended). However, when in Haiti…
I had to show my passport way more times than I’m accustomed to: to check in your bags, and then at the customs window, once again when you go through the x-ray station (there was one that you had to go through right at the entrance, and then one right before going to board), again when they gave you a boarding pass, again to go into the waiting room, once more when you left the waiting room to walk through to the plane, and a final time at the base of the stairs before boarding the plane. Whew, that was tiring just writing about it, nevermind doing it! I went to upstairs at the airport to have one last beer before flying home- it was a Presidente, and not the Prestige I have been accustomed to drinking from the Hole. I think Presidente is from the Dominican Republic (or the DR, as everyone here seems to call it).
I’m so appreciative of this trip, of the time I got to spend at Grassroots, of being able to participate in the first straw bale project in the country, of the time I spent meeting local villagers and talking about their homes and plasters. I can see why many volunteers who are currently in Haiti go home for short stints to make some money, and then return- there is so much work that can be done there. There is so much unemployment, and such a discrepancy between the rich and the poor (our driver charges $10 USD an hour; our labourers on the straw house make $1 USD an hour). Hard to fathom.
And so ends this journey to a country with beautiful people. I was quite struck by how beautiful people are, and how well dressed. Cleanliness in such a poor country is high on the priority list- Jean Louis & Annio get cleaned up after work, and even change their clothes sometimes before venturing out onto the street. My favourite experience is still my Christmas Day trip to the tent community with all of the kids. I will continue to write bit more as I decompress here at home, reflect on what I have experienced and learned.
I'm already missing my new friends at Grassroots, the smells, the sights, the sounds. Funny, life is!
Emma is so beautiful, so animated. She is the one who has spearheaded working with orphanages, and she is so great with kids! Like so many of the other women who come to Grassroots, she is incredibly beautiful, energetic, and talented. Every day at Grassroots starts with a meeting that Emma leads, and her enthusiasm is infectious!
One thing is for certain, and that is a desire to return to Haiti, to do more work with Grassroots, to be involved in more building projects, and also, to work with kids.
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