Trip to Leogane

          The trip to Leogane began Sunday morning with the car being late. We were supposed to meet at 9am at Epi D’or, a bakery on Rue Delma, about half-way up the hill from downtown Port au Prince toward Petionville. We usually meet there because it is a convenient place between where I live and where the other people were coming from, and Epi D’or makes great sandwiches which we buy to eat on whatever journey we have planned.

As we walked out to get into the car, Myrtha said “It isn’t Bernardo’s car. That has a problem.” So, what we had instead was a rented “Tap-Tap” the usual form of transportation for most Haitians. It is a converted pick-up with wooden benches and a metal roof in the back. You “tap” the roof when you want to get off.

          Normally, these are very crowded and can be hot and uncomfortable. But today, there were just three of us in the back and some large buckets of rice and beans, an ice chest, cases of soda and small bags of “DLO” – water. It turned out to be a wonderful way for me to travel. There was a constant breeze (although it usually carried exhaust fumes from diesel trucks and cars badly in need of maintenance, and road dust.) and there was a great view out the back of everything we passed by.

          At first, as we descended to the coast road, we came through crowded streets with Marchands, motocycles weaving in and out, large water trucks blocking the way, and tap-taps like our own (we’d have to wave off people who wanted to board our truck), and we passed shops of every sort. One shop had a sign that read “Swimming Pools –Exterminator” which left me wondering.

          The main road used to be filled with tents that got set up right after the quake. The 6 foot wide strip down the middle of the street had been “home” to thousands. But now it was clean and there were even some flowering shrubbery. The route got closer to the bay and I could see the blue water of Port au Prince harbor and occasional hotels with “plag” meaning beaches.

          Occasionally there would be a speed bump, for reasons I couldn’t discover, which made us slow down and which made us targets for people selling food and sodas to the somewhat captive audience. I began to wonder whether the speed bumps were there to force people to be available for the sellers. And sometimes there were police checks – again I never figured out why. There is a sense that it is police, with not much else to do, exercising authority.

          As we worked (and “worked” is the operative word) our way past the oil storage tanks and into the suburbs of Carrefour and beyond, the sights became more rural. Ram-shackled homes, vying for space with tiny shops – “JESUS MERCY COUFITEUR”, – and large churches like “EBEN-EZER TEMPLE”, from which singing and loud shouts of “ALLELUIA” could be heard. There were fields of sugar cane, some barren fields with a few tethered cows and goats, and coconut and banana palms.

          We turned off the main road onto a bumpy side road along a deep ditch with wooden bridges (two tree trunks with smaller branches nailed to them), and, on the other side, small houses, maybe 10 feet by 20 feet, made of cinderblock with corrugated steel roofs, sheltered beneath numerous trees. Some of these were the homes of the children we were visiting at the School in Leogane.

          GracePeople is a program developed to help children in Leogane and Montrouis. Leogane is south and west of Port au Prince and, though it was the epicenter of the 2012 earthquake, has received little of the attention and aid since. We provide yearly tuition for 22 children in Leogane (about 40 more in Montrouis), and bring food, school supplies, and clothing.

          After we arrived and unpacked, the children assembled and sang a song to welcome us. They had also drawn pictures of flowers and boats for me, even though I am just a part of the team. They are very happy to be in school AND they are getting very good grades. Today we had brought rice and beans, chicken, tomatoes and lettuce and soda and water. Even though there are only 22 children in our programs, other children from the school were there so we fed about 45.

          The school consists of 6-8 20X30 foot cinderblock rooms with small windows and a corrugated roof. There is no electricity, although I noticed two solar panels near the entrance and several young men using laptops. I brought a solar powered speaker system and my Kindle. I planned to play some varieties of music, including “Peter and the Wolf” in French. But my trial run at the orphanage the day before nixed “Pierre e La Lou”. Even the music I did put together left them more or less un-impressed. My friend Jonathan reported later that he heard them say in Kreyol; “Where did he get this Granmoun music” Fortunately he had some Konpas, Rah Rah, and other pop music which pleased them – Ah the generation gap!

        For amusement, the boys kick around a soccer ball (called football there)

with some great skill. Myrtha and I are looking to set up a real football field with goals and also get a volleyball net that could be used in the same space for the girls. And we want to use another area for a small but functional basket-ball court

          We began our departure, but before we pulled away, about 10 boys and girls climbed into our TapTap to get a ride to their various homes. And then the director loaded his bicycle in and climbed in himself. Oh well, the motto is: How many people can you fit in a TapTap? – Just one more.

 When we stopped at one girls home we noticed her brother climbing a coconut palm to retrieve some of the coconuts, which the family proceeded to hack with a machete to provide coconut juice for us. So we drank that and ate the coconut “meat”. Eventually we worked our way back into the city and up to Petionville and home. After a brief rest  and a shower to remove the dust, it was time to get dressed for the first night of Carnival. More about that another time. Carnival is another adventure entirely.

The Mis-perceptions of an Outsider

    Although everything I say here should be read as my opinion or observation, I need to own that I, like too many visitors to Haiti, make assumptions that ought to be corrected by deeper exploration. In my previous blog I talked about the garbage situation in Haiti and made some interpretations that turn out to be wrong. 

      First, I was over-generalizing, looking at several specific areas and assuming the rest of Haiti followed along. The truth is, much of Port-au-Prince is swept and quite tidy most of the time. Today, after my visit to the orphanage to check on the school (There was no electricity so not much to be done), my motorcycle driver took a very different route home, and I saw neighborhoods I'd never seen before. Many were very neat. I even saw women and some men along the streets sweeping. And it should be added that the major effort of removing the rubble from the 2010 Earthquake (The anniversary is this Sunday) has been pretty much completed. 

      Having said that, a further explanation of what I saw before that prompted my previous comments is needed. The fact is that the part of the Ministry of Transportation and Planning that deals with "trash" hasn't given out trash bins anywhere I can see. So the real problem is there is no place to put trash. What I experienced on the bridge (Throwing bags of trash  over the bridge to a dry river bed) is one of the few options open to people. And further, even if homes were given receptacles like we have in San Francisco, many streets and alleys where houses are, are too narrow for trucks to pick them up. The burning of the trash which I have seen is, perhaps, the best way to process the trash. Last night I saw a dump-truck and a bulldozer picking up what looked like charcoal. It was, in fact, the remainder of a garbage fire which could now be processed more efficiently.

     From the outside, it is easy to see something and apply the gestalt from your own experience for interpretation. Haiti has been a major victim of that. From the early French slave-owners to modern times (like me, several days ago) people see Haitians and interpret what they see by their own inner sense - which usually comes from a very different set of experiences. 

      Many of you have heard stories about students who end up fulfilling what the teacher expects of them. If the teacher feels "These children aren't going to be able to accomplish much." then, in fact, the children won't accomplish much. We have also seen the exact opposite happen when a teacher expects great accomplishments from her/his students.

      A wonderfully written and highly informative book: "Haiti: The Aftershocks of History" by Laurent Dubois, records, among much more, many examples of this biased interpreting of Haitian people and culture. This is perhaps the best place to start if you want to understand Haiti now. It is where I started, but I fell into the trap of believing my perceptions rather than challenging them by looking deeper.

     One of the many exciting things for me about retiring here is that I can keep challenging my assumptions. Already, Haiti has taught me a lot about world economics and political striving. I see Haiti as a kind of microcosm of poverty and the dis-empowerment of people throughout the world. But Haiti is also challenging my own inner microcosm from which I interpret the world outside. Most situations are more complicated than they seem. There are no simple answers, but there are answers. Much of the work to find those answers is inward, then moving outward. 

      The adventure continues.

      

First Impressions

       Saturday, was the first day I really got out into Haitian day-to-day life. New Years Eve was partying and the 2 days following were much the same. Many stores were closed, and when my friends and I went out to eat, there was loud rhythmic music everywhere. It was as if people wanted to stretch the celebration out as long as they could. Actually, my experience of Haitians, especially the young (which seems to be most of them) is that any excuse for a party is the antidote to the reality of poverty and joblessness. 
      So, we went out to a barbershop to explore one idea for a business. For me it was a fascinating experience of inner-city life here. We drove to a large empty space, a parking lot, I suppose, but it appeared more like a dry river bank that was flat enough to drive your car on. We walked along the riverbed itself – there was a small stream – which was littered, literally, with refuse of every sort. Lots of plastic bags, empty or full, everywhere.

     Let me digress about an observation about this. Although most all the rubble has been removed, I am impressed by how dirty the streets are. I do see people sweeping in front of their shops, but most people don’t have shops. The Marchan (Merchants) who sell on the street just leave there trash where they created it. Sometimes this gets moved a bit into a large pile, and sometimes it is set on fire. I also see garbage trucks, occasionally at night, trying to pick up some of the refuse. But there doesn’t seem to be any major effort like “Recology – Sunset Savenger. More on that another time.

So we wove our way through narrow passageways that reminded me of medieval places I have seen in Barcelona and Cologne. Here in Haiti, houses are built wherever they can be built, so sometimes there is a very narrow passage to get through. Once I had to turn sideways to fit between two buildings. Along the wider spaces were Marchan selling vegetables (I bought some heads of garlic) and OTC medicines and candy and bread. This is the source of livelihood for so many people. (I am not sure how much of a livelihood it really is.)

We found the barbershop my friends were headed for. It was a small cinderblock room about 6 X 8 feet. The cinderblocks had been painted “Graffiti Style” in bright colors and free-hand spray-paint letters. We set up a table in the alley and got some plastic lawn chairs. At our back were some crumbled walls of a building spilling out onto the passage way. And, again, the area was strewn with plastic bags, empty soda and beer bottles. But the sky was blue and there was a make-shift awning flapping in the breeze, so it was all good. Music blared from the entrance to the shop, some Creole Compas and some Lady Gaga or Miley Cyrus – pretty much foreign to my classical background but infectiously uplifting.

Other people began to gather. And our party began. Someone came by with a bottle of Creole Cream which is rhum-based with coconut milk and sweetened condensed milk and almond and other flavors. It was quite good. But as I drank it, I also was breathing, so there was a really earthy blend of this delicious drink and the smells of the trash and urine and fried meat and plantain. It was not unpleasant, altogether. And it seemed very real. Nothing artificial here!

People were going by – this was a main passage, it seemed. A group of very well dressed men carrying drums and other instruments, on their way to a Pentecostal meeting, women and men carrying, on their heads, merchandise to sell or things they need to get from A to B, like one man had a television balanced on his head, children going home from school or children just going somewhere, maybe with buckets or gallon bottles of water. I smiled at some of the children, which I like to do, but then I noticed one particular boy who stood a ways off, after our smiles connected, and I could tell he was hoping for more.

Young children especially ask for money. I have heard of places where children are sent out to solicit money for their “owners”. I don’t know whether that was going on here. But I have learned not to respond, because once you start other children see it and come expecting their share. But most times I just get a pleasant, perhaps, from the girls, shy smile, mixed with curiosity. “What is this old white man doing here?”

I looked around at the small gathering that had formed, mostly young men and some young women who seemed to be flirting with one guy after another, and I started thinking that most of these people have no jobs or something very minimal, and yet there was great joy and laughter. How was I going to connect with them to make some kind of difference.

I will focus on the young because they hold the hope for Haiti. They have the energy, and I hope they have will to pursue a different strategy then living day to day. There doesn’t seem to be a sense of thinking of consequences. The trash issue is one symptom. There doesn’t seem to be a sense of future. They take garbage from their homes and just throw it from a bridge into a riverbank (I was in the car when we stopped on a bridge and when I asked why, I saw one of the guys take bags out of the trunk and toss them). It is like there is no thought for what the result is. Taking it deeper, perhaps the thinking is, “Why bother. This is what it is like. Nothing will change”.

One sign of hope. As I was sitting there with this gathering party, I looked in one direction and saw the narrow alley of rough cinderblock walls, several Marchans stalls, a dirty stream where people kept dumping their pails of dirty water, and people going here and there.




Then, turning in the opposite direction, I saw a very new house, with nicely painted walls stuck right in the middle of all this that I have described.



Haiti is full of contradictions, or perhaps, better said, in Haiti hope keeps emerging, but has major work to flourish, let alone survive. For example, the day after we visited this barbershop, we got word that it had been broken into and robbed of virtually anything of value.