Haiti Fact #11:
The president-elect of Haiti, Jovenel Moise,
is slated to take office at the beginning of February. He is part of Parti Haitien Tèt Kale, which
translates as the Haitian Bald Head Party.
Port-au-Prince
We spent last week in Port-au-Prince. One doesn’t hear much of anything good about
that city. It is overcrowded, hot and choked
by traffic jams, as well as not safe at night.
Plus, the trip was for work. So I
did not expect to have fun. It started
with an overnight bus ride down from Cap-Haitien. Despite the driver’s swerving all over the
empty roads to avoid potholes, I actually slept a little bit. Leaving
the bus, we got a taxi to the hotel. I
picked a driver who seemed nice and who gave us a great price. But when we arrived, he ripped me off with a trick
so simple that I had honestly forgotten about it because I’ve never actually
encountered it. After that, the moto we took to a grocery
store ripped us off to a similar degree.
So after only an hour in Port-au-Prince we had already achieved
clueless foreigner status. That night we
went out to visit with our coworker who was in town for the week too. Just walking down to his hotel without a
problem made everything feel more doable.
After one day in Port-au-Prince we could at least walk around during the
day. I took that as a badly needed victory.
It turned out that the synod
(church governing body) would not start until later than expected, providing some time to explore. Unfortunately, Port-au-Prince offers very
little to do. But there is
a history museum, so we went to that. The Museum of the Haitian National Pantheon (MUNAPAH in
French) is small but worth seeing.
That afternoon the synod started with a church service in the national
cathedral. I even understood a decent
amount of what the bishop said during his opening message. The following day was the main meeting. After hours of listening to Creole I found it
increasingly difficult to try to understand.
But the church government meeting was more exciting than I
expected; even matters such as church laws and election procedures sparked
passionate debate. A central purpose of
our attendance, a meeting with the bishop, came at lunchtime. The meeting went fantastically and wrapped up
work for the day very nicely. I went out
with a few friends in Pétionville, which is to Port-au-Prince as Greenwich, CT
is to NYC. I had a great time. Just the moto ride up to Pétionville was an
experience. When I say “up to Pétionville,”
I mean up. Port-au-Prince is located on
a fairly small patch of flat land that quickly gives way to mountains as you go
inland. On the way up, as the moto wove
through traffic, I caught a birds-eye view of the grey concrete sprawl rolling
over the foothills and up the moutains. I actually saw how massive Port-au-Prince is. Later that night I took a moto back down and
saw the city lit up at night with the wind on my face, grateful for the experience. With the week’s work and
meetings finished, we took one day to sightsee.
Like I said earlier, Port-au-Prince
doesn’t offer much for sightseeing. We
tried anyway though. One particular
point of interest was the Nèg Mawon statue, which we managed to see despite it
being formally closed off. Many of the
previous tourist sights in Port-au-Prince collapsed in the earthquake. The mostly collapsed former Catholic
cathedral is still fairly striking, while the ruins of the former Episcopal
cathedral have been razed while reconstruction talks take place. The Presidential Palace, a former symbol of
governmental power which collapsed in the earthquake, is another formerly iconic Port-au-Prince building that is gone now. So, like many aspects of life in Haiti, our experience took place in the
shadow of the 2010 earthquake. We wrapped
up the week by doing the most commonly recommended activity that Port-au-Prince
offers: the band Ram at the Hotel Oloffson on Thursday nights. The show went late as I hung out and
appreciated the music and unique atmosphere of the hotel. After a few strenuous days it made everything
a little better. After a week of not so
much vacation but rather of experiences, Ram was the grand finale. Only the journey home remained.
Herman Melville writes, “there is
no quality in this world that is not what it merely is by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over
comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be
comfortable any more.” When I first read that in Moby Dick it resonated with me but seemed difficult to
implement. How does one intentionally
put discomfort into life? I learned
about that on the way home. For the
seven hour bus ride over the same speed bumps and mountains while swerving to
avoid a different set of potholes, we had the added pleasure of listening to a
group of guys in the back of the bus argue at the top of their lungs for at
least four hours straight. It rotated
between several topics: philosophical (“The problem isn’t Haiti, it’s
Haitians”), sports, asking me if the USA would restart the draft, and accusing
one of the verbal combatants of being bourgeoisie. That conversation proved that
after a long enough, consistent exposure, the brain can tune out anything. The bus had more to offer though. Not only was it smaller and bumpier but the
air conditioning broke and the only windows that opened were at the very
front. But somehow, the windows kept
ending up closed. Around five hours into
the trip, one of the verbal combatants went up to open the window himself. But the guy sitting next to it slammed it
shut again. A general outcry of rage was
met with his promise that he would stop shutting the window as soon as they
shut their mouths. The combatants defied
this at first, for show I think, but conveniently quieted down within ten
minutes. The rest of the trip,
remarkably, was uneventful. Considering
that the heat and yelling eventually became funny, I agree with Moby Dick on the importance of discomfort.
Fortunately for me, in Haiti one does
not need to seek it out.
A special thank you to these donors:
Rich Lammlin
Darlene James