On Quick Break from the Haitian Sun

I'm in France for a month to learn French since that is now a job equirement.  Feels kind of silly to write about life in France on this blog so I think I'll take a little blogging break.  Unless something outrageous happens.  Like I get hospitalized for a cheese overdose.

Today was my first day of class. 
I like both my teachers. 
This keyboard is infuriating.
Two different people made comments about PNG being dangerous when I said where I lived: one because of"diseases" and the other because of, uhm, animals.  I just nodded.

On Preliminary Food Impressions

Of keen interest to a few of you and mild interest to others, I’m sure.  Here is what I’ve learnt so far: the staple foods are rie nacionale (rice mixed with some beans or lentils), meat, and plaintains.  What I’ve had so far:

Some of my colleagues order food from nearby eateries for lunch.  I got a box of rie nacionale, a beet-tomato chop with vinegrette, and deep fried chunks of pork fat (with a little meat stuck to it).  My first bite of pork was the only meaty bit and it tasted like Brazilian salt pork with some spice.  Really, really good.  ($10 US, which almost gave me a heart attack (pork fat aside))

Today I went out to another province in the south and had an entrée of creamed spinach with some shredded carrot and tomato, accompanied by bread.  The main meal was rie nacionale, medallions of fried plantain hash, and shrimp in a clear both-y sauce that was quite good. ($6)

Last weekend, in another province, I had a roadside snack that consisted of essentially a thick flour tortilla stuffed with cole slaw and mystery meat (hold the ketchup and mayonnaise) and deep-fried to a crisp firmness.  It was good, but for the large chunks of bone.  (About 50 cents)

We fineshed our activities too late in the night to find any food in the eateries, so we ended up eating what I was told was “soup” from a lady in a popular road-side stall.  What I got in my ubiquitous Styrofoam container was a watery stew of boiled plantains, spicy-vinegary slaw, and….tripe.  I was sharing with a German woman who has been in Haiti for two years.  We chose not to investigate the tripe bits too closely and passed them on to our colleagues to literally slurped them up.  It was amazing.  ($3)

In addition to these forays into local cuisine, I’ve has seafood in two restaurants, both tasteful in their food and décor.  ($12-24)

More updates to come.

On the Epicenter

I missed out on a lot of the media coverage of the earthquake while living in PNG, but I’m guessing that most of you got bombarded with it, making you more prepared for Port-au-Prince than I am.  On our two and a half drive to one of the southern provinces today, we drove through the epicenter of the earthquake.  It’s hard to take pictures of what I see in a bucking Range Rover and besides, the photos don’t really convey the effect of seeing building after building, home after home smashed to bits.  Many homes were untouched while their neighbors were obliterated.  My most frequent thought was “nothing could have survived that.”  I think these photos may be my last attempt at capturing this aspect of Port-au-Prince.  Time to move on.

On Guinness

Yesterday afternoon I went to observe a refresher course for sex workers involved in our peer education program.  Several of their clients were listening in on the training, one of whom had a bottle of Guinness in his hand.  I asked one of my co-workers what Haitians drink (rum) and mentioned the beer.  There was a pause.  “Guinness isn’t really beer,” he said. This was news to me.  “It’s an energy drink.  You drink it when you’re tired, before sport or sex, to give you a boost.”  I confirmed that he and I were talking about the same Guinness - alcoholic black Guinness?  “Yes,” he said, “It's brewed locally, but it’s not really alcoholic.”  He confessed he’s only tried it once a long time ago.  I decided to dismiss his comments as those of an unenlightened rum-drinker.

On Haiti v PNG: Part 1 of, oh....Infinity

1.    1.   Though it feels like years since I lived in Papua New Guinea, I only had two weeks between leaving PNG and arriving in Haiti.  I sort of feel like Haiti and Haitians can’t possibly be as crazy as Papua New Guineans (i.e. who routinely charge the government money for the privilege of fixing the road by their homes after it is destroyed in a landslide).  Then I was told that Haitians short on cash (uhm…) who have relatives in the US will sometimes kidnap a relative in Haiti to get some money from the rich ones in the US.  This kind of logic makes me fear that I haven’t quite left the crazy behind in PNG.

2.    2.    Haitians are Latin!  They listen to music loudly, they dance, they laugh!  Haitian women aren’t afraid of showing some skin.  When I went out over the weekend to observe a rural cinemobile* event, I was handed a teeny tank top (size medium, mind you) with the program logo on it to wear.  I asked three different people if it would be appropriate to wear and they all looked at me like I had gotten a little too much sun.  I’m sorry! In PNG, we cover up in the provinces. 

3.     3.  I find it hard to describe small rural communities in Haiti as “villages”.  I think of a village as a cluster of houses made of natural materials with gardens and footpaths.  In Haiti, most of the houses are made of unfinished and unpainted cinderblock along unsurfaced, but grid-based roads.  Small town, maybe?  I found out yesterday that the reason why so many houses are gray is because Haitian law does not consider a house finished (and therefore taxable) until it’s painted.  Ha.

*A cinemobile is an outreach event in which we entertain a crowd with a DJ, the screen short films on several health topics to stimulate discussion.

On the Mysterious Properties of Concrete

On the drive to work I pass several examples of houses whose walls and ceilings seemed to have turned from concrete to wet cardboard.  They have flopped over, sagged, and bent in ways I never thought concrete could.

On Day One

I arrived in Port-au-Prince in the morning and spent the next hour and a half in a hanger, trying to get at my luggage through the massive crowd.  At one point, the man next to me decided to deal with the lack of space around the luggage conveyor by pretending the people around him didn’t exist and swinging his luggage off the conveyor into his neighbors.  I was saved from being crushed by a pair of very fashionable young Haitian-Americans who literally held their arms in a protective circle around me until Crazy Man had finished his rampage and then offered to pull my bag off the belt for me. Thank you, Fabulous Green Top Lady and Elegant Sideburns Man!

The PSI driver was waiting for me on the street. A taxi driver grabbed my suitcase from me and carried it to the vehicle, then frowned when I gave him $1 tip.  He wanted $10.  This is the first sign that cost of living isn’t going to be cheap. 

Germain, the driver, spoke a little English and we quickly seized upon a topic of mutual interest: the World Cup.  It became apparent when every single car we passed was festooned in multiple Brazilian flags that Haitians are Brazil fans.  Germain explained, compensating for his limited English vocabulary by repeating phrases for emphasis (a technique I plan to borrow):

Germain: “All of Haiti is bresilien.”

Me: “Really?!”

Germain: “Bresil all the way!  All the way!  All, all, all the way! ALL the way!  ALL THE WAY!  All, all, all the way.”

Me: “Wow.”

Germain: “Many bresiliens!  Many, many, many, many, many!  Bresil is VERY big!  Very, very, very, very very big! VERY!”

And so on.  Germain is an Argentina fan.  I feel a little bad for him given the total canvassing of Brazilian flags across town.  Seeing all those flags made me giggle.  It also made me nervous.  What if Brazil disappoints?  Will the whole nation mourn?  Don’t they have enough to be sad about already?  Why not put your eggs in a few baskets, eh, Haiti? [A few days later, Brasil beat Cote d'Ivoire 3-1.  I had a delay on my TV but knew we were about to score from the roar of excitement from the city]

We passed piles of concrete rubble all over the sidewalks.  Many of the buildings are untouched.  One or two are completely flattened, including what Germain told me was a hotel in which many people, including his friend, died.  Looking at what’s left, it’s hard to imagine a hotel there.  The PSI office is around the corner – it’s a small compound of buildings on a hill about 45 minutes from Port-au-Prince and the epicenter of the quake.

I was in travel clothes and suffering from lack of sleep when I met the tiny, American country director, Alison.  We chatted until lunch, which we had at a charming little café nearby.  I was dumbfounded that such a place existed and that it was operating normally.  Alison said that a couple of months ago, the main supermarkets were stocking out of food because UN food aid ships were clogging the defunct harbor.  Other boats couldn’t get in.  It sent Haitians with money into a panic – it wasn’t appropriate for them to get food rations when they could pay for food, but at the same time, the supermarkets couldn’t get at their stocks which were anchored outside the harbour. 

[note: if during the course of this blog I start ranting about the UN, please call me out – that soapbox is already overcrowded]

In the afternoon, I met with the Director of Programs and the heads of the social marketing, HIV, maternal and child health, and research teams.  One of the first questions I was asked was what my expectations were of what I would be doing here are.  Uhm….that’s a tough one. I didn’t even know what their programs were yet.  Also, I hadn’t slept in a while.  They seemed to be expressing a desire for support while also demanding to know in exactly what way I could do that.  It was a bit much for me to deal with, but I would rather to be working with people eager to start addressing weaknesses than with people who refuse to see that there are areas in which they can do better.

On the Haiti Transition

I left Papua New Guinea without having the time or inclination to contemplate where I was moving to.  I focused on my holiday to visit Angkor Wat and enjoying some solitary indulgence in a fancy resort in Khao Lak.  I then flew to my parents' home in Vegas (via an Italian/Bavarian themed hotel in Seoul which is reason alone to visit Korea) to take care of business, run errands, remind my parents and Argus-the-dog of my existence, and take advantage of unemployment to wake up daily at 4:30 to catch all the World Cup matches that I could.  

Getting information on post-earthquake Haiti was difficult.  My attitude, for better or worse, was that whatever awaited me, I would have to deal with when I arrived, so I didn't let the massive void in my knowledge bother me too much.  I couldn’t tell if my lack of excitement was because I knew so little of where I was headed or I was becoming blasé about adventures.  Or both?  It worried me a little.

I got on a red eye flight to Miami and then boarded the plane to Port-au-Prince along with fellow passengers who I divided into five categories:

• 1.     Haitian business people
• 2.     Missionaries
• 3.     NGO workers
• 4.     Contractors and military folk
• 5.     Very young missionaries on summer break

The flight was an hour and 40 minutes, which is shorter than most Virginia residents’ commute into DC.  That and the fact that Haiti is on US central time are a bit disconcerting, especially compared to PNG which, takes three days to get to and is several time zones from the US.

As we approached the island, I saw reefs, cliffs diving into the sea, mountains, lowlands, and then dwellings: gray cinderblock homes clustered on the mountainsides and spilling down to the sea.  As we descended towards the airport, I started seeing different sorts of structures.  It was the blue tarps that made me realize that I was seeing a displaced persons’ camp from 5,000 ft.  Then my eyes were drawn to the rows upon rows of neatly pitched identical tents of UN’s Camp Charlie. 

That’s when it hit me that I was arriving in Haiti. I got excited.