On Baby Showers

I attended my first baby shower today for a colleague on my team.  Emmanuella, another colleague, and I arrived an hour late and were the first people there.  There were about eight of us for about an hour while people tried to figure out how to get the guest of honor to show up at her own party.  The conversation (in French and Creole with a little English thrown in when people were feeling fancy) was about English classes for children, the benefits of swimming classes for asthmatic children, which drugs to give asthmatic children, and always, the crazy things that children say.  I was the only person there without a kid.  I thought of my friend, Anita, in the US who is pregnant.  I thought about how I should call her to have a normal conversation before the baby pops into her life and changes her vocabulary to one I don’t understand. 

People were still arriving long after the end time on the invitation.  The few men who accompanied their wives got to go outside into the garden where there was beer and wine.  I was indoors, seated in a circle with a bunch of women where I understood (or was interested in) none of the conversation.  It’s not shocking that I’m not in my element at a baby shower.  There are awkward pauses because people don’t necessarily know each other well and the cutesy games demand more laughter than they deserve. 

But Nathalya, the mother-to-be, seemed happy and in good spirits after her mother finally convinced her to come to her surprise party on a day when she was tired and just wanted to eat ice cream at home.  Bodes well for her adventure into motherhood, I guess.

On Salt

My air shipment of "essential" items that I packed on May 26 in PNG arrived last week.  It's at the port, where even without an administrative mistake regarding who it belongs to (me!), it could stay for a good long time.  Everything under the sun, from emergency housing to exotic nailpolish, is pushing and shoving it's way into the destroyed port.

So I wait.  Funny that the two items I am longing the most for are my lovely red can opener and my spice bottle of crushed red pepper.  Need sushi rice or avocado oil?  No problem!  But I have yet to find my favorite spice anywhere.  These days my kitchen buddy is salt.  

I've had a lot of respect for salt since reading Mark Kurlansky's book, Salt: A World History, several years ago but I've always had too many other spices at my disposal to really only concentrate on the magic of salt.  Tonight, I bought a Chateaubriand at the supermarket in n honor of my glorious French summer.  I made a salad of tomatoes and avocado sprinkled with salt.  I rubbed my Chateaubriand with salt, olive oil, and garlic, seared it, and then finished it in the oven on a bed of salted thyme.  I made wild rice with rehydrated shitake mushrooms and salt.  The result was a meal so lovely, that I had my first helping without even noticing my forlorn glass of wine.

Salt!

On Everyday Haiti

Everyday in Haiti I drive the 1 mile to work and between the people, the cars, and the roads, rarely make it out of second gear.

Everyday in Haiti I find myself in a meeting in which everybody has their cells phones arranged in front of them (one PSI phone, one Digicel, one Voila, maybe a Blackberry for fun).  The phones go off loudly all the time, to my keen irritation, and the owners answer de sotto, holding the mouthpiece directly in front of their lips.

Everyday in Haiti, we hear lively demonstrations on the streets.

Everyday in Haiti I look down upon women balancing baskets atop of baskets heaped with bright produce as they walk on the street below my apartment to the market.

Everyday in Haiti I pass people who have been living under tarps for six months.  Sometimes I notice them, sometimes I don't.

Everyday in Haiti, I relish having internet access at home.

Everyday in Haiti the power goes off for a few minutes at night before the generator kicks in, reminding me that I have electricity and water comes out of my taps when I turn them on.

Everyday in Haiti I pass people walking on the street and look at them through the glass of my car window and find it weird that I am here to serve them, but they know nothing about me except that I am rich and they are not.

Everyday in Haiti, I am glad to be here.

On a Clear Day

I just got home and am standing on my terrace overlooking a large valley and mountains on my left and a huge lake and the mountain border with the Dominican Republic in front of me.  I live in the narrowest part of this country that still surprises me with its smallness.  It's a wonder to be able to see the ocean from my bathroom window and the DR from the other side of my house. This is a special evening because this scenery is usually covered in haze (which is why I have no photographs for you yet).  Today there are even big cumulus nimbus clouds catching the setting sun - I didn't realize until now that the haze usually makes them indistinct, too.  The gaudy sunsets from my balcony in Papua New Guinea have been replaced by something more expansive and less dramatic.

On Cultural Obliviousness

It just now occurred to me, after having hired a maid three weeks ago, that she must think I'm mad or self-destructive for leaving my hair and nail clippings in the rubbish bin in the bathroom.

This is, after all, the land of voodoo.

Ekk.

On Security Unknowns

One of the most challenging things about being an expat in PNG was trying to make heads or tails of the security situation.  I stopped reading the newspapers because I couldn't handle the daily barrage of gang rapes, murders, tribal wars, and hackings that they contained.  But violence experienced by Papua New Guineans is different from violence experienced by expats.  The only crime reports I had access to were the occasional e-mails sent out by G4S, as security firm.  Those reports were vague and only included incidents reported by their customers.  Of course, there were weekly stories of break-ins, car-jackings, and other crimes that never made it into the G4S report, so it's clear those reports are limited in scope.  So the answer to the question: "How at risk am I?" ended up being "How much at risk to I feel today?"  Some days were better than others.

And now Haiti.

As I mentioned, there are plenty of UN peacekeeping forces around the place: trucks full of uniformed men with big guns.  I always get a chill when I think about who they are using those guns against.  People in camps?  I don't really know.

Today we drove across town to visit the PSI warehouse.  We tend to take a maze of back streets to avoid traffic. We passed some UN vehicles and I wondered out loud what the guns are for.  My counterpart, Emmanuella, said something like "sometimes they get shot."  It was unclear whether she meant people on the street around there or the blue helmets.  I asked for clarification.  "Sometimes there is an incident and they get killed!"  Again, it was unclear to me who was killing whom.  The soldiers who try to break up an "incident" or people in the incident that the soldiers try to break up?

At this point, the wise-cracking expat consultant in the back seat said to me "Do you know where you are? Didn't you read anything about Haiti before you came here?  Check any of the websites??"

(sigh)

Of course I did.  But how to separate what is true, what is inflated, and what relates to me?  For example, the biggest slum in Haiti, Cite Soleil, is a red zone.  But when would I have reason to go there unless it was against my will?

On the way back to the warehouse, I was asking about the area we were driving through - after all, I have to learn my way around eventually.  That led to a discussion about women driving by themselves in which the same person said the following:

"It's safe.  Everything is safe."
"There is no Green Zone in Port-au-Prince.  There is Dark Red Zone, Bright Red Zone, Red Zone, and maybe an Orange Zone."

Because I was still feeling peevish after being accused of being oblivious to Haiti's security situation, I pounced on upon these contradictory statements with childish delight and made a show of demanding an explanation:  which is is?  Everything is safe for a new arrival like me or there are no green zones?

Not sure I got resolution on that.  The A/C was broken and everybody was too busy giving the driver a hard time for not being sufficiently aggressive for midday traffic.

On Lunchtime Peculiarities

Everyday, my elegant counterpart, Emmanuella, pulls out her elaborate insulated lunch caddy and removes aromatic containers of stew and rice.  She happily slurps up her goat stew, a delicious-smelling concoction full of goat parts that I struggle to identify but always contain thick tubes and something that looks like a soft palate.  At the end of the meal, Emma daintily digs for marrow in the long bones with a fork, then puts everything neatly back in her lunch caddy.

Yesterday, with great curiosity, she asked me something about my lunchtime habits that had perplexed her for a while: how could I not eat rice with my lunch?

On Laundry Day

Driving past Camp Raymond, my neighbors, after work today, I noticed it was laundry day!  Every piece of concertina wire and tent support rope was bedecked with laundry.  Kids in their underwear soaped themselves and poured water on their heads in the semi-private (what is semi-private?) stalls for bathing.  The giant water tank must have been replenished today.

What a relief it must be to feel clean!

On Queens and Queens

When you hear Carnival + queens + condom gown fashion shows, what do you think of?

A drag show, right?  Lots of lovely lads dressed in over-the-top gowns in bedazzled platform heels.

We have many condoms that have expired in our warehouse that we need to do something with.  So during a meeting yesterday, we discussed using them for promotional art, namely fashion shows in which the dresses are made from condoms.  For Carnival!  So I'm thinking drag queens in condom dresses paraded through the streets on the platforms of trucks...nice!

Today I sat down with my colleagues, Emmanuela and Nathalya, out how we're going to do this.  We talked about putting out a bid to designers, seeing if the design school is open, what the creative brief would look like...then we talked about finding queens in February (Carnival) to fit the dresses we commission.  How do we know what sizes to commission?  Some of the queens, Emmanuela said, are like me!  Emmanuela has the proportions of a supermodel.  Like you?  I say, picturing delicate, fey queens of the SE Asian fame.

I ask more questions about size until it finally came to light that in our discussions of "queens", I was thinking drag queens and they were referring to elegant, queenly women.  I was trying to hard to stifle my laughter that I started crying.  Emmanuela and Nathalya looked concerned.  What's so funny?

I didn't bother pointing out that half of the condom dresses we were looking at online were probably being modeled by drag queens or transsexuals.

On Wyclef's New Career

This morning's water cooler conversation: Wyclef Jean's bid for presidency!  Ha, ha!  Apparently he has interviews with Anderson Cooper and Larry King tonight.

Funny!  But so was the possibility of Bush winning a second term!

On the Present vs Past Tense

PSI has a number of huge white vehicles in its motor pool.  Every evening I can either drive myself the 4 minutes home or ask a driver to take me.  There are many drivers and I only know a few of them.  Today, I had to do some grocery shopping so I asked the motor pool manager for a driver (in French, no less: look at me go!).  He selected a driver and a vehicle for me and I climbed up into the passenger seat in my skirt and heels along with my empty water jug, computer, handbag, and two boxes I received from Amazon.  Off we went, as I tried to explain what a bucket was to the driver.  Booo-ket?  Ha, ha!

He took me to a different supermarket than the one near my apartment.  The two I have see are tiny and crammed full of stuff.  I finally got everything I could (no booo-ket).  I was about to get into the vehicle when the driver locked the passenger door.  I looked at him in confusion.  He looked at me looking at him in confusion.  This is a common scene in the life of Carla.

Turns out he thought I wanted the car for the night and that I was going to drive myself home.  How to explain that I have no use for a vehicle?  Where would I go?  And how would I navigate these crazy streets to get myself home?  I managed to tell him that I didn't need the vehicle and he called the motor pool manager to clear up the situation.  We left the supermarket with him driving and me feeling relieved to have cleared up the 54th miscommunication of the day.

I was even more relieved not to be driving when the driver made a right to go down the hill when I would have made a left to go up the hill to my apartment.  Must be some secret fast way to get to my apartment, which is definitely uphill from us  But to my surprise we didn't make another turn, we kept going downhill.  In the direction of the house I was staying when I first visited Haiti in June. Oh-oh.  Did he think I still lived there or were we on the hunt for a bucket?

Me: Excuse me.  The apartment of Alison is up there, yes? (pointing behind us)
Him: Yes, yes.
Me: I stay in the apartment of Alison, yes?
Him: Yes, you stay in the apartment of Alison?  On the 6th floor?
Me (alarmed that we were still going downhill): Yes!  But! Where is we?  We go?  Apartment of Alison is not (pointing straight ahead).
Him: No!  Muble arloorr ss hee here.
Me (he thinks I'm taking in the past tense! How do I explain I live there in the present tense?): ?
Him: Muble arrrr looorrr ss h?
Me (making big X with my arms): I don't live here! I stay at Alison's apartment now!
Him: Yes!
Me: I inhabit the apartment of Alison.
Him: Yes.
Me: We go place???!!
Him: We are going to the Montana House?
Me (around the corner from the turn off to Montana House): I don't live in the Montana House!!  I live in Alison's apartment!
Him: Ha! Ha! You don't live in Montana House?  I see!  Ha, ha, ha!
Me (slumped in relief): Ha! Ha! Ha!
Him: Ha, haa, ha!
Me: Haa, haa! Ha, ha, ha!

There was lots of laughter and he turned the monster vehicle around, ignoring traffic.  Probably because laughter was the one thing we didn't have to translate.