Happy Holidays

Merry Christmas / Joyeux Noel !

Happy holidays to all from Haiti!

I still haven't found a permanent place to live, but I feel that I am getting close. So I am spending Christmas day at the lovely Villa Creole hotel where I will feast on Turkey and breadfruit tonight.

I hope that you are all having a wonderful holiday and hope to hear from you soon.

p.s.: No, I do not know the Santas in this picture.

On the road again

You guys remember when every rock band worth its salt, after a few hit records, would do a “tour lament” song. This usually involved lyrics about how hard it is to be constantly on the road, sleeping in hotels, dealing with groupies. Well, this entry is my “Man in a Suitcase”. Minus the groupies.

I am on the last night of my three-night tour of the Artibonite during which I helped local hospitals prep for their upcoming quarterly report. For the record, I have not spent more than three nights in the same bed in now more than a month. Anyway, if you are at all curious, here is how these site visits work.

We usually leave early in the morning from Port-au-Prince in one or more of our white Toyotas loaded with medical supplies and other things to transport to the field. Timing is important because the gangs of kidnappers have the run of the roads between nightfall and daybreak. Sometimes, though, some rudely break this custom and do something like abduct a BUSFULL of people in broad daylight (this after the nabbing of a senator and a van of schoolchildren). The bus incident actually happened two days ago on the road I will be taking back to the capital tomorrow (don’t worry Maman, I plan on sending this from the office, so if you can read this, I am home safe. Well, kinda.).

As I mentioned before the roads are pretty rough, especially when you leave the major thoroughfares and head to small rural communities like Gros Morne, where dirt tracks are the only connections to the outside world. The constant jostle makes digesting the copious breakfast (we usually won’t eat again until nightfall) a rather tricky affair. Speaking of breakfasts, I am quickly getting used to the local tradition of eating spaghetti in the morning (isn’t there a children’s song about eating pasta for breakfast? Jude? Jill?). For one, it tastes better than greasy eggs of questionable provenance, and it does fill you up nicely for a long day of work, though I am leaving the addition of the customary ketchup to the mound of noodles for my final initiation into Haitian House.

Once at a site, I usually sit down with the DRO (Disease Reporting Officer), do an inventory of the site IT equipment and personnel, perform data quality checks on medical forms and reports and then update the staff on new guidelines. I then meet back with the rest of my team and do a little motivation speech for the whole hospital staff (they’re totally not getting the “van by the river” reference). At that point our team will leave the site and go eat an early dinner at a local restaurant. Actually, not quite. First, we have to call the restaurant and figure what dish they are serving. I find this step quite unnecessary, since the menu will invariably consist of two of three things: chicken parts in sauce, red meat parts in sauce, fish in sauce. This will be served with rice (with or without beans) exactly two slices of tomato and a few leaves of lettuce. Sometimes fried plantains will be thrown in for good measure. Anyway, we have to call ahead with our order, because Haitian service is rather slow, kind of like the Sahara is a little sandy. I once waited forty minutes for a bowl of soup. (At the expense of breaking the spirit of insufferable petulance I have spent the last three paragraphs developing, I will say that the meals are usually quite good and more varied than I make them out to be thanks to variations in the sauces.)

After dinner, it’s off to the hotel, the very best in town. Of course that doesn't mean all that much in Haiti. As you can see from the pictures, the locals seem to favor the Malevich school of aesthetics. The plumbing, on the other hand, seems to be inspired more by the Homer Simpson school of home improvement. The rooms are clean, though, and have a/c. A good thing, too, since I end up spending more than twelve hours a day in them, as there is simply no place else to go after dark. Let me spell it out for the DC and Paris folks: THERE ARE NO BARS in the Haitian provinces. I know, I’m surprised to still be here too. One adapts, I guess.

And now some good news. I appear close to signing a lease on an apartment. I saw the place last weekend and liked it a lot. It is high in the hills above the cosmopolitan enclave of Petionville, far up enough that the nights are cool and air conditioning is unnecessary. I will be negotiating the deal on Friday. This being Haiti, issues to be ironed out include the use of the generator and the salary of the armed guard. I will update this blog with pics as soon as something is signed.

‘til next time,

Max

Back to Haiti

Hey evreebohdee,

I guess that by now you’ve figured that this blog wil probably operate on more of a weekly/bi-monthly schedule. I think that a look at my calendar will reveal why I can’t be more prolific.

So the last time I wrote in, I had just come back to DC from Zanzibar (I was very happy to see a few of you in town and, as you may have see from my schedule, I am looking forward to see more of you next week). Since returning to Haiti, I have begun looking for an apartment, an endeavor that is proving more difficult than I had anticipated. The problem is that as the number of genuinely safe areas shrink (the security situation has been deteriorating for the past few months) and the number of foreign workers increases (the UN is snatching up all the dwellings it can), rental prices have skyrocketed. It looks like I will have to pay at least $1200 for a one bedroom, if I can find one. Though a company-recommended real estate agent is on the case, I am also exploring the Haitian ways of getting things done – relying on the friends and relatives of acquaintances to gain an edge. The Caribbean version of craigslist sadly leaves much to be desired…

In any case, I really did not have much time to go house-hunting as my presence was cordially requested at the World AIDS day ceremonies in Gonaives where the local hospital was unveiling a new AIDSRelief-sponsored wing. Before I describe the festivities, a word about Gonaives: It is universally known as the armpit of Hispaniola, more wretched than Sale Trou (transl: Dirty Hole), more hopeless than Sources Puantes (Stinking Springs). A google image search will tell you all about the dismal nature of the place, which two years ago was submerged under up to ten feet of water thanks to Hurricane Jeanne. So while I was apprehensive about the visit, I was also very (morbidly ?) interested in seeing how bad things could get here. But as with all of my experiences here so far, the situation failed to live up to the nightmares I had imagined, save perhaps for the condition of the highway from Port-au-Prince. I would have taken pictures of that road and its assortment of craters, boulders, spills, wrecks, and other obstacles, but I was too busy hanging on to the handle of the Toyota to play photographer. There was little of the dramatic once we reached our destination, however. And while Gonaives most certainly is desperately poor, dusty, dirty and altogether rather squalid, it wasn’t quite the Indian village in “Temple of Doom”. It even had a somewhat surreal Spaghetti Western-style backdrop of dry hillsides and dusty fields.

So on to the ceremony, in which the town’s dignitaries and representatives from the foreign donors gathered in the hospital’s chapel for a church service and a few speeches. Two things

stood out. One was the music performed by three distinct parties: a small drum and sax combo on the side that seemed happy playing some soft jazz melodies, a choir that belted out church hymns, and an unseen organist performing strange Phillip Glass-like etudes in

atonality. The result sounded very much like three radio stations (Smooth 102.5, Praise 97.4 and NPR) sharing a bandwidth. The other memorable part was the speech by some crazed departmental
sanitation official who perhaps through a desire to have his audience emphasize with the plight of the infirm decided to deafen us all. Through his voice was itself quite a weapon, able to hit shrill highs and thundering lows, he was greatly aided by the arena rock show caliber amps aimed straight at my seat. I lost another great opportunity for a picture when I turned around and saw most fellow attendees desperately covering their ears with both hands.

I did, however, manage to sneak into a picture with the Archbishop of Gonaives, the first VIP to make it on the blog. (okay I am still far from Tom’s chumming it up with the Bushes, but you have to start somewhere).

Due to the Haitian mid-termish elections and the great demand in hotel rooms they generate, I had to spend the weekend at a beach resort (emphasis on “had to”), but not before having to deal with a flat tire on the way. It is a sad commentary on the state of Haitian tourism when I can say that I was the only guest in the place.

Fortunately the election went well (only one riot and four casualties) and I was able to leave on Monday for my first site inspection in Fond-des-Negres, a four hour drive from Port-au-Prince on roads that made the highway to Gonaives feel like the autobahn.

Once in Les Cayes (where our hotel was) my colleagues and I went to go eat dinner. Now I have to say that until that point, I had marveled at the ability of our chauffeur to drive like a maniac with impunity. That ended on the way to the restaurant where a daring attempt to overtake a line of cars by racing on what would pass for a sidewalk concluded in our car being rear-ended by a pick-up. So here is what happens when a fender bender takes place at night in an incredibly busy thoroughfare in Haiti:

1) Everyone in both vehicles gets out to inspect the damage. This means that the cars are permanently stopped in the middle of the street.

2) The drivers survey the damage and begin to deliberate in a rather civil manner.

3) A crowd appears out of nowhere.

4) The crowd grows (and will keep growing for the duration of the incident).

5) Once said crowd has reached an acceptable size, both drivers will begin arguing their case.

6) To gain an epistemological advantage, the two sides will use increasingly more animated gestures and loud sound effects.

7) Remember the part about the cars blocking half of the road? Well, there are now about one hundred vehicles behind us (including UN armored transports) furiously honking their horns.

8) People make fun of the confused-looking white man.

9) The police shows up. They take away a kid’s bike, then leave.

10) No one seems to think this strange and the showdown continues.

11) The police return and ask the drivers to take their vehicles to the police station.

12) I am now inside a Haitian police station. Awesome!

13) A cop emerges from the office where he had been speaking with the drivers and, Solomon-like, pronounces his judgment: both cars will be impounded until the parties resolve the issue themselves.

14) That actually sounds pretty wise for a bit, until I realize that the other driver has left and that we are basically stranded at the station.

Fortunately, my colleagues have an office just across the street and we are able to borrow a vehicle from them.

After that, the rest of the visit felt like an overlong epilogue, with a lot of work being done at a Salvation Army hospital. Very sick people were seen lying about. Not the best part of the job.

I am now back in Port-au-Prince and ready to leave for DC tomorrow.

A la prochaine.