But it's So Salty!

  Yesterday Sister Mary and I went to the beach at Paradise for the morning.  She got to walk up and down and get her feet wet, for the first time in forever. She is Irish and loves the sea, but here in St.-Marc going to the beach is just not very popular.  So while she was walking, I was swimming and thinking to myself how, last Sunday at this time, I was swimming up north at Labadie.  

  There was an American voice I kept hearing, who kept repeating, "It's salty!  Why is it so salty?" Then I heard him say something about Labadie. So I swam over to his group to say hi, and asked him if he had been there. "I want to go there. I've heard it's nice. -- But is it salty like this?"

   He was serious! I said, "Where are you from, anyway?"  Turns out he grew up in Colorado and this was his first time swimming in the ocean! He was probably 30 years old.  He was Haitian American, and his parents immigrated to the U.S. when he was young. 

   Intellectually, he had to have known it, don't you think? But until he tasted it himself he never actually realized what it meant.  He truly was amazed.

A Ride to Remember

It is about 90 miles from St.-Marc to Cap Haitien, where I went last weekend.  On Friday I had the great good luck to get a direct schoolbus.  There were 3 people in my seat, but one of us was a 4-year-old girl (very polite and quiet, I might add) so all in all, the trip was a dream at 6 hours and only 300 Gd., about $7.50.

I returned to St.-Marc yesterday; what a difference!  I began my journey by going to the bus stop about 5AM.  They call it the station, but there is no station, it is a huge business conducted in the street.  I arrived home here in St.-Marc around 2:30 and breathed such a sigh of relief.  It was only 90 miles, and I was actually on a moving vehicle for 6 hours of that, so that's 15 miles an hour we went, on average.  Both going and coming back.

Travel is problematic for the average Haitian.  The tap taps are uncomfortable, crowded,dusty, and badly sprung, and often on their last legs engine-wise, so they break down a lot.  You see them with broken axles, maybe a wheel spun off, all manner of catastrophes by the side of the road.  And if the tap tap coming along already has 20 people in it, it's not like they are going to take all 20 of you with them.  But Haitians, being generous, would be sure to pile at least a few more on top.

Since things are expensive here, bus travel is something of a luxury. They don't run a bus unless it is full. (See above, re 3 to a seat in a schoolbus. That's usually 3 adults to a seat.) Last Friday, even though the bus left at 10, I went at 8 so that I could get a window seat. You never know when it will fill up, and then suddenly, they're off.  Haitians are very good at waiting. 

Wednesday's journey began on a hopeful note on Tuesday night when Tony, the houseman and jack-of-all-trades for Sasha Kramer and Sarah Brownell, went out and bought my ticket in advance.  A ticket is just a photocopied slip of paper, maybe 2 inches by 4 inches, that has scribbled on it the destination and time, and that you've paid.  There is no Cap Haitien to St.-Marc bus, so I had to buy a through ticket for Port au Prince. It cost 400 Gd., $10 even.  The ticket said 5:30.

Sarah, bless her heart, got up early and took me to the bus herself.  She wanted to be sure I got on the right one.  She went up to the door and asked if it was the bus for Port au Prince. It was, so we said goodbye and I waved my ticket at the driver and got on.  It was pretty nearly empty, even though it was 5 o'clock, so I grabbed a seat by a window.  I even got to put my suitcase up in the rack.  The racks fill up quickly. About 5:20, someone came up to me and said, excuse me, you're in my seat.   I hadn't noticed, on the back of each seat was written 3 numbers in black magic marker.  I had grabbed seat 18.  Uh oh, will I get a window?  Yes! Seat 25, my real seat, is a window.  Thank you, Tony!

When the bus did not leave at 5:30 I was not shocked, as very little happens in Haiti on time.  I was shocked at 5:40 when someone came up waving their ticket at me that also said '25' on it. We all gathered around and then someone observed that my ticket was for the other bus to Port au Prince.  The one, the only one in Haiti, apparently, that actually leaves on time and was even now on its way up the highway.  At that point I should have hired a motorcycle and chased it down, but little did I know.

I went to the bus driver. He was a very nice guy and felt a little bad about this. He took me by the hand and we went out to the street where a lot of men proceeded to have a very loud, animated discussion about what was going to happen about this.  We walked hand in hand up the street to the spot where the other buses leave from.  I was definitely the little lost girl. The go-to man was taking a break, having successfully gotten his bus to Port out the gates.  Loud discussion.  Shrugs.  I could tell: No money back. Not my problem if the Blanc missed her bus!

We walk back to our bus, 50 yards away.  More discussion.  He gets the OK from his boss to take me to St.-Marc without buying a ticket, so I give him my ticket.  He will try to get the money for the unused trip from the other driver if he is lucky.  I realize about this time that there really is no way they will let me sit in a seat for free-- when he shows me my "seat."  It is a little table, between his seat and the left side of the bus.  I will be able to sit there.  Very cosy, no?  he empties it off, smiles, and taps it for me to sit down. 

Now it is 6:00.  There is a little streetside vendor beside the bus, right in the middle of the usual wet and dirty, garbage-strewn gutters. As I am looking out the window I realize that underneath a rickety table with pots of food on it, a street kid is sleeping curled in a ball.  He is laying on a piece of filthy cardboard and you know he's been there all night.  A few minutes later another guy stumbles up the street.  He is maybe 10 or 12.  He crawls under the table and curls up next to the first one.  Now the vendors are ticked.  When they go past they keep nudging him and giving him little kicks.  A lady sprinkles him with some water, but he's fast asleep by now, his face and hands pressed into the dirt.  The cardboard doesn't reach that far. He is maybe 8 feet from me. I think I don't have it so bad.

At 8:00 there are only 20 or 30 people who bought tickets, and the owners abandon the notion of sending their bus to Port au Prince today. You would have thought there was a fire on board.  I don't  realize what is going on until the second last person getting off explains it to me.  I get up and go back and wrangle my suitcase off the overhead rack.  I think it must have been at this point that I lost my cell phone.  There is a huge frenzy of returning all the passengers' money.  

There are some tap taps there.  Someone grabs my suitcase and tosses it up on top, between two bags of flour.  They just kind of stuff it in between them.  The ride will be unbelievably jarring; I worry it may fall off.  The price to sit in the front (an honor; it is assumed that a Blanc is only going to want to ride in front!) in the middle spot of a two-seater Toyota pickup that will only take me as far as Gonaïves?  400 Gd.  I get out of the truck to go get my suitcase down from the rack.  When I come back dragging my suitcase the driver starts yelling at me to take it out of the cab (in fact there really is not room in the cab for the three of us and our little backpacks which we do bring with us into the cab.) He settles down when he realizes my extra money is inside it.  I didn't think I'd be needing extra money this morning and packed it away.

He said we would get to Gonaïves, site of all that death and devastation last autumn, in 3 1/2 hours, and he hit it pretty much on the button.  We stopped at the same mountaintop rest stop that we stopped at on Friday on our way north.  It is evidently a tradition.  The same old lady came up to me begging for coins, and I gave her the same thing I did on Friday:  A peanut butter sandwich.  She smiled and thanked me graciously.  Women surround us and try to sell us avocados and figs and chadèques.  I try to tell them we have not any room, for nothing. They persist. I say, "Désolée, but I just can't." I am so sorry, desolated, in fact.  I think I am demonstrating typical Haitian effusiveness, but they think it is over the top and laugh at me.

We finally reach Gonaïves, and our tap tap driver drops us off where there is a bus loading for Port au Prince.  It costs about 150 Gd. to go as far as St.-Marc.  There is a lot of line jumping. As soon as a couple dozen of us get situated on the bus, someone announces they will not be running it, better get in the bus behind, instead.  By this time we are snapping like sharks.  I start to wonder about those tragic crushings at the soccer matches; the bus doors on Haitian buses seldom open up all the way.  Eventually we all mob onto the new bus, kind of like an octopus pressing itself through a very small opening.  By now no one is taking any chances. We know the drill.  

I do get a window seat.  The women seated with me have chickens in a box.  This is lots better than goats, much quieter. The husband of one of them, up the aisle from us, holds a chicken in his hand. It is a well-behaved chicken. I see one of our chickens' feet sticking out of a hole in the box and gently push it back inside.  No use he should be uncomfortable. The women smile at me.

More teeth-rattling bouncing and banging down the road for another two hours.  A brave but crazy vendor is hanging onto the back corner of the bus, screaming "Sodas! Water!"  The driver yells to him to be quiet. How can he hold on out there, with such a rough ride?  How can he breathe, in all the dust?  It is 90 degrees in the bus and he keeps selling, passing drinks in though the window, a helpful passenger passing money back out the window to him.

  Then they stop for me! St.-Marc!  There is my market, there are my little Bons Samaritains students coming home from school at 2:30 in their dear little uniforms.  I yank and pull my suitcase from between my chin, my legs, and the seat in front of me.  It's wedged tightly in there with the 3 of us and our box of chickens. We send it off and I watch as it surfs up the aisle. 6 adults across, lots of them men, and all those bags and boxes really fill up a school bus. Next, I surf up the aisle. I get to the front and the whole area beside the driver is full. Nobody moves.  Then a couple of guys jump off the steps.  I see my bag out on the sidewalk.  Almost there.  I perform a gymnastics move of grabbing the bar in front of the seat by the door. Mrs. Ebling would be so proud!  I swing underneath like a very clumsy monkey, over the people who are seated there, make it down the steps and I am home.

As I come through the market my little students call out "Lees!  Lees!" and rush up to me for kisses and hugs. I don't know their names, but they missed me and I've missed them, too. It's great to be back.

The view from the rest stop at the top of the mountain. You see one of those no-railing switchbacks up ahead. I'm sure you noticed it's on the way to Cap Haitien, since I am taking the pictures from a schoolbus. The sweet old lady that I mention in this post makes a brief appearance as well.

A Very Surprised Gecko

I just spent the weekend at a little hotel in the village of Labadie on the north coast of Haiti. It is a small place, just a couple hundred people. Sunday was election day, and they were having the polling in the schoolhouse. To keep the peace, the U.N. sent soldiers out to all the highways and byways of Haiti. I saw a half dozen soldiers walking around the village. It is so remote that you must get there by a 10 minute boat-taxi. There are no cars there. So the soldiers came from all over the world-- Brazil, Chile, El Salvador-- to their barracks in places like St.-Marc, to be trucked or flown to another city, then to be ferried by boat to a village like Labadie.
The hotel is called Norm's Place. It is a set of beautiful little guest houses set in a tropical garden with lots of chairs and hammocks. Right by the beach, so you hear waves shushing on the shore the whole time you are there. A guaranteed stress-free vacation.
The bathroom in the room I had has a stone wall with ferns growing out of the cracks in the wall. It was so gorgeous, so tropical. I was brushing my teeth one morning, when I realized that a gecko tail was sticking out the overflow drain in the sink. As I watched it, I could see it was getting longer. He was backing out. So I watched as his hind legs, then his forelegs, then his head backed out of the hole. When he finally turned around and looked at me looking at him, he jumped! And took off running. I laughed and laughed.
The walls were stone, 10 or 12 feet high. The fourth wall, instead of stone, had woven cane for the top 4 or 5 feet. It was pleasant and open to the garden. I could hear the frogs singing all night long. And those waves.
On Sunday afternoon we took a boat to a nearby cove where there is a white sand beach and also, further out, a coral reef with lots of nice coral. I saw fan corals 3 or 4 feet high. I know there are bigger ones than that, but they are the biggest I ever saw. Also, I saw 2 big spiny lobsters, and I saw squids swimming for the first time. So fascinating.
On Monday morning I went to the Labadee resort run by the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. I was admitted as a guest and got to visit my friends from Pennsylvania, Terry and Becky Lawhead, who had come to Haiti on their first stop on a cruise that left Miami on Saturday. We spent the day together. What a great time.

Paradise

Words can't describe it as well as this clip!  I must add one note: I say in the video that I thought the sand was trucked in- a local person assured me it was natural.

Good Friday Procession

>

View looking down the driveway from the hilltop site of new church, Notre Dame de Perpetuel Sécours

Today I walked in the Good Friday Procession through the town.  The church was packed at the end, so there were probably over a thousand in the procession; I am not good at counting. However many the church can seat, were seated in it, and the courtyard outside was full as well.

There are two Catholic churches in the town, the original parish of St. Marc, and a new parish they made by dividing in half, giving the original parish the church and the new parish the school, located a couple miles away on the south side of town.  The second parish is called Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Notre Dame de Secours Perpetuel.  (My own parish of St. Paul's in Annville is sending a committee to visit this new parish and their pastor, Father Antoine, on Monday the 13th.  I am looking forward to their visit.)

Not knowing where the other church was, I took a chance on going to St. Marc's, which is only 3 blocks from my apartment. When I got there, there were maybe a half dozen people there, and Father Evance was just leaving to go over to Notre Dame. He said he was going over by taxi (sitting on the back of a motor scooter). There was a tap tap there, that was taking the crosses over for the procession.  He ran over and asked, and said we could ride in that.

This turned out to be a great thing for me, because I rode over with a nice lady named Carol. These Haitian ladies are so graceful:  They can stand in the tap tap, just stand there, as though they are standing on the ground, and balance with one hand on the railing. As we go over potholes and bumps. Carol noticed that I was having a hard time managing myself and my hat, and she kindly reached over and took it, which left me with two hands to cling to the railing. Even using two hands, though, I still cannot stand in a moving vehicle on these roads as nicely as they can. But thanks to Carol I arrived with my hat, which I badly needed. There is not much shade here, and the sun can be brutal. 

By the time we got to the other side of town, there were about 15 of us in the tap tap, after starting out with 6 or 7. Every couple of blocks someone on his way to the procession saw us and yelled for the driver to stop.  Several men stood on the bumper; our muffler scraped on every dip. Plus I am sure they got splashed by some of the puddles we went through.

I did see several people I knew in the course of the morning, and a couple of my students. 

We began to walk around 7, and finished at 11 AM.  I wound up spending the morning with Carol and a couple of her friends, and they were all very nice to talk to. 

About halfway through the walk we had to cross the National Highway, Route 1.  I tried to get a picture to show you what the highway is like; sometimes there is a lot of traffic and then next time you see it, it's empty. While not all of it is paved, this piece here in town is paved, but you can see the potholes. There are not a lot of rules on the highway; faster things like motorbikes go out and pass the slower things like the tap taps full of people. All the traffic stopped for us both times we crossed over the highway, which was nice.

The twelfth station of the cross is the one in which Jesus dies.  For that one, the Bible reading and prayers were at the Place in front of the Mairie, or Town Hall. The woman directing  the stations said "Everybody kneel! Kneel down, everybody!" and we pretty much all did, right there on the stones in the street. We finished up inside St.-Marc's church with the fourteenth station, Jesus is buried in the tomb.

Here is a video clip from the final station. It shows what a cross-section of people attended the walk, and also gives you a picture of what the inside of St.-Marc's looks like:

Foun's at 8AM

The balcony in front of Foun's and the view on Pivert Street

I finally got some good pictures of Foun's, in the daytime with nobody around. This is such a nice place. Nice atmosphere, wonderful hosts who make you feel so welcome. Foun and his wife Maggie lived in New Jersey for twenty years. Foun has a Joisey accent, even. 

Here you can see the main dining area;  the taller, white building in the back, upper right, is the 

Bons Samaritains. I could get here by zipline if there were one. It's a walk of maybe 100 yards.

Maggie heard of a good dancing instructor who would come to her place to teach Salsa dancing, and she invited me to come. So this picture was taken this morning at 8AM at Foun's while I was waiting for the others to come.  The instructor's name is Herbie, I think, and he really was very good, so I may try to keep doing this if time permits.  I am not a coordinated person, but I guess I did OK.  He does recommend dancing shoes; the other ladies all wore heeled evening shoes.  I could not walk in them, much less dance, so we may have to compromise on the shoes. I can see that rubber-soled Tevas will keep me from improving, though.

Here is a little video so you can see how pretty the place is. They have a gas fired rotisserie out front where they do whole chickens basted with a little bit of sauce. Mmmm. They also do wings, which is an idea they brought back with them from the U.S.

Test Time: Do You Have the Right Stuff?

Hello! Step into my office. I understand that you are thinking of going to work for a little while in a developing country, and you wonder if it's for you.  I am sure every experience is different, and I don't know myself how well I would be doing minus the internet, (Back home- maybe. Here, no way!) but at any rate, I have prepared a little test for you.  Take it and see how you do. Remember, there are no right or wrong answers.

Question 1:  You are working at your desk, and you see a large spider. You . . .

(1 point)   think to yourself, "Whoa, look at the size of him.  He must eat a lot of bugs,  good thing he's living here," and go on writing.

(2 points)   jump up and smack him quick with the sole of your sandal.

(3 points)   run out of the room and wait somewhere else till your friend gets home so s/he can kill it for you.

Question 2:  It's 9PM.  You're in the shower and suddenly all the lights in the house go out. You . . .

(1 point)   are really glad you thought to light that candle and set it on the sink before you got started.

(2 points)   calmly finish up in the dark.

(3 points)   start screaming, "Lights!  Where are the lights!"

Question 3:  You are walking down the street and motor scooters and motorcycles blaring Beep! Beep! Beep! keep buzzing past you, sometimes, it seems,  from only inches away.  You . . .

(1 point)   try not to jump or move from your intended path, and trust they are not going to swerve, either.

(2 points)   reflexively jump back and say "Oops! Sorry!" to the fellow pedestrian you just knocked over.

(3 points)   press yourself against the nearest building and continue on to your destination sideways, walking like a crab.

Question 4:  You begin to eat some stew.  You find a fish scale and a fish bone in the first couple of mouthfuls.  The stew tastes fishy.  You . . .

(1 point)   take them out of your mouth, lay them aside, and keep eating.

(2 points)   think, "Well, I wasn't that hungry anyway," try a few more bites and then lay down your spoon.

(3 points)   immediately stop eating and say out loud, "Yuck! Gross!" and make a big deal out of it.

Question 5:  You see a Hershey's chocolate bar (can of Diet Coke, pack of Doritos) in the store.  It's not very large, and you notice it costs $2.50.  You . . .

(1 point)   think to yourself, "That's the price of a whole 19-ounce bottle of dish soap! No way am I paying that much for Doritos!"

(2 points)  squirm a little and fork over the money.  You really need some chocolate. Now.

(3 points)  buy 8 of them with your last $20 bill, because this is the first time you have ever seen them and you know they will not be here when you come back next week.

Question 6: You wake up in the morning covered with mosquito bites. You . . .

(1 point)   thank your lucky stars that you are on a malaria medication, and you coat yourself with DEET from now on before you go to bed at night.

(2 points)   go to the store and buy yourself a mosquito net which you jury-rig over your bed.

(3 points)  change your return plane ticket from next year to tomorrow.

Okay!  Time to add up your scores. Note: If you have had an appendectomy, you may deduct 2 points from your score.

up to 9 points You could think about joining the Peace Corps.

10 to 12 points This kind of work might be a problem for you.

13 to 18 points You should stay home and watch the movie.  

Grosse Roche Beach

Today I finally got to swim at Grosse Roche Beach. This is the beach at the north end of town.  I went with some teachers from the school, actually the third grade staff:  JeanRony and Blemur, two great guys who are also good teachers. I can always count on having a fun class on Wednesdays, when I go into the third grades.  I can tell when kids are thinking, and their kids are.  If you see that more than just a couple of the kids in a class are trying to puzzle out answers, it's always a sign that they have a good teacher.

Grosse Roche is beautiful!  Dinah, who says she is my mother here in Haiti, was worried about me going there, because of the high contamination in the bay.  They understandably do not want me to get sick. I promised her I would not put my head in the water, and wore my glasses and hat to remind myself.  The water in the Caribbean is so warm and so heavy with salt that a person my size floats like a cork.  JeanRony does not swim, unfortunately, so he swam by hugging onto a beach ball. I told him I have an old waterskiing life vest at home I wish I could give him.  I think he could swim around better if he had something like that.  Blemur is a good swimmer and told me about snorkeling at Labadie, where I hope to go after Easter.  He said he saw some nice coral and fish there.

The beach was covered with large round rocks.  Some of them were pebbles, but a lot of them were broken up coral that had washed ashore.  There were pieces of staghorn coral, and we saw a piece of brain coral that actually looked like one of the lobes of a brain.

Loud Speakers with Loudspeakers

This morning I was awakened early- at 4AM!- by the sound of singing and chanting out in the Market.  There was a religious rally going on. I lay there for an hour and then I went out onto the balcony and made a few minutes of tape.  I thought that, since I could not see anything, there would not be many megabytes.  But there were; which make it too many to post from St-Marc. So I prepared just a minute of the rally and offer it to you here.

And after I up load this I might try taking a short nap. For some reason I feel sleepy.