Haiti Souvenirs

After carrying my souvenirs from Haiti to my mother's house, I posted them all across the country. They arrived today.

They look great!

Archives

I just followed a link to a 1940 b&w tax photo of my first condo, the Avenue B one.

52 years after this photo, I bought this 463 square foot apartment for $56,500. The rest, as they say, is history.

Well, history I care about and very few others do, but history nevertheless. This is how I have been able to travel freely around the world and treat jobs with curiosity rather than necessity.

My building didn't change all that much in 52 years.

Transit-giving

I woke up at 6, had a quick shower that never really got warm, enjoyed a good breakfast at La Lorraine, and headed to the Port-Au-Prince Airport international terminal. In addition to my small backpack, I was carrying a paper maché chicken along with a horse head, three iron wall decorations, and four paintings among my souvenirs.

As the flight took off from Port-Au-Prince, I reflected on my incredible week, and how Haiti's general strike had altered my plans. As the protests and work stoppages had led to roadblocks, I'd lost my itinerary a day at a time, eventually going from four days in PAP to a little less than 24 hours, with most of the city shuttered.

And yet my singular experience had likely been made better for having to wing it. This week in Haiti—no, less than a single week—had been one of those rare trips, the kind we seek out year after year, holiday after holiday, where our goal is human interactions of the sort you can't get at a theme park. Well, maybe you can, if someone in a dog outfit is tasked with repairing plumbing and asks you to hold their wrench. But it's unlikely.

Haiti has few enough tourists that Haitians do not appear to be sick of us. They are not jaded by our selfish requests and attempts to interact for our own satisfaction. We tourists are still individuals here, treated with far fewer clichéd expectations than in many destinations. Heck, I'm not even sure Haiti is a destination. That's something you say in glossy travel magazines. Haiti is a place. A destination is something involving a lot more infrastructure and many more ways to spend your tourist dollars.

And yet, the exquisitely human interactions my delays had led to were in no way good for the country itself. One day of protests had been planned, and this had so far led to five days of paralysis. I felt guilty for having enjoyed my trip. Ten Haitians had died, according to news reports. One tourist had been shot by bandits on a road near a resort. And here I was, thrilled by the minor interactions with artists and schoolchildren.

I do not believe there is an inherent difference between a tourist and a traveler. I believe the difference is merely one's opinion of one's actions--people say "I'm a traveler" because they are embarrassed to admit how frivolous planned adventures really are. I am unabashedly frivolous in a way, as I carefully spend money purely in service of my own need for adventure. The people I visit with likely think me quite mad, and I am reminded of a Namibian travel executive I met who rolled his eyes and suggested tourist dollars might be better spend in a hundred different ways. He's not wrong, of course, but possessions aren't all that special either, so maybe there are only 99 different ways. Later, I'd count every cent I'd spent on the trip—including vaccines, guidebooks, the private plane, the booze for the vodou ceremony, every coffee downed in airports, the malaria meds I'd decided not to take—and learn my careful spending still added up to $2,800 for my week away from home. If that's not frivolous, I don't know what is.

But I wouldn't trade this past week. Well, I would, but the offer would have to be pretty damn good, because this had been one of those rare trips where pretty much everything had been fascinating, and I'd been alone the whole time without once being circumstantially isolated from those around me.

Less than an hour into my flight, I looked down and saw Cap-Haitien. That seemed like so long ago now! But today was Thursday and I'd taken that photo the previous Saturday morning.

An hour later, I saw Florida beneath me. We landed in Ft. Lauderdale, where I met a friend for a Thanksgiving BLT at a hotel restaurant. Later, I put on my socks for my connecting flight into winter, and by evening, I was at my mother's house near Washington DC, contemplating the nature of life and paper maché chickens.

The (Improvised) Artsy Tour of Port-Au-Prince

Getting off a tiny private plane was a little different from getting off a commercial airliner in Port-Au-Prince. For one thing, I had to pay on arrival. I was taken by golf cart to a separate terminal from the main arrivals one, where a friendly missionary office worker ran my credit card and then ushered me out to the curb outside the terminal.

Another difference was only one taxi driver lackadaisically asked if I needed a ride. I’m sure things are different when an entire plane arrives, plus I was at the domestic terminal, but I was startled by how low-key my arrival was.

My driver, the one I’d confirmed just last night, was nowhere to be found. I sat down to wait. After a minute, I dug out my phone to text him.

No signal.

I spent the next five minutes wandering around, my phone held high to the sky. I was just about to beg an airline check-in desk for the password to their wifi connection when my cellular signal suddenly clicked in. I texted my driver. “I am coming,” he said. He was the same driver who’d taken me to the bus depot last Saturday, the last day Haiti had normal working hours.

He had been confused about my arrival time, but he showed up within 20 minutes. Driving in PAP today was easy. The streets were still nearly deserted as a result of Haiti’s general strike.

As we drove from the airport to La Lorraine Hotel in Petionville, the driver told me stories of his other clients. Everyone was stuck somewhere, sending him updates. He handed me his phone and asked me to text a tourist in Cap-Haitien about my private plane solution, so I gamely did so.

We quickly arrived in Petionville, though we had to pass a bad car accident on the way.

At La Lorraine, a different driver and guide were there waiting for me, their car full of touristy treats like a straw hat, a coconut, and a Haiti keychain. I'd booked two day tours with a travel agency, but obviously nothing had worked out, so we were improvising based on whatever was open. I wasn't even sure we had any business being out on the streets, but they didn't seem worried so I checked in, left my luggage, and raced down to their car. I cleared the sedan’s back seat of the souvenirs (What am I going to do with those?), hopped in, and off we went.

High Over Jacmel

Here's a look at Jacmel from the tiny plane that flew me from there to Port-Au-Prince.

And here are a few photos.

Arrival at Port-Au-Prince airport 

A New High (or Low?)

When I checked out of the hotel this morning, the clerk laughed and said "See you soon."

"God, I hope not," I said. She was a nice clerk, but my thwarted attempts to leave Jacmel for Port-Au-Prince during a countrywide general strike had a Groundhog Day-like feel to them.

This was getting old.

I walked to the corner and hailed a moto-taxi using just a slight tip of my chin. I'd only been on a few motorcycle taxis in Haiti, but they work the same all over the world. I used to take one from town to my bungalow every night in Ubud for the month I stayed in Bali in 2011. And of course, I took them frequently in Kampala when I stayed there in 2005. And, you know, in other places too.

I was off to Jacmel's airport, just an airstrip and a building, really. The moto-taxi driver hand-signaled to get into the airport, so I paid the man 30 gourdes instead of 20 for his extra safety efforts. (He'd had to dodge a few smoldering tires where the protesters had been, so I probably should have tipped him more).

The pilot walked up to me at the airport security checkpoint. "You're Marie?" He was an earnest young American man, but what else would you be when you're a pilot for Mission Aviation Fellowship? We brought along one of their employees who had gone to Jacmel and become stuck there, just like me.

The six-seater held a pilot, a co-pilot, me, and the employee.

We took off, rising quickly over the sea and then turned back around to fly over the town.

Good-bye, Jacmel! You are lovely.

After days of trying to get over the mountain in a two-hour long bus ride, the $274 private plane journey took 15 minutes.

And came with spectacular views.

Last Day in Jacmel

I packed, but I didn't bother taking my bag to the bus depot. I didn't even take them out of my room this time.

I walked up the street, away from the Jacmel historic district. The farther you walk from Rue du Commerce, the most typical the city looks, with rubbish on the roads and traffic and chickens and motorbikes. The walk up to La Source takes about ten minutes. 

The depot gate was shut. I pushed it opened and barged in. 

"Wout la bloké?" I asked. 

"The road is still closed. We do not know when it will open again."

I wasn't surprised. I'd seen a lot of policemen at the staging area, in front of town headquarters. They had on what I can best describe as riot gear, and they'd go off north up the road in trucks. Were they going to the road block? To some kind of checkpoint? I don't know.

I walked back toward my hotel, and as I crossed the river, I was greeted.

"Hey, you are still here?"

The man greeting me had been one of the few with an open shop on Sunday during the initial protests. He was carrying a sack of groceries, but he adjusted them and shook my hand.

"Wout la bloké," I said ruefully. He laughed. I laughed. What else could was there?

"Good luck," he said, as I continued on my way.

A Visit to Church, in a way

"Don't eat anything! Don't let anyone touch you." The hotel manager's instructions stopped me. I looked at him, puzzled. I'd been reading in the guidebooks how vodou (not voodoo, which is something in New Orleans that mostly seems to involve souvenirs) is not about zombies and scary movies. It's a religion. Spiritualism.

The hotel manager laughed and laughed.

Oh. He was joking. Maybe? I mean, he's from Brooklyn, but before that, he was from Haiti. He knew vodou wasn't what we've seen in the movies.

I found the guide for the evening in front of the Florita, where he always is. He asked if I had money for rum—the donation to the vodou ceremony.

Patron of the Arts

Back at the Jacmel Arts Center, the guy who had pulled me off the stairs at the request of the police wanted to show me his art.

I looked at every painting by every artist. Finally, I said "I will give you twenty dollars, and you choose the painting."

He immediately got to work, considering.

"Not by another artist. One of yours," I explained.

"I represent all the artists," he said.

"I know, but I want one of yours."

He chose one, wrapped it up, and sent me on my way.

Wout la Bloké

At 6, I hopped out of bed in my Jacmel hotel and turned on the shower. The water takes a minute to warm up, so doing this involves consciously ignoring one's guilt about water shortages in Haiti.

I hurried downstairs right before breakfast started, but service was taking too long. I watched impatiently as the staff showed up, and eventually my coffee did too. I was nervously watching the time. On my three-hour ride down, I'd just missed the previous bus (what can I say, I was on a plane), and I had to wait two hours for the next bus. And the downtown Port-Au-Prince bus depot is not the kind of place where you whip out an iPad and start reading. This is what paperbacks were made for, but I'm not carrying one here—I went with carry-on luggage only, one tiny backpack and my handbag.