A Taste of Haiti

I’ve arrived in Haiti safe and sound. My bags didn’t make to Haiti with me, but they did arrive the following morning, so it wasn’t a big problem. I’m loving it as much as I did when I was here before. It is, of course, an alternate universe of sorts, but I think that’s what I like about it so much. It’s so different from anything that I’ve known before. Hospice, where I’m working and living, is a diverse community and I love that too. There interesting people around most of the time and breakfast and dinner are eaten together.

There are six students here from Boston College who are running an English camp for neighborhood kids. They’re great and we’re having a lot of fun. Several of them lived in Haiti when they were young or have Haitian parents. It’s nice to have some younger people around. There’s been a lot of card playing going on. I’ve been to class with them everyday this week. The kids (ranging from about 4 to 20) are so incredibly eager to learn. The older kids stayed to have more lessons when given the option.

The security situation is good in Haiti right now, better than it has been in a long time I was told. That is a comfort. There are still UN troops here though. I don’t think they’ll be leaving anytime soon. We talked to a couple of them from Argentina today when we were out to lunch. They’re not really too alarming though because they don’t carry weapons, it’s really the armed guards at many places of business and at a lot of apartment buildings/neighborhood entrances that are a little nerve racking, but they all seem pretty sane. Shooting at a blan (the Haitian word for white people and probably foreigners in general) is probably not in their best interest—a little sad that that’s how it works, but most likely true. A car stopped for us so we could cross the street as we were walking down the hill from the school, which is unusual and I am wondering if it had anything to do with skin color or our obvious American-ness.

Traffic in Haiti is unbelievable. They are no discernable driving rules and up until recently there have only been two stop lights in this city of 2-3 million people (the infrastructure is so bad that no one knows the population for sure). Now there are probably fifteen which are probably tied to some development money or project (i.e. we’ll give you this money, but you have to use it for stop lights or something like that.)

It is hot here too, but I’ve been managing. There are fans in our rooms and then windows are open all of the time. Somehow last night, I think it actually got hotter after the sun went down. I’m not sure how that works, but I wasn’t the only one who thought that. The power went out yesterday (both the city grid and our generator), so we had no lights or electricity for fans for a while. It went out again this morning, so my last few hours of sleep were a little restless due to the heat. I’ve been showering much more often than is my usual, but it’s so hot and humid here that it’s necessary.