Haiti Elections

The Haitians had elections on Sunday November 28. The campaign of 19 candidates was lively, but not as violent as expected. Haiti elections have always been violent, so people expected the worst. This is a positive thing to say about the UN presence here, and there are not a lot of positive things to say….

The people in Village La Renaissance didn’t go to vote. There is no polling station. No public transportation. Most of the people don’t have voting cards. And we’re located very close to the capital city. Assuming this gets worse on far-out places, the democracy in Haiti is not for everyone.

The village and the surrounding area were dead quiet on Sunday the 28^th. We went out for a few minutes to try and get gas and were the only car on ‘national route 1’.

On Election Day, most of the candidates called for cancellation of the election. The mess in the voting stations made sure that even the people that tried to vote couldn’t find out where to go and how to vote. Candidates claimed that voting cards where only provided to supporters of the current regime. And the people that had the chance to vote executed their right in more than one station. If indeed the mess was planned by the current president in order to get the elections cancelled and stay in office (as people claimed), this is the first sign he has shown of planning and thinking ahead in a very long time.

And it’s not over yet. Yesterday the election results were announced. There will be a second round between the ruling party and another candidate. Even before the results were announced there was a strange feeling in the street. People were hurrying, closing all the little business around and disappearing from sight. The smell of trouble coming. In the evening some stores and a bank were attacked. Rumors said some people were shot. Today there were a lot of demonstrations, burning of buildings and tires. The 3^rd candidate called for a press conference this evening. He spoke for 2 minutes encouraging people to continue exercising their right for fair elections. Not exactly the calming peace calling speech one would expect.

As for us – we got stuck in the city. At 4 in the afternoon it was already considered unsafe to go back to the village, and today everyone stayed home waiting for the demonstrations to stop. There were helicopters in the air and some far away bombing sounds (probably UN), but other than that we couldn’t hear anything of the mess outside. Without satellite TV, we were quite out of touch. The second round of the elections is expected in January and we’ll probably get a replay of the unhappiness whether the ruling corrupted party wins or loses.

A little perspective

We’ve been in Miami for the past 3 days. Going back to Haiti tomorrow. The official excuse was Art Basel (http://www.artbaselmiamibeach.com/). But – I’m not really that much into arts J

After 3 straight months in Haiti, I’m now in the US, and can’t stop comparing.

Some stuff is pretty obvious:

The US is cleaner. The streets, the air, the water, the food.

Everything is organized. A road is used for driving and people respect the rules. Sidewalks are hardly used, since everyone drives. The side of the road in Haiti is where most of the life goes on. You walk, shop, sell, argue and sometimes live there.

Most people are not spending 25 hours a day just surviving. They know where the next meal is coming from and the one after that. They don’t spend every waking moment just to be a little ahead of the rest. Their kids aren’t hungry. They don’t need to talk about hope and change all the time. Having hope is taken for granted.

When you step into the shower, water comes out. A lot of it. And it’s hot.

Other things, I didn’t realize how much I missed until I started enjoying here.

FREEDOM. I can go anywhere I want, whenever I want to. I don’t need a chauffeur, a local person to accompany me, to organize buying bread a day in advance. A car and a GPS. What joy. Yesterday we went to the Everglades National Park. The park is very nice, but the thing we enjoyed most was driving on an open road without boundaries for a few hours.

STRESS – people here don’t want anything from me. I don’t have any responsibility. I don’t need to worry about things slipping.  Nothing depends on me. Nothing is expected. I think this is what people call a vacation.

I’m so relaxed, I can’t help ruining it a bit by being a little worried about going back...

Going Out

After a couple of very quiet months we are finally starting to have a social life. The credit goes to Inbal for being a friendly open person.

Still – in the last 2 weeks of cholera, political unrest and upcoming elections our little bubble went to a few nice restaurants, been to 3 concerts (classical music, local bands and a semi-international band called magic systems) and even attended a pool side barbeque. The Haitian elite live a very good life that includes regular flights to Europe and the US, shopping and eating in places that would be considered expensive for anyone who is not Japanese. When we stay in the city over-night we sleep in the mansion of a family that started renting a few rooms after the earthquake. Attaching some photos of how the ‘other side’ lives.

Out city 'get-away'.
This is not the most fancy house we've been to in Port-au-Prince...

They have more trees than our entire village..

Olofson is an old hotel that is used also for live music concerts.

Cholera

A month ago a cholera epidemic started in Haiti. When it started we didn’t have water in the school at all. We distributed drinking water to the kids twice a day

but other than that we were highly unhygienic. So – we got water tanks into the school, got a truck to actually fill those with water and started practicing with the kids after toilets / before food proper procedures. We hang posters, and each teacher reminds the classes daily. It might sound trivial to us, but the plan is that the kids will teach their parents about hygiene..

The main source for the cholera is an infected river about an hour drive from here. A week ago I tagged alone to some folks from our organization that were bringing a big water tank to a cholera emergency center that was being built. Strangely enough the deadly river looks the same. The population looks the same. There was no real feeling of emergency.

But – expectedly, it has now spread to other parts of the country, thriving in a densely populated country without any infrastructure for taking care of water or sewage. Our little village sits on a huge underground water pool that pretty much provide the water to port-au-prince. If this water gets contaminated the ‘little’ epidemic that has still not reached its peek and has so far killed about a 1000 people will become a huge natural disaster. The current estimation is that cholera will now become a permanent resident in Haiti for at least a few years and possibly spread to near by countries.

Sandwich

I just gave 2 sandwiches to Ban, a kid that I really like because he was hungry. I told him to bring one to another kid that popped up recently and doesn’t have anyone at all. As far as we could tell someone took him into his tent, but except for that he has nothing. No family, no cloths, no possessions whatsoever. He started going to our school today, which means he will get to eat some rice each day. I hope and believe that Ban is good enough to bring the second sandwich instead of eating it or giving it to one of his 6 siblings. Sometimes Haiti makes me sad.

Hurricane Tomas

For the past week we’ve been getting Hurricane alerts and weather reports. Being from a place that doesn’t have tropical storms we took the alerts very seriously and were excited about our first real storm.

When the ministry of education declared that school will be closed for 2 days in honor of the storm, we realized that this was really happening and started preparations.

The day before the storm started out with cooler air, and some wind. It felt a little like a storm was coming… Not leaving anything to chance, we set out to prepare:

-         emptied our two tents and secured them

-         removed the tarps used for shade from our house and the school

-         chased the water guy to come especially to fill in our nearly empty tanks so they would not fly away

-         hid or put rocks in everything that looked like it could fly

-         finished the preparation by putting a sack of sand on our back door which is the usual place from which rain comes in

-         then we asked someone to get us groceries (house was rather empty) and waited…

The hurricane touched the southern and northern parts of Haiti and we got a drizzle with very little wind.

School closed... looks like a storm is coming

Inbal fooling around with the kids on Hurricane day.

No real storm...

It rained quite a bit in the night after but all in all a rather disappointing tropical storm experience. On the bright side – those who are not curious visitors here, and especially the 1.3 million people living in tents probably prefer this version of the storm to the real one…

At night it rained... our front porch.
Notice the LIGHT -
we were connected to the electic company a couple of days ago!

School the day after...

Vallee de Jacmel

November 1 and 2 are a holiday in Haiti. It’s the serious equivalent of Halloween in which the dead are respected and the spirits are feared. We learned about it quite late so we didn’t have any special plans until the school building contractor (and also a friend) invited us to join him and his friends for a couple of days in the mountains above Jacmel. The holiday turned out to be a nice and much needed vacation. Vallee de Jacmel is a green quiet mountain area with a lot of trees and a calm community.

The Valley

The Village

The shore city of Jacmel is a center for art workshops and exhibitions in Haiti…. And there is also a sandy beach.

Art

In the evening in Jacmel before sitting down at a very nice bar for a drink, we got to see a small part of the Gede holiday spirit. Basically it’s a holiday in which voodoo ceremonies are combined with street parades and “sexual” dancing. There are ceremonies at the cemeteries. Most people we talked to claimed that in most areas the holiday lost some of its meaning by becoming a dancing parade instead of the ‘real thing’ (what ever that was). That actually sounds familiar as it happens in Israel and the US too (US Memorial Day is only one very trivial example).

Gede: it's a little hard to see but these men have white paint
on their faces and are dancing in the street.

Nice Jacmel bar