Driving (GTA* Port-au-Prince)

After the Christmas vacation we decided it was time for another step towards independence and started driving ourselves. We did drive in Haiti before, but not inside the city. The roads are very steep. Usually unpaved. With many holes. They are two way, but often not wide enough for two cars. The cars are huge (including ours), usually some kind of 4x4. There are people on the side of the roads. Walking, selling, buying, working. The side of the roads is often ON the road. Children try to cross, but there are no organized places for that. People are crossing with heavy loads of merchandize on their heads, or women with large buckets of water on their way back from the well (both inside the city and outside). At night there are no lights, and the dark skin color of the population only makes it harder. In addition there are tap-taps which are small pickup trucks that act as mini buses. They usually are packed full of people that are many times expected to jump in and out without the pickup coming to a full stop. Every little disturbance becomes a huge traffic jam in the streets that are already very jammed 80% of the time. And there are many accidents both due to the conditions and the fact that road rules are somewhat vague and the way to aquire a driver’s license is to pay someone to print it for you.

So, we drive. Carefully. Already scratched the car a few times, but all during parking - probably due to a combination of the size of the car and too much worrying about the many other elements of the street. We like being able to control our schedule, and not having someone always waiting for us, but after many years behind the wheel and being a confident driver – in Haiti I’m a ‘new driver’ all over again.

* GTA- Grand Theft Auto is a popular video game. I’ve never played it, but the stories I’ve heard remind me of what’s happening when I drive here.

Disappointment

I’ve heard Haitians describe themselves as tired. Not the regular: “I want to sleep”, but

the more enduring: “I’ve been walking up this hill for the past 10 years and every time I find a place to rest something happens” kind.

The inability to trust long term plans is also part of the reason foreign investors don’t like to invest in Haiti.

As for us – we were asked to return our loaned houses last Monday. We spent Monday packing our house, office, storage, school kitchen and putting all in temporary storage. It was a long and draining day that ended by us moving with most of our personal material to the city getaway house and settling there. On Tuesday other people took out our fence, and our plants, and some of our shelves. Now the house looks almost like the rest of the empty houses in the neighborhood, which is sad to look at because we put a lot of heart and muscle to make it a pleasant place to live. Now we’re waiting for the ball to drop. Will we be able to come back? Will we move to another house in or near the village? What else will change?

Something positive has already come out of this change. The school is operating very nicely without us. It might be operating even better. The directors and teachers are taking responsibility and solving their own problems. On Friday, we came by to do some things and found a teacher vs. student soccer game in recess with the entire school cheering by. Our little corner of hope in Haiti is making me extremely proud.

Guess who won...

January 12, 2011

Today is January 12. At 4:52 PM it will be a year to the earthquake. Most of the people will spend today in the church.

A church in the city. One year after.

For a few days now we’ve been preparing for Jan 12 along side our day-to-day activities.

We were trying to find out what is being planned for this day (which is an official government day-off). The first response from the village committee was surprising. They said all everyone wants it to forget. They don’t want anything to remind them. Some of the teachers at the school thought this should be a day of celebrating life and not remembering the dead. Everyone that survived should be happy. Many people thought that having a ceremony or other activities on this day will be good for everyone. We tried very hard (maybe too hard) not to impose our opinions. We were directed a few times to talk to the pastors of the various churches as they were organizing prayers for this day. We ended up not preparing anything special and letting the pastors decide what to do. They decided to do a day long prayer. Some of the churches worked together and others did their own thing.



Village praying on the 12th

We had a teachers meeting to prepare for school activities on the last day of school before the 12^th. There was praying in the opening ceremony, teachers talked with the kids about their memories from the day and Inbal led an art activity. A picture is worth a thousand words. A movie?

Inbal is editing a movie of Jan 12 in the village. I will post it when ready.



Returning to the village – aka round II

We were very tired at the time before the vacation. It’s an accumulation of a few months of work in non-standard conditions and of knowing that a vacation is coming. Inbal said we are finishing ‘round I’ and will be coming back for round II. We have an open debate on who won the first round.

I was very excited to be returning to the village. I missed the people and came back with a long list of things that need to be done and should be improved.

The first days were a little strange. Due to the long Christmas/New Year vacation it seemed to us like the village was full of new people. Instead of hugs/kisses/missed you that I expected, we got the “hey, white people!” response that we get from people that don’t know us. Many of the kids didn’t return from the vacation. We had a 60% attendance at the school instead of our usual nearly-full capacity. Some of our ‘regulars’ disappeared and we’re still trying to understand if they will return or not. We haven’t heard from our village orphan in a few days. We know the woman that took him in kicked him out, and we need to track him down. Yesterday at school, a woman came to return the books for one of the 5^th graders. We sat with the girl at recess and found out that this woman took her in to help her with house chores and now she doesn’t want her anymore. The girl still wants to go to school (getting to 5^th grade is not trivial in Haiti), but is now staying with a cousin very far away.

It also seems like the committee wants to be less involved, and some other people are looking for more involvement in community life. Since this is one of our major tasks for round II, it will be interesting to find out who the ‘new team’ is going to include.

Update: in the 2 days between writing and publishing this – some of our regulars returned and the orphan showed up again. Things are starting to feel more familiar.

Kaleta and me playing with a flashlight



Ban - making us laugh



A month later

Close followers may have noticed that I haven’t blogged in a while.

Things stopped feeling new, which is probably a good thing.

A very short personal/school/Haiti summary:

- Election fiasco is not over yet. The international committee in charge of the recount finished its job, but the president didn’t get it yet because he’s refusing a meeting. Rumors are their recount puts the president backed candidate 3^rd which excludes him from the second round of election. When the government announces it will accept or when it rejects the conclusions we will probably have a few more days of unrest in the country.

- The person in charge of the pedagogic aspects of the school was replaced with one that will hopefully be much more involved in giving guidance to the teachers and directors. We already had a 2 day seminar as a first very positive step for this change.

- I spent 10 days in Israel meeting loved ones. Had a wonderful visit, recharged my batteries and got a new appreciation of things that I used to take for granted like: proper roads, electricity, water systems and in general having a functional state. Got a new appreciation for family and friends, but that I never took for granted…

The Xmas party at the school was a little strange. Mostly composed of dancing that would be considered totally inappropriate for a school environment in most places of the world. But – People seemed to enjoy themselves and the contribution for extra food we got for this day.

Kindergarten tent ready for party

Dancing

Kindergarten kids performing

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...