Filed under: Exploring, Living in Haiti | Tags: Art, Basketball, Croix de Bouquets, Haitian Creole, Indiana Jones, Port-au-Prince, Voodoo
How have I been spending my time in Haiti? Here’s a list of this past week.
- Visiting a Haitian artist colony in Croix de Bouquets. The artwork is made from scrap-metal cut and shaped into images of everyday life. The art deserves to be shown here and when I go back I’ll bring a camera.
- Visiting a “cultural center”/Voodoo priest’s house and listening to some of the most inspiring drumming I’ve ever had the pleasure of witnessing. And getting a half-hour lecture on Voodoo (which is a religion like any other, and not what you see in Indiana Jones).
- Having my boss’ car breakdown on me while climbing a steep hill in rush-hour traffic. Then, after somehow finding a mechanic on the street to fix the car, trying unsuccessfully to drive home up another steep, muddy hill while a tropical mini-storm slicked up the road. Failing half way up, I had to back down while cars and motorcycles passed on either side. But at the bottom I played games with half a dozen kids while watching other cars try and fail to overcome the mud, rain, and slick road.
- Finding Progresso soup in the market.
- Playing basketball in front of a hundred people in a Port-au-Prince neighborhood where, outside of my two friends and I, no other foreigner appears to venture. Then losing because we were out of shape. But making about a dozen new friends in the process who couldn’t believe we spoke Creole.
- Watching an “extreme biker” put on a show in a Croix de Bouquets park, also in front of maybe a hundred people, again many of whom couldn’t believe we were there and spoke Creole.
- “Turning 16 again” and getting to drive while abroad for the first time in almost three years. This may be the biggest development. It can’t be understated.
Here’s another video for your viewing pleasure. It takes place in the beautiful coastal city of Jacmel, a city renowned for the pageantry and creativity of its carnival celebrations.
While most of Haiti scarcely sees a tourist, Jacmel has been a consistent tourist destination for decades, and this video shows a bit of what makes it such an attractive vacation getaway.
Filed under: Living in Haiti
If Month One was a chance to get to know some of Haiti’s poorest, then Month Two was a chance for me to sprint over to the other end of the social spectrum – and then take a private elevator 273 floors to the top.
Haiti is a country best known for its grinding poverty and general dysfunctionality, rightly so, because 91.73% of the population falls into the destitute category.¹ Still, not to be outdone by anyone in the exalted realm of general inequality, 0.23% of the country also falls into the category of richer-than-you-by-a-magnitude-of-47.¹ Haiti’s super-rich have an ignominious history, to say the least, but there will be plenty of time for unambiguous class warfare later, so I’ll leave it at that.
In Haiti, English, French and Arabic are the languages of the elite. English is the international commercial language, so that should be clear. Haiti’s a former French colony, so that figures too. But Arabic? Well, I’m glad you asked. Haiti, and the Dominican Republic as well, are home to a small but affluent Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian community. They do well for themselves.
In fact, I just had the unique pleasure of going out for drinks at a swanky Lebanese restaurant in Petion-Ville, Haiti’s elite suburb on a hill. With bleach-white linens and wicker ceiling fans fluttering in the wind, and house music from the DJ, it gave off a certain Miami Vice vibe, or maybe that’s just modern-day Beirut. The crowd was a good mix of elite Haitians, UN military and civilian employees, development workers and one AP reporter I had met by chance two years earlier in the Dominican Republic, at an illegal “speak-easy” at around four in the morning. It’s a small world we live in.
I also learned in that same night that the one kiss on the cheek introduction ubiquitous across Haiti isn’t enough for the upper class, they want two. You know, how the French do it.
Lately I’ve been getting to know some of Haiti’s expatriate community, something I never got around to doing with two plus years in the DR. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the “development” of Haiti isn’t priority #1 everyone in this group. That being said, there are a good group of very intelligent and well-meaning ex-pats that I have had the pleasure of getting to know lately. Is it a coincidence (or a shameless plug) that a lot of these brainiacs can be found working for Fonkoze? I knew I made the right decision…
Anyway, more on Month Two to come.
¹ That statistic has a 1.73% chance of being accurate.
Actually, I have no idea what Carnival is like in Rio, though I bet it’s nice. But now, I do know what Haitian Carnival is like, and it is something to behold.
Haiti is supposedly home to some 9-10 million individuals, and it seems that every last one of them came out for Carnival in Port-au-Prince’s Champ de Mars area, adjacent to the presidential palace, Haitian National Museum, and some rather nice urban parks.
If you are lucky enough to make the trip for Carnival, you’ll see parades, costumes, pageantry, and order during the day, then a shift to musical pandemonium at night as the real crowds pour onto the streets. And, as demonstrated on the third and final night of Carnival, even torrential downpours aren’t enough to stop or even slow the show. There is a genuine commitment to partying.
So during the day, Carnival is much like any parade you’d find across the US, just with Haiti’s Caribbean style, music and fabulous artistic creativity. A peacock to the State’s show-dog, if you will. Then at night, all eyes turn to the titanic parade-floats, each resembling the “oversized load” hauled behind an eighteen-wheeler.
But then again, the floats are really just giant contraptions meant to boast famous Haitian pop artists and their passengers, who ride atop waving flags and dancing for the crowd below, and, just as crucially, massive speaker systems to blast Carnival music for the crowd.
Each float has one song and one song only, composed by the pop artist atop that particular float. Each float’s song is original, specially composed for that year’s Carnival. And the best song, as voted on by the Carnival Committee, is awarded a prestigious recognition of musical excellence.
Filed under: Living in Haiti | Tags: Carnival, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mango Season
Two of my favorite seasons are starting. One will only last a few days; the other lasts a few months. The first is Carnival and the second is Mango Season – capitalized, because it deserves it.
Carnival is a week-long celebration and allegedly “the only time Haitians forget how hungry they are.” That’s a little bleak. I prefer, Carnival is such a massive, essential celebration that “some presidents have been thrown out of office for not holding it.” Democracy in action.
Haitian National Palace
Mango Season, on the other hand, is like Carnival in your mouth every time you bite into that sweet mango meat. And, not to be outdone by Carnival, Mango Season provides a free, easily accessible source of Vitamin C to rural Haitians all over the country. And it won’t take your money, accidentally spill beer on shoes, or steal your camera.
This past Sunday, I was out in downtown Port-au-Prince investigating Haiti’s Carnival, because I wanted to be able to write about it in my blog! The real deal hasn’t started yet, it was only “pre-Carnival” or “pre-Kanaval” in proper Haitian Creole, but I could get a feel for the madness that’s about to be unleashed. I’ve also had the distinct pleasure of enjoying Dominican Carnival, so I’m waiting to let the judging, assessments and comparisons fly.
Dominican Carnival 2008
As for Mango Season, I’ve already had to start carrying floss at all times. Yesterday, while doing home visits, some co-workers and I stumbled upon a veritable mountain of mangoes of all different varieties and walked away with two full, large boxes. And for under $10! What’s the Whole Food’s price on mangoes, again?
Anyhow, a topic for further investigation: it’s purported that Haitian mangoes are far better than their Dominican-incarnation: fact or just plain, old-fashioned mango-chauvinism?
PS None of that bad-Carnival stuff happened to me. Haiti is safe. I’m all good. Come visit.
Filed under: Living in Haiti | Tags: FONKOZE, Haiti, Living Abroad, MICROFINANCE
My first 21 days in Haiti. With each week has come a new adventure, a three or four day trip to a new part of the country to check on the progress of Fonkoze’s two programs aimed at Haiti’s poorest (Ti-Kredi for the very poor, and CLM for the ultra poor).
These trips into the field allow me to see how each program is carried out at the community level (the “village level”). It is here where a project or a program either succeeds or fails. It is somewhat ironic that an organization’s near-lowest rung employees, the credit agents or more generally in the development world, the facilitators, are its most critical determinants of success. But across the board, whether public health or microfinance, this rule of thumb holds true.
These trips also give me a better picture of Haiti’s rural poverty. Thus far I’ve been based in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s overflowing capital city, and these rural respites are my only chance to escape. Logically, though nevertheless surprising to me, rural poverty in Haiti shares many characteristics with rural poverty in the Dominican Republic, my fullest case study on the matter. The only significant difference is the absolute lack of infrastructure – roads, health clinics, schools, etc. – that conspires against Haiti’s poor. (more…)
