Filed under: Out in the Field | Tags: Cap-Haitian, Dengue, Haiti, Port-au-Prince
I just got back into Port-au-Prince from a few days of field-work in Cap-Haitian and some surrounding towns. The seven to eight hour trip up to Haiti’s northern coast is bad enough under normal conditions, see here, but making the trip while suffering from what I assume was dengue made a bad trip a nightmare.
Filed under: Haiti, Out in the Field | Tags: FONKOZE, Haiti, Microcredit, Peace Corps, Public Transportation, Tap-Taps, Ti-Kredi
My trips out to the field are rejuvenating even if physically draining. Clients poor enough to qualify for Fonkoze’s “Ti Kredi” program – micro, microcredit – tend not to live in or nearby large population centers. And it’s not uncommon to spend two hours trudging along narrow dirt paths before reaching their small, sparsely populated rural villages. But the chance to dialogue is rejuvenating because the stories and faces, the smells and sounds, serve as a reminder that our “beneficiaries” are more than statistics; their poverty is more than just a topic of conversation for my friends and I.
And on this past trip out into the field I had to manage for myself without a car and driver, which meant public transportation (mainly motorcycles, pickup trucks, and former school buses). For me, the thought of riding public transportation is always initially exciting: I like considering myself a man of the people and air-conditioned, chauffeured trucks don’t fit that image; it’s a great way to learn how to travel when you don’t have a car, which outside of trips into the field, I do not; also, it’s an opportunity to surprise a few Haitians with my Creole, and of course, it’s a fantastic way to make new friends.
Nevertheless, there are a few downsides, not least of all the pain that flat, metal seats inflict on my derriere when traveling over crater-size potholes and jarring dirt roads. And let me state flatly that I was not blessed with a lot of cushioning in my derriere: when I was in the Peace Corps, one of my nicknames was “flat ass,” also “big head,” “mayor,” and “whitey.”
Public transportation can also be quite a time-gamble if you’re on a tight schedule, which I always am. Transportation from town to town doesn’t leave until the pickup, minivan, or ex-school bus is filled like a sardine-can. Economically, it makes sense because the cost of public transportation is dirt cheap. But, time wise, it means making a meeting on time is challenging. For example, to make the 30 minute trip from Cap-Haitien to Milot, I woke up at 4:30am in order to make a 7am meeting time (It took me arriving an hour late the day before for me to remember public transportation doesn’t run on my schedule). Inexplicably, just a few months of riding in a personal vehicle with a driver has erased an understanding of developing-world public transportation built over two years as a Peace Corps volunteer. (more…)
