Roger and Me

[bcholmes]

I hadn't met my traveling companion, Roger, until a day before we were set to fly here. Roger is a member of the Haiti activist community in British Columbia, a sister organization of THAC, here in Toronto. It's Roger's first time in Haiti. For me, this is my fourth trip, and to some extent, I've been able to convey to Roger some logistical facts.

• Take US dollars and exchange them for Gourdes in Haiti; don't try to exchange Canadian money
• You can't drink the tap water; don't even brush your teeth with it. Use bottled water for anything that goes in your mouth
• Give yourself a lot of room around flight times; those flights are prone to delays
• and so forth.

Roger's an interesting fellow, but he's quiet and a bit reserved. I find him difficult to read, but I've watching him, hawkishly, trying to remember, through him, what it was like for me to see Haiti the first time.

I'll get glimpses of that, when Roger asks certain questions. What happens, he asks, to all the garbage? Everyone tosses empty water bottles and banana peels and mango pits into the street. These things get crushed under the wheels of the cars and all of the gutters are clogged all the time. I remember being shocked by this, but now I just accept it as part of the country.

Another example: the crowded vehicles. People overcrowded on trucks, and buses, with extra people riding on top. The backs of pick-up trucks with a dozen people seated, sardine-like, on the edge, shoulder to shoulder, ringed around another bunch of people sitting in the middle. All of this, while the truck is rocking and twisting down the awful Haitian roads.

As Roger observes these things, they're new to me again, and I can see them in a way that I have almost forgotten.

Haiti is a place of amazing contrasts, in my opinion. And I think that was especially visible during our trip up north, starting on Monday. Get out on the road, and you can see the beauty of the country. The plains; the blue, blue ocean that goes on forever; and the glorious mountains. Out of the cities, especially, Haiti is a gorgeous land.

And then we hit Gonaives. Gonaives was hit very hard in 2004, when Hurricane Jeanne caused massive flooding. 2600 people died, and their bodies remained in sun for days. To be honest, it really hasn't recovered. It was close to dinner time when we arrived, and we turned into town to find a restaurant. As we turned down one road, we found it impassible due to a massive hole in the road.

Our driver turned around, we backtracked a little bit and went along a parallel road, and then we turned a corner to find our way barred by a giant pile of waste taking up the entire road. I suspect that they were going to set it on fire to get rid of the garbage. Roger, who was sitting near the window, pulled out his camera to take some photos.

So we tried a third route. A third obstruction. As our road ended, we found that the way right had an open pit filled with garbage and fetid water. The way left was a partially constructed road. The metal bars of the steel-reinforced concrete road stuck out, dangerously, and deep gutters of water were on either side. The road wasn't really level; the new section was several inches higher than the surrounding road; it'd be like driving up a four inch curb to get on it. And it certainly didn't look finished.

Our delegation leaders explained, briefly, that some rebuilding had been going on since the flooding. The flooding in 2004. Three years ago.

But here's the thing. The metal bars that stuck out of the end of this construction were rusty. It looked like something once started, and now abandoned. New roads, to repair damage from three years ago, perhaps never to be completed.

I don't know Roger well; my sense is that he's a little guarded with his emotions, and describes a lot of stuff dispassionately, even though I get a sense that he cares very deeply about issues. But it was apparent that Gonaives affected him. It hit us all. We went to a nearby restaurant and ordered dinner. And no one talked. We sat there absorbing what we'd seen. Unable to absorb what we'd seen. The wretchedness of the roads, the garbage, the destruction.

Hurricane Jeanne happened during the period of the interim government. At a time when Canadian politicians were getting in front of television cameras and announcing tremendous amounts of aid to the country. Where's that aid going? Not to Gonaives, apparently. Because it still looks like a disaster area.

Comments

[rosefox]

Thank you for posting about these things. I'm getting a lot out of reading your Haiti entries.

[pogodragon.livejournal.com]

I'm enjoying reading your Haiti stuff, but I'm woefully uninformed about things that are happening there. Can you point me at any good resources on-line to look at - I think I've not quite got the context of why you go there - nothing much more than a vague *handwave* and 'activist' would come to mind if I were trying to explain to anyone else.

Thank you for the word-pictures here, they are very vivid.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much.

I can't help but wonder how much your post-Hurricane-Jeanne story of Gonaives could be written in parts of New Orleans in 2009, not to mention the smaller towns that were hit harder.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

And I also know that the "bodies remaining in the sun for days" story is not one told in the U.S.A. (yet), and we do generally manage to move our garbage, even if how we do it is morally repulsive.