Arrival in Haiti – First Impressions

In much of Port-au-Prince, collapsed buildings are next to standing ones...

Dear Friends,

Now that I’ve given a bit of background, my intent is not to make this blog too serious or wordy most of the time, but as that is occasionally my nature, I make no promises. It also seems possible that I will not have enough time to really keep up with this whole attempt at blogging, but as it is easier and quicker than writing long letters to 40 different people, I will do my best to update it at least once a week. Here then forthwith, are some impressions of my travel to and experiences in Haiti up to this point…

August 16, 2010 – In Washington, DC

• On the way to Haiti, I got to go to the main Peace Corps Office in Washington, DC for the first time ever despite my long association with the agency. The memorial inside the front door with the names of all Peace Corps volunteers who have fallen during their service is a sobering way to enter the building.
• My trip to Haiti will be with 2 former Haiti PCV’s – Katherine B and Steffani F. They speak Creole and Spanish but not French, whereas I only speak French.  Both lived or served in Dominican Republic after Haiti. Katherine is a lawyer, a bit younger than I am, having just finished up at Georgetown. She is waiting on the results of her bar exam and will return to the states to a waiting law job in New York after 3 months here in Haiti. Steffani (a bit older than I) lives in the Dominican Republic with her husband. They have started an ecotourism and community development NGO, and have gotten a PCV to come work for them. She might be looking for a longer term gig. Both seem genuinely cool, and I think we will all get along if we end up working together in Haiti.
• In DC, I got a preloaded bank card from Peace Corps. That’s weird and new, but I’m glad I don’t have to carry around backpack-sized bricks of cash like I did in Guinea and Gabon. All the money for the whole time is already on the card. I hope there are places to actually get money from in Haiti using the card, or I’ll be screwed.
• Met a lot of really old school (1960’s era) staff at the Peace corps office and they were all really excited about us going to Haiti to work for the State Department. They said it was the first time this had ever happened, and that it was pretty much what Joe Biden said. Weirdly, many people not even directly associated with sending us to Haiti seemed to know our bios and have read our resumes, and said things to me like “Oh yes, you must be the agriculture guy. Haiti needs lots of those.” We also met with medical staff, the staff psychologist, various chiefs of operations, and with people just coming back from Haiti. Subsequently the three of us got sworn into service in the main conference room of the Peace Corps Office, standing under a large portrait of President Kennedy. All of us with goofy, happy grins on our faces – just like the first time.
• We are told that we will be working in the American embassy in Port-au-Prince, and probably living in military tents on the embassy grounds because safe housing is very limited after the earthquake and staff numbers are very high.
• Apparently, our travel and movements will also be very regimented and limited which will be very uncomfortable for former Peace Corps volunteers who are used to going where others don’t go, talking to people that others don’t talk to, and using public transportation options that most expats never even see. For us, as embassy staff, there will be shifting red zones and yellow zones in the country and in Port-au-Prince which are mostly no-go areas unless with specific security measures.
• Despite the interview process and being recruited for specific positions by the State Department folks, nobody at Peace Corps seems to know exactly what we will be doing. They want us to tell them, rather than vice versa, and as bad as that may sound, it is actually pretty normal in my experience. I’m guessing they probably picked us partially for that reason…
• We are told there is not much stuff around the embassy, and that we will be unable to easily walk out and find stuff on the street like we did as Peace Corps volunteers before. I find this hard to believe, but we shall see.

August 17 – Travel To Haiti

Today we flew into Haiti from DC, via Miami. In Miami we sat in the plane for 2½ hours because some person checked in, checked two bags on the plane, came through security, but then somehow never got on the plane. Don’t do this. First, this caused great confusion and consternation which took awhile, and then second, it caused hassle. Essentially, by not getting on her international flight but not telling anyone why, this person necessitated finding already short-staffed baggage handler crews, taking all bags off the plane and checking each one individually, and eventually reloading each bag onto the plane again. It was hot. People became irate. The Haitian man next to me began loudly demanding a refund every time any flight attendant walked by. He then yelled to be let off the plane himself, which precipitated a verbal altercation, followed by a lot of audible sulking. You get the picture. Flying into Port-au-Prince, I had an aisle seat and two people between me and the window, so I did not get the view I wanted, but my quick impressions were of a chaotic and overcrowded port, thousands of blue tarps, and the unmistakable (and at this point in my life, familiar) patterns which from the air indicate urban slum jumbles, tropical plants, teeming life, and impending sweat. In many ways, it felt like a homecoming. We were met coming off the airplane by an embassy chauffeur and an embassy grease man one of whom argued with a guard, while the other one guided us out the door.

We were driven in an SUV to the edge of the airport past piles of supplies, military equipment, and a contingent of American soldiers who still guard the airport and help run the control tower. A torrential tropical storm began as we waited, perhaps for an hour, until another vehicle arrived with all our bags (only mildly wet), and we were given back our passports which had been neatly stamped without us ever so much as laying eyes on an actual customs official. Even in Peace Corps I had to schmooze my own way past the final customs officials. This was great! But a little weird considering everyone else scrumming and jockeying in the customs office humidity…

My first drive in Haiti was in a convey from the airport to the US embassy, past fortified UN camps, through rainy, muddy streets, flowing with plastic bottles and other trash, and looking for all the world like Conakry in Guinea. This is the most African looking place I have ever been outside of Africa…

A Hatian Woman Carries Supplies in Port-au-Prince

Women and men carrying loads on their heads. EVERYTHING being sold in piles on the side of the road. Hundreds of people in the streets wading through flowing water, soaked to the bone. Traffic free-for-all. Street food of all forms. Baguettes in bowls covered by a dirty plastic sheet to keep the rain off. Children everywhere. Heavily decorated bush taxis (called “tap-taps”) stopping and starting, with people piled onto the sides and hanging out the back. Pickup trucks piled with impossibly high, precarious, ridiculous loads as the rear bumper nearly scrapes the ground. Neem trees, plantain plants, palms, lantana, bougainvillea, manioc [cassava], growing everywhere. Music, noise, graffiti, rutted unpaved roads up and down hills, hundreds of axel-killing potholes, honking, smells of mud, and open sewers, and roasting meats, and rain, and wet plants. There are mountains  coming nearly down to the coast, and the city climbs up into the hills, often precariously. It is beautiful here. I am Africa home, but in a different place, and there are other things too – collapsed buildings, rubble lined streets, hundreds of them. And white people – so many (I am one more), all in SUVs and vans, and military peacekeepers in armored vehicles, in troop carriers, and on foot patrols. Actually military people all over, and not just UN, and almost none of them visibly Haitian except for a few police. This is going to be wild and wooly…

After a stop at the Embassy, a giant complex with most flat ground not covered by buildings covered by hundreds of beige colored army tents, apparently for the overflow of staff people who now have no place to live, we are told we won’t be living there after all. It takes another hour and a half of driving to get to our house on a mountain in a luxury neighborhood called Morne Calvaire. The huge house is surrounded by a razor wire topped wall and has metal gates and 24 hour guards. There are two black Chevy Suburbans with diplomatic plates parked inside. The gates have the European Union symbols on them, but this is upper level USAID staff housing now. How we (the three newly arrived Peace Corps peeps) get to stay here I have no idea. I find that there are two houses right next to each other, one for men, and one for women. My housemates are mostly much older, they are big-wigs in USAID and have worked in the development world for many, many years. They make decisions and manage enormous budgets. It is intimidating, but incredibly interesting, and several were Peace Corps volunteers themselves in the 60’s and 70’s, so that makes me feel a bit better.

I think there are 6 or 7 of us in my house. We share bedrooms that have been stocked with two or three single beds to a room. My roommate is named D, a good guy. He “advises ear plugs, and a blindfold,” presumably for sleeping. T is the oldest. He has met many US and world presidents, and the Pope, “twice.” He is friends with Bill and Hillary. He uses only their first names. His next door neighbor in America is the present Peace Corps director; T shows me an emailed greeting from him, and tells a story. All these guys can top each of my stories. Like I said, intimidating… C is about my age, and P is next in the command chain after S. S is leaving soon. It will take a bit of time to get to know everyone, and the turnover rate means 9 out of ten non-Hatians one meets here right now are probably transient. There is a TV which is only used for watching NFL football. We get every game. A copy of the Rolling Stone article on General Stanley McChrystal lies open on the table. Other copies of Esquire, and Men’s Health, and Men’s Journal, and Fortune are strewn about the main room. I find a copy of Outside magazine open to an article about Mallory’s fateful last hours on Mt. Everest. The only DVD visible in the house is a Russian language copy of Charlie Wilson’s War [T has a story about him too] There is decaying food in the fridge. Yep, it’s a Man house.

We have a maid (“Leave your clothes, she’ll wash and iron them every day. And just leave all your dishes in the sink. She’ll do those too.”) There is a 24 hour generator backup running on trucked-in fuel. ALL of our water is brought in by truck. There is a defunct swimming pool in the back yard filled with 4 inches of water and 5,000 tadpoles, but the ladies house next door has a functional one. My bedroom has air-conditioning, and the hot water works in the shower. Yep, it’s not the Peace Corps.

~ by tchibanga2000 on August 22, 2010.