Hey everybody,
I know I'm supposed to talk about the trip to Haiti but let me first start this post with a bit of advice. If you decide to take a sleeping pill in order to make sure that you can get some rest on a redeye... WAIT UNTIL YOU'RE ON THE PLANE. Don't take it one hour before boarding. Ever.
If you do, you end up writing things in your notebook like this:
On my first day there we picked up a doctor from Medi-Share to bring her around to the clinic and see if they had any interest in making use of it. She had kind of a tough time wrapping her head around the concept of a clinic being built and ready for their use. She'd ask questions like "so you want us to pay rent?" No. "Ok, so you want us to buy the clinic from you?" No, we just want you to use it. "For free?" Yeah, well you have to support yourself and pay for electricity, but yeah. Though initially perplexed and a bit skeptical, Tammy and Cari were able to convince her that the whole thing was legit and that we're not psychos. Well, except for this guy.
People ask me if things are better in Haiti and I don't know quite how to answer that. First of all, I'm far from an expert having only spent about a month there, only in Port-Au-Prince and working strictly in Cite Soleil. Tammy, Cari, and even Rich have spent much more time there than I have. Larry and his wife Jean came down for a week while we were there and I think it's something like his 12th trip since the earthquake so you should ask him. I'm sure his answer would begin with a diatribe on "missionary tourists," include scores of f-bombs and talk about how improvements in Haiti would require lifestyle changes on our part. Larry's actually a pretty thoughtful guy, don't let the sexy red wife-beater deceive you.
When you drive through Port-Au-Prince, you drive on paved roads along streets that are lined with buildings made from concrete and rebar... we're not talking about dirt roads and mud shacks here. There must've been a point sometime in the past where there was the capital and resources to build this level of infrastructure, but now it's gone to shit. Crumbled, abandoned buildings (some due to the earthquake, many predating it) and streets that are on the verge of being undriveable due to the depth and number of potholes are the norm. There is no maintenance. Where did all the capital and resources go?
Take 'er easy,
I know I'm supposed to talk about the trip to Haiti but let me first start this post with a bit of advice. If you decide to take a sleeping pill in order to make sure that you can get some rest on a redeye... WAIT UNTIL YOU'RE ON THE PLANE. Don't take it one hour before boarding. Ever.
If you do, you end up writing things in your notebook like this:
What it says doesn't really matter (actually, it's strangely pithy. I now understand Ken Kesey a bit better). It's more the fact that I couldn't manage to stay within a loose vertical column, then I took a right turn and decided to write up the side of the same page rather than, say, write on the next page. I also caused a minor incident by stumbling and shoving my way directly to the front of the line when my boarding group was called, experienced a hallucination involving a pulsating gate ramp as well as several awkward minutes of difficulty as my arithmetically challenged mind wrestled with the task of discovering my seat location.
That little pill definitely put me to sleep though. I woke up on the descent to Miami, then another flight to Port-Au-Prince (packed with the requisite missionaries in matching t-shirts) where I was picked up at the airport by Tammy, Cari and Richard. With Help Tammy Help Haiti's (HTHH) medical clinic in Cite Soleil nearing completion we traveled down to finish up whatever work needed to be done in order to make the clinic fully functional. Once that's done then HTHH plans to find a medical organization to make use of the space and provide services to the populace in the Boston area.
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| Keep away from small children |
The clinic itself looks great. Two stories, a pharmacy, two doctor's offices and plenty of space out front for triage. The work that remained to be done were things like filling cracks in the walls, reinforcing shelving in the offices, building benches, putting up razorwire on the security wall, and painting. We ended up tearing out all the shelving and rebuilding it since the previous carpenter thought it was ok for a shelf to be hanging off one screw about 2 inches off the wall.
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| The HTHH clinic |
The first time I saw Robinson was when we were hanging out at Jamaica Base catching up with some of the folks there and playing with the kids. He zooms up on his scooter, says hello to everybody, sees me and yells out "Kaka bloc!" Well fuck me. Guess what all the kids were calling me over the next two weeks? This is what happens when you try to get too cute with a language you don't know. Last year I thought it'd be funny when we were pouring concrete to figure out how to say if you eat cement, you poop concrete (mange ciment, kaka beton). Well, somehow this got transmogrified into "mange ciment, kaka bloc" and then just to "kaka bloc" but it wasn't until Rob made his dramatic scooter entrance that it turned into my new alias. So now the kids call me Kaka Bloc, and when I try to say my name is not Kaka Bloc (mwen pa rele kaka bloc) they think that's even funnier, and there's nothing worse for your ego than having a pack of six-year-old kids (some of whom aren't wearing shoes... or pants) running around calling you Kaka Bloc. Well ha ha ha you little shits... next time you come into the clinic I'm going to put stool softener in your vitamins.
My Kreyol actually got pretty good over the couple of weeks. I got to the point where I could carry on a stilted conversation with most four-year-olds, though their condescension was palpable. Robinson was particularly patient with me and he was justly rewarded while trapped in the back of the car on the way to dinner with a stirring double rendition of Whitesnake's "Is This Love" by me and Rich.
Was David Coverdale touring through Bornemouth in early 1975? Maybe we should ask Mrs. Colbourne.
As far as the work on the clinic you can see what was completed in the pictures. All that's left to do is for someone to finish up the electrical and it's ready to go. We did take part of one day to distribute water in the neighboring area of Soutay. Tammy rented a water truck and we walked over with our local guys (Milot, Elton, Jean-Claude, Owl and Jean-Cheri) as security and crowd control. As Rich said, Boston is posh upper-class when compared to Soutay. Most of the dwellings are made of wood, tin, or corrugated iron rather than concrete and cinder blocks. I'm not sure what kind of access they have to water other than the tank one of the locals owns, and that requires payment. They certainly don't have access to a large tower like the one HTHH built in Boston.
Well once the truck came rumbling down the street and the hose was unfurled all hell broke loose. Most of us worked on the line filling up the buckets that people were bringing for the water while Milot and Elton tried in vain to get the locals to form some kind of a line. Eventually some semblance of order was achieved and we spent the best part of the next hour hauling buckets and pouring water. In retrospect I think that the crowd was mostly composed of women and kids. Why that is, I don't know. Cari did manage to take some fantastic pictures of the distribution, though.
Overall there was less excitement than last year, and I mean that in a good way... as in no guns. You never really want to get comfortable in Cite Soleil, though. We got a rock thrown into the windshield of our car while it was parked at Jamaica Base. That move was not particularly well thought-out by the perpetrator since it was right at that time that the UN was meeting with Tammy at the clinic to discuss funding. The next the UN had pictures of this kid so he spent the next week or so hiding out. The most bizarre incident occurred when we arrived one morning at Jamaica Base in the middle of an argument as Mario was kicking some woman out of the Mission Ranch clinic. Things got heated, she ended up getting shoved into some razor wire, then she got up, grabbed her three-year-old boy and tried to use him as a club to hit Mario and Milot. That was definitely something I've never witnessed before... literally using a child as a weapon.
People ask me if things are better in Haiti and I don't know quite how to answer that. First of all, I'm far from an expert having only spent about a month there, only in Port-Au-Prince and working strictly in Cite Soleil. Tammy, Cari, and even Rich have spent much more time there than I have. Larry and his wife Jean came down for a week while we were there and I think it's something like his 12th trip since the earthquake so you should ask him. I'm sure his answer would begin with a diatribe on "missionary tourists," include scores of f-bombs and talk about how improvements in Haiti would require lifestyle changes on our part. Larry's actually a pretty thoughtful guy, don't let the sexy red wife-beater deceive you.
When you drive through Port-Au-Prince, you drive on paved roads along streets that are lined with buildings made from concrete and rebar... we're not talking about dirt roads and mud shacks here. There must've been a point sometime in the past where there was the capital and resources to build this level of infrastructure, but now it's gone to shit. Crumbled, abandoned buildings (some due to the earthquake, many predating it) and streets that are on the verge of being undriveable due to the depth and number of potholes are the norm. There is no maintenance. Where did all the capital and resources go?
When talking about third-world countries the instinctive reaction most people in the first world have is corrupt government. It would be foolish to say that it has not been an issue in Haiti since there has been plenty of evidence to show that this has been the case (see Duvalier). That's just one aspect of this complex situation. I asked Robinson about Haitian economics when we were out to dinner one night. He told us about what his father said, that twenty or thirty years ago people were poor but they could still find jobs. Now it seems like a large part of the work has dried up. All it takes are a few Google searches to find out that, as part of the conditions for IMF loans back in the 80s and 90s, Haiti was forced to lower or eliminate its import tariffs. As a result the (subsidized) US agriculture industry was able to export rice and beans to Haiti at a lower cost than their farmers could produce them, essentially making rice and bean farming untenable as an industry. So today the poorest country in the western hemisphere is one of the United States' largest importers of rice.
I'm not a policy expert, however, and I'm sure if you spend a few minutes looking things up yourself that you'll be able to discover a multitude of reasons and theories on Haiti's economic situation and how/if it can be improved. What I know is what I see, and what I see are guys like Robinson who works tirelessly with multiple charities on various projects to improve the quality of life in Cite Soleil. Or a guy like Elton who told me that he would love to move his kids out of Cite Soleil if he had the money, but that he would stay even if he could afford to move out because he wants to work to make it a better place to live. And luckily there are people like Tammy, Cari, and Rich who besides working on projects like the clinic and the water tower use their own money to put kids in school and pay for medicine and medical procedures for those who can't afford it.
Anyhow, there's still a lot of work to be done. People have been asking me if it was a good trip or if I felt like I accomplished anything. To be honest, it sometimes feels like you're pissing on a forest fire. Lucky for me, I have the bladder of a 90 year old man so once the seal is broken it's off to the races. So we'll just keep pissing I guess. Besides, all the Prestige that Rich and I drink when we're down there has to come out somewhere. Maybe we should push for full Haitian employment at Brasserie D'Haiti... then they could export Prestige to the U.S. and England.
Without further ado, here are the pictures...
https://photos.app.goo.gl/r8manfRyZhyWbopf8
Take 'er easy,
Dave
