Haiti May 2010 Day 2 & 3

Yesterday was my first full day back in Haiti. I woke up at 5am, which seems to be my normal time while I’m here…can’t figure that one out, but whatever. After eating breakfast, I settled in my usual perch at the dining room window, only this time, I’m not sitting on Mamie’s antique Chinese chest, but rather, at the small round dining table that used to be out in the Treehouse that has temporarily been moved inside while the Threehouse is being worked on. There, I did some writing and took in the view of Port-au-Prince through the mango and coconut trees. The shoreline is noticeably different and the Cathedral no longer exists (there goes that pain in my heart again).

Dad took me, my aunt and uncle downtown to check out the situation. We headed to the Champs de Mars and the National Palace first. The Champs de Mars is like our own National Mall in Washington DC only smaller. There are monuments and a park area in the center. Except now, none of it is visible as it is entirely occupied by a tent city and rows and rows of Port-O-Potty’s (I think I just came up with a new NGO- POP’s for PAP…there are tons of them, but not enough). The National Palace still sits there, slumped over, a UN military tank sits on her front lawn, the grass just barely being maintained. The two outer domes sit cockeyed while the center one is gone altogether exposing the rooms that once existed behind it. The IRS building is nothing but a pile of rubble (oh darn), City Hall was hit by an earthly bomb and the Minister’s office is broken and tattered beyond repair. It’s a breathtaking sight and I don’t mean in a good way either. Imagine the White House of the United States being reduced to a single story of rubble and a spiderweb of twisted metal, or the US Capitol building with a decapitated dome and thousands of people living in tents and cardboard shacks on the National Mall. Americans wouldn’t know what to do with themselves and I imagine the country would fold like a lawn chair. Well, that’s pretty much what The Champs de Mars looks like…and yet life goes on.

We made our way down by the water, where a tenant of ours is a maritime agent. It was from here he made a harrowing trek home on January 12th sans communication with his wife or 5 kids and had to walk THROUGH a crumpled, screaming, burning city of Port-au-Prince and his completely flattened neighborhood of Turgeau only to strike gold when he discovered his entire family and his home were intact. I hope to get his account first hand during my stay here. The entire marina and shipping docks had completely collapsed and vanished into the bay of Port-au-Prince…cranes, containers, roadway, everything…gone. The relief efforts in the last four months have since supplied at least a temporary if not permanent shipping and receiving dock so business for the country is not totally crippled.

Driving through the streets of downtown PAP, it’s difficult to truly assess the progress that’s going on here. By that, I mean the streets has been cleared of rubble for business and there are marchands (merchants) everywhere, conducting business as usual. I noticed right away, though, that the streets are no where nearly as crowded as pre-J12. They are passable this time. Is that because they have cleared out of PAP into the provinces? Are there just fewer people? Dad thinks it’s because everyone is clinging onto their tents and what little they have left for fear of theft. Who knows really? I hope to find an answer before my departure. The one thing that hasn’t been completely cleared are the miles and miles of, old buildings, condemned buildings, destroyed buildings, buildings marked for demolition and not yet touched. During our entire excursion of Downtown, I don’t think I saw a single bulldozer or earth mover. That’s not to say there aren’t any at all, but I just didn’t see one. I did see one former building (now a pile of broken concrete) with a crew of organized Haitians in their bright yellow team shirts and hard hats, picked away at the pile and removing the rubble, one chunk at a time. At this rate, my great-great-great grandkids MIGHT be able to enjoy New PAP. I had a major reality check at the sight of this and it was one of those, “Holy S**t” kind of reality checks.

After coming home for lunch and a break for my weary eyes, my uncle took me on a tour of the streets of Turgeau, my hood. Turgeau is an old neighborhood and has some beautiful old homes. Last year while I was here, I came across a book (at a bookstore that no longer exists) of historical photos of Haiti. One of the photos was of the natural fresh water well from the 1800’s that still sits outside our gate. I hope to God I can find another one of those books while I’m here…it’s a gem! I really hope someone with a better camera than my little Nikon Coolpix took better pictures of the hood than I can to document the evolution of this place. There is not one single home in Turgeau that has not been affected. Every single home either no longer stands at all or is so badly damaged it’s only standing because the cobwebs are keeping it up. There is one street a block down from us that makes a big loop of about 12 or so formerly large, glorious homes. An entirely family once occupied this street. Not one single home remains now. There is also an apartment building belonging to another family whose entire back wall has crumpled, exposing all the units that once stood privately behind it and now stands askew. There are clothes and shoes, book and papers and other belongings strewn everywhere. One of our other satellite family members has a small compound the next block down that used to contain three homes on it around a central quad area. One of the homes was completed last summer during my stay here. Apparently the bottom floor is condemned, but not the second… Yeah, I can’t figure that one out either, but let me know if you find out how that works. The second house is still standing although there are large visible cracks everywhere and walls have separated. The third house belongs to the matriarch and is a large wooden typical Caribbean-style structure painted in turquoise blue with red trim. It looks perfectly untouched!...until you drive around the side and see that the whole back of the house fell off. It literally looks like a dollhouse now.

Oye! I had enough for the day. We went home and got dressed to have dinner at our cousin, JP’s house. It was a fabulous evening of delicious appetizers and main course and we discussed what lessons each of us has walked away with since J12. My lesson was a bit different than everyone else’s …my lesson was that God has a plan and it’s not up to us to decide or control what happens to us. Everyone else said that material things do not matter. I didn’t think of that because I cannot really relate to it. I am still living in a perfectly safe house with all my clothes, trinkets, hot water, electricity and abundance of food. My personal lesson stems from having nothing to go on but my faith that God kept my dad and the rest of family safe. Without communication or news of what’s going on with family on a daily basis, it’s a nail-biting anxiety that takes over, so all you can do is pray and have faith. And it made me realize the different types of “affected” people. I think there are three different types: Those who were in Haiti at the time of the earthquake; those of us who were not in Haiti at the time, but were deeply affected by it because of their personal ties to Haiti (like me); and those who don’t know Haiti from squat with no ties to her at all and only know what they see or hear on CNN and could never fathom such a catastrophe.

At least I was able to temporarily forget the day’s madness in JP’s killer Dry Martini’s.