Haiti

Day 2 – I had a bad night’s sleep. I don’t know if it was nervousness or being in a different bed, but I woke several times in the night. We all finally woke, had a “we don’t really want to make breakfast but if you want to pay for something, we’ll fake it” breakfast of quickly scrambled eggs and dry toast that must’ve been left over from the last time the restaurant WAS open. We were asking the hotel if we could leave our car there while we were in Haiti – we wouldn’t be allowed to bring a car into the country – and I was a little concerned about leaving a rental car in a strange hotel –a strange remote hotel. After getting that straightened out we had to find a way into town, to the gua gua station, where we would catch a gua gua to the border, Dajabon. The people at the desk introduced us to a man who had just stopped by the hotel to say hi to a friend, and who gave us a ride in the back of his pickup truck into town. Along the way he stopped at a bank, so we could change money from Dominican pesos to Haitian gourdes. In the bank, the people told Amy that she didn’t need to change her money – pesos were accepted and fine in Haiti.

We caught a gua gua at the station. These gua gua’s were different from the usual third-hand vans and pickup trucks we’re used to in La Galera – this was a mini bus, with comfortable seats and AC. The driver seemed aware of the higher quality of the vehicle too, as he floored it out of town and on the road south to Dajabon, one of two towns from which you can cross into Haiti from the DR. He was unable to keep up the pace, however, as the road sprouted a series of potholes and unpaved stretches, along with the usual Dominican road collection of motorcycles, cars, and trucks making their own lanes and speeds. I don’t know if I’ve said this before, but driving in the Dominican is a big game of chicken.



The ride to Dajabon was 45-ish minutes. We arrived in the bus station, right across from a large arch that said, “welcome to the Dominican Republic,” and we thought we were at the border. No. The border was a kilometer’s walk away. We shouldered our bags and walked there, having to zig zag a bit as we asked for directions and each person told us to change directions, turning our walk from an”L” to a staircase. As we were approaching the real border, and the real arch saying “welcome to the Dominican Republic,” we saw a couple of obviously American men. We asked them where they were from and they said they were from Philadelphia, but were living in Cap Haitien – where we were headed – and working for the Royal Caribbean Cruise line, the cruise that used to take people to a beach in Haiti and not even tell them it’s Haiti – at one time calling it “Hispaniola” and “Paradise Island” in their brochures. They were heading to Puerto Plata, on the north shore of the DR, to meet the next boat coming in. They introduced us to a Haitian man they said had been their guide, and had helped them get across the border. We were a little skeptical – how hard could it be when you could see the border? – but we didn’t immediately discourage his overtures for our business. We all headed through the arch, and saw the bridge to Haiti. The bridge crosses the River Massacre, named for a battle in the Haitian revolution where the revolting slaves killed many French. The river is also infamous for an event in 1937, where the Dominican dictator Trujillo spent a week slaughtering Haitians at the border, in order to have a scapegoat for Dominican labor woes.

We stopped at Dominican immigration, a building before the bridge, where Amy paid our fees of $100 to leave the DR. Our “guide “ stayed with us, we not knowing if we needed him or not.



The bridge is wide enough for a vehicle, but we later learned that a section of the bridge had been broken by a falling tree, and the main gate was closed, leaving a door on one side that a guard allowed people to pass through. The visual here was a stark and sudden change. The Haitian side of the river was almost barren – there were several large trees that had been cut down, and the rest of the scene was a large, garbage-strewn field, with a few vendors’ tents / tarps set up along the way. Looking down at the river, we saw that it was full of people – people washing clothes, people washing themselves, people washing bicycles. As we passed through the gate, there were people in line with wheelbarrows of goods, a group of men passing rebar underneath the gate, people arguing with the guard. While the Dominican side had been crowded, the energy on the Haitian side was something completely different – everyone was moving, doing something. At this point we felt a little better about having our guide, as he took us on the quarter mile walk from the bridge to the Haitian customs building in Ouanaminthe, the Haitian border town. Looking back at Dajabon from the Haitian side, it looked like the Boston skyline.



The Haitian customs office looked like something out of a third world cliché movie –a small concrete building, with a couple guys in uniforms behind a bank tellers’ window, and a guy sitting behind a desk on the side of the room with his legs up on the desk. In our entire 15 minute experience there he did nothing, except once tell me what date to put on our visitors pass. He told me the wrong date. When I tried to correct him, he disagreed, so I left the wrong date on. Also, while we were filling out our forms, a swarm of activity was taking place in and around the customs building. It seemed that every mototaxi driver and moneychanger had showed up, hoping for our business. At this point our guide became useful, as he negotiated a quick money exchange and found two motorcycles to give us a ride to the bus station. Even though the guide had picked and placed us on two motorcycles, other drivers were still grabbing our arms, asking us to ride with them, trying to put our bags on their bikes.


The bike ride was through the heart of Ouanaminthe – a dirt road with enough potholes to make the Dominican roads look like expressways – where we turned into the bus station – a dirt lot with a couple stands on the edges and some old American school buses lined up. Being the only tourists in town, we were the center of attention - a crowd of vendors, featuring the ever-present moneychangers, gathered around us as we tried to make it to the bus. Our guide told us it would cost us 250 pesos – around seven and a half bucks - each. Knowing that the Haitians weren’t paying anything like that, we said no, and asked around for the price. One person told us 100 pesos, and we thought we had a negotiating vantage point. As we approached the bus, the people in front of the door and on the bottom steps started moving about – it turns out they kicked some folks out of the front seat of the bus to make room for us, the “blans” (white foreigners in Kreyol). Our guide told us that if we wanted him to guide us in Cap Haitien, he would “go to his house and tell his woman that he would be away.” We told him we didn’t think this would be necessary. He asked to be paid, and we gave him 200 pesos, from which we told him to pay his motorcycle driver what we owed him. (We had paid our two motorcycles, but we also owed the guide’s driver.) He made an unhappy face, and said he was usually paid more than that. When we asked how much, he said 20 dollars. We paid him another 100 pesos, and got on the bus.

When we got on the bus, we thought we were being shown tourist courtesy by being given the front seat. We soon realized that we were given this seat to allow the vendors easy access to us. They all took turns – the woman selling grilled corn on the cob, the –as always – moneychangers, the soda guy, and – my personal favorite – the guy with a phone, saying it was one dollar for one minute. (I might try that one back home.) During this people were still piling on what we thought was an already full bus. We also kept asking people what they were paying, hut no one offered any feedback. Also, a couple guys kept asking for our payment, and we told them we’d pay when everyone else did, thinking we’d then find out how much the typical fee was.

Out the window I noticed a fight start. The crowd outside the bus started swarming around the other side of the bus, and I saw a couple guys chasing each other with sticks. This went on for a couple minutes, and then it calmed down into a shouting match. One of the participants then got on the bus – it turns out he was the driver. He and another man stood at our seat and demanded our payment. We told him we didn’t want to pay 750 pesos (Benjamin gets a free ride, as he’s sitting on Amy’s lap). They said, yes, that was the rate, then, in what was a great line, one of the guys said “more or less.” I said we’d prefer less or less, and they laughed and demanded our money. We gave in - it being not so expensive for us and we wanting to get going and not knowing any other options – and the two of them took our money and immediately started paying people outside of the bus, for what we do not know. Maybe it was group effort to get blan rates, maybe they owed people money for the bus, maybe it was a bet on how much the blans would pay – but once they had paid up the bus started going. At this point the bus was packed, with people sitting and standing everywhere. Our reserved seat had the four of us, our bags, and a 5 gallon container of some unknown liquid sitting on Amy’s feet. She was worried this was gas, as it started leaking on her leg during the ride.

Note: vehicle horns are communication items in Haiti. The driver beeps if someone is in his way. The driver beeps if goats are in the road. The driver beeps if he sees a friend. The driver beeps on an empty road, just in case there is a friend coming who might be in his way.

We pulled out of the parking lot, horn blaring and passengers at medium volume. We had no idea how far it was to Cap Hatien – we had a feeling it was 1½ hours, and hoped this was true. The road, if you want to call it that, was amazing – it was like something out of Mad Max. It was dirt, about 4 cars wide, and you made your own lane in either direction. Throw in people walking, bikes riding, and goats wandering, it was the closest to anarchy I’ve experienced, up to this point. We got pulled over by a policeman, who made all the people standing get off the bus. It turns out there is some rule against people standing on buses and, while the driver and a couple passengers argued with the policeman for awhile, the offending standers got off without too much fight, left alongside a dirt road miles from any towns that we could see.

The road was under construction and none of the bridges had been finished so, when we got to an unfinished bridge, we would usually go around, dipping down and then back up to the road. One bridge actually had a river, with people bathing and doing laundry in it.



A woman stood up in one of the front seats and started pulling bath products – soaps, colognes, etc. – out and making sales pitches to the bus. At least that’s what I think she was doing – she would hold up a bar of soap and make what sounded like a sales pitch on its virtues to everyone, but I don’t understand Kreyol. The noise level on the bus steadily grew, and there were always a couple arguments going on. We lost track of the time, and have no idea how long the trip took. Along the way we passed numerous white Hummers and Jeeps, with UN on their hoods – we don’t know if they were there for peacekeeping purposes or to build the road we were on (there were many UN construction vehicles also) but they were the majority – by far – of the vehicles we passed on the road.

As we neared Cap Haitien, the road became much rougher, and we jostled into town, without knowing that the second largest city in Haiti was near. The buildings also got worse – it became more crowded, with more people walking on the road, and more broken down vehicles and buildings in the landscape. One interesting note – there wasn’t nearly as much garbage on the roads as we have become used to in the Dominican. The road out from Ouanaminthe was relatively garbage free, and when we got into Cap Haitien, while there were a lot of rundown buildings and vehicles, there wasn’t much actual garbage. We have discussed whether this is because a) Haitians are cleaner, b) they are so poor that they use everything, leaving little to no garbage, or c) there is little of the typical packaged product sold in Haiti because, again, of the poverty, so there is little to throw out. We’ve decided it’s probably a combination of the three.



Entering Cap Haitien was a new experience for me. While I’ve seen my share of rundown neighborhoods (lived in several) in the US and seen some poorer areas of the Dominican, this was a third world city in the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. As the ride in showed, there is no infrastructure as we are used to it. At one time Cap Haitien was considered one of the most beautiful cities in the new world, as the French had built it in the 17th century styles they had at home. It was a thriving port for Haiti in the early years of its independence, but the glory days had passed by about, oh, 150 years ago. The scene – the crowds, the dust, the every square inch being taken up by something – either a vendor or a box of bike parts or people just moving – was like nothing I’ve ever witnessed. As we pulled into the bus station, I had the feeling of being in the worst neighborhood I had ever been in. There were buses everywhere, but there were also vendors –ladies with clothes laid out in between the buses or along the walls of the bus yard, puddles of oil and mud and sludge, and people walking about. For lack of a better word, I freaked. We got off the bus, stepping into a puddle of ankle-deep sludge, and were immediately surrounded by people vying for our services. I made a beeline for the gate out of there. For a little ways I kept Amy and the kids nearby, but after a few strides I realized I had left them behind. I was busy freaking out, so I hoped they’d catch up. Finally Amy and Lane yelled at me to stop, while Amy stopped in a bunker where there were some people with uniform shirts on to see where we could get a taxi. Someone hailed one – the car seemed to appear out of the midst of the buses and people and sludge – and we haggled for two exchanges before getting in. I was still having a tough time –this was a new entry on the most anarchic scene I had ever witnessed – as we pulled through the crowds and down streets that I would have been terrified to be lost on, instead of being driven by a stranger in a direction I knew not where.



We headed to a hotel we had looked up – the Mont something, on a hill on the outer edge of town – but it turned out they didn’t have room. So we headed to our second choice, a hotel in town, the Roi Cristophe. We made it there, they had room, and we went in. It is beautiful – it was built for the French governor in Cap Haitien’s glory days, plenty of old courtyards – and we went up to our little, and old, room. I immediately went into the shower, with my sludge-covered sandals and muddy t-shirt, and turned on the shower, trying to wash away the images, I think.



After getting myself together, we headed out to the hotel pool. Amy bravely went out to check out the neighborhood and look for some place to change money, as we were told that pesos couldn’t be used in Cap Haitien. The hotel had a good old classic pool – it was a large, cement pool. There were two floating mattresses in it, and Lane and Ben claimed them. We had the pool to ourselves, but there were a couple French-looking men in lounge chairs near the pool, and a meeting was forming at a table on the patio in back of the pool. A woman came by, who had greeted us as we entered the hotel earlier. In the parking lot, she had tried to sell her hair care services – specifically, would Lane or Amy like her to braid their hair? We had told her we had to check in, and perhaps we would get braids or haircuts tomorrow. When she found us at the pool, she asked again – would Lane like a braid? Would I like a haircut? I told her we would wait until Amy returned and let her know. She told me she had run into Amy and Amy had okayed a braid for Lane. Lane said she didn’t want a braid, and I told the woman so. She said she was going to the store to get colored beads for Lane’s braid, and what colors would Lane want? I told her Lane didn’t want a braid, and maybe we would do hair activities tomorrow. She told me she wouldn’t be at the hotel tomorrow, as her baby was in the hospital in Port Au Prince and was having an operation tomorrow.

I hate to sound cynical. But this is the third time I have heard someone, when asked to wait until tomorrow, tell me that they had a relative in the hospital far away and had to go see them. The first two times it was in the Dominican. Either there are a lot of hospitalized people on this island or we meet the unluckiest folks here.

Amy showed at the pool. I told her of the hair lady, and Amy said Lane could have a braid if she wanted. I told her Lane didn’t want one. Then Amy left again – she had to go back to a bank to get money, as she hadn’t found one the first time out. The hair lady returned, with braiding materials. I told her that Lane didn’t want a braid today, and that Amy would return, and to ask us then about haircuts. She went over to one of the French-looking guys and talked him into giving him a foot massage.

Later, Amy returned, we both got haircuts, and Lane got a single braid. The hair lady was at the pool the next day.



That night, we went to the hotel restaurant. When we entered, a woman sitting at one of the tables asked us, “Are you Americans?” We said we were, and that we lived in Maine. She said she did too. At her table were two American men – in their early twenties – and a Haitian woman who lived in NY City. The were there to work in a clinic they had created – the Haitian woman was funding and building a school in her hometown of Milot, 20 kilometers south of Cap Haitien. The told us how they came to Haiti a couple times each year with school and medical supplies for the kids and people of the school community. They treated the children and adults for conditions typical to this community – ear infections, worms, scabies, etc. We talked with them for a while, and they invited us to join them the next day, to visit the school and community.