Fonse Pase Nwa: Day 1 - 4 in Haiti!!!!!!!!!!

Bonjou!

Li fe uit dimaten (It is 8 in the morning). I have been up since 6AM, and laid in the bed for about an hour and a half before that trying to keep myself asleep. Our bedroom has a big window that lets the light in as SOON as the sun starts rising. With (and before) the sun comes the sounds of roosters crowing, dogs barking, trucks going into the city, and people getting up.

Right now I am sitting at the dining room table typing to you (not eating the breakfast of omelets), which has room for 10 huge wooden chairs. The architecture for humanity guy just yelled at Terminator because he is chewing on wires and scratching up the wooden luxury bar.

Yep, Terminator is the house kitten. He is semi feral and cannot be picked up right now (you can touch him if you go slow). I am working with him so he will one day be able to be held atleast for 10 seconds. I think he is 9 - 12 weeks old. I am going to have to make a conscious effort to touch him several times a day because all the attention is on Chans (Chance), a St. Bernard looking 8 week old puppy. He was found on the side of the road...and brought back here a couple weeks ago. Here he comes bouncing his little booty in here now....

But, let me back up. I am staying at the Architecture for Humanity (AFH) house. They are actually renting the house from someone, and we (AIDG - Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group) are renting a room from them. I share that room with my 'supervisor' Jess, a woman my age from Connecticut whose lived in Haiti for 3 years (she is fluent in Kreyol and French). Jess's sister flew in the same day I did to visit her for a few days. She is feeling kinda sick right now, so is resting in the room. She's only just about to graduate high school so I think all this is a bit much for her. Anyway, the house....it's 4 stories...actually its a mansion, like most of the homes up here in Pétionville.
My bathroom in the house

Pétionville is located on the top of the mountain , and it takes about an hour to get down to the main city of Port-au-Prince. Yep, it's exclusive. And about 10 degree cooler up here! Last night I was actually cold. Here you find 18 - 24 hour electricity most of the time (our house has 24 since we have a generator), no trash on the streets, and safety by means of an armed guard who sits inside our gate, with his rifle in hand 24/7.

Check out the view from the balcony off our room...

The AFH team consists of their leader, who has the full floor suite on the top of the house, 3 other workers (2 Haitian-Americans/Canadians & 1 white American), and maybe a couple others I haven't met. There is a support team of Haitians who cook, do the laundry, clean, and a Haitian guy who I think takes care of internet tech stuff. AFH uses this house to home the teams they bring in to build or give lessons to Haitian architects. AIDG does the same when we bring down masons and architects. The dog and cat have full run of the house inside and outside and come and go as they please. Oh, and the little black goat, who is nameless, can be seen running around in the yard.

So this is the place I will be staying while I am in Port-au-Prince (PAP). For the first three days though, we stayed in Cap-Haitien (Cap), a 45 minute plane ride from PAP. We took Salsa Air, but I am told sometimes we get to ride in the private Helicopter. The AIDG house in Cap is smaller and less glamorous than this, but it's still nice.
Our room in Cap

There are a few Haitians working there, a Haitian-Canadian/American, and a couple Americans working for AIDG there. It's hard to describe where people, especially African-diaspora people are from, so from now on out unless I go into detail about someone, we'll just all be black. We basically just toured Cap-Haitien with Jess, her sister, Donald (founder of Shelter2Home), and a few of her friends. We went walking through marche la (the market) and I discovered I can find anything I want here, from hair products for the dreads to new underwear. I didn't see any Soy Milk though. While in Cap we stopped by a hotel owned by one of Jess's friends (Steph) mother by LABADEE. Labadee is the #1 cruise ship stop in the whole Caribbean - with zip-lines, a ferris wheel, jet skiing, para-sailing and more. You would think that with all the people pouring money into those cruises, the areas surrounding it would be prosperous as well. Nope, as soon as you step outside of that areas its back to being dirt poor. The money that should help the economy is of course filtered through the local government, and goes into building bigger and better houses for them and their families. So, now we know that going to vacation in Haiti in these beautiful spots does not actually help the economy. Anyway, we went swimming in the ocean (no I did not get my hair wet and yes I did go in there with my khaki shorts on over my bathing suit) and then had a drink at the bar. It was something with rum in it, and since I rarely drink I was getting dizzy after 1/2 of the little glass. Since then I have had a headache, but I think its more from not drinking enough water. Right now I am sipping on the Gatorade I brought, so hopefully it will go away by tomorrow. We ordered food at the bar, but it was taking a while and the game (Lakers vs. Celtics) was on, so Steph (short for Stephan - a guy) told them to take the food to his house when it was ready, and we all proceeded to watch the Lakers kill the Celtics on their big screen TV. I ordered the Spaghetti with vegetables and it was delicious. Someone who shall not be named got drunk and someone else didn't want to cart a drunk guy back down the hill to Cap, so that drunk person fell asleep on Steph's mothers couch and, since there were no vacancies, we three (me, Jess, Chrissy (the sister)) slept in Steph's room. HE HAD A HOT SHOWER!!!! (which i did not get to enjoy, and even in this AFH house we have cold showers) We also met his brother and cousin-type person who was nice. This is that top 2%, who are the mixed Haitians. I'll leave it at that. A 30 second walk from our NBA finals revealed the real poverty-ridden Haiti again.

I forgot to mention, on our way back from picking up our baggage from the airport in Cap (the plane is small so all the luggage couldn't go at once), we were moto'd (transportation = motorbikes) into a sea of burning tires and people throwing beer bottles over a wall. I didn't notice until I saw everyone else's motos huddling franticly as far away from the wall as possible. The people in that area were upset because they didn't have electricity. Why was that such a big deal in an area that rarely has it anyway....the BRAZIL v. NORTH KOREA world cup game was on!! Since the government controls when the electricity goes on and off, people were pissed because they wouldn't turn it on for 2 hours so the people could watch the game. I would riot too. We went to a little bar and watched the game. Afterwards, some UN soldiers came in. They couldn't come in before because they were told it was a security issue to be inside with Haitians while a Brazil or Argentina game was on....how stupid. Most Haitians are for Brazil, since I guess that is the closet to a black country that has a chance of winning. I was rooting for South Africa, or any african country.

I am leaving some stuff out, but it's cold up here and I have a headache. I'm glad I know someone down here (Davidson) for when I want to get away from all these people. We were going to hang out yesterday, but since I live in the super rich part of town an hour and a half from his place, we are going to wait until Sunday probably. That is when I will go and by some drinks to store in the fridge. And some non-meat foods to add to my beans and rice. I am happy on the beans and rice and have not been hungry at all. I hope I am loosing some weight. I have been doing yoga for the past 2 days and stretching, because I feel stiff. Okay...since Chrissy is sick but I want to lay down too (we have bunk beds) I'm going to find another spot to rest. Then I will practice some more Kreyol.

OH! That reminds me....on the way back to the airport my moto driver was so fast we were going to arrive like 3 miunutes before Jess, who speaks Kreyol and has the money. I already told the guy I couldn't speak Kreyol (he couldn't speak French, only Spanish&Kreyol), but I needed to tell him Jess had the money. I went over the sentence like 10 times in my head before I got the courage to say it. He pointed to the airport and I took my chance -- I said "Ou bezwen tale paske mwen zanmi gen lajan la" (You need to wait because my friend has the money). It's actually supposed to be "friend my" instead of "my friend", but he understood and laughed. THANK YOU DAVIDSON for always telling me to TALE (Wait). When we got there the guys at the airport made fun of Americans for only being able to speak English. I could understand them but they thought I couldnt. They were saying you cant speal kreyol, french, spanish, nothing. In my mind I just thought - that's what you have to live in Haiti, jerk. HORRIBLE THOUGHT I KNOW, but it's real.

Things I should have brought:
A portable dresser (I have no place for my clothes since she has all the space...)
A scale
My yoga mat
My Pilates DVD

We use solar power at the house too - My cell phone is even solar powered! It takes a while to charge though.