The Eagle Has Landed
Well, the eagle has landed –sort of. One quick (and quick was all I had the stomach for) look in the mirror would did not reveal an eagle of any sort –more like a weathered old bird flopping down. In any event, I am here in Haiti and as promised am going to give it my best shot to chronicle this trip on the PWP blog page. One of the, shall we say “charming” (charming in no way being the expression I want to use, but I am pulling out all my yogic breathing techniques so I can keep these transmissions with a PG rating- ha) things about trying to do anything electronic in a developing country is dealing with sporadic Internet service. So, you will all have to forgive any run on sentences and/or other grammar or spelling mistakes as my goal will be to perfect a faster than the speed of light “cut & paste” technique that will have no time for spell check in order to post whenever I see a wireless signal appear. Not guerilla warfare, but a fight none the less.
Today I arrived at the Turks & Caicos Airport at 6:30 am as they requested and for almost the next 4 hours I sat waiting for them to fix their plane to Cap-Haitien. All I could think of was “come on God –really! Do you think I am going to need this extra test of patience before I even get to Haiti?” Finally we were all herded out on the tarmac to board a very old looking plane and had the sheepish explanation from a very sweaty frazzled looking employee who explained they weren’t able to fix the regular plane so were going to “try” this one. “TRY!” I guess we were all hoping that that was just a little language goof and assumed he meant “we are going to use this very reliable, perfectly working back up model.” After all, we all couldn’t have been so bereft of patience by that time that we would so cavalierly accept that we may be boarding the ‘old Bessie’ model that hadn’t been fired up for the last decade –or could we? In any event, we started off down the runway and wouldn’t you know, we couldn’t get enough power or something to actually take off. There was no explanation forthcoming from the cockpit which I had a perfect view of since I was in the front seat and all my non-mechanical (understatement of the century) mind could deduce was that they both –and I do mean both pilots who each had a hand on what I assumed was a throttle of sorts - couldn’t get it to produce enough speed. Okay, so I was praying my little (understatement again) butt of by this time and, as I said with no explanation, we taxied around the runway and back to the start and tried again. One quick look over my shoulder revealed that all Haitian eyes were shut tight and some hands in the air and, apparently they were praying their little butts off to. If I hadn’t had a death grip on the seat in front of me with both hands, I would have got my camera out and taken a picture.
Forty minutes later, we touched down, opened our eyes and stepped onto a burning hot tarmac into a dust storm. Gets better and better. It has been very dry in Haiti for over a month and today it was windy enough to stir up every piece of dust that hasn’t been tramped into mud cement. I’m wearing a good coating of it as I type this as I spent the afternoon on the back of my administrator’s motorcycle. Okay, enough about me –Hey, I heard that clapping all the way to Haiti.
On the ride from the airport to the Hotel, I was surprised to see the streets so empty. Of course it was still a merry-go-round of all kinds of crazy sights –men pounded down pushing wheel barrows with massive loads of everything from soda pop to mattresses, ladies sporting unique hats of food items like live poultry, dishes and I even saw one with a giant dishpan of mirrors (I don’t know how the sun beating off those did not set fire to anything in line with those deadly barbs of refracting light), the usual group of men fixing a flat tire in the middle of the street and the other group of men standing in the middle of the street watching, the local bus heading back to the countryside with as many hundreds of people balancing on the roof as there were squished inside so close it looked like one massive person and a million other mind boggling expressions of daily Haitian life. So, there, you already have one of those grammatically incorrect run on sentences you have to overlook for me. However, for me it seemed like a slow day in Cap-Haitien.
Toto, our Haitian administrator/driver and wearer of many hats of his own in Haiti explained that all schools are still closed in Haiti in respect of those who died in the earthquake. Immediately all conversation shifted from why I was so late arriving to rapid speed expressions of how the earthquake has affected all of Haiti. With all the schools closed, what makes up the largest percentage of the Haitian population (children under 18 yrs.) were all sitting in their houses with nothing to do (hence the emptier than usual streets) while their parents still had to pay for school tuition because the Government teachers still had to be paid. This was the Haitian Government’s idea of something that would be good for the country. It is a perfect example of how one simple thing like this has tentacles that reach out and squeeze many facets of Haitian culture. With schools closed, mothers with small children can’t leave them to go and spend their days in the market to eek out their meager existence to feed those kids because they can’t afford to pay someone to look after them – taptap (local taxis) drivers sit on the sidelines not eeking out their few cents per kid that use their services each day to go to school –local vendors then do not eek out their few cents from the taptap drivers who buy water and snacks from them during the day –the gas stations who can basically do what they want jack the gas prices up since the taptap drivers aren’t using so much gas and, - the carnival continues……….
There was much talk about the refugees that were sent on busses the Haitian government paid for to bring them to live in the soccer stadium in Cap-Haitien so they could begin clearing rubble off the Port au Prince streets. I guess the first rubble to go were the displaced people. What the government didn’t do was send any International aid to support these refugees. I will have to concur with this as I did not see one UN vehicle at the airport or in town all day – and that is very unusual. Toto said they are mostly in Port au Prince. So, the Cap-Haitian Government officials have been on radio, t.v. and using megaphones blasting from vehicles hired to drive all over the City, begging every group in the area to help to feed the refugees in the stadium and the overflow of patients that have been brought to the hospital. No one knows what will happen when they can’t do it anymore. Toto says that they do what we can today and pray for what they will have to do tomorrow. He further went on to say that in Cap-Haitien, it is Haitians and missionaries helping the people. That was vehemently backed up by the very tired looking owner of the Hotel where I stay who says the burden is falling on the business sector heavily and if they don’t do something soon, security is going to become a serious issue and it will be places like hers that will be the first targets.
I can see this posting is getting too long and I feel I haven’t even touched the surface of what I learned today. I must turn myself off even though I am still waiting for the Internet to turn on (grrrrrrr). I am sure there is some kind of “blog etiquette” I have completely abused at this point. I will have to let it suffice to say that it is really not possible to fathom the intricacies of this catastrophe. I will move to a close for today by letting you all know that tomorrow Toto and I will meet with the rest of the PWP staff and plan some full days of purchasing and cooking food (I’m already praying there will be no goat heads involved) that we will take to the hospital patients on Sunday as the part we “can” do. Toto reminded me that everyone has something to give and we must keep focused on that because the part we can’t do is too big for any of us. God will have to carry that burden.
Peace,
Julie
Posted on Wednesday, February 3 2010, at 5:40 PM.