In the Village

By the time we arrived in Corail I was feeling pretty hopeless.. And after the remove, suspicion, and wariness of so much of the trip to that point, on our second afternoon, I was caught completely unaware walking down the hot, dusty street, by one then two then three pairs of little hands that appeared out of nowhere and took hold of mine. They stuck by my side, smiling, laughing, jockeying with each other for the best grip on my BLANC! hands, and when we followed the sound of music into the Hope on a String courtyard, and found an impromptu jam session underway, the children - the same ages as my children - danced, and insisted I dance with them. It was, hands down, my most surprising, gut wrenching, enduring impression from the week, and a clear answer to what I'll take from Corail...

A big part of our reason for visiting Corail was to see Hope on a String - a grassroots nonprofit focused on creating social and environmental transformation through music. After all we had seen up to that point, as we drove into this dusty town without electricity, without running water, without a paved road, I remember thinking, "Music? Really? Is this really the place to start?"


But something about dancing with those children changed my answer.After so much feeling of impossible distance between my life and theirs, the ability to be present and together and joyful in a shared moment was deeply moving and really caught me off guard. I felt it too our second and last night in Corail, watching a community concert. A bunch of kids pouring their hearts out on recorders and piano and in song and dance, before a packed audience of family, friends, and neighbors that felt no different at all from the assemblies at my kids' schools back in Boston.  Here's a sampling of my favorite moments that lands on picture of dumbfounded me:

Yet even despite these moments of connection, much about our visit difficult for me - most of all the complete language barrier. My elderly host mother would say same thing over and over and over again. And I would just smile awkwardly, until she took matters into her own hands one way or another - for example, at one point disappearing into the room and emerging carrying a chair, which of course was the moment her son explained, "seat!" just as his mother collided with the door frame and careened out onto the front porch, where I ran up to meet her and take the chair from her as quickly as I could. Then I tried to insist she take the seat with vigorous but hopeless gestures and finally, when it was clear she wouldn't rest until I did, just said, "Mesi," and took a seat.

On my final day with them, I asked and took a few pictures of my host family, including these of my host mother, who all called, Mami, and who insisted on the second , both of us crouching beside the fake plant in the blinding sunlight.

But at that point I was feeling way woozy and had already begged off the breakfast she had clearly slaved over (over the charcoal stove) for me.

"Pa grangou," I said, "Malade" rubbing my stomach and feeling so guilty I would have done anything she asked.

And then she asked something I didn't understand and then said it again and again and again until finally her son said, "Give?" And I realized that, when, on my first morning, her daughter had snatched and unwrapped all of the gifts I'd arrived with - a solar powered radio, marbles for any children, drawings of our life in Boston from James and Maya, and a copy of my book - though they were gifts I had intended for the whole family (and which I had assembled not knowing what kind of family I would stay with), they had gone one to a person, with Mami assuming I had forgotten her, a rich foreigner happy to receive her impossibly gracious hospitality - one of the only rooms with a bed, abundant meals served for me inside at the table, as others sat outside on the dirt eating the meager-looking gruel we'd been warned was all we should expect. All that and not give anything in return? The realization hit me like a ton of bricks. I tore through my suitcase. My  Nike running shoes and training shirt for her son. My yellow polo button down and green sleeveless workout shirt for my guide.  My red Marmot rain jacket for Mami. Who needs it all?

Not me.

In many ways, being in Corail was the best experience of the trip - one the whole week had been building to.

But it was also very difficult.

I felt relieved to pile onto the van again.

A stop to see the model homes.

Back through Port au Prince.

Back up into Petionville and the Karibe Hotel.

Swimming and relaxing and luxuriating again at the Karibe Hotel.

That night, we put on the the best of what remained of our clothes, and drove to a sendoff soiree, where we wined and dined by the pool as the children of Haiti en Scene bowled us over with joy and power of song and dance.

The next morning to the airport.

That night, home in Boston, creeping into James and Maya's room as they slept, and losing it.

Just losing it.

The Charcoal Market

Without close equal, the most disturbing place we visited during our week in Haiti was the charcoal market. It was like a scene out of Dante's Inferno.

On the way there in our white, air-conditioned van, Pierre described how some believe a country's ecological sustainability depends on its having at least twenty five percent forest cover.

"Haiti," he said, "has two percent."

Airplanes flying over the Dominican Republic into Haiti can see the border from tens of thousands of feet high. In fact, it's apparent even from satellite images.  Even though the two countries are on the same island, divided only by a political boundary, that boundary is also now an ecological boundary. One side (the DR side) is lush, green - the kind of lush and green one would expect in the tropics, with rich, fertile earth, and ample sun and rain.  The Haiti side is brown, brown, brown. Denuded. It looks like desert. 

The number one culprit? 

Charcoal. Trees cut down. Buried in pits. Smoked into a jet black, air fouling, lung compromising, dirty, dirty fuel that the vast majority of Haitians use to cook with. So the demand stays high and the industry robust, even though the industry kills the land, dries up watersheds, and literally robs families of the capacity to earn a living in the future.

Most of the country's charcoal now comes from La Gonave, a picturesque island (and part of Haiti) that lies across the water straight west from Port au Prince.  When we arrived at the market, we all piled off the bus, and walked first to the water's edge, where, in the distance we could see La Gonave, and the impossibly beautiful scene of these classic wooden sailboats, anchored just offshore amidst glistening waters.

But there was nothing picturesque about the scene on shore. If there was sand or rocks at the water's edge, I couldn't tell. Because rising up from the water to where we stood was covered, every inch, with trash, which children and pigs picked their way through:

And then came the scene of the market. Young children, grandparents stooped with age, and everyone in between hauling and piling and transferring and loading these massive white bags of black, black coal, in the midst of coal-dust piles taller than men, the accumulation of years and years of this dirty business:

What few trees there were at the water's edge were coated black with the dust. And so were all the people. You can only imagine it coating their lungs just the same.  And no hot shower waiting at day's end.

In the midst of it all, one of the most striking and lasting impressions I have  was of Pierre speaking with one of the young boys working there with his family. Pierre did this with every bit as much grace and ease and respect as he showed speaking with the former Prime Minister earlier that morning. You can see it in this picture... 

...which also catches me with a stupid grin on my face - my feeble effort to look at ease, a thin veneer masking the overwhelm, confusion, and dismay I felt being there.

The Plantation Museum

Before we left Moulin Sur Mer, we visited the plantation museum on the property. It was in the building that still housed the old waterwheel, which once powered the massive machines used to transform sugar cane into molasses. The owner and his daughter gave us a tour. "We can't move forward unless we understand our past," she said. And then they guided us through the images of a Haiti when Haiti was the most profitable of all of France's colonies - a period when it seemed not to matter how quickly African slaves were dying from the crushing labor and brutal treatment, because new boats of replacements were always arriving, their price was low, and the global demand for sugar was high and getting higher - no matter the rumblings here and there about abolition.

And the beneficiaries? The "Blancs" - that is, the whites, the mzungus, the gringos, the people who looked like me.

Some scenes serene and jarring from Moulin Sur Mer...

 

Brain Drain

Our first stop back in the city was at the offices of FOKAL, a foundation working to bring positive change on all sorts of levels in Haiti. It's head is Michelle Pierre-Louis, who is also Haiti's former Prime Minister. She also teaches at the national university.

This I found to be her most compelling appeal for hope, and to "Just keep going" in the face of obstacles seemingly insurmountable...

"Each year," she said, "I ask my students, 'If you were able to obtain a Visa, would you leave Haiti for the United States?' And over ninety, ninety five percent of them say, 'I would go Visa or no.'"

And I remember thinking, "Who can blame them?" If it were me or my family, either path is fraught with uncertainties, I could see it being an excruciatingly difficult choice - but also very difficult to justify staying, to bet on hope and change, when so many hopes have been dashed, and so many of the changes have been for the worse.

Full Hearts

After five years of this we should know by now there is no going to water with these kids without them getting into it.

A few weeks ago, after Drew's epic morning nap, and the rest of us continuing the assault on the long-neglected back lot, we made a day trip  to Halibut Point State Park The water was freezing. It didn't matter.

"We didn't bring dry clothes for you guys," I said.

"I don't mind," said Maya, as James plunged in,

...and she followed.

...and soon Drew was squirming to get out of our arms and join the fun. There was no holding him back either.

And when all of a sudden it was no longer fun - "I'm so cold, Daddy," said Maya - I helped her out of her wet things and gave her my shirt. 

It did the trick.

And as we made our way back, against the chill ocean breeze, I warmed myself with a happy baby in the ergo against my bare skin back, as we all scrambled across the rocks - me and Drew, James, now shirtless,

 and Ashley - carrying the purple backpack now bursting with soaking wet clothes - led Maya by the hand, as the heavenly lights kissed them both.

That night at bedtime, lying there in the dark, James said, "Mommy, everything is right in my heart today."

"What do you mean, James?" she asked.

"I'm full of joy," he said.

"Me too," added Maya.

Me too.

We five.

.

Earthquake Proofing, Tents, Model Homes, and King Sized Beds

Even though Haiti's Presidential Palace is still in ruins, and 50% of the rubble from the earthquake remains, traveling about the country, we still saw quite a lot of construction and reconstruction under way.

Full disclosure - I know very little about construction or structural engineering. Still, the construction I did see struck me as flimsy. The basic and pervasive design started with a stand of four spindly poles of rebar marking off each corner of each room and each building, big or small. Even in finished or near-finished buildings, these poles were still apparent, jutting through roofs toward the sky. I didn't know if this was for style, or for lack of cutters or blow torches to finish the job, or for holding out the possibility of one day adding upper floors.

These stands of rebar were bound together by small metal brackets, are were then linked by rows of cinder blocks, held together by concrete.

And when the earth shakes? This was the remnants of a school we saw in the mountains several hours south and east of Port Au Prince.

Nearby this devastated school they were rebuilding a temporary replacement.

"What's different in how they build now?" someone asked Pierre.

"Now," said Pierre, "they build with six poles of rebar instead of four, and every five or six feet, there is a horizontal "belt" of rebar to give greater integrity to the walls."

My journal sketch of new and improved Haitian construction

"How much would those belts help?" I wondered.  Some in our group claimed to have seen groups of six rebar poles jutting out from rubble of the collapsed school.  I didn't notice - though driving around the country, I rarely spotted more than four.

The one notable exception we saw to this ubiquitous construction method was when we went to visit a field of model homes - developed as part of an international competition, in which designers competed to present (and a select few invited to self-finance construction of a prototype of) affordable, earthquake-resistant homes.  The one we spent the most time in and learning about was this one:

Built on a cushioning bed of recycled tires. Its geodesic dome roof was all triangles. And its striking artistic flourishes - like the bathroom and shower in the photo below - showed other, higher uses for trash, in this case for plastic bottles, which, along with styrofoam food containers (thanks to international food "aid" that feeds for a day, but does nothing to boost local food production capacity) that litter the roadways, the waterways, and the countryside - as in the backdrop of these photos.

It was an amazing house. Inside, on a 90-plus degree day, it was cool and comfortable, with cross-ventilating breezes.  And in a way it was hopeful to see on display the ingenuity and craftsmanship of this dynamic Haitian artist/architect/entrepreneur.

But as it turned out, the project was a huge waste of his money and time. Part of the project's initial draw was the possibility that designers would recoup their investments and then some, when the government channeled redevelopment funds into construction of huge numbers of the winning designs. But the program had started under the old presidential regime. And with the election of Martelly as President in 2011, the whole project was abandoned.

As we walked among some of the other model homes in the barren field only a few miles from where over half a million people still live in tented camps, we realized the most prescient designer was a Connecticut-based firm that never even bothered building a model. They just paid to erect a billboard with this picture of their home:

On the way back into Port Au Prince, just passed the airport, we saw the tents again. This time I also noticed one of the billboards rising above them. It was was an advertisement for king sized beds -

Like a cruel joke and, just like those model homes, a picture of the possible that is, at least from where things now stand, seemingly impossibly out of reach.

Whitewashing - or Not

From the mountains, we made our way back down, along the coast eastward, and back into Port Au Prince. As it happened, it was the day before the anniversary of the earthquake. Everywhere there were signs of a city frantically readying itself for its moment, again, on the world's stage, for the arrival of Bill Clinton and other dignitaries en route to mark the occasion.

I spotted the one and only garbage truck that I saw all week. And everywhere there were makeshift crews with hospital masks, raking and shoveling piles of trash into wheelbarrows.  The median from the pothole checkered road from the airport was being filled with gleaming white stones - creating a simple, but distinctly improved visual contrast to the surrounding dusty grey.

My cynical engine by then firing on all cylinders, my initial reaction was "WHITEWASHING!" But as our group talked about the unfolding scene, someone mentioned the same treatment Boston had gotten in the run up to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, or for the visit by Pope John Paul years before.

So why shouldn't Port au Prince put its best foot forward for visitors. Don't we all clean as best as we can when we have company? And do our dinner guests cross our thresholds and think "WHITEWASH!" when they see cleanliness and order and not the typical chaos and mayhem of our three-kid, one dog household?

And so I sat too with the half-full view that the fact the government can organize this kind of activity is proof there IS actually capacity to make things happen.

And that is something.