Market Forces...

Bernadette arrives each morning at about 8.00am, usually as we are finishing breakfast.  We are able to cook a little for ourselves – and breakfast is varied and nutritious as long as we like fruit, eggs, toast and peanut butter! (homemade)  The fruit is ripe, sweet and delicious: papaya, banana (called “fig” or “figue” in Creole – the word “banana” is reserved for plantains), pineapple, (confusingly called “anana”) and mango are regulars, and guavas, grapefruit, oranges, and soursop (no, I had never heard of it either) make more occasional appearances.

Bernadette prepares lunch – salad type food, and also cooks dinner.  And dinner is tasty, varied and supersubstantial!  All cooked over a charcoal cooker or two.  We eat beef based vegetable stews, rice and beans – both white and black, chicken as fresh as can be – frequently bought live and introduced to the pot at the last minute...  Little is stored as fresh or frozen (given the precarious nature of the electricity supply) so Bernadette makes daily or twice daily visits to the market.

Somehow in my last visit the market had escaped me, so a visit today was a first, and somewhat enlightening.

There is one supermarket in cap-Haitien – population 190,000 – expensive, and with an armed guard on permanent duty outside.  Inside, the air-conditioning is enough to account for some of the prices, and there is a limited but predictable supply of coffee, milk, frozen goods and vegetables – with a booze section.  There are also a number of small roadside shops – poorly supplied, and as varied as a pharmacy – no prescriptions needed – clothes  shops and many, many lottery outlets.

However it seems most residents buy their food from the markets, and a visit today, even relatively early, found the streets crowded.  There is a covered market – the Marche Fer – which is predominately food, and inside there are colourful stalls of peppers, onions, beans, fruit, etc, in close proximity to charcoal (for cooking) soap in long bars, and washing powder in vast barrels sold by the cup.  Nearby was less familiar dried fish, live crabs and even two tubs with turtles swimming around (turtle soup is a delicacy).  Chickens are invariably sold live to ensure freshness...  Round the corner a further market sported stall after stall of shoes – new and second hand, in numbers from 10-12 up to several hundreds.  Bags, clothes, interspersed with artificial flowers and toiletries.  There were even stalls selling drugs – some unnamed capsules, and some branded medication for hypertension.  (If you take Lisinopril for your blood pressure let me know and I’ll try and get you some!)  

  

It helps to know the price of things, as the price quoted to whites (“blan” or “blanc”) is invariably higher to start with, much higher.  And within the market there are smaller traders who are trying to make a living offering 2 or 3 bananas, or bunches of herbs, balanced in trays on their head or in their arms.  As much as I would like to be assimilated into, and understand ordinary Haitian living, I suspect market shopping is always going to be a specialist field, best left to experts.  Thanks Bernadette.

An Enduring Dawn Chorus...

The day begins at about 6.30am for us in the flat, though it has already made itself apparent from about 5.30am with the first of the semi-continuous church services that are held throughout the four lower levels throughout the day.  Most of them are accompanied by singing, at some point, and it is for us a gentle nudge into awareness.  Evanet is the church care-taker, and he unlocks the door at 5.00am for people to come and go.  Groups of up to 100 meet for prayer, bible study, preaching (some of which sounds very vigorous!), counselling, choir practice – there are probably 25 official choirs and singing groups associated with the church and who help with leading worship in the various Sunday and weekday services.  There is also a style of ministry that is not commonly seen in the UK or New Zealand which is offered most weekdays: people are invited to sit or lie on mats and the scriptures are read, or accurately “chanted” over them for up to 2 hours at a time.  (Though there is no fixed start or stop time and folk come and go at will.)

The bible is well known to many in Haiti – Bernadette is Robyn’s housekeeper and our cook, and a member of a local Baptist Church (itself no light-weight in the congregation stakes coming in at about 1000 every Sunday morning) could recite from memory Psalms 1, 23, 121, 91 and more.  At the opening and close of the Physiotherapy School the students take it on themselves to start with a hymn, and a communal recitation of a psalm or prayer.  (I feel rather embarrassed at my attempts to learn a Psalm every holiday, and failing to complete Ps 27 over our last NZ trip.)

As we make our way up and down the stairs there are always individuals, couples, and groups receiving or giving ministry throughout the day until Evanet will lock the doors at about 8.00pm, and music accompanies much if it. 

  

Caribe Tours into Haiti

Dominican Republic to Haiti...

Our travel plans for the trip from Santiago to Cap Haitien had been made from a relatively safe distance in England with advice from New Zealand, and they involved the Caribe Tours Coach service.  And in reality everything turned out as smoothly as intended.

We were to make our way to the Caribe Tours Coach station on Avenida Febrero 27, and both google maps and the hotel desk staff confirmed it was there...  However what wasn’t clear was that there were two Caribe Tours Coach Stations on a very long Avenida de Febrero 27 – about 5km apart.  Our taxi dropped us off at the first terminus, but when we went to buy the tickets it took my limited Spanish and the desk clerk’s English a little while to explain that we need to get to the other terminal for both tickets and to leave for the journey...  Oh dear.  Except with great kindness the clerk arranged to put us on the next passing coach and drop us off at the correct terminal, and at no charge, saving us a few US dollars taxi fare.  At the correct terminal we were ushered into a back office where the tickets are issued and after relieving us of our passports we were given return tickets, and waited for 90 minutes for the bus to arrive.  Apparently there is a website, where in theory tickets can be ordered and paid for, but according to many travel discussion forums the advice is that it is usually “down”, and certainly my foray into Spanish speaking cyber-space left me in no doubt it was no way to part with cash.  So no option but to get there early and wait.  As it happened the coach was only half full, but given there is only one coach a day we wanted to take no chances.  Once on the coach the Caribe Tours staff take over, and after serving us lunch – pork, rice and bean sauce with bottled water – we were off for the border.  Vastly improved roads compared to the same route four years ago: all the road works that meant that journey was almost entirely on un-made up roads, this time it was tarmac all the way – even if speed bumps feature liberally through each and every township and settlement, and preceding each of the frequent Police road blocks.  Once at the border we were ushered into a courtyard, where there was a cursory Customs Authority glance, and we were taken to the front of the queue to have our passports stamped.  Then surrounded by pedlars and children we drove across the new 2 lane bridge and into Haiti, where at the plush new immigration building we were invited in, asked for our passports and then shooed back into the coach, and (in time) reunited with our freshly stamped passports.

And so the seeming transportation from South America to Africa occurred over a single sluggish river.  Even though this was a return journey it was still fascinating how different the Dominican Republic is from Haiti: strongly Spanish influenced East of the former island of Hispaniola becomes the distinctively French and African West.

And from then it was a 90 minute journey to the enclave that houses the coach overnight to be reunited with Bernadette and her daughter Ruth who were waiting for us with a reassuringly familiar though barely holding together taxi, including the obligatory cracked windscreen and baffling door system that seems to affect each cab where only the driver knows how to open them.  (Invariably involving repeated depression and elevation of the lock, and then the pulling of a piece of wire – photos will follow.)

And then to our flat – the fifth floor of the church, and the barely finished home for the pastor: spacious, comfortable, running water (cold and hot), breezy and a remarkable lack of mosquitos!

We soon met up with our flat-mates: Robyn who had set it all up, and Claire and Jo – New Zealand physiotherapists who are currently running the course to train up Physiotherapy Technicians.  Claire and Jo have offered three months to live in Haiti and are taking the class along a specific learning programme – more of this later.

Then after a meal in the local Hotel – a favourite of ex-pats from all over the world – we retired to a fantastic night’s sleep under a fan and a splendid blue mosquito net. 

Santiago de Los Cabelleros...

Santiago de Los Cabelleros...
Leaving England was surprisingly smooth and efficient, and likewise our entry to the Dominican Republic. The only "hitch" turned put to our benefit when the hotel we had booked in had no record of the booking when I rang to tell them of our scheduled but late arrival from New York. After retrieving the documents they realised that they had no rooms but arranged for us to stay at the Airport branch of the same chain, which not only was a higher spec but included breakfast and less distance to reach after arrival - and at the original price! This morning we embarked on the next phase of the journey - coach from Santiago to Cap Haitien using the Caribe Tours Coach Company. And a continued sense of being "watched over" (in a good way) continued. Caribe Tours has 2 stations in Santiago, and both are on the Avenida de 27 Febrero. However only one has the coach to Haiti. We picked the wrong one to start out and with my scanty Spanish and the obliging clerk's scanty English this was pointed out. However they arranged for a passing coach to take us the 5-6km to the correct location at no cost. Then tickets were bought in a dingy but English speaking office, our passports were taken - hopefully to be returned after the border crossing and we have the fascinating and not unpleasant time of people watching in temperatures of about 26c, in a sheltered if basic bus station.  

York to Cap Haitien... While comparisons with the regularity of a commuter run are hard to find, there is a familiarity about today's train journey to Manchester Airport. In 2010 I first went to Haiti, and as today, was carrying bags that not only held clothes and personal effects but also the unusable, and so unwanted, hospital equipment from England that miraculously becomes both usable and highly prized as soon as it is presented to the theatre personnel in Haiti. And the travel anxiety (that is so frequently my travel companion) is ameliorated a little by remembering this is a path already trodden, and eased a lot by sharing it with Lorraine - who at time of writing is sleepily resting her feet on the seat opposite. (I am hoping the guard will be equally too sleepy to notice!) My first trip to Haiti came in the first few months after the earthquake that claimed the lives of 250,000 Haitians. "Hearts and Hands for Haiti" was born from this tragedy, and the God-inspired idea of New Zealander Robyn Couper a long term resident of Cap Haitien, and desperate to see help coming to the people and country she has served for many years. Working with her local church, Robyn arranged for a medical team to accompany her back to Haiti to work alongside some of the established medical services. And so official invitations were issued to three physiotherapists, two surgeon and me - the one anaesthetist - to come and work in the Justinien University Hospital. That was for an intended 6 Week period, and from that initial team effort, great things have developed with the funding, building and staffing of a Physiotherapy Assistant School thanks to the generosity of many, the assistance of agencies including the United Nations (it does help having a New Zealander as the current Number Three in that organisation) and the determination of Robyn and others to see it come off. And continued medical links with New Zealand see Prof Jean-Claude Theiss (Orthopaedic Surgeon) make trips to Haiti and enable Haitian doctors gain experience in Dunedin. I am going to be very interested to see what has changed over the four years, and to introduce Lorraine to some wonderful people, and a fascinating culture that is so different to what we are used to in the UK. Also having first come with an expectation of helping, and then finding myself being helped because of contracting Dengue Fever, I am again keen to show I can go more than 30 minutes without either being sick or having to lie down. (I should mention that 100% DEET has been added to the packing!) So from York to Cap Haitien, via Manchester, Amsterdam, New York, Santiago and the long coach trip across the border lies ahead, and we go excited, nervous and honoured to be able to try and help.