A Day in Port-au-Prince

    This last trip down to Haiti was a great chance for me to get a little more understanding about life in Haiti as a whole. On a few occasions, while the team was operating the medical clinic, I was able to head off in other directions and work on things relating to the over-arching LiveBeyond/MMDR work rather than just the medical clinic that was happening that day. Throughout most of the trip, I was documenting as much as I could so that I could later put together some video footage of what is going on in Thomazeau as well as throughout Haiti. Right now, I am working with some awesome people here in Nashville to get that footage together and make a couple of videos for everyone to get a sense of the oppression that most Haitians live in on a daily basis. When those are finished I will definitely be putting them up on the blog.

    For right now, though, I want to talk about one particular day down in Haiti that was absolutely awesome. If I am to be completely honest with myself and with everyone else, my trip in to Port-au-Prince during October was exactly why I have gotten myself into this line of work. I love helping others and I think that working in International Aid is so exciting because I'm constantly trying to answer questions that haven't really been asked before. To be completely honest, though, I love it so much because I get to experience and learn about cultures that I would have no clue about otherwise. The trip into Port-au-Prince was essentially just an errand run that needed to be made for the team so that we could purchase some much needed items, and I just tagged along for the day. The sad fact about life in Thomazeau, Haiti is that a lot of everyday things just can't be purchased without going in to Port-au-Prince. This particular day, we needed to get a few groceries to help feed the team members and we needed to handle some financial/legal matters relating to MMDR/LiveBeyond doing business in Haiti.

    For most of the day, I was just along for the ride, following Katherine since she handles pretty much all of the logistics in Haiti. Picture me as just a wide-eyed kid being dragged all over Port-au-prince experiencing everyday life there. Early in the day, we went into the outskirts of the Croix-de-Bouqet market. It was an awesomely hectic mix of loud vendors, blaring truck horns, smelly livestock, and sweaty people. I was so disappointed at the end of the day that I didn't get many shots of the market (mostly because I was having to make sure that I didn't get lost and could hear what the vendors were telling me the whole time). At one point during the market negotiations we were interrupted by a dump truck driving through the market, on a path barely wide enough for a wheelbarrow, loaded with 30+ people in the back all leaning over the side yelling at everyone to get out of there way. Of course, it was going the opposite direction of our truck, which was manned by one of our interpretors, who had to essentially just back out and yell that he would be back for us in a few minutes. After we got everything that we needed, we had to hop in the bed of the truck as he drove back past because the street was so crowded that we couldn't open the doors to get inside with our groceries.

   We also went in to Port-au-Prince and shopped at a depot that I have affectionately labeled the Haitian version of Costco. Imagine a ware-house filled to the brim with 50lb bags of rice, 75lb bags of beans, and crates filled with the most random assortment of American goods you could imagine. You could probably still go there and get a Twinkie (miss you guys) without too much of a problem. I was so blown away by this because in Thomazeau, where we normally work, the only American product you will see is Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola, by the way, is pretty much available in every corner of the world. To see this huge space chock full of things you might see at a local Kroger, though, was pretty awesome.

    A final stop for the day was at an office to exchange some US dollars for Haitian Gourdes. If we had made this pit-stop at night, it probably would have made a great intro to some thriller where the white guy gets kidnapped. Where we stopped, I was told, was somewhere that Katherine goes a lot and is well known. To me, though, it looked like we were just walking into a dark building that had a bunch of guys with guns standing in the front courtyard. As we walked into the dark interior, we passed tall stacks of rice bags that reached to the ceiling and several men standing round watching us. At the back of the room, an office with faux wood walls had two woman sitting behind a desk counting stacks of dirty, crumpled-up money. During our meeting with these women, one got up and walked through a back door into what I found out was some sort of vault to get more money. I was told that even when several thousand dollars needed to be exchanged, going into the vault wasn't necessary since these women had plenty in their desk drawer. I'm guessing the man that she was exchanging money for must have needed a rather large sum of money for her to have to get up and walk out. Apparently, they are quite confident that they are well protected by the guards out front as well as plenty of other men that we didn't see.

    After all of that, we headed back to Thomazeau to meet up with the rest of the team for the end of the day's clinic. I tried to play it cool and act like these events were just another day at the office for me, but I'm sure my face showed that I had just gotten to have the most fun day of my life basically just walking around the city and keeping my eyes open and mouth shut.

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