The Sights & Sounds

(Disclaimer, this post turned out long. If you can only commit to a small amount of blog reading tonight, read this instead and come back and read my post later) J

In the last two days I have seen more of the city than I have in the last 2 weeks combined, and most of the “sightseeing” was done by foot. For a long time I have wanted to live somewhere where I could travel by foot, bike, or public transportation; somewhere that I didn’t need to depend on a car. Now, Port au Prince isn’t that place, but, because I don’t have a car, Haitian license, or the guts to drive here (yet….) walking is the best option. On Friday night, a few of us on-campus dwellers were heading to another neighborhood a couple of miles away for a movie night at another teacher’s house. It’s only about a 30 minute walk, but a 2 mile walk here is not like walking most places, even big cities, in the states. I’ll try and paint a picture for you as best I can.

When you step out the school gate onto Delmas 75 your senses are assaulted with Haiti. Sight: all around are people: people walking, people selling, people buying. All along the street are vendors set up selling almost anything. Radios and various electronics on this little table; cold cokes in this cooler, various vegetables in this basket, toilet paper, toothpaste, shampoo on this sheet; brooms and cleaning supplies over here; any and all items you could want. Often you will also get to see a wide variety of animals on your treks; goats, chickens, dogs, and babies of each of those varieties. My favorites are the baby goats, so cute! Sound: the sounds almost never stop; motorcycles, car horns, big trucks with big engines, bigger trucks with bigger horns, people yelling, people laughing, more engines revving, more horns honking, all the time noise, the soundtrack of Delmas 75. Smell: this is the fun one. The smells run the gamut from delicious to disgusting. Walking down the street you smell car exhaust, fresh mangos (coming from a large truck where a lady sits and hands them out in exchange for the small price of 10 gourdes), urine, old rotting trash, corn grilling (smells amazing, haven’t gotten the courage to try it yet...someday), oh the smells.

Walking along the road is really an experience. There don’t seem to be any hard-and-fast traffic laws so you can pretty much pass at any time, especially if you drive a motorcycle. We were talking this evening about how our friends back home were worried about robbers, malaria, earthquakes, and cholera ending us all when, really, all our friends need to worry about is the motorcycles!

As we were walking along on Friday, night began to fall and we could see the lightning flashing in the sky and just as we arrived at the house the rain began to fall. This was a quieter neighborhood on a dirt road and it was almost peaceful watching the lightning, listening to the rain.

This morning, Josiah and Jill and I went on another walk but to a different area. We walked through a relatively nice neighborhood down a well paved, smooth street and turned the corner onto a street that was half-taken up with a soccer game and half taken by a couple dozen tents. These tents were interesting though, because they appeared almost new (well, new is relative…they had less holes and were all mostly in one or two pieces). We continued past this area and into a small area of homes, about 10-15 but these houses were very different, even from the tents we had passed. They were put together with tarps, spare wood, tin, and a smattering of blue “Samaritan’s Purse” tarps. We went to the family that Josiah knew and several kiddos ran out to us and we walked in a big circle around the rest of the neighborhood. When we got back, they brought out three chairs for us to sit in so we sat and talked (well, as much as possible with Jill and me only understanding every other word) and played for a while. The little girls played with my hair and styled it in a very interesting way. The kids taught us Creole and a couple of small games. I am constantly learning here. Learning names, games, words, culture, everything.

I learn so much from these kids. And not just words, from them I learn Haiti. I have not once felt unwelcome here. As we walk along, three blans (tourists/white) all in a row, we say bonjou/bonswa to people we pass and they respond with a smile and a greeting. People let us sit and talk with them and play with their kids. They want us to see them and learn about them and get to know them.