We do make it through the shallows to a sandbar. To his credit, Bill is sane enough to stop, disembark, and assess the situation. We look out at the wider, deeper part of the river, swirling in currents, running swiftly downstream.
A crowd of young men who had been waiting at the far shore wade over to the sandbar. Each one is shouting some suggestion.
“Just ignore them,” Bill orders, like it’s that easy to ignore someone shouting in your face.
Piti confers with one of the quieter young men. It seems there is no other spot, upstream or downstream, suitable for crossing. “We can make it,” Bill keeps saying. But Piti insists on checking it out first. He strips down to his underwear and wades across the river, disappearing up to his shoulders, before his body reemerges on the other side. Not good news. He comes back and advises that really we should wait.
“Okay, twenty minutes,” Bill reluctantly agrees.
“Nothing is going to happen in twenty minutes.” I try to reason with him. “Come on, honey, it’s not even eight thirty.”
Bill looks at his watch. Unfortunately, several Christmases ago, I got him one of those atomic watches that sets itself via satellite, so Bill can never be wrong about what time it is. “It’s eight forty-three. And I’m not waiting more than twenty minutes.”
“Well I am. And so is Piti, and so is Mikaela.” What’s he going to do: leave the three of us stranded on a sandbar in northwest Haiti? “Honey, come on, please,” I try the gentle approach. “Why don’t we use the time to talk?”
“We can talk on the way to Port-au-Prince.” Then after a beat, “What do you want to talk about anyway?”
I’m trying to come up with an answer when I’m saved by the approach of a familiar figure, joining us on the sandbar. Wilson! He was headed to Bassin-Bleu to visit some relations. But now, he delays his journey to help us out. What did I say about saving by spending? We did a good turn by taking him home to Haiti. Now he is ready to pay us back by helping us get across the river, so we can eventually get home to the DR.
Wilson strips down to his underwear and gives Mikaela and me his dry clothes to hold in the cab. He and Piti wade into the waters to map out the shallowest route for the pickup to cross. Bill stands on the shore, periodically shouting suggestions.
Meanwhile, the river gang have grown bored watching them work. They crowd around the opened windows of the pickup where Mikaela and I are sitting, blocking all ventilation. We decide to climb out, in part to get some air, but also to move the guys away from the cab. They’ve been checking it out, looking for some loose valuable or small trinket they can snatch or demand as payment for their help.
As we’re standing around, one of them suddenly grabs at the water bottle Mikaela is holding. I face down the would-be petty thief, hands on my hips. “C’est ma fille,” I roar. “That’s my daughter.” I’ve turned into the lioness whose cub has just been messed with. And I’m accusing Bill of trying to get us all killed! This guy might be skinny, but he is several inches taller and at least thirty pounds heavier than I am. Interestingly, the other guys turn on this young man and shove him away. He’s broken some basic code of honor they all follow. You don’t mess with a girl in the presence of her mother.
But soon they’re back to hollering suggestions, pointing to the other side. A few of them pick up some stones from the sandbar, carry them across the river, and lay them down on the other bank. Are they planning to build a bridge? I shake my head and keep repeating, “Patience, patience,” just like the many banques in their country advise. Then, partly to show off, and partly to entertain them, Mikaela and I strike a yoga tree pose. A few of them try imitating us.
Another vehicle now comes barreling through the shallows and joins us on the sandbar. It’s a Jeep with a CARE logo on the side. Mikaela and I rush over, thinking it might be driven by someone who speaks English. No luck. The driver, a light-skinned Haitian, looks us both over. I can almost hear his thinking: Why are you two white women doing exercises on this sandbar? Over our shoulders, Bill is gesticulating to Piti and Wilson, who are midstream, gesticulating back. That must answer the driver’s question, because he nods at us, puts his foot to the pedal, and hurtles across the river, and up the other bank. This seals our fate. Bill has been proven right: if the Jeep made it, so will our pickup.
Bill hurries over to where Mikaela and I have resumed our tree poses. “Okay,” he says, “we’re off.” Piti and Wilson are already standing at different points in the river, semaphoring directions. But the river gang is not about to let us go. They press in on us, demanding payment.
Bill tells me to tell them that they must stay away from the truck. Once we’re in the water, he won’t be able to see where they are. They might trip or fall, and the truck could run them over.
I try my best to mime this homicide scenario, ending with putting my hands together in the gesture of pleading. They look at each other, as if deciding whether to obey the white man’s instructions. Okay, they nod. This might be their only chance of getting the tip they obviously feel they deserve.
“Everything off the floor in case the cab floods,” Bill commands, as he starts the engine. Oh dear. He would have to say that.
“How about our seat belts?” I ask, terrified.
“I wouldn’t,” Bill answers. I suppose that means I shouldn’t, either. “Okay, here we go!” As the pickup lunges forward, two small hands reach forward from the backseat for my hands. I take them and squeeze. “Say a little prayer!” I call back to Mikaela. I know from several of our talks about religion that Mikaela is a practicing Catholic, the radical liberation theology strain of Catholicism of her activist parents. As a child, Mikaela would be taken along to demonstrations as well as open-air services in public parks. Half the time, she didn’t know if she was attending a mass or a mass rally. She is the only one in this cab whose prayer God would not dismiss with the remark, “Now you come to me!”
We splash our way across the river and roar up the bank over the few rocks the guys have laid down. Mikaela and I cheer. But our elation is short-lived. The river gang have come racing across the river and up the bank, claiming credit for what just happened and demanding payment.
Piti and Wilson join us. As they climb into their dry clothes, we confer on what to do about the river gang. Part of the problem is that we have run out of cash. Unless we can break down a hundred dollar bill or use a credit card, all we have among us is two hundred pesos.
Soft-spoken Piti is trying to calm the angry mob. But Bill is inciting them more by shaking his head. He is not paying anyone a tip except for the quiet guy who advised Piti. At one point I glance out my window and see a woman, who wasn’t even one of the river gang, holding up a rock and menacing me with it.
“You’re making things worse,” I hiss at Bill.
The crowd quiets down when they see Bill handing Piti some bills to give to the one guy. Bill explains to Piti that as soon as he hands over the money, Piti is to jump in the back of the pickup, and we’ll take off. But before Piti can even take a few steps, the crowd closes in around him. I can’t see him at all! These guys are so desperate, they’re liable to hurt Piti for a pitiful two hundred pesos, the equivalent of six bucks.
I step out of the pickup, another lioness with her cub moment. But just then, Piti disentangles himself from the mob and runs toward the truck. “Get in!” Bill screams to me. I don’t even think about disagreeing. I jump in, bang the door shut, just as Piti clambers on board, and we roar off, down the road. A few guys start to run after us, but finally give up.
When we’re well down the road, beyond sight, we stop so Piti and Wilson can come inside the cab. “They almost tore off my hand,” Piti recounts, still trying to catch his breath, his eyes wide with fear. The money never got to the guy who had helped us out.
“We should go back.” I know it’s a foolish suggestion, and a cowardly one: putting others in the position of being the tough-hearted ones, having to naysay my easy kindness.
&nbs
p; We’re all sobered by this scary moment. And what’s even scarier is that this might well be the story of the future, with far more violent conclusions, unless we begin to solve one of the great problems in the world: the inequitable distribution of goods. Here, six months after the earthquake, with millions of dollars pledged and a cadre of well-meaning people on the ground, solutions to this problem continue to evade even the best efforts. Those pages are still a blank in so many of our notebooks.
To Port-au-Prince or not?
We let Wilson off in Bassin-Bleu, and then begins the heated debate: whether or not to proceed to Port-au-Prince or go back the way we came, over roads we know. Actually, Piti and Mikaela are silent in the backseat. It’s Bill and me at odds about what to do next.
It’s not that I am chickening out on our earlier plans. It’s that I feel shaken by what just happened. We have no idea what the roads to Port-au-Prince will be like. What if there are more swollen rivers, more mob scenes? I want us to think through each choice and make an informed decision.
Bill makes a face. “I’ve thought it through,” he says.
“I know you’ve thought it through, but I’m talking about thinking it through together.”
“Okay, let’s think it through together. I think we should go. What do you think?”
Am I really married to this bloke? If two sweet young people weren’t sitting in the backseat, I’d give this guy a mouthful. Instead I seethe. “That’s not thinking it through together. That’s making a decision before we even start.”
I turn around to the backseat. “I’m sorry you have to listen to this.”
Mikaela giggles. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve traveled with my family.” I guess it is a universal truth: families, especially spouses, bicker on road trips.
Piti has the soul of a peacemaker, but he also has a male bias, as we saw by his chauvinist remark the night before his own wedding. Now he points out that we’ve passed several packed buses coming from the capital. If the roads were impassable, they would not have gotten through.
“But are you sure that’s where they’re coming from?”
“Yes. There are seven of them a day; we have passed five already.” He has been counting them.
That is the kind of reasoning I was hoping for. The fear of impassable roads is laid to rest. The other fear is just that, a fear, not a reason to cancel the trip. I can acknowledge it to myself, though not out loud to a partner I’m at odds with. And this is it: after witnessing the desperation of people in a place where there hasn’t even been a horrible natural disaster, I am worried about what we will encounter in a place where people have every reason to be desperate.
“So, are we going or not?” Bill has pulled over.
I look out the window, too upset to answer right off. We are parked in front of SOLUTION GARAGE, down the street from EASY GO HOTEL. Haiti isn’t just talking to me. She’s shouting at me: Be a grown-up! “Yes, we are going to do what you want.” I pronounce the words distinctly, as if each one were packed in bubble wrap and would explode if it came in contact with another.
And so, once again, fearsome Eichner wins out over fearful Alvarez. But it’s not an easy truce. All the way to Port-au-Prince, our silence is palpable, our conversation so clearly directed at the backseat. Will this keep happening as we grow older, I wonder? As our work lives drop away, and we’re thrown together more, will we discover that while we did fine as two parallel solitudes, we do less well as one perfect union? Some marriages function well at certain stages and then go awry—look at Homero’s. Makes me despair that Bill and I can be happy forever after together.
It’s at this point that I see the woman wearing the T-shirt that reads, STOP BITCHING: START A REVOLUTION. Maybe I’ll do just that. Give it all up and come to Haiti. But as the passing tap-taps keep reminding me (JESUS IS MY LIFE, DIEU SEUL MAÎTRE, AMOUR ET DISCIPLINE, FIDÉLITÉ DIEU), I am hardly a candidate for total self-sacrifice. If the speaking landscape has anything to say about it, Haiti will not take me.
Human GPS
The road south is definitely better than any we’ve been on before. But I’m distracted by the emotions roiling inside me.
Past Saint-Marc, about halfway to Port-au-Prince, we look up, and for a moment, we don’t understand what we are seeing. The hillsides are speckled with a sickly, plasticky blue—not the beautiful, dreamy blue of shutters and doors in Moustique. Slowly, it dawns on us: these are tarps, held up by sticks. This far out from the capital, the tent cities have started.
As we near Port-au-Prince, we’re stuck in one bottleneck after another. Traffic in the capital has always been a challenge, and now even more so, with many streets blocked by piles of debris, or by trucks carting it away, or by swarms of people who have nowhere else to go. We don’t dare leave the main road, as we’re not sure that the side streets go where they’re supposed to anymore.
Luckily, we have a number to call and a destination. Right before leaving Vermont, a good friend and founder of an international consulting firm sent us the contact information of the man who has been running the firm’s projects in Haiti. Louis is an American, about our age, who has lived in Port-au-Prince for a number of years, speaks Kreyòl, has a Haitian companion—I think that’s the way Elsie is referred to. We should get in touch with him. We thanked our friend, but didn’t make much of an effort, focused as we were on getting our paperwork in order with José Ortiz. But we did send a quick e-mail to Louis, and he replied.
Unfortunately, the very week we are in Haiti, Louis and Elsie will be in the Dominican Republic getting some much needed R & R. But Louis gives us the phone number of his son, Adam, who is now in Port-au-Prince, working for the OAS.
Louis also obliges Bill’s request to make us a reservation at the Hotel Oloffson for our night in the capital. Bill has been wanting to stay there ever since he had lunch at its terrace restaurant during a brief visit to Haiti in 1983. The hotel, a huge white gingerbread house was immortalized in Graham Greene’s novel about Duvalier’s Haiti, The Comedians, which was set in a fictional version of the Oloffson: a hangout for entrepreneurs, bohemian journalists, CIA cronies hobnobbing with Haitian politicans, Haitian artists and intelligentsia coming up for air. A place where one could count on lots of intrigue and beautiful women and booze.
Making a reservation proves to be more of an ordeal than we realize. Louis actually has to send his driver over to the hotel to secure two rooms for us. Phones are still unreliable, as I know from trying to call the hotel from Vermont. Louis does warn us that the night we plan to stay at the Oloffson, a Thursday, is the night that RAM plays till all hours of the night. I recognize the name of the band that was started by the current Haitian-American proprietor of the hotel, Richard Morse. It’s quite loud, Louis adds. Back in Vermont, the warning didn’t faze me.
We are able to return the favor and help Louis and Elsie with their accommodations in the Dominican Republic. After spending a day in the capital, they plan to head for the interior. Can we recommend a place to stay? As a matter of fact, we can. How would they like to stay on a coffee farm? A coffee farm? Why . . . sure! And so, just as we are arriving in Port-au-Prince, Elsie and Louis are settling in at Alta Gracia.
As we hit the outskirts, I call Adam for help getting downtown to the Oloffson. After brief greetings, he suggests that we come instead to Pétionville, where his office is and where he lives. From there, he can lead us through the thicket of streets into the center of Port-au-Prince. He gives us a set of directions, using landmarks, not street signage, always in short supply here, and now even more so. We’re to call him in twenty minutes, and tell him where we are. Our human GPS! I start doubting that Adam could be from the USA, as such lavish generosity with time most often abounds in less wealthy countries.
Finally, we are in Pétionville, the elite neighborhood in the hills above the poorer Port-au-Prince. It still has an air of prosperity, but it’s as if the dividers have been lifted. We pass piles of rubble, devastated buildings,
a tent city in a vacant lot, right alongside high-end boutiques, trendy galleries, expensive restaurants.
The Planet Café is in ruins; its sign advertising “multi-services” sits atop slabs of concrete. Were the drivers of the two cars, whose fenders stick out of the rubble, availing themselves of those services when the earthquake struck?
In a vacant lot down the street, another car has been released from the surrounding rubble. Dented, its hood up, it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere. I’m puzzled by the flowered sheet curtaining a back window, until a door opens and a man climbs out. This is a family’s house.
Some electric poles are still standing, their wires entangled with dozens of small, homemade kites. I’m wondering about the children who lost them. Are they still alive?
As we start climbing uphill, a white pickup with a UN logo pulls up alongside us. Three soldiers in camouflage are standing in the flatbed. They are remarkably handsome in their dark sunglasses and nicely fitting uniforms, like actors in a movie about the earthquake. They grin over at us, and one of them gives us a thumbs-up gesture. He must have spotted Mikaela.
Rather than risk our getting lost one more time, trying to locate his office, Adam directs us to wait outside a restaurant called Papaye on the street we are already on. We pull up on the sidewalk and look around. Papaye looks untouched by the earthquake, except for a missing e at the end of the letters bolted on the outside wall.
After hours on the road, Mikaela and I need to use the facilities. Will they let us? we wonder. Two scruffy-looking ladies. It’s worth a try.
We walk in, and this will be one of the biggest shocks of all: the huge stretch between the destroyed city, the flimsy tarps, the masses of displaced people, and this plush, soft-lit series of dining alcoves complete with white linen tablecloths and twinkling wine goblets. We might have wandered into a trendy restaurant in Paris or San Francisco. It is a lovely, enticing spot, but given what surrounds it, we feel compromised even using the bathroom. But use it we do, and then hurry out to report on what we found inside.