Picture courtesy of voyagevirtuel.info
I was 11 years old when I spent a summer in Haiti ( click here for google map view ), the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, it is hard to imagine that such a beautiful green resourceful country could have such a striking poverty, I knew the statistics but I couldn't really internalize it until I've seen it with my own eyes.
One of the scariest things that happened to me happened in Haiti: We were driving through a "bad" neighborhood : Cite Soleil is known for kidnappers, robbers and armed gangs, my father didn't know how to drive, so he had a driver, Jim'.
Somehow we found ourselves driving through the wrong areas, in the wrong time; We were in front of a football ( soccer, depends where you are from) stadium, right after the game! There was a lot of traffic and we were caught in the middle of a sea of cars, we couldn't distinguish the road, pedestrians and drivers were side by side...suddenly we heard gun shots, jim' the driver was very scared so he took his gun and shot it in the air, the crowd in front of us dispersed and we were able to finally find our way out of the scene.
My father lived a couple of years in Haiti working as coordinator for an NGO, he wasn't always armed but his driver was, Jim' explained to me that the car was armored, but I think I still need therapy to recover from the shock of that incident.
The situation is much worse now than it was in 97', recently, Haitians have developed a cookie like food made out of salt, mud and oils as a substitute for the lacking food, the unemployment rate is 80% and
Haiti is classified the most corrupted country in the world according to transparency International
Every night, down hill from our residence, the locals gathered in the empty marketplace transforming it to a dancing ring the stands of fruits and vegetables are replaced with stands of "rum" sellers, the Compaq rhythm music, mainly drums starts around 10 pm every night, I remember my sister and I spending good parts of the night watching the scene from the roof.
The beaches in Haiti are simply F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S, I haven't seen such clear, pure waters in my entire life!
In port Au Prince, the public transportation is tap tap, shuttle like buses/vans, extensively decorated, most of the time with religious slogans and pictures, a piece of popular art more than it is a mean of transportation.
Market Place in Port Au Prince ( Capital)
(pictures above courtesy of friendship.org)
(Picture courtesy of traveladventures.org)
4 comments:
Sounds like a good place to go blow our American dollars.
I think it is...it is a major route for cocaine entering the US...
Haitians in CH? Yes, many. There is a loud Haitian evangelical church one or two doors from Boulevard Cafe IIRC but anyway it is somewhere on Empire on that side, and at the edge of the shchuna, over on Nostrand, many of the small shops are owned by Haitians.
Vive Duvalier!! (tiff, tiff in der erd!)
BS"D
on my block. for sure.
gon shots complimentary.
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