A view of the beach we visited... I still feel guilty for taking a short "vacation." Since it was a national holiday in Haiti, Operation Blessing told us we should take a quick trip as the Hospitals would be empty...
Monday, August 15, 2011
Lightning Storm over the Haitian Ocean
I find thunder and lightning storms to be one of nature's most beautiful phenomena. We were luck to catch this light show over the ocean on Sunday evening.
Yin and Yang
It seems that for everything lovely in this world there is something dark and dangerous; For everything dark, there is a beauty to even it out. After spending a few days in Cite Soleil, we took a short day and a half off to go to the beach North of Port au Prince. Although it was only 30 miles outside of the city, it took us nearly an hour to arrive due to the disrepair of the roads. As we departed the crowded city and began our journey through the countryside, the massive overpopulation ebbed slightly. Although, the countryside was still dotted with tents, small houses under construction, and some houses that were still crumbling from the earthquake. The ocean breeze whipped into the van we were in and kept us fairly cool despite the blistering heat and lack of air conditioning. I really didn't even notice the heat until we slowed to a crawl to wade our way through the villages. We travelled rapidly on the "highway" and barely at all through the village towns. One of our Haitian friends, Wilson, told us the name of each town as we passed through. I wish I had thought to write them down, because they're all escaping me now.
We passed plantations filled with banana trees and mango trees, but the sparse housing remained. In the towns, masses of people lined the roads selling everything from pencils to clothing to plantains.
We turned into the hotel area we were staying at and the image changed drastically. Immediately, we were surrounded by lush grass and trees. We walked into the hotel and were greeted with complete chaos at the front desk. It had the air of a tropical hotel with absolutely no order. After about 3o minutes, we were checked in and made our way to the beach. It seemed as though I had stepped into a different world. The hotel was clearly a place where wealthy locals and UN members came for the day or weekend. The beaches were pure white sand that met up with a crystal clear turquoise ocean. It was incredible to think that just outside the walls we had left a world of poverty and need. I felt a bit guilty laying on the beach and enjoying the ocean, but I feel like it also was a good quick break from the endless stretches of people, cars, and pollution in Port au Prince. Returning tonight, I'm ready for my next venture in the St. Damien hospital network!
A little rest
The Beauty of Existence – Part II
A Circus of the Senses
Flanked by mountains and the leeward side of Hispanola, Port-au-Prince streches up receeding hills, ascending in social class with each degree of elevation, with Cite Soleil pressed at its bottom against the ocean and resolutely bordered by a refinery and a river on either side. Haiti's open sewer system makes the flattened low-lands the least desireable. Even the marginal slope, from the top of Cite Soleil until it reaches the marshy bay, helps to define the complex class hierarchy amongst the poorest of the poor. The higher above sea level your house is the less often swelling sewers will flood inside your home. Cite Soleil is one of the most densely populated area's in the world, 200,000 to 300,000 people in 2 square miles. As you descend toward the ocean, the quality of homes detereorates from contrete blocks to corrugated tin to wooden poles with cardboard walls, an area known as Cite Carton. This unimaginable density and poverty intensifies the individual's drive to exaggerate class differences based on miniscule things, perpetuating classist disdain for the ultra-poor in the community. It's density also presumes throngs of kids - playing, yelling, chasing me at times in spurts of curious revelry followed by a shy embarrasement when I turn to greet them. They're like children everywhere, except instead of feeling like one distant cousin you're meeting for the first time, its ten to fifteen every few blocks.
It is impossible to explain the intensity of the poverty. We often conceptualize poverty into a generic form: paucity of things, derelict buildings, encompassed by a over-all feeling of despondency. Yet the on-slaught, the dense and mulitplistic sensorial experience of poverty in Soleil can not be accurately described or imagined. Soleil's sewage filled canals, black with industrial sout, petrol coated mounds of plastic bottles floating motionless in stagnent rows 2-3 feet deep and 1 foot wide, like a grid, slicing between homes that are only 7-12 inches apart in places. The smell compounds disparate elements of the entire city into each inhale, thick and heavy in the tropical sun: coal-fire ash; diesel smog; frying oil; composting waste; smells of livestock like pigs, goats, and chickens; and sweaty human beings. Electrical wires reach out from roof to roof supporting hanging clothes above street vendors selling their wares with often pristine pyramidal mounds of fresh fruit lining the road. The combined sounds of Cite Soleil is really lound 23 hours a day, in part because Haitains are the most verbal and physically expressive people I've ever met, similar to my experiences in southern Italy but even more so. Laughter, singing, joking, arguments that erupt in yells and then fizzle in seconds; hoards of children playing and yelling - competing with their infant siblings muted within the homes; cars honking in morris code; vendors advertising their goods; singing and music coming from multiple directions (one of the most important aspects of Haitian social and religious life). There is a brief respit, as the rising sun breaches the mountains behind Port-au-Prince, slicing through Soleil towards the ocean. During this mystical hour the silence in Soleil is gently distrupted by just the sweeping of brooms, the quiet singing of mothers, and Catholic alms from the daily ceremonies. Haitians are emphatically clean in their clothes and homes, their white blouses and pressed shirts seem to defy the entropy you'd expect. Soleil is the dirties, dustiest place I've ever been and their pride and the sense of dignity is ever apparent in their spotless attire. I would return after a days work looking like I had just stepped out of the mines. I don't know how they do it. Soleil is a circus of the senses – music, sewage, laughing children, malnutrition, and abominable living conditions; and yet, and this is one of the most important personal insights that I've gained over the years, is how strong there is an inclination for me as foreigners to myopically perceive the most severe of, the worst aspects of, a complex environment like Soleil. When I first began living in Soleil in my early twenties, I would walk out my door and I unconsciously saw and heard only what re-inforced my perception of the Haitian's condition of misery and hopelessness.
I remember when this began to shift, and it wasn't just the broadened perspective that comes with prolonged experience. In the next segment, I'll go into the internal process that facilitated a change in perspective. During my later trips, from 1996 to 2000, I would live and work at a hospital run by Mother Theresa's Missionaries of Charity brother's in Cite Soleil. Although the brothers were from all around the world, the compound was mostly Haitian staff and patients. I enjoyed the immersion of livinging amongst Haitian's, working on my Kreyol and creating relationships. I also appreciated the brother's monastic lifestyle as many of you know I spent some time as a Buddhist monk.
I awoke one morning in the usual cacophony of sounds, except this time my consciousness singled out the gentle singing of our neighbor as she hung the morning's laundry. Every morning hence, I awoke to her singing. A new layer of perspective slowly began to take root, to spread into my moment by moment experience of Soleil. Day by day I'd notice things like teen age couples flirting on the front stoop, people singing together, parents gooey with joy over a new born child. Soleil in all it's glaring poverty and suffering came to have an evenly balanced spectrum of the same human experience that we all share, yet until then I hadn't quite seen it. Not that I was oblivious to this side, but that it that my perception focused on the difficult. The average life span in Soleil is shorter, there's more sickness and hunger. But also, like everyone, they fall in love, they laugh and joke with friends, infants beam at the sight of their parents, soccer games form amongst friends, they dream of better lives and hope the same for their children. It's the same human condition - the routine of work, the responsibilities of parenting, the emotional symphony of daily life…and bit by bit it occupied a balanced portion of my experience in conjunction with the difficulties.
We just got back from our vacation from our vacation. We headed an hour and a half away to Club Indigo for two days and one night of beach. The ocean was amazingly beautiful and we all just lounged on the beach and floated in the water. The majority of the group are now various shades of lobster, but it was worth it. It's funny though because we all discovered that we missed Relax a little and are happy to be "home." Tomorrow we go back to work, some to City Soleil, some at the local hospital. We are all safe, happy, and eating a little too much
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