On my second night in the hospital while on suspension, I woke up at about 3am with dodgy gut pains again. I hadn’t been eating base food (which while basic is reasonably clean and tasty) and instead was sampling Haitian gourmet off the street. You might get super deep fried chicken or deep fried eggs with msg on a roll if you’re lucky, but more likely some deep fried green banana scallops or other stuff that needs a good dose of chilli sauce to bring out the full flavour.
Anyway I woke up with grumbly guts and got out of my fold-out stretcher bed to search through the hospital for a toilet. The hospital is four semi-cylinders, joined with small tunnels at various points. It is a sterilish environment with a space frame covered in thick plastic tarpaulin sealing the atmosphere. There are tubes running along the roof on the inside with holes punched in them, where cold air-conditioned air pours out. There is a full suite of surgical apparatus but generally a shortage of supplies and a lot of improvisation occurs there, especially with surgery.
It looks like the International Space Station crash landed gently on Haitian soil, all white and glistening in the sun. I like it because it’s cold and there aren’t any flies inside. For a temporary structure it is very impressive. I have a feeling that like many things around here temporary will turn into semi-permanent.
The problem is it doesn’t seem to have a toilet, so when I woke up I was given a bowl to go outside and turd in. I summoned the first guy I saw who happened to be a Haitian orderly. I grimaced in exaggerated discomfort and made a downwards flushing motion next to me backside with my hands. “I need to do a shit.”
The orderly frowned at me for a minute then motioned to follow him. I sighed in relief and shuffled after him.
“Take this,” he said handing me a bowl with some paper in it. I peered at him in confusion. This wasn’t the toilet I was looking for.
“What do I do with this?”
He motioned me to follow him again and we walked through a maternity ward where a Haitian lady was lying propped up on her elbows with her legs spread wide. For some reason the way to the toilet was through the maternity ward. She was sweating and grimacing in pain. There were a couple of nurses buzzing around her. Jesus Christ, I thought and hurried on to the end of the cylinder. The orderly opened the door and motioned me outside, and we walked to a small pile of rubble that shone white in the moonlight. I had to pick my way over mud bogs as it had been raining.
“So do I shit here, and wash my hands in the bowl?”
Of course this was a stupid thing to say since there were taps in the hospital but I couldn’t contemplate turding in a Tupperware container. What would my mother say? He made a pooing motion with his hands, intimating that I should do my business in the bowl, and turned around and walked away. Ok no worries I thought, and dropped my pants, shuffled over the bowl, and squatted.
Squatting is not a comfortable way to drop your guts. I am used to sitting down and relaxing, letting the body take it’s time to do its thing. It’s a time to contemplate life, your day, and whatever the hell you’ve been eating to make yourself feel so damned horrible.
I had a knee reconstruction a few years ago and squatting is not a comfortable position for me at all so I applied gentle pressure to speed things up a but. Bloody hell I thought two minutes ago I was fast asleep in an air-conditioned room and now I’m squatting over a blue Tupperware bowl ankle deep in filth and my knee hurts. And a mosquito was drinking blood from my ass cheek.
Anyway I finished up, at a loss with what to do with my blue Tupperware bowl so I just left it there and walked back to the door in the maternity ward feeling a little unsatisfied with the whole experience. I walked past the woman who had been in labour moments before and she looked exhausted, wrung out and bedraggled. I felt I could relate to her. Her hair was slicked down the side of her face with sweat and she sagged limply in the bed, but she seemed to radiate a deep happiness and joy, as she nursed her newborn baby.
I thought about our respective achievements over the last 15 minutes and realised how profound things can happen in such a short space of time. I can only vaguely imagine the pain and discomfort she went through for that child, while I was perched on my rubble pile. The beatific smile on her face as she held her child is something I suppose I will never understand but it was wonderful to see.
Jokes aside, having never seen a newborn baby in that fashion before, I was struck with what an amazing place Haiti is. The human condition is exposed raw to the burning sun, and things are brought back to basic needs and emotions. There’s none of the cosmetic and make up of civilised society to cushion the impact of what occurs here. The food tastes better, the alcohol is stronger, you sleep deeper, small achievements mean more.
A related event happened a few weeks ago. A mother had a two month premature baby and left it outside the hospital. She didn’t want it.
Someone found it and sent it to the Miami University Hospital in Port au Prince because there is an incubator unit there. The child survived, and one of the nurses has decided to adopt it. At two months old the baby, called Emily-Anne, weighs 4.4 pounds, and instead of dying on the side of the road abandoned, in Haiti, she will now grow up an American citizen with all the privileges that society has to offer.
Enough about that sort of thing. I haven’t explained what really makes this place so interesting, which is the people, the Haitians and the volunteers, some of whom I believe I'll be friends with for a long long time despite knowing them for a month or less. So maybe I’ll do something about that in the next blog.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Anzac Blog-bit late
I started writing this blog about 2 weeks ago but have been too lazy to finish so if the dates seem a bit out, they probably are. And it looks like I’ve lost my camera so no more photo’s from now on.
If you’re Australian or Kiwi skip the first two paragraphs because you should already know it, otherwise read on.
25th April, 1915, the Anzacs (Australia New Zealand Army Corps) along with other Allied soldiers, invaded Turkey, on the Gallipoli peninsula. Instead of sending us to the nice flat beach as planned the English sent the Anzacs to the cliff faced, machine gun topped beach where they got slaughtered. Over the ensuing campaign about 11,000 Anzacs died, and eventually they withdrew in defeat. Many times that number of Turks died.
For the newly federated nation of Australia, it was the first time we had acted as a sovereign country, as opposed to independent states. As a result Anzac came to mean two things, a celebration of the birth of the Australian identity, and the time that Australians and Kiwis stop to remember the men and women who died fighting for our way of life. These days Anzac day is a time of respect and remembrance for Australians and Kiwis, with dawn services the usual way to pay your respects, followed by a day of toasting our soldiers as often as possible. Only unAustralian people (like farking Englishmen) stay sober.
There weren’t any dawn services in Haiti so I slept in a bit. We had a trip to the beach planned that day and before we left I made an Australian flag out of some nurses scrubs, a red mesh singlet and sports tape. It looked lush. There are photos on face book if you’re interested.
We got a tap tap (a ute with room for about 19 people on the back) and went to Bellisimo, which is a resort fronting a small coral reef. I use the word resort expansively because it was really some half built halls and guest houses, which were then blown up by the earthquake. What they do have is electricity for the 6 foot tall speaker blocks and the beer fridges. In it’s own way this place is paradise and like the rest of Haiti a design of contrasts.
Speaking of contrasts, I think Haiti is best summed up by the view of sunset we get from the roof of the HODR base each night. In the foreground the unfinished columns and rebar of Belval Plaza point vertically, like emaciated fingers at the grapefruit sized sun. It swells as it floats to the horizon, which is pierced by tall coconut trees. The sky turns a molten gold colour and the clouds reflect purple, blue and amber light. The sun is beach ball sized as it drops behind the palm fronds which are silhouetted black now, and your eyes are drawn to a grand concrete building, cement rendered and three levels high. There are trees in the grounds of this majestic structure and wrought iron patterns the windows and doors. It is gated with a large dirt driveway, and spaces for many cars to park. The wall around it is partially collapsed. Scattered throughout it’s grounds are pieces of concrete, rebar and a burned out car. Kids run around playing games, squealing loudly and barefoot. The road running past the building is dusty, potholed and lined with rubble, burning garbage piles, timid dogs, crushed, derelict or burned out vehicles and men pulling wooden wagons loaded with bricks, lumber or bottles by hand, often barefoot. If the garbage pile isn’t on fire often a giant hog or some skinny goats while be snouting around in it. There are a few vendors, each seemingly specialising in one item, you can buy a hot dog (mystery meat on a stick with hot sauce) from one, but have to walk further down the road to get a Coke. So the contrast, if you haven’t worked it out yet, is human tenacity and squalor amid amazing natural beauty. You could look at it and draw the conclusion that in the end nature is still very much in charge. Maybe there’s something in that for all of us.
Well, back to our beach. The shore is sprinkled with rubble and a few damaged buildings, with a small plaza leading to a large wrought iron gate that arches across steps leading to the water. The gate sits in isolation-there are no walls to either side of it. If it sounds like a strange set up, it is.
A large group of us went and by the time we got there the rum had already loosened things up a bit. We all stepped gingerly into the bath temperature water, which was wading depth out to about 100 metres, since the bottom was mostly soft sand but also sharp bits of garbage and man-o-wars. There was a cruise liner and a clipper with triangular sails off the coast, and as always seems to be the case in Haiti, there were indistinct mountains in the distance. They are actually the mountains on the other side of the gulf which is the most recognisable feature of Haiti if you look at it on a map. Mostly we spent the day wrestling in the water with Haitian guys, taking photos, throwing the gridiron ball and generally clowning around. Well, I was wrestling so I‘m sure everyone else was.
Before things got out of hand I wanted to pay my respects to the Anzacs. I drank a few beers and a few bottles of rum (they’re small) until I was feeling sentimental and emotional. Then I found a pile of rubble a little way from the rest of the revellers and climbed to the summit. I held my makeshift flag out, and stared out to sea for a slow count of sixty and thought of the sacrifice all those young men and women have made for our country and way of life.
I love being overseas and in different countries, in fact I left because I was bored with everything back home. I love sampling different cultures and languages, eating local foods and meeting locals. I also like appraising local alcoholic beverages to check if they have the same wonderful effects as Australian ones. But one thing which is reinforced while overseas is that we are lucky to be from somewhere like Australia because in fact there are a lot of places out there which aren’t as good.
I think it’s OK to have a patriotic moment every now and then (maybe once or twice a year) and while I was having a private love in with myself about Australia I made sure I was alone because I didn’t want to ram it down anyone’s throat (anymore that I had already-I scored some Australia flag boxers from a girl who had been romancing some Aussie guy somewhere and she’d claimed his boxers as a souvenir, which she then donated to me for Anzac Day. So I was prancing around in aussie flag boxers and bandana). At any rate this all took about 5 minutes, because I didn’t want to miss out on the rounds being bought back at the bar.
On the way home down the freeway I was standing on the bumper bar of the ute, which had a wooden tray and tailgate. I was wearing boardies, thongs and my backpack, and as we pulled into the street the compound is on, the tailgate I was hanging onto broke off and I hit the ground, did a few commando rolls, and somehow landed on my feet without a single scratch. Legend. More evidence that if you have to fall off a balcony or the back of a car be blind drunk when you do it.
That night was the start of a suspension from base I copped for missing curfew. Myself and two others came home late one night and walked through the front door, and went to sleep. The next day we were given two hours to get off base-we were suspended.
I thought it was a little strange, we were only an hour and a half late and as I pointed out, if I’d known it was a serious rule I would have walked through the gaping hole in the back of the building (caused by the earthquake) as opposed to the front door. Anyway rules are rules as I keep discovering. The first two days of hiatus, I slept at the house of a family who’s land we had cleared of rubble, about 30m down the road from the base, so I thought was karma really.
Maybe I should explain how this situation came about. When I arrived at the HODR base in Leogane I was given a brief tour of the facilities.
One of the rules briefly touched on is a 10pm curfew. I always imagined this to be a bit flexible since the bar next door shut at 10pm and it always took people 15 minutes or so to filter back into the base.
Natalie, an attractive, bouncy girl who seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time enjoying male attention, was the base manager. She always looked clean and fresh with spotless clothes and immaculate hair which I always wondered about since it’s almost impossible to clean a pair of socks, let alone your whole body at HODR base. She reminded me a bit of some of the girls I worked with at Minx who are also very resourceful. On Saturday night she invited a few of us to a locals birthday party. She said we could stay the night at the party where we were, and thus not violate curfew. We left Masayes, which I’ll generously term the restaurant at the centre of Leogane (since there aren’t any others, anywhere) and drove to the party a few minutes away. Great burgers at Masayes, so if you ever make it to Leogane you should it hit it up, but they’re small so you’ll need to order two.
The venue was an outside courtyard surrounded by concrete warehouses leaning at strange angles with cracked walls and chunks of wreckage lying scattered on the ground. The area was lit solely by a large fire which had ten or twelve chickens frying over it-delicious-and some oversized speakers were booming onto the dance floor. A few guys were elbow deep in the speakers (while they were at full volume) trying to fix the tweeters that weren’t working. There were tables set up with bottles of J&B whiskey on them, and the beer was free too. Unbelievable! When the blanques (whites) walked in everyone swivelled their head to peer at us but they settled down quickly because Natalie knew the locals. She told me airily that she had two Haitian boyfriends and they were both there that night. Yea right, I thought and hit the DF with Bora from Turkey, Cayla and a bunch of Haitian guys. I am probably the fourth or fifth worst dancer in the world but I’ve never danced like that in my life; the Haitians would do moves that we’d then copy/mangle them and it was like running cross country carrying a goat on your back and a sack of cement on your head, it was intense! At one point we all took turns doing handstands and walking of the stage to crowd surf into the guys below, and I remember being spread out like a starfish with four guys holding me up by my hands and feet, whipping me like a sheet. I was even busting out the worm, launching off chairs to do it onto the concrete and I don’t need to be told I’m lucky I wasn’t bashed and thrown onto the street for pulling such a rude stunt! It was fantastic fun and the gross lack of quality was made up for with enthusiasm. Those guys were great value.
About 11pm Natalie took off, pissed as a Scotsman at an open bar and unable to stand up straight. I don’t know where she went but it looked as though our accommodation option had disappeared without a trace! By that stage we were all exhausted (we had worked all day as well) and decided that staying at an all night party where we didn’t know anyone or speak the language in one of the poorest countries in the world was not ideal so we walked home.
The streets of Leogane are pitch black because there is no electricity at all so we walked around trying to avoid the street dogs and piles of rubble and walked in the front door about 11.30.
The next day we all got a talking to and a four day suspension from base, effective at midday Sunday. I pointed out that I wasn’t wilfully breaking the rules-if that had been my intention I would have climbed over the walls, not walked in the front door! At any rate I was given two hours to find somewhere to stay in a city where 90% of the buildings have been destroyed. Fucking ridiculous! I can sleep on any surface but I don’t know what Cayla ended up doing, the nearest accommodation option was hours away on a tap tap (like a local taxi). On Sunday we all went to the beach anyway (it was Anzac day as explained above) so not a lot of planning was done I can tell you, but in the end kharma showed up and the people who’s house I had helped to demolish and cart away said I could stay with them (in the remains of their house). They generously gave me a double bed with clean sheets, so I was actually better off than at HODR base. I believe that generosity to be tempered a little by the fact that they aren’t actually confident enough to sleep in the house after the earthquake and do so in a tent in the back yard but…I don’t care. Last night I got checked into the hospital by a nurse volunteer and had the best nights sleep I’ve had yet, in a clean, air-conditioned environment free from mozzies, so thanks for that Christina! In general the generosity people have shown me since I got punted has been overwhelming and I will touch on that later.
The first day off, I went with Dave (a Haitian volunteer) to PaP to buy a bigger sledgehammer than the ones we had on base, which maxed out at 8 pounds. I asked for the biggest one they had, which, disappointingly, was 10 pounds*. I am almost positive Dave ripped me off and arranged a kickback with the guy at the hardware store, since he mysteriously knew the price of the hammer well before we got to the shop, which happened to take 3 hours to reach. A number of strange occurrences like that happened with Dave (e.g. catching him pocketing my change) and after he asked me for money one day I told him piss off and not come near me again. Then I pushed hard (successfully) to get him fired from the HODR program because I believe him to be a shifty, dishonest swindler, who tries to guilt trip people into forgiving his indescretions by blaming it all on a misunderstanding. Enough of that…
Funny thing about sledgehammers. If you don’t care about sledgehammers I wouldn’t read this paragraph…I never really thought about them before, in fact had never used one. Now I care how heavy it is, how long the handle is, if the handle is wood or plastic etc. The longer the handle, the more speed you can swing the head at, and the heavier the head, the greater the impact and damage you do to the concrete. You have to balance the size of the head and handle length with your strength and fitness because the effort needed to swing hammers goes up exponentially with the weight and arc length. But lighter hammers bounce of the concrete more which messes with your wrists and hands, so if you‘re reasonably strong you want a long heavy hammer to get through your work faster…hmmm getting a little carried away by the look of it. Anyway for the first few days I was here I couldn’t open a bottle of coke my hands were so painful from hitting concrete, but like everything else they adjusted. I am quite pleased with my new sledgehammer and can’t wait to throw it at something.
One day of my holiday I went for a walk. I travelled a few hundred meters down the road from HODR base and turned left at the tent city, made of makeshift USAid tarps and tents with wooden doorframes. “Made in China” was stamped in big red letters on the doors and women sat between the rows cooking, or cleaning small kids. This place is crawling with children younger than about 10 years old. Men of working age sat around playing card games or chatting.
Question: If there are 4 Haitian men at a drinks vendor on the side of the road, how many does it take to sell you a fruit juice?
Answer: None, one of them will yell out to get a (busy) woman to do it.
To be fair some Haitian men are back at their old jobs, working on the sugar cane or coconut plantations, or tilling fields, pulling wooden carts laden with goods or produce, by hand, down the rutted dirt roads of Leogane, or selling things like motor oil, beer, Coca-Cola and machetes on the side of the road. Some are getting on with repairing their houses or clearing out drainage pits for when the monsoon hits in a months time. This place operates at about subsistence level, with any gaps being filled by foreign aid.
Past the tent city I headed towards the beach, and gradually the buildings thinned out and the tents disappeared. After a few minutes I came across three ruined buildings, roofless with vines growing around their columns and walls. They formed three sides of a square, looking inward, about thirty metres to a side. Behind one side of the square was a sugar cane plantation, the cane stretching three or more metres into the sky. A few old men were amongst the cane hacking at it with machetes and some cows grazed in the pasture between the cane and the ruins, chewing chaff lazily in the midday heat. Beyond the second side of the ruins was a coconut tree plantation, the palm fronds etched against the hazy indistinct mountains in the distance, and the searing blue sky. The water evaporating from the palms and the midday heat made the air shimmer and faraway objects were only just opaque and waif-like, insubstantial. The sun was so bright that the sky turned a grey blue from the heat. There was no sound except the wind rustling through the cane, and the odd tap-tap-tapping of a man nailing his house back together behind the woods.
Between the mountains in the distance and the coconut trees in front of me was the sea. The shore was sparsely dotted with makeshift buildings and crowded with plants, and the coconuts grow right down to the shore. The heat, ruins, small farms and natural setting combine with the strange silence to make you feel like you’ve stepped back in time to a more basic, primitive place. It is very beautiful.
I’ve had a pretty good week. It was my birthday on Thursday, so got shouted a few beers which is always nice. Also started running teams at rubble sites. I spent three days finishing of a large site at a house owned by a guy called Boissoniare, and the same people kept signing up to my crew and it was satisfying to finish clearing the slab so the family can move off the street where there tent is and back onto their property. The girls and guys on the team were great and cleared what was a huge pile of concrete out of the way right on schedule.
To cap it off the Haitian volunteer contingent voted me as the volunteer of the week, That sounds like something you get from McDonalds (by no means a bad thing at all) but there’s over 120 volunteers floating around base now so at least some people like me around here. Since I know about 7 things in Creole (do this, come on, please, thank you, good work, wanker, I am having a wank tonight) I wonder if the vote was influenced by the number of beers I buy the Haitian guys after work rather than any indication of their goodwill towards me.
This place is a revolving sick bay. People inhale or eat most of the things that make them sick. Probably the same as back home really but there is always a pile of garbage on fire somewhere, adding ambience to the streetscape. Failing that, but usually as well as that, is the dust thrown up by truck tyres. Where there are trucks there are plumes of oily black diesel smoke-these trucks are always at least 20 years old. The clincher is a bit more complicated: Running by most streets are deep canals or drainage gutters, about a foot wide and up to three deep. This is where you shit, piss, spit, throw garbage and leftover food (if you don’t want to light it on fire) and put basically everything not worth keeping (which in Haiti is a small and very unappealing set of items).
Then, to keep dust down, you throw water from the canals onto the road, so that when it dries and the trucks roll past and throws up dust and vomit exhaust, you’re inhaling particles of sewerage as well as standard pollution.
* A small girl showed up to base yesterday with a 16 pound hammer so I feel a bit underdone now. If you would like to donate a 20 pound hammer head please let me know.
If you’re Australian or Kiwi skip the first two paragraphs because you should already know it, otherwise read on.
25th April, 1915, the Anzacs (Australia New Zealand Army Corps) along with other Allied soldiers, invaded Turkey, on the Gallipoli peninsula. Instead of sending us to the nice flat beach as planned the English sent the Anzacs to the cliff faced, machine gun topped beach where they got slaughtered. Over the ensuing campaign about 11,000 Anzacs died, and eventually they withdrew in defeat. Many times that number of Turks died.
For the newly federated nation of Australia, it was the first time we had acted as a sovereign country, as opposed to independent states. As a result Anzac came to mean two things, a celebration of the birth of the Australian identity, and the time that Australians and Kiwis stop to remember the men and women who died fighting for our way of life. These days Anzac day is a time of respect and remembrance for Australians and Kiwis, with dawn services the usual way to pay your respects, followed by a day of toasting our soldiers as often as possible. Only unAustralian people (like farking Englishmen) stay sober.
There weren’t any dawn services in Haiti so I slept in a bit. We had a trip to the beach planned that day and before we left I made an Australian flag out of some nurses scrubs, a red mesh singlet and sports tape. It looked lush. There are photos on face book if you’re interested.
We got a tap tap (a ute with room for about 19 people on the back) and went to Bellisimo, which is a resort fronting a small coral reef. I use the word resort expansively because it was really some half built halls and guest houses, which were then blown up by the earthquake. What they do have is electricity for the 6 foot tall speaker blocks and the beer fridges. In it’s own way this place is paradise and like the rest of Haiti a design of contrasts.
Speaking of contrasts, I think Haiti is best summed up by the view of sunset we get from the roof of the HODR base each night. In the foreground the unfinished columns and rebar of Belval Plaza point vertically, like emaciated fingers at the grapefruit sized sun. It swells as it floats to the horizon, which is pierced by tall coconut trees. The sky turns a molten gold colour and the clouds reflect purple, blue and amber light. The sun is beach ball sized as it drops behind the palm fronds which are silhouetted black now, and your eyes are drawn to a grand concrete building, cement rendered and three levels high. There are trees in the grounds of this majestic structure and wrought iron patterns the windows and doors. It is gated with a large dirt driveway, and spaces for many cars to park. The wall around it is partially collapsed. Scattered throughout it’s grounds are pieces of concrete, rebar and a burned out car. Kids run around playing games, squealing loudly and barefoot. The road running past the building is dusty, potholed and lined with rubble, burning garbage piles, timid dogs, crushed, derelict or burned out vehicles and men pulling wooden wagons loaded with bricks, lumber or bottles by hand, often barefoot. If the garbage pile isn’t on fire often a giant hog or some skinny goats while be snouting around in it. There are a few vendors, each seemingly specialising in one item, you can buy a hot dog (mystery meat on a stick with hot sauce) from one, but have to walk further down the road to get a Coke. So the contrast, if you haven’t worked it out yet, is human tenacity and squalor amid amazing natural beauty. You could look at it and draw the conclusion that in the end nature is still very much in charge. Maybe there’s something in that for all of us.
Well, back to our beach. The shore is sprinkled with rubble and a few damaged buildings, with a small plaza leading to a large wrought iron gate that arches across steps leading to the water. The gate sits in isolation-there are no walls to either side of it. If it sounds like a strange set up, it is.
A large group of us went and by the time we got there the rum had already loosened things up a bit. We all stepped gingerly into the bath temperature water, which was wading depth out to about 100 metres, since the bottom was mostly soft sand but also sharp bits of garbage and man-o-wars. There was a cruise liner and a clipper with triangular sails off the coast, and as always seems to be the case in Haiti, there were indistinct mountains in the distance. They are actually the mountains on the other side of the gulf which is the most recognisable feature of Haiti if you look at it on a map. Mostly we spent the day wrestling in the water with Haitian guys, taking photos, throwing the gridiron ball and generally clowning around. Well, I was wrestling so I‘m sure everyone else was.
Before things got out of hand I wanted to pay my respects to the Anzacs. I drank a few beers and a few bottles of rum (they’re small) until I was feeling sentimental and emotional. Then I found a pile of rubble a little way from the rest of the revellers and climbed to the summit. I held my makeshift flag out, and stared out to sea for a slow count of sixty and thought of the sacrifice all those young men and women have made for our country and way of life.
I love being overseas and in different countries, in fact I left because I was bored with everything back home. I love sampling different cultures and languages, eating local foods and meeting locals. I also like appraising local alcoholic beverages to check if they have the same wonderful effects as Australian ones. But one thing which is reinforced while overseas is that we are lucky to be from somewhere like Australia because in fact there are a lot of places out there which aren’t as good.
I think it’s OK to have a patriotic moment every now and then (maybe once or twice a year) and while I was having a private love in with myself about Australia I made sure I was alone because I didn’t want to ram it down anyone’s throat (anymore that I had already-I scored some Australia flag boxers from a girl who had been romancing some Aussie guy somewhere and she’d claimed his boxers as a souvenir, which she then donated to me for Anzac Day. So I was prancing around in aussie flag boxers and bandana). At any rate this all took about 5 minutes, because I didn’t want to miss out on the rounds being bought back at the bar.
On the way home down the freeway I was standing on the bumper bar of the ute, which had a wooden tray and tailgate. I was wearing boardies, thongs and my backpack, and as we pulled into the street the compound is on, the tailgate I was hanging onto broke off and I hit the ground, did a few commando rolls, and somehow landed on my feet without a single scratch. Legend. More evidence that if you have to fall off a balcony or the back of a car be blind drunk when you do it.
That night was the start of a suspension from base I copped for missing curfew. Myself and two others came home late one night and walked through the front door, and went to sleep. The next day we were given two hours to get off base-we were suspended.
I thought it was a little strange, we were only an hour and a half late and as I pointed out, if I’d known it was a serious rule I would have walked through the gaping hole in the back of the building (caused by the earthquake) as opposed to the front door. Anyway rules are rules as I keep discovering. The first two days of hiatus, I slept at the house of a family who’s land we had cleared of rubble, about 30m down the road from the base, so I thought was karma really.
Maybe I should explain how this situation came about. When I arrived at the HODR base in Leogane I was given a brief tour of the facilities.
One of the rules briefly touched on is a 10pm curfew. I always imagined this to be a bit flexible since the bar next door shut at 10pm and it always took people 15 minutes or so to filter back into the base.
Natalie, an attractive, bouncy girl who seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time enjoying male attention, was the base manager. She always looked clean and fresh with spotless clothes and immaculate hair which I always wondered about since it’s almost impossible to clean a pair of socks, let alone your whole body at HODR base. She reminded me a bit of some of the girls I worked with at Minx who are also very resourceful. On Saturday night she invited a few of us to a locals birthday party. She said we could stay the night at the party where we were, and thus not violate curfew. We left Masayes, which I’ll generously term the restaurant at the centre of Leogane (since there aren’t any others, anywhere) and drove to the party a few minutes away. Great burgers at Masayes, so if you ever make it to Leogane you should it hit it up, but they’re small so you’ll need to order two.
The venue was an outside courtyard surrounded by concrete warehouses leaning at strange angles with cracked walls and chunks of wreckage lying scattered on the ground. The area was lit solely by a large fire which had ten or twelve chickens frying over it-delicious-and some oversized speakers were booming onto the dance floor. A few guys were elbow deep in the speakers (while they were at full volume) trying to fix the tweeters that weren’t working. There were tables set up with bottles of J&B whiskey on them, and the beer was free too. Unbelievable! When the blanques (whites) walked in everyone swivelled their head to peer at us but they settled down quickly because Natalie knew the locals. She told me airily that she had two Haitian boyfriends and they were both there that night. Yea right, I thought and hit the DF with Bora from Turkey, Cayla and a bunch of Haitian guys. I am probably the fourth or fifth worst dancer in the world but I’ve never danced like that in my life; the Haitians would do moves that we’d then copy/mangle them and it was like running cross country carrying a goat on your back and a sack of cement on your head, it was intense! At one point we all took turns doing handstands and walking of the stage to crowd surf into the guys below, and I remember being spread out like a starfish with four guys holding me up by my hands and feet, whipping me like a sheet. I was even busting out the worm, launching off chairs to do it onto the concrete and I don’t need to be told I’m lucky I wasn’t bashed and thrown onto the street for pulling such a rude stunt! It was fantastic fun and the gross lack of quality was made up for with enthusiasm. Those guys were great value.
About 11pm Natalie took off, pissed as a Scotsman at an open bar and unable to stand up straight. I don’t know where she went but it looked as though our accommodation option had disappeared without a trace! By that stage we were all exhausted (we had worked all day as well) and decided that staying at an all night party where we didn’t know anyone or speak the language in one of the poorest countries in the world was not ideal so we walked home.
The streets of Leogane are pitch black because there is no electricity at all so we walked around trying to avoid the street dogs and piles of rubble and walked in the front door about 11.30.
The next day we all got a talking to and a four day suspension from base, effective at midday Sunday. I pointed out that I wasn’t wilfully breaking the rules-if that had been my intention I would have climbed over the walls, not walked in the front door! At any rate I was given two hours to find somewhere to stay in a city where 90% of the buildings have been destroyed. Fucking ridiculous! I can sleep on any surface but I don’t know what Cayla ended up doing, the nearest accommodation option was hours away on a tap tap (like a local taxi). On Sunday we all went to the beach anyway (it was Anzac day as explained above) so not a lot of planning was done I can tell you, but in the end kharma showed up and the people who’s house I had helped to demolish and cart away said I could stay with them (in the remains of their house). They generously gave me a double bed with clean sheets, so I was actually better off than at HODR base. I believe that generosity to be tempered a little by the fact that they aren’t actually confident enough to sleep in the house after the earthquake and do so in a tent in the back yard but…I don’t care. Last night I got checked into the hospital by a nurse volunteer and had the best nights sleep I’ve had yet, in a clean, air-conditioned environment free from mozzies, so thanks for that Christina! In general the generosity people have shown me since I got punted has been overwhelming and I will touch on that later.
The first day off, I went with Dave (a Haitian volunteer) to PaP to buy a bigger sledgehammer than the ones we had on base, which maxed out at 8 pounds. I asked for the biggest one they had, which, disappointingly, was 10 pounds*. I am almost positive Dave ripped me off and arranged a kickback with the guy at the hardware store, since he mysteriously knew the price of the hammer well before we got to the shop, which happened to take 3 hours to reach. A number of strange occurrences like that happened with Dave (e.g. catching him pocketing my change) and after he asked me for money one day I told him piss off and not come near me again. Then I pushed hard (successfully) to get him fired from the HODR program because I believe him to be a shifty, dishonest swindler, who tries to guilt trip people into forgiving his indescretions by blaming it all on a misunderstanding. Enough of that…
Funny thing about sledgehammers. If you don’t care about sledgehammers I wouldn’t read this paragraph…I never really thought about them before, in fact had never used one. Now I care how heavy it is, how long the handle is, if the handle is wood or plastic etc. The longer the handle, the more speed you can swing the head at, and the heavier the head, the greater the impact and damage you do to the concrete. You have to balance the size of the head and handle length with your strength and fitness because the effort needed to swing hammers goes up exponentially with the weight and arc length. But lighter hammers bounce of the concrete more which messes with your wrists and hands, so if you‘re reasonably strong you want a long heavy hammer to get through your work faster…hmmm getting a little carried away by the look of it. Anyway for the first few days I was here I couldn’t open a bottle of coke my hands were so painful from hitting concrete, but like everything else they adjusted. I am quite pleased with my new sledgehammer and can’t wait to throw it at something.
One day of my holiday I went for a walk. I travelled a few hundred meters down the road from HODR base and turned left at the tent city, made of makeshift USAid tarps and tents with wooden doorframes. “Made in China” was stamped in big red letters on the doors and women sat between the rows cooking, or cleaning small kids. This place is crawling with children younger than about 10 years old. Men of working age sat around playing card games or chatting.
Question: If there are 4 Haitian men at a drinks vendor on the side of the road, how many does it take to sell you a fruit juice?
Answer: None, one of them will yell out to get a (busy) woman to do it.
To be fair some Haitian men are back at their old jobs, working on the sugar cane or coconut plantations, or tilling fields, pulling wooden carts laden with goods or produce, by hand, down the rutted dirt roads of Leogane, or selling things like motor oil, beer, Coca-Cola and machetes on the side of the road. Some are getting on with repairing their houses or clearing out drainage pits for when the monsoon hits in a months time. This place operates at about subsistence level, with any gaps being filled by foreign aid.
Past the tent city I headed towards the beach, and gradually the buildings thinned out and the tents disappeared. After a few minutes I came across three ruined buildings, roofless with vines growing around their columns and walls. They formed three sides of a square, looking inward, about thirty metres to a side. Behind one side of the square was a sugar cane plantation, the cane stretching three or more metres into the sky. A few old men were amongst the cane hacking at it with machetes and some cows grazed in the pasture between the cane and the ruins, chewing chaff lazily in the midday heat. Beyond the second side of the ruins was a coconut tree plantation, the palm fronds etched against the hazy indistinct mountains in the distance, and the searing blue sky. The water evaporating from the palms and the midday heat made the air shimmer and faraway objects were only just opaque and waif-like, insubstantial. The sun was so bright that the sky turned a grey blue from the heat. There was no sound except the wind rustling through the cane, and the odd tap-tap-tapping of a man nailing his house back together behind the woods.
Between the mountains in the distance and the coconut trees in front of me was the sea. The shore was sparsely dotted with makeshift buildings and crowded with plants, and the coconuts grow right down to the shore. The heat, ruins, small farms and natural setting combine with the strange silence to make you feel like you’ve stepped back in time to a more basic, primitive place. It is very beautiful.
I’ve had a pretty good week. It was my birthday on Thursday, so got shouted a few beers which is always nice. Also started running teams at rubble sites. I spent three days finishing of a large site at a house owned by a guy called Boissoniare, and the same people kept signing up to my crew and it was satisfying to finish clearing the slab so the family can move off the street where there tent is and back onto their property. The girls and guys on the team were great and cleared what was a huge pile of concrete out of the way right on schedule.
To cap it off the Haitian volunteer contingent voted me as the volunteer of the week, That sounds like something you get from McDonalds (by no means a bad thing at all) but there’s over 120 volunteers floating around base now so at least some people like me around here. Since I know about 7 things in Creole (do this, come on, please, thank you, good work, wanker, I am having a wank tonight) I wonder if the vote was influenced by the number of beers I buy the Haitian guys after work rather than any indication of their goodwill towards me.
This place is a revolving sick bay. People inhale or eat most of the things that make them sick. Probably the same as back home really but there is always a pile of garbage on fire somewhere, adding ambience to the streetscape. Failing that, but usually as well as that, is the dust thrown up by truck tyres. Where there are trucks there are plumes of oily black diesel smoke-these trucks are always at least 20 years old. The clincher is a bit more complicated: Running by most streets are deep canals or drainage gutters, about a foot wide and up to three deep. This is where you shit, piss, spit, throw garbage and leftover food (if you don’t want to light it on fire) and put basically everything not worth keeping (which in Haiti is a small and very unappealing set of items).
Then, to keep dust down, you throw water from the canals onto the road, so that when it dries and the trucks roll past and throws up dust and vomit exhaust, you’re inhaling particles of sewerage as well as standard pollution.
* A small girl showed up to base yesterday with a 16 pound hammer so I feel a bit underdone now. If you would like to donate a 20 pound hammer head please let me know.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
I Am Scared of Earthquakes
Leogane is stinking hot, with squelching humidity and a blaring sun that sucks the life out of you. After sunrise you can’t sleep because it’s too uncomfortable to lie in the greenhouse your tent has become and as soon as you get up you start to wilt in the heat. Exposed skin starts to prickle and sweat pops out of every pore. If you put sun cream on it washes off after 5 minutes, even in the shade, because you’re too wet for it to soak in, and by lunch time you’re drenched down to your underpants, literally. If you are hungover your head feels stuffed full of cement mix and your whole body aches. Any hydration your body had was leached out of you while you slept. Your mattress is soaked and the tent reeks of dank sweat rancid man smell. This is derived from the alluring scent of male pheromones (err..) and sweat, soaked into a dirty singlet and left to ferment for 48 hours in a tent with no ventilation and an ambient temperature of 45C. At any rate you feel crusty because even though you’ve taken the fly off, exposing the tent to the night air, there is no wind at all and you’ve woken up every 20 minutes to slide around your mattress in an attempt to find a comfortable way to lie. The only way to sleep in this heat is on your back, spreadeagle, nude or maybe in briefs, because people can see right in since the fly is off. That doesn’t bother me but out of courtesy to others I wear undies most nights. I am down to three undies from five-one pair lost in transit somewhere and another due to an unfortunate case of follow through on a demolition job on my second day. Oops.
During the day dogs walk across the road and slump down on their haunches in the middle, to lazy to get to the other side. Haitians sit around under improvised awnings made of sticks and bed sheets, on the side of the road, or on the verandas of the few buildings still standing and play board games or do chores. Many of them look at the crazy white people slaving away in the middle of the day and shake their heads in wonder. They think we’re crazy, but I think they’re lazy, you be the judge. Some of them sit around drinking rum from small bottles. Some Haitian guys offered me a swig of theirs today while I was hammering away-Haitian rum is 43% alcohol and at 35C-it’s wasn’t delicious. Another guy from Texas did the same and was vomiting in the gutter a few minutes later-what a weapon. It’s not just the temperature that’s the real killer but the humidity, and the physical work that we spend our time doing. At lunch after four hours in the sun when I wring my socks out the sweat drips onto the ground like I’m squeezing a dishrag. My body sweat runs down my legs and into my socks. I’ve been told I’m a disgusting human being but I’m not so sure. Anyway, the heat is one of the striking features of this place, along with the dust, poverty and destruction all around (and rum).
Until today.
At 4.30pm the clouds rolled in, the wind picked up and the sun disappeared early. It hasn’t rained here for a month but it really opened up tonight. From the first drops, which created little dust clouds on the road until the end of the downpour when the stars popped out again was only about an hour, and it was still dry outside when the first lightning hit, right outside the compound. Then the sky collapsed, there was constant lightning and you couldn’t speak for the deafening crash of thunder. Within minutes the entire central courtyard of the base was flooded, about 3 inches deep in water. A few people used the storm as a chance to pair off and run to a tent for some romance, confidant they could be as noisy as they wanted and for once nobody would hear them Something about rain after a long dry spell makes people act weird and before long everyone was running around fully clothed in the deluge, soaked to the skin. I considered getting nude but some people here are pretty conservative and it’s best not to offend. Other people were using it to wash (without a bucket for once), others sliding around like kids, it was bizarre. Charlie fell over and cracked his head which dampened spirits a bit (couldn’t resist) and then the wind hit.
It was really pouring, a typical thunderstorm with thunder, lightning, the whole set up. I’d gone up top to close Simons tent (Simon is a foul mouthed Scotsman who is one of my best mates around here) and my own, but forgot to close mine so had to race up halfway through the storm to zip it up, discovering it had collapsed. Still waterproof though so I jumped inside, I was prepared to stay with the tent all night to save it and the contents. Apart from the flimsy poles which kept buckling, I had anchored it well so it stayed dry and intact. Once the storm passed I hung out the few things that had got wet and took the fly off and for the first time since I got here, I had to use my sleeping bag at night, because it actually got cool-it was great.
The storm was a nice prelude to other events that made me realise that life is full of choices. Tea or coffee, Playstation or Xbox, stay at boring job or go overseas etc.
In Leogane I get to choose between zipping my tent closed to keep the mozzies out, or leaving it open so I can get out when there are earthquakes. I don’t know what the point of getting out is since I’m still stuck on a roof 30 feet of the ground with no exit route whatsoever. At any rate the mozzie won’t kill me (unless he gives me malaria and even then…) or even bite me very often but he buzzes past my ear all the time so I keep the tent closed. I even slept through a small aftershock once and was only woken up by the screaming from the people in the bunks downstairs.
Tonight there was a tremor, and it was the first big aftershock I’ve really experienced since I got here. It was midnight and I was fast asleep and I woke up to my tent shaking and air mattress bouncing. There was rapid vibrant banging as the bunks downstairs frantically started swinging into each other and the whole earth was moving as if a giant jackhammer was pounding into it. It’s like the world is a pot of water on a stove and the surface is the lid which starts to suddenly jump around when the water hit’s boiling point. It usually takes me 4 hours to really wake up, but I knew I was in an earthquake about one millionth of a second after my eyes opened and to be honest it completely scared the living shit out of me! I was terrified, and I couldn’t open my fucking tent zipper. FUCK.
Holy shit, I thought, I’m going to die in a $32 Walmart tent in Haiti. Dying in a tent just seems to shite for words, something a fat, uncoordinated, asthmatic, androgynous 36 year old virgin would do, it doesn‘t appeal to me at all! Just as I was about to rip the zip off entirely it came undone and I burst out onto the roof. Usually it takes me 2 minutes to unfold from inside my tent. In reality I was stuck for about three seconds but when your brain is really in imminent-death mode it works much, much faster than normal and three seconds is really 30. I experienced that once before, flying through the air in the moment immediately after launching over the handlebars on my motorbike, but preceding the moment I hit the ground. Ah clarity and reasoning, why aren’t you always with me!?
Anyway it’s pretty interesting experiencing an earthquake for the first time. We were told this morning that it was only a 4.0 so apparently I am a coward and was scared for nothing, I’m glad I didn’t scream. I thought about it…just kidding. Some girls downstairs slept through the whole thing…but I found out later they were drunk, which is cheating really. The first tremor we had when I got here (which I slept through) was a 6.0, but I guess it depends where the epicentre is and if you’re awake for it.
My heart rate went from a standing start to completely off the chart by the time I’d removed myself from the tent. The night, which had been silent, erupted in noise as every dog, cat, cow, goat, duck, turkey and chicken panicked and started making their respective noises into the night and for once I didn’t resent them for it. It took a few minutes to relax enough to go back to sleep but it’s good to be able to say I’ve popped my earthquake cherry. I fully understand now why the locals live in tents on the road even if their house appears intact.
In all an eventful couple of days.
During the day dogs walk across the road and slump down on their haunches in the middle, to lazy to get to the other side. Haitians sit around under improvised awnings made of sticks and bed sheets, on the side of the road, or on the verandas of the few buildings still standing and play board games or do chores. Many of them look at the crazy white people slaving away in the middle of the day and shake their heads in wonder. They think we’re crazy, but I think they’re lazy, you be the judge. Some of them sit around drinking rum from small bottles. Some Haitian guys offered me a swig of theirs today while I was hammering away-Haitian rum is 43% alcohol and at 35C-it’s wasn’t delicious. Another guy from Texas did the same and was vomiting in the gutter a few minutes later-what a weapon. It’s not just the temperature that’s the real killer but the humidity, and the physical work that we spend our time doing. At lunch after four hours in the sun when I wring my socks out the sweat drips onto the ground like I’m squeezing a dishrag. My body sweat runs down my legs and into my socks. I’ve been told I’m a disgusting human being but I’m not so sure. Anyway, the heat is one of the striking features of this place, along with the dust, poverty and destruction all around (and rum).
Until today.
At 4.30pm the clouds rolled in, the wind picked up and the sun disappeared early. It hasn’t rained here for a month but it really opened up tonight. From the first drops, which created little dust clouds on the road until the end of the downpour when the stars popped out again was only about an hour, and it was still dry outside when the first lightning hit, right outside the compound. Then the sky collapsed, there was constant lightning and you couldn’t speak for the deafening crash of thunder. Within minutes the entire central courtyard of the base was flooded, about 3 inches deep in water. A few people used the storm as a chance to pair off and run to a tent for some romance, confidant they could be as noisy as they wanted and for once nobody would hear them Something about rain after a long dry spell makes people act weird and before long everyone was running around fully clothed in the deluge, soaked to the skin. I considered getting nude but some people here are pretty conservative and it’s best not to offend. Other people were using it to wash (without a bucket for once), others sliding around like kids, it was bizarre. Charlie fell over and cracked his head which dampened spirits a bit (couldn’t resist) and then the wind hit.
It was really pouring, a typical thunderstorm with thunder, lightning, the whole set up. I’d gone up top to close Simons tent (Simon is a foul mouthed Scotsman who is one of my best mates around here) and my own, but forgot to close mine so had to race up halfway through the storm to zip it up, discovering it had collapsed. Still waterproof though so I jumped inside, I was prepared to stay with the tent all night to save it and the contents. Apart from the flimsy poles which kept buckling, I had anchored it well so it stayed dry and intact. Once the storm passed I hung out the few things that had got wet and took the fly off and for the first time since I got here, I had to use my sleeping bag at night, because it actually got cool-it was great.
The storm was a nice prelude to other events that made me realise that life is full of choices. Tea or coffee, Playstation or Xbox, stay at boring job or go overseas etc.
In Leogane I get to choose between zipping my tent closed to keep the mozzies out, or leaving it open so I can get out when there are earthquakes. I don’t know what the point of getting out is since I’m still stuck on a roof 30 feet of the ground with no exit route whatsoever. At any rate the mozzie won’t kill me (unless he gives me malaria and even then…) or even bite me very often but he buzzes past my ear all the time so I keep the tent closed. I even slept through a small aftershock once and was only woken up by the screaming from the people in the bunks downstairs.
Tonight there was a tremor, and it was the first big aftershock I’ve really experienced since I got here. It was midnight and I was fast asleep and I woke up to my tent shaking and air mattress bouncing. There was rapid vibrant banging as the bunks downstairs frantically started swinging into each other and the whole earth was moving as if a giant jackhammer was pounding into it. It’s like the world is a pot of water on a stove and the surface is the lid which starts to suddenly jump around when the water hit’s boiling point. It usually takes me 4 hours to really wake up, but I knew I was in an earthquake about one millionth of a second after my eyes opened and to be honest it completely scared the living shit out of me! I was terrified, and I couldn’t open my fucking tent zipper. FUCK.
Holy shit, I thought, I’m going to die in a $32 Walmart tent in Haiti. Dying in a tent just seems to shite for words, something a fat, uncoordinated, asthmatic, androgynous 36 year old virgin would do, it doesn‘t appeal to me at all! Just as I was about to rip the zip off entirely it came undone and I burst out onto the roof. Usually it takes me 2 minutes to unfold from inside my tent. In reality I was stuck for about three seconds but when your brain is really in imminent-death mode it works much, much faster than normal and three seconds is really 30. I experienced that once before, flying through the air in the moment immediately after launching over the handlebars on my motorbike, but preceding the moment I hit the ground. Ah clarity and reasoning, why aren’t you always with me!?
Anyway it’s pretty interesting experiencing an earthquake for the first time. We were told this morning that it was only a 4.0 so apparently I am a coward and was scared for nothing, I’m glad I didn’t scream. I thought about it…just kidding. Some girls downstairs slept through the whole thing…but I found out later they were drunk, which is cheating really. The first tremor we had when I got here (which I slept through) was a 6.0, but I guess it depends where the epicentre is and if you’re awake for it.
My heart rate went from a standing start to completely off the chart by the time I’d removed myself from the tent. The night, which had been silent, erupted in noise as every dog, cat, cow, goat, duck, turkey and chicken panicked and started making their respective noises into the night and for once I didn’t resent them for it. It took a few minutes to relax enough to go back to sleep but it’s good to be able to say I’ve popped my earthquake cherry. I fully understand now why the locals live in tents on the road even if their house appears intact.
In all an eventful couple of days.
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