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.