Desperate Men. Sometimes things in your mind coalesce into clarity at really odd times. You can be trying to sleep in yet another hostel room, a memory will pop into your head, and suddenly what was really happening at that exact moment becomes crystal clear. The context, the colours and sounds, the diluting details wash away and a realisation of what was really happening hits you like a shot of rum on a hot day. Or maybe my brain is just ascribing meaning to something where meaning doesn’t exist. We’ll see.
There was a Haitian guy, I don’t remember his name, who used to hang out at Joe’s next to our base. He wasn’t one of the volunteers. He was friends with some of them and he tried to sell me pages of English words translated into Creole a few times, because I expressed an interest in learning some Creole when I first got to Haiti. The amount of time and effort to write a page of translations…it must have been an arduous task for a man who could barely write at all, let alone in English. I was tempted but laziness and a general tightness with cash prevented me from going through with it. But mainly, when I checked I discovered many of the translations were somewhat…flexible.
I should describe Joes since it was one of two main venues for relaxing we had in Leogane. There were a few smaller ones like Guttermans (situated in a gutter, later renamed Little Venice, I guess because of the picturesque canal running past it). We actually demolished and removed Gutterman’s house for him. There was also Toiletman, next to a toilet,, and more recently there was Left Bar, reached by turning left when you walked out of the base. It raised the bar for roadside bars (sorry) in Leogane, because he installed a tarp to sit under. He also initiated a price war, dropping his beers to 30 Ghoudes during the world cup soccer. Well, Joes is a basic place. It’s more or less an open square space, with the grey rendered walls of the HODR compound on one side, an L shaped veranda, with the fourth side open. There are square tables with plastic tablecloths and metal fold out chairs. At the corner of the L shape is a bar where can buy all sorts of drinks-Prestige beer, Barbancourt rum…and that’s it actually. Barbancourt rum sends you sideways. It sent me sideways literally. I could never walk straight on the stuff. Not ideal considering I lived on a rooftop with no fence. It‘s great stuff, brings out the obnoxious in you!
The veranda’s are lit with bright orange mood lights and there are murals painted on the wall. One thing Haitians do well is loud fucking speakers. The speakers in the bar are 5 foot tall and weigh about 90 kilo’s each and there are 6 of them. Huge woofers topped by giant horns. It’s not overkill, it’s overserialkill. These things are brutal. You don’t go to Joes to have a conversation because it is impossible, reggaeton or autotuned pop/rap music overwhelms everything.
As an aside, I can’t stand autotuned pop/rap/hip-hop music. If there is an aural equivalent to explosive mud guts, this is it. If auto-tuned music was a hamburger from McDonalds, the beef patty would have a pus pimple in it and there would a tangle of grey (or red!) pubes stuck to the pickle. Worse, they would have forgotten the cheese-I fucking hate it when that happens! I would definitely take that burger back, and as every respectable bulimic can tell you, at least you have the option of throwing up garbage food but you can’t unhear terrible music, ever.
It’s enough to make your ears bleed. Maybe it was the speakers and not the rum which sent everyone staggering all over the place. Let’s run with that. I’m sure there must be a law which restricts Haiti to only having 20 different songs in the entire country-although if it was a law it would be broken, so maybe it’s just a cultural thing-let’s only play twenty different songs this year! They would play reggae and rap all night every night, except for Wednesdays which was reggae night, and then they’d only play reggae. And every time they would finish on ‘No Woman No Cry’, the unofficial Haitian national anthem.
Thursdays was rap and hip hop night when the place filled up with gangsta’s and I felt daggy in my short footy shorts and y-fronts. Nobody saw the y-fronts of course but everyone can see a gangsta’s undies because his pants do up under his ass cheeks. Y-fronts wouldn’t cut it, especially the ones I wore because I bought them at Wal-Mart where the sizes are actually smaller than what they are in Australia, so they were a little snug shall we say. In fact they still are a little snug-I’m wearing a pair right now-it‘s more a squashed lunch than a cut lunch down there. Anyway that was all the music variations, except for Tuesdays now that I think about it, which is salsa night, when they play salsa tunes, and probably some reggae for good measure. Either way the repertoire of songs is very select. They definitely know what they like!
That all said I really enjoyed drinking at Joe’s, (probably in spite of the entertainment) and I really like Joe, they handsome chap who owns the bar. He is a top guy-very amiable and while I was suspended he let me sit on his veranda and gave me beers to drink in the sun for free, while I played the guitar and everybody else worked. He is Haitian and drove taxi’s in NYC for 25 years. He was in fact an award winning taxi driver, according to himself, which I find impressive in the extreme. He tapped into the fact the food at HODR base doesn’t quite qualify as gourmet and started making pizzas and selling them to all the hungry volunteers. Those pizzas were delicious, and made him a fortune. They were made in a bakery between the toolshed and the kitchen of the HODR base. I have great memories of that bar because of its unusual quirks and I miss it, and I most certainly miss the people I drank with there.
This Haitian guy was there every night. He was about six foot and athletic skinny, and had a brown fleck in the white of his left eye, like a blood speck that never filtered out. The whites were really more of a sallow yellow, and he spoke English to a reasonable degree. He would always ask me about the girls on base, especially brown Sarah, where is she what is she doing, so to get him to drop it I started telling him Sarah was my wife. The next day he started asking about someone else and I told him she was my wife too…and he nodded as if to say “I know something strange is going on here but I don’t know exactly what…”
Soon I was up to seven or eight wives. Since even the very concept of having seven wives was filling me with panic (and he was starting to regard every thing I said with suspicion) I told him I didn’t have a wife at all. He shook his in a disappointed, angry way. I had told him an untruth and more importantly diverted him from his infatuation with Sarah, who all the Haitian guys held in very high regard. Now he’d been daydreaming needlessly and unfaithfully about other girls for a couple of weeks.
These young men would hang around in the yard outside the bar, sitting on the fence watching the volunteers drink and be social inside. At first I found it a bit creepy, all these guys staring intently at us while we relaxed. Then it was strange and then I just ignored it all together. Some of them would venture inside to dance but the reason they sat and watched is because they couldn’t afford the 40 Goudes Joe charged for a beer. That’s about US80c. Over time, more Haitians came into the bar and partied with the volunteers. I think this was due to the local volunteer program which helped us integrate more with the Haitians.
When they did come inside to dance the result was spectacular. If it was rap or reggae they would form circles and have dance off’s. These Haitian guys can really break it down (I believe that‘s the term). The girls amongst the international volunteers also loved to dance so often the Haitian guys would round up all the women (come to think of it…it was usually the other way around!) and the dance floor would crank. There were two eleven year old Haitian boys. They could both dance as well as anyone I’ve ever seen-little Michael Jackson’s in training-and had no qualms about grabbing the young female volunteers and twisting, grinding, pelvic thrusting and doing various other lustful things that I almost certainly do not approve of...The girls, they absolutely loved it of course. I shudder to think what the reaction would be if I was dirty dancing with a ten year old girl, but anyway, they were talented little guru’s. They would have the most intent looks in their eyes as they sweat it up with the excited blancs, who’s shirts would cling to their bodies and hair would drip with perspiration, their skin shining in the lamplight. It’s easy to remember the grins on everybody’s face as they swirled in the humid night air.
It was great to watch, but never to participate in-I have a profound ego and as such there is no way I am engaging in any activity where a ten year old can completely disgrace me. Unless it‘s Xbox-then I don’t care. Plus I don’t like dancing of course.
The reason I described blood-fleck guy before is because I remembered his eyes when he spoke to me. Not the off-white colour of his eyeballs, but the earnestness in his face whenever he came to speak to me. He wanted to teach me Creole. He wanted to find out if I was staying long in Haiti, and if I liked his country. He wanted to know about the girls at HODR-did they know who he was? What he really, achingly wanted was for me, and the rest of the volunteers (especially the female ones I suppose), to see him as having some intrinsic value-to demonstrate that who he was and what his country has given him, made him into, was impressive or interesting to the international volunteers.
I was thinking of all of this the other day while lying in bed, over a month after I’ve left it all behind. I realised that maybe these young men were staring at us because they so keenly want, no, need the opportunity to be like us. Not to be like a privileged kid from Sydney’s leafy North Shore (like me) but to live in a society that allows them to at least contemplate their potential, or failing even that modest goal, to live in a country that lets them improve their lives, if that is what they want to do. They are desperate to be educated, to understand the concepts that we take for granted, to live the sophisticated existence that we enjoy in the West. We lead these lives without ever even thinking about how far our societies have come, and the prospects we’re afforded in them. Why do we have these opportunities which they don’t have? We can blasé about things they could never contemplate attaining.
I doubt these young Haitian males would articulate things like that. It’s probably not something they dwell on, perhaps in part because it would be a futile and frustrating line of thought. I could be completely wrong as well, who knows. I wonder what the other volunteers think.
As I lay in bed that night, Joe’s bar wafted through my consciousness, the people, nui’s and blancs dancing, drinking together, the ear puncturing music. It swirled through my mind amidst memories of the heat, the flies and mosquitoes, the ice cold beer and potent rum, the concrete wall of the HODR base and the murals of Haitian coastal panoramas. I was reminiscing about these things and the coloured lights along the veranda and the pitch black streets beyond Joe’s, when the truth revealed itself, coalescing out of the memories in my reverie. Blood-fleck’s eyes, his body language, his words, his persistence-his desire.
It seems obvious now-he was a desperate man. He was clinging to the hope and desire of a better life. The sort of existence that the international volunteers gave him a glimpse of when we celebrated finishing a days work in Joe‘s bar. A moment of insight and it was crystal clear, even though I never bothered thinking about it while I was there.
I don’t think it’s all of them or even most of them. There could be a dozen reasons guys like him behaved the way they did. That isn’t the whole story either. Most of the time he probably just wanted to be friendly. But I know what I saw in this guys eyes and in his actions and I know what was underlying his curiosity, a force just beneath the surface driving his behaviour. On reflection there were others like him.
Some people will read this and disagree completely. I think those that would show a lack of empathy. After all it is just blind luck that we were born to privilege and my Haitian mates were born to poverty.
Myself and the other volunteers became close to the Haitians we worked with because the only things we had to judge each other on was our work ethic, integrity and generosity. But this guy, he didn’t work with us and he didn’t know that. So he wondered about us and how we judged his countrymen.
Or maybe it’s just a conceit I have, a privileged rich kid from the West, thinking these people want to have the opportunities we do. That’s possible. But I doubt it. Who wouldn’t want to have the options we do? Perhaps only bead selling hippies from Guatemala would suggest it’s not good to at least have the options we do in the developed world. That makes them the human equivalent of autotune pop songs, inedible, like that burger with no cheese on it. Either way we should count ourselves lucky. I’ve seen, the HODR people have seen what the have-nots have. Mostly, it’s just hope and determination. It will be a long road for Haitians but we’ve seen who the Haitians really are. They can get there in the end.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Last night in Haiti
“My God will help you. You came to my country and helped me. I cannot help you, but I pray that my God will.”
Reginal was the oldest of the local volunteers and told me this on my last night in Haiti. He was crying when he told me that.
It’s tough for the Haitian guys. People like me fly in and work to fix up their city, which really was ruined in the earthquake. We work side by side with the Haitians and become their friends. After work we eat with them and drink with them at the dodgy bar next to base. We get to know their families, their problems, hopes and aspirations. We talk about their personal lives and find out that some of them pass up paying jobs to work with HODR, because they hope by working with Westerners they can learn something from us. We give the older ones grief about how fat they are and the younger ones grief about how desperate and horny they are. (They are outstandingly desperate and horny). We have nicknames for each other. Mine was Lapoynet. This translates to “only God sees me” or something poignant like that. It’s not as cool as it sounds; what it actually means is “wanker”. As I drove around in the back of a tap tap kids, adults, everyone would wave and call out to me “Lapoynet! Lapoynet!” It was a real honour to be hailed in that fashion. The name probably stuck because Haitian guys pretend they never have romantic moments with themselves-because they are so virile they all have multiple girlfriends. Yea right. They thought it was hilarious that I freely admitted to enjoying some special time on the odd occasion. By odd I mean every night, of course. Helps me get to sleep. Tony would ask me every day before work, “Tim, last night lapoynet? One time, three time lapoynet?” Thanks Tony. I started calling him Chichiflex Tony, which is a way of referring to sex in Guatemala.
After we’ve gotten close enough to write each other off with bad sexual nicknames the time comes to leave. Living in Haiti, working 6 days a week 7.30-6pm drains you, mind, body and spirit. I stayed for ten weeks. You live on a surge of adrenalin for the first month, and most people who stay for about that long have amazing memories of the place and plan to come back. They update their face book profiles with Haiti and HODR references and plan reunions. It’s a fantastic experience where you make wonderful new friends and revel in the work being done, which is difficult but very satisfying. Some of them do come back and are confused and disappointed because it isn’t the same as when they were first here.
If you stay for ten weeks, or longer, Haiti, the work, the living conditions, the difficulty of continuously making new friends, then seeing them leave, it grinds you down. Teaching people new skills, seeing them become good at their jobs, then seeing that effort disappear when they do is tiring. Long termers get a bit cynical and withdrawn and newcomers wonder why they are so unfriendly. The food is wholly inadequate and in my last two weeks I could barely stomach it. A typical meal is chicken cooked in an nuclear powered deep fryer, of which you are allowed one piece. The intensity of the frying allowed you to eat the bones often as not so maximum nutrition was gleaned. I guess the oil was full of energy to fuel our days. On a bad day we were served fish head soup. Fish heads are fucked, and so are the fish tails which are part of the recipe. Whenever that meal was served, it was entirely possible to pick up one end of the fish and pull it’s entire spinal chord out of the bowl. Plenty of brown rice with beans thrown in, and one piece of tomato. Often there was a vegetable mash (an appetising brown slush. It looked solid enough to walk on, but was surprisingly viscous. It certainly helped keep our bowels loose) with fresh onions thrown in. As luck would have it there was always chilli sauce to ensure it you could moderate the taste as required. The first month I believed the old maxim “there’s no seasoning like hard work” but now I know that in fact the real seasoning of last resort is chilli sauce. Always in the last week before guys leave (for some reason this applies to men, not women) they lose up to 10 pounds. I did, because I just couldn’t eat the food any more. I had a few other issues as well, including dynamite food poisoning and a busted rib which didn’t help. The thing to remember is that HODR is a volunteer organisation and that when you start to loose drive it really is time to go-no point poisoning the atmosphere.
I remember on my last night at the HODR base, I had made my goodbye speech, and was next door at Joes saying goodbye to the Haitians. Reginal would barely look at me. I could sense something was wrong so we went for a walk.
We walked down the pitch black streets of Leogane. The streets there are just dirt, the main ones cobblestones. If you’re in thongs you need to watch out for the puddles left over from the afternoon rain, which glint a little in the moonlight. The mud bogs are harder to spot since they’re not as reflective and you need to be switched on or you’ll get first muddy, then septic feet. The streets are lined with open sewerage/drainage canals and vacant buildings. There is no electricity. When I first arrived the roads were covered in smashed concrete and tents. People lived on the road out the front of their houses, while dump trucks rumbled past, literally inches away.
Now as I walked down the road I could feel the space that we had helped to create. The roads don’t have rubble or tents on them anymore and people don’t have to sleep next to heavy traffic. Street vendors line the roads in increasing numbers. Commerce is returning. People are rebuilding their homes. Cars can pass each other without having to back up because Leogane has its streets back. It has its streets back because the people who used to live on the road, have their houses back. The rubble has been picked up and carted away. I did that, and the other volunteers from HODR did that. We made it happen and Leogane is better for us being there. It’s a satisfying feeling.
As we walked down the broad streets it was clear Reginal had something to say. He is a Haitian man in his early thirties. He has short hair, slightly longer on the top than the sides. He is pitch black and is round in the middle but mostly from muscle, not fat. He has a gold brace holding one of his teeth in. We sat on a half collapsed wall on the side of the road, up the street from Gutterman’s Bar. Some local kids skipped past laughing, rolling bicycle wheels with sticks, and the only light came from the moon, which shone through fleeting clouds.
“What’s the matter mate?”
Reginal sighed. “I am sad. I am sad because I am losing a friend tonight Tim.” He lowered his head and stared at the ground. I could see his eyes glistening. I didn’t know what to say.
“Will you come back to Haiti one day?”
I don’t know the answer to this question. Haiti is a long way from Australia and I am broke. I would love to come back in a few years and see Leogane rebuilt, but would rather see my Haitian mates with good jobs and families living in a flourishing, incorrupt society. I tell him this. He grimaces. He knows I’m saying I will probably never be back.
“We see you Tim. We are sad that you leave because we see how hard you work and we see what you do for us. We know that you are a good man, and that you have a good heart. You come to my country and help me. I want to thank you but I can never thank you because I am poor.” He frowned. “My God will help you. You came to my country and helped my people. I cannot help you, but I pray that my God will. My God will help you Tim,” and he swung his eyes up to stare into mine. I could hear the truth of what he said in his voice. I knew he would pray to his God for me. I still didn’t know what to say, so I put my arm around his shoulders and we just sat there for a while in the moonlight.
His words meant a lot to me. The truth is that I have worked extremely hard in Haiti. I basically worked myself to a stop. Not necessarily only for the Haitians, especially at the start, but because if I actually get around to doing something I push it to the limit. At any rate, the actual reasons don’t matter. The volunteers saw me work and respected it. I’ve never been in an environment where it was so basic-if you worked hard you won respect, as simple as that. So for that, I need to thank the people I have met through HODR, the local and international volunteers.
It’s hard for the Haitians because when people like me come, work ourselves to a standstill, lose motivation and then leave, they are the ones left to deal with the loss of their friends. For me it was an amazing ten weeks and I'll always cherish the memories I now have and the people I met, but I left because I was exhausted. The Haitians have to keep going, for weeks, months and years and even when the rubble is cleared and their town rebuilt the struggle for Haitians is really only just beginning. I don’t feel guilt at all, in fact I’m happy with the contribution I’ve made. I just have a deep respect for the long term battle these people have, just living in their own country. Ten weeks is enough for me, for now.
On my last day I was sitting around at Masayes with a few people from HODR. Ton, Sinead, Becky, Chris and a couple of others. For once the music wasn’t too loud and even though I was sure the twelve fingered guy behind the counter had served me the wrong type of macaroni (again) it was a pleasant place to be.
Ton had been there a while. He is a tall crazy eyed Dutchman with a masters in science, who likes wearing orange outfits and proves that beer is a food group in its own right. He was always a bit crazy, I’ve seen him licking a girls feet while she slept, but on my last day I think he lost the plot a bit. Not because of me, just because it was that time. Or maybe it was just that he was on the end of a 40 hour bender.
“Sinead, you are very beautiful.”
“Shutup Ton, you’re an idiot.”
He looked out from under his shaggy, filthy fringe with questioning puppy dog eyes. “All I want is an orgasm. Is that too much to ask?”
I started giggling. I knew he was being rude but this was pretty funny. I wondered how it would pan out. Besides, Sinead was pretty plucky, being an Irish lass and all. She raised one eyebrow in exasperation. “Ton, stop it.”
“Isn’t there anybody here who will give me an orgasm?” He swung his eyes over the group. They landed on me. I shook my head, grinning.
“Is that too much to ask, just a little orgasm?” His eyes swung past Sinead again and stopped.
“You come under table and suck my dick. Yes suck my dick until I make orgasm. Please?” He looked around the table for reassurance he was on the right track. I gave him the thumbs up. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in, reflecting deeply on something.
“Oh no, I can’t get it up, how can I have an orgasm now? I hate my stupid penis…No wait, what am I saying? I love it!”
He pulled his knob out and started to apologise to it. It was pretty hairy down there, the bloke obviously didn’t have an extensive hygiene routine. Still, I didn’t need to see his old fella to know that.
I truly believe that a mans flaccid penis, surrounded by a thick tangle of pubic hair is one of the ugliest sights you can ever feast your eyes on. It’s one of natures most epic failures. It’s not grand, or delicate or impressive in any way, and it’s certainly not aesthetically pleasing, but it is why I had to change beds when I admitted myself to hospital with food poisoning on my last Saturday. The old chap lying next to me had his trousers pulled down to his knees and a yellow catheter inserted into his dangler. A little mushroom lying limply on a grassy knoll. With a plastic hose jammed in the top. Not what I wanted to see after vomiting all night, and besides, that catheter was disturbingly thick and it made me uncomfortable to look at it. I found a spare cot in the operating theatre and had a pleasant afternoon listening to reggae courtesy of the theatre nurses, who were sharpening surgical tools. That hospital was by far the most comfortable place to be in Haiti-because it was air-conditioned. When I was lying next to catheter man the generator broke and the air con stopped. Within the 15 minutes the temperature had risen to 47C in the hospital, because it’s just a giant plastic tent, acting like a greenhouse. I could actually see sweat emerge from the pores on my forearm. Luckily it was only out for an hour. When the air con came back on, I was lying on the floor of the drug storage room. I actually fist pumped the air it was such a relief.
I tried to salvage Ton from himself. “Ton, you’re out of your line, what’s on your mind?”
He looked up sharply and pouted. Then he reached cross the table and knocked over an empty beer bottle.
“What? What’s the matter?” He knocked another one over and stole a chip of Sinead’s plate and threw it at the street dog lurking around the table. I couldn’t stop giggling, he was being a very naughty boy. At least his little champion was back in his Dutch Orange soccer shorts.
He passed out later that evening on a sack of concrete in the base, spooning someone in a platonic way. He slept there every night. A few nights before he had passed out on the concrete in the middle of the courtyard at 7pm, starfish on the ground. Maybe he was a little crazy but at least he worked hard. Ton, I hope you got your orgasm, mate.
That night I was sitting with my mates at the bar and trying to think of things to say to them but nothing was coming. I knew what the matter was. I wasn’t excited to be going, and I wasn’t sad to be leaving these wonderful people behind. I wasn’t looking forward to Miami and I didn’t spend the evening reminiscing about my last ten weeks. The problem was simple.
I was just tired.
I remember Shooby who I met on a demolition site out in the country. He showed up to the site with a guy called Ga and spoke good English. Turned out he had lived in Florida for 25 of his 27 years and been deported back to Haiti in 2008.
The two of them looked like they wanted to pitch in so I gave them some tools and let them go. They were good workers. There was another local guy there who didn’t speak any English at all. He was a bit older and was missing most of his front teeth. He picked up a sledgehammer and I pointed to a corner of the house that we needed blown out. He worked, in the 35C heat, without a break, for four hours. I couldn’t believe it. Haitians have a strange style of sledging, straight up and straight down instead of in a circle which is how I would do it, to make the most of momentum. He just hacked away at his corner until he’d reduced it to dust.
The next day Shooby, Ga and old mate showed up again. I didn’t really have enough tools for everyone and old mate was left standing around without much to do.
Ga is a pretty gangsta sort of guy, who happily trades practicality for fashion, if it means his boxers can reach halfway up his back and his pants do up under his ass cheeks. He spoke English to an extent. He pointed at old mate who was standing around eyeing of a sledgehammer and said:
“Nigger wants to work.”
“What?” You can’t say nigger. It’s politically incorrect and offensive to minority groups. I looked around guiltily for someone from the Sydney Uni arts faculty, or one of those bead selling hippies from Guatemala.
“Nigger wants to work, man.”
Sweet, I thought, I’ll let the African-Haitian work. I gave him my hammer and took a break. And work he did. I never got his name but he was one of the fittest men I’ve ever seen. He belted down half the roof on his own and saved us huge amounts of time on the job. Men like that helped restore, and then bolster my faith in the Haitian work ethic.
Shooby and Ga went on to become volunteers with HODR. One day Shooby pulled me aside at the bar and told me about his daughter. She needed to be baptised and he needed 1500 goudes to pay for the baptism. I was pretty cynical and thought it was a scam. At that point I was pretty sensitive about being a source of charity to poor Haitians because of guys like Dave Shakalaka and Jesse James, who are con artists and dickheads (don’t worry I told that to their faces) and apart from anything else I was running out of my own money. Anyway I gave him 500 goud towards the baptism. I justified it to myself by thinking I’d rather be a generous sucker than a cynical asshole, in case he turned out to be telling the truth, but really I just wished I’d told him to go away.
A few days later he pulled me aside again and gave me a hug. There were tears in his eyes and he told me that thanks to me (and another volunteer, a Texan guy called Aaron who forked out 1000 goud) his daughter had been baptised in the proper way. Later he showed me a photo of the ceremony.
It made me glad that I erred on the side of sucker. Shooby was one of the guys who cried when I left. He is intelligent and speaks good English. I think he will be one of the young Haitians to lead their town, and maybe their country, out of the mess they are in.
I helped lead a strike in my last week in Haiti which transformed the local volunteer program but will leave that for another time as this post is already weeks overdue.
Reginal was the oldest of the local volunteers and told me this on my last night in Haiti. He was crying when he told me that.
It’s tough for the Haitian guys. People like me fly in and work to fix up their city, which really was ruined in the earthquake. We work side by side with the Haitians and become their friends. After work we eat with them and drink with them at the dodgy bar next to base. We get to know their families, their problems, hopes and aspirations. We talk about their personal lives and find out that some of them pass up paying jobs to work with HODR, because they hope by working with Westerners they can learn something from us. We give the older ones grief about how fat they are and the younger ones grief about how desperate and horny they are. (They are outstandingly desperate and horny). We have nicknames for each other. Mine was Lapoynet. This translates to “only God sees me” or something poignant like that. It’s not as cool as it sounds; what it actually means is “wanker”. As I drove around in the back of a tap tap kids, adults, everyone would wave and call out to me “Lapoynet! Lapoynet!” It was a real honour to be hailed in that fashion. The name probably stuck because Haitian guys pretend they never have romantic moments with themselves-because they are so virile they all have multiple girlfriends. Yea right. They thought it was hilarious that I freely admitted to enjoying some special time on the odd occasion. By odd I mean every night, of course. Helps me get to sleep. Tony would ask me every day before work, “Tim, last night lapoynet? One time, three time lapoynet?” Thanks Tony. I started calling him Chichiflex Tony, which is a way of referring to sex in Guatemala.
After we’ve gotten close enough to write each other off with bad sexual nicknames the time comes to leave. Living in Haiti, working 6 days a week 7.30-6pm drains you, mind, body and spirit. I stayed for ten weeks. You live on a surge of adrenalin for the first month, and most people who stay for about that long have amazing memories of the place and plan to come back. They update their face book profiles with Haiti and HODR references and plan reunions. It’s a fantastic experience where you make wonderful new friends and revel in the work being done, which is difficult but very satisfying. Some of them do come back and are confused and disappointed because it isn’t the same as when they were first here.
If you stay for ten weeks, or longer, Haiti, the work, the living conditions, the difficulty of continuously making new friends, then seeing them leave, it grinds you down. Teaching people new skills, seeing them become good at their jobs, then seeing that effort disappear when they do is tiring. Long termers get a bit cynical and withdrawn and newcomers wonder why they are so unfriendly. The food is wholly inadequate and in my last two weeks I could barely stomach it. A typical meal is chicken cooked in an nuclear powered deep fryer, of which you are allowed one piece. The intensity of the frying allowed you to eat the bones often as not so maximum nutrition was gleaned. I guess the oil was full of energy to fuel our days. On a bad day we were served fish head soup. Fish heads are fucked, and so are the fish tails which are part of the recipe. Whenever that meal was served, it was entirely possible to pick up one end of the fish and pull it’s entire spinal chord out of the bowl. Plenty of brown rice with beans thrown in, and one piece of tomato. Often there was a vegetable mash (an appetising brown slush. It looked solid enough to walk on, but was surprisingly viscous. It certainly helped keep our bowels loose) with fresh onions thrown in. As luck would have it there was always chilli sauce to ensure it you could moderate the taste as required. The first month I believed the old maxim “there’s no seasoning like hard work” but now I know that in fact the real seasoning of last resort is chilli sauce. Always in the last week before guys leave (for some reason this applies to men, not women) they lose up to 10 pounds. I did, because I just couldn’t eat the food any more. I had a few other issues as well, including dynamite food poisoning and a busted rib which didn’t help. The thing to remember is that HODR is a volunteer organisation and that when you start to loose drive it really is time to go-no point poisoning the atmosphere.
I remember on my last night at the HODR base, I had made my goodbye speech, and was next door at Joes saying goodbye to the Haitians. Reginal would barely look at me. I could sense something was wrong so we went for a walk.
We walked down the pitch black streets of Leogane. The streets there are just dirt, the main ones cobblestones. If you’re in thongs you need to watch out for the puddles left over from the afternoon rain, which glint a little in the moonlight. The mud bogs are harder to spot since they’re not as reflective and you need to be switched on or you’ll get first muddy, then septic feet. The streets are lined with open sewerage/drainage canals and vacant buildings. There is no electricity. When I first arrived the roads were covered in smashed concrete and tents. People lived on the road out the front of their houses, while dump trucks rumbled past, literally inches away.
Now as I walked down the road I could feel the space that we had helped to create. The roads don’t have rubble or tents on them anymore and people don’t have to sleep next to heavy traffic. Street vendors line the roads in increasing numbers. Commerce is returning. People are rebuilding their homes. Cars can pass each other without having to back up because Leogane has its streets back. It has its streets back because the people who used to live on the road, have their houses back. The rubble has been picked up and carted away. I did that, and the other volunteers from HODR did that. We made it happen and Leogane is better for us being there. It’s a satisfying feeling.
As we walked down the broad streets it was clear Reginal had something to say. He is a Haitian man in his early thirties. He has short hair, slightly longer on the top than the sides. He is pitch black and is round in the middle but mostly from muscle, not fat. He has a gold brace holding one of his teeth in. We sat on a half collapsed wall on the side of the road, up the street from Gutterman’s Bar. Some local kids skipped past laughing, rolling bicycle wheels with sticks, and the only light came from the moon, which shone through fleeting clouds.
“What’s the matter mate?”
Reginal sighed. “I am sad. I am sad because I am losing a friend tonight Tim.” He lowered his head and stared at the ground. I could see his eyes glistening. I didn’t know what to say.
“Will you come back to Haiti one day?”
I don’t know the answer to this question. Haiti is a long way from Australia and I am broke. I would love to come back in a few years and see Leogane rebuilt, but would rather see my Haitian mates with good jobs and families living in a flourishing, incorrupt society. I tell him this. He grimaces. He knows I’m saying I will probably never be back.
“We see you Tim. We are sad that you leave because we see how hard you work and we see what you do for us. We know that you are a good man, and that you have a good heart. You come to my country and help me. I want to thank you but I can never thank you because I am poor.” He frowned. “My God will help you. You came to my country and helped my people. I cannot help you, but I pray that my God will. My God will help you Tim,” and he swung his eyes up to stare into mine. I could hear the truth of what he said in his voice. I knew he would pray to his God for me. I still didn’t know what to say, so I put my arm around his shoulders and we just sat there for a while in the moonlight.
His words meant a lot to me. The truth is that I have worked extremely hard in Haiti. I basically worked myself to a stop. Not necessarily only for the Haitians, especially at the start, but because if I actually get around to doing something I push it to the limit. At any rate, the actual reasons don’t matter. The volunteers saw me work and respected it. I’ve never been in an environment where it was so basic-if you worked hard you won respect, as simple as that. So for that, I need to thank the people I have met through HODR, the local and international volunteers.
It’s hard for the Haitians because when people like me come, work ourselves to a standstill, lose motivation and then leave, they are the ones left to deal with the loss of their friends. For me it was an amazing ten weeks and I'll always cherish the memories I now have and the people I met, but I left because I was exhausted. The Haitians have to keep going, for weeks, months and years and even when the rubble is cleared and their town rebuilt the struggle for Haitians is really only just beginning. I don’t feel guilt at all, in fact I’m happy with the contribution I’ve made. I just have a deep respect for the long term battle these people have, just living in their own country. Ten weeks is enough for me, for now.
On my last day I was sitting around at Masayes with a few people from HODR. Ton, Sinead, Becky, Chris and a couple of others. For once the music wasn’t too loud and even though I was sure the twelve fingered guy behind the counter had served me the wrong type of macaroni (again) it was a pleasant place to be.
Ton had been there a while. He is a tall crazy eyed Dutchman with a masters in science, who likes wearing orange outfits and proves that beer is a food group in its own right. He was always a bit crazy, I’ve seen him licking a girls feet while she slept, but on my last day I think he lost the plot a bit. Not because of me, just because it was that time. Or maybe it was just that he was on the end of a 40 hour bender.
“Sinead, you are very beautiful.”
“Shutup Ton, you’re an idiot.”
He looked out from under his shaggy, filthy fringe with questioning puppy dog eyes. “All I want is an orgasm. Is that too much to ask?”
I started giggling. I knew he was being rude but this was pretty funny. I wondered how it would pan out. Besides, Sinead was pretty plucky, being an Irish lass and all. She raised one eyebrow in exasperation. “Ton, stop it.”
“Isn’t there anybody here who will give me an orgasm?” He swung his eyes over the group. They landed on me. I shook my head, grinning.
“Is that too much to ask, just a little orgasm?” His eyes swung past Sinead again and stopped.
“You come under table and suck my dick. Yes suck my dick until I make orgasm. Please?” He looked around the table for reassurance he was on the right track. I gave him the thumbs up. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in, reflecting deeply on something.
“Oh no, I can’t get it up, how can I have an orgasm now? I hate my stupid penis…No wait, what am I saying? I love it!”
He pulled his knob out and started to apologise to it. It was pretty hairy down there, the bloke obviously didn’t have an extensive hygiene routine. Still, I didn’t need to see his old fella to know that.
I truly believe that a mans flaccid penis, surrounded by a thick tangle of pubic hair is one of the ugliest sights you can ever feast your eyes on. It’s one of natures most epic failures. It’s not grand, or delicate or impressive in any way, and it’s certainly not aesthetically pleasing, but it is why I had to change beds when I admitted myself to hospital with food poisoning on my last Saturday. The old chap lying next to me had his trousers pulled down to his knees and a yellow catheter inserted into his dangler. A little mushroom lying limply on a grassy knoll. With a plastic hose jammed in the top. Not what I wanted to see after vomiting all night, and besides, that catheter was disturbingly thick and it made me uncomfortable to look at it. I found a spare cot in the operating theatre and had a pleasant afternoon listening to reggae courtesy of the theatre nurses, who were sharpening surgical tools. That hospital was by far the most comfortable place to be in Haiti-because it was air-conditioned. When I was lying next to catheter man the generator broke and the air con stopped. Within the 15 minutes the temperature had risen to 47C in the hospital, because it’s just a giant plastic tent, acting like a greenhouse. I could actually see sweat emerge from the pores on my forearm. Luckily it was only out for an hour. When the air con came back on, I was lying on the floor of the drug storage room. I actually fist pumped the air it was such a relief.
I tried to salvage Ton from himself. “Ton, you’re out of your line, what’s on your mind?”
He looked up sharply and pouted. Then he reached cross the table and knocked over an empty beer bottle.
“What? What’s the matter?” He knocked another one over and stole a chip of Sinead’s plate and threw it at the street dog lurking around the table. I couldn’t stop giggling, he was being a very naughty boy. At least his little champion was back in his Dutch Orange soccer shorts.
He passed out later that evening on a sack of concrete in the base, spooning someone in a platonic way. He slept there every night. A few nights before he had passed out on the concrete in the middle of the courtyard at 7pm, starfish on the ground. Maybe he was a little crazy but at least he worked hard. Ton, I hope you got your orgasm, mate.
That night I was sitting with my mates at the bar and trying to think of things to say to them but nothing was coming. I knew what the matter was. I wasn’t excited to be going, and I wasn’t sad to be leaving these wonderful people behind. I wasn’t looking forward to Miami and I didn’t spend the evening reminiscing about my last ten weeks. The problem was simple.
I was just tired.
I remember Shooby who I met on a demolition site out in the country. He showed up to the site with a guy called Ga and spoke good English. Turned out he had lived in Florida for 25 of his 27 years and been deported back to Haiti in 2008.
The two of them looked like they wanted to pitch in so I gave them some tools and let them go. They were good workers. There was another local guy there who didn’t speak any English at all. He was a bit older and was missing most of his front teeth. He picked up a sledgehammer and I pointed to a corner of the house that we needed blown out. He worked, in the 35C heat, without a break, for four hours. I couldn’t believe it. Haitians have a strange style of sledging, straight up and straight down instead of in a circle which is how I would do it, to make the most of momentum. He just hacked away at his corner until he’d reduced it to dust.
The next day Shooby, Ga and old mate showed up again. I didn’t really have enough tools for everyone and old mate was left standing around without much to do.
Ga is a pretty gangsta sort of guy, who happily trades practicality for fashion, if it means his boxers can reach halfway up his back and his pants do up under his ass cheeks. He spoke English to an extent. He pointed at old mate who was standing around eyeing of a sledgehammer and said:
“Nigger wants to work.”
“What?” You can’t say nigger. It’s politically incorrect and offensive to minority groups. I looked around guiltily for someone from the Sydney Uni arts faculty, or one of those bead selling hippies from Guatemala.
“Nigger wants to work, man.”
Sweet, I thought, I’ll let the African-Haitian work. I gave him my hammer and took a break. And work he did. I never got his name but he was one of the fittest men I’ve ever seen. He belted down half the roof on his own and saved us huge amounts of time on the job. Men like that helped restore, and then bolster my faith in the Haitian work ethic.
Shooby and Ga went on to become volunteers with HODR. One day Shooby pulled me aside at the bar and told me about his daughter. She needed to be baptised and he needed 1500 goudes to pay for the baptism. I was pretty cynical and thought it was a scam. At that point I was pretty sensitive about being a source of charity to poor Haitians because of guys like Dave Shakalaka and Jesse James, who are con artists and dickheads (don’t worry I told that to their faces) and apart from anything else I was running out of my own money. Anyway I gave him 500 goud towards the baptism. I justified it to myself by thinking I’d rather be a generous sucker than a cynical asshole, in case he turned out to be telling the truth, but really I just wished I’d told him to go away.
A few days later he pulled me aside again and gave me a hug. There were tears in his eyes and he told me that thanks to me (and another volunteer, a Texan guy called Aaron who forked out 1000 goud) his daughter had been baptised in the proper way. Later he showed me a photo of the ceremony.
It made me glad that I erred on the side of sucker. Shooby was one of the guys who cried when I left. He is intelligent and speaks good English. I think he will be one of the young Haitians to lead their town, and maybe their country, out of the mess they are in.
I helped lead a strike in my last week in Haiti which transformed the local volunteer program but will leave that for another time as this post is already weeks overdue.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Getting over HODR blog
Well that was an interesting week or two. I’ve been in Haiti for nine weeks now and around week six I was sick to death of the place. 80-90% of the buildings have been squashed around here so there are no: bars, clubs, libraries, internet café’s, normal café’s, shops of any description. There are also no parks or public spaces because they are covered in makeshift tents which is where the Haitians live. There is nothing to do and nothing to do within 45 minutes of our base unless you get a moto or taptap.
Speaking of volunteers, which I wasn't, Sangita was a girl from the UK. She was badly blocked up, in fact she hadn't had a successful trip to the toilet for nine days. That is quite a backlog, and one nobody else could understand given the soupy consistency of the average turd at HODR base. I took her to the hospital one night because she was starting to feel ill and she explained her problem to the doctor. Doctors love to use any issue as a teaching experience and before long there were eight or nine medical types standing around discussing options to treat her. Pills, potions, a saline drip to moisten things up a bit. One of the them suggested a digital manipulation to dig it out. I giggled and waggled my middle finger at Sangita, who turned pale.
I felt these guys were missing the point.
"What she really needs is an enema." That stopped conversation for a moment, and one of the nurses eyes lit up-she was the enema specialist. Sangita shook her head in mild embarrassment, but really that was what she was hoping for.
I asked if I could get one as well, two for the price of one, but the offer wasn't on the table. Did she want me to hold her hand while they inserted the hose? No thanks Tim. So I left and Sangita got her enema, and later that night did her first turd for nine days. When she emerged from the bathroom later that night she got a round of applause. Awesome.
There are plenty of smashed buildings to demolish and clear. So for the first month when you’re on a high from being in such a different, interesting place you work till you drop everyday. The shitty food is delicious and you relish the freezing bucket showers you take before and after work. Then you become a team leader and you get a kick out of running groups of people to continue the job HODR is doing.
I found that running teams was really satisfying, for a while. I had to work out how to get and keep people motivated to work hard, and also enjoy themselves and make them feel like they were contributing. Most of the people who come down to Haiti can contribute well, but truthfully some don‘t add much value. Having said that I felt it was our job to at least make them feel useful by giving them some small task they could complete because they had made the effort to get down here and help out, an act by itself which is very meaningful.
There was always a huge variety of people to work with-old, young, fit, fat, smart, dumb, etc. I would say some people are motivated to work and that others aren’t but coming here in the first place is quite a filter, lazy people don’t usually make it to Haiti. To sum it up, I liked some people at HODR and disliked others but respected almost everybody there. However, if you run the team well most people work properly. It was always satisfying to turn a rubble pile into a liveable plot of land again as well.
I found it easier to run teams with lots of girls because rubbling is a fairly repetitive job. That might seem like a strange connection but I think its because girls concentrate better than guys in general. So if you give them a repetitive job (like pushing a wheelbarrow) they will actually do it, and not come up with a helpful suggestion, or a better, shorter, different, faster, more efficient way to get the task done.
Girls understand that while running a site can be a collaborative decision making process, in fact it usually isn’t. They also won’t stop what they are supposed to be doing and pick up a sledgehammer and pulverise the nearest object for no reason.
Guys like sledgehammers. I get it. You break shit with them, work up a sweat, then walk away and let someone do the boring job of cleaning up the mess.
Some guys liked wheelbarrows too. They could run all day with them. Not me. I found it boring, and thought my talents were better deployed destroying things rather than shifting them around.
I’ve lead a couple of good teams and had a great relationships with the people in them. Then they leave and you teach another group the same things, and get them operating really well…then they leave…and it happens a few times you get tired of going through the same processes with new people, because you know where it will end.
So by week six I had decided to start something different. I was still out in the field a lot but was spending more time in the office. By office I mean concrete enclosed space with four industrial sized fans circulating air. There is a tenuous internet connection and dress code consists of thongs, footy shorts and…that’s it. That’s what I wear anyway-despite the practical nature of this attire you are still in danger of sliding off the metal chairs from the sweat lubricating the seat.
Anyway some Harvard Business School students came to Haiti I guess so they could put the HODR project in the Life Experience section of their C.V. Some of them were quite useful. For example they had skillsets in organising committees/discussion groups to disseminate methodologies to ascertain measurable, deliverable and tangible outcomes in relation to proactive group-based post act of God/cataclysmic natural event debris relocation, or rubble removal as the rest of us call it. One of them wanted to get locals in touch with a microfinance organisation called Finca to dish out loans to the local small business owners. I followed up on this and had a grand plan to set up HODR as a central part of the economic recovery of the region, and wanted to collect names of people who would be suitable for these loans and get them in touch with the finance providers.
So I organised a seminar for the Finca rep to speak to our volunteers. This guys job in essence was to sell micro loans, so I should have known better than to invite him to speak, having been a shady financial products salesmen once myself. Anyway I heard “Finca” mentioned perhaps 20 times in the first 5 minutes, and then the guy really got animated.
He was wearing a typical friendly African dictator/evengelical preacher button up long sleeve shirt-brightly coloured with gold stitching and slogans on parts of the fabric. He had large gilted rings and a bulky gold watch hanging loosely on his wrist. He had small square glasses perched on the end of nose, meaning his head tilted back and he stared down his nose when addressing you. His shabby trousers were held up by a worn belt and gleaming black shoes poked out the bottom. He took a deep breath, smiled, and spread his arms wide, pausing…“In Leogane you have some serious problems my friends! It is Finca who is the answer to your economic problems! Finca will help you feed your child and satisfy your women! Finca wants nothing from you but your partnership in this great vision of Finca’s!”
Then he started levitating and with a halo around his head and visions of God crackling around him he begun to berate our guys, loudly, for their ignorance, scepticism, rude questions and general intransigence in the face of the overwhelming logic and unparalleled opportunity he was offering them.
It seemed that he just wanted to five Finca discount these guys' money and I knew it was a failure when the guys started sniggering and left to help bring out tools for the afternoon session (something I’ve never seen them help with before) but I decided to call it a learning experience.
I pushed it, writing up a plan to get anybody with money, be they public, private or NGO, to channel their funds through us-we have experience on the ground with Haitians and could them direct funds efficiently. I sent it to management where it was met strongly and decisively with apathy and disinterest.
That was pretty frustrating as I thought that apart form the economic effect on Leogane, it could have helped HODR raise funds from donors by giving us a long term, sustainable program we could point at when in fundraising mode.
So at the end of week seven I had had enough. Most of the people I initially made friends with had gone and been replaced by others who I wasn‘t interested in, or lacked the energy to get to know. In my mind the general feeling around HODR had changed as well. It used to be a place where everybody worked flat out but in an uplifting way, where small things were done for you for no thanks and you did small things for others even when you knew they would never know it was you. Inspirational people had met me when I first started, and now were gone.
In my mind it seemed like small acts of selfishness and stupidity are more the norm and the workforce has changed composition, so that instead of strong proactive people it feels more like a babysitting adventure holiday. I had obviously burnt out. I just had no interest in Haitians, for a variety of reasons. It is very difficult to help people when many of them only see the opportunities you present them as zero sum games. I knew there was every excuse in the world for these people, poverty, lack of education, disasters, exploitation. After a while I got to the point where I stopped caring about the sad stories and have started wishing people here could learn some accountability, and learn to help themselves.
I knew it was me, not the place because whilst lying in my tent one night I heard two newbies chatting about how positive the atmosphere was at HODR and how proactive people were-they sounded the same as I had two months earlier.
I was essentially, bored and jaded and sick of living in everyone else’s pocket. Many of the Haitian guys who work with us are excellent in ways I’ve outlined previously. Conversely, many of them are useless to the point of frustration and as a team leader I’d lost patience. For example, it would be at least 35C here everyday, with 80% humidity or higher. One of our local guys, called Job, showed up day after day wearing a beanie, long pants and a baggy collared shirt. I told him the beanie at least was a stupid idea but he continued to wear it as a fashion statement.
So one day when he sat down at work overheating I threw his beanie away and told him it was a shit idea, through a translator. I explained that because he wears inappropriate clothes and has to sit down the rest of us have to do his work for him and that tomorrow he needs to grow up, just a little and wear proper clothes to work.
I forgot these guys never had role models apart from retarded American rappers. It wasn't their fault, but they needed to learn.
The point is, stupid little things were getting to me and I’d lost some perspective on what was going on. I needed to do something different.
As a result I decided to go to Jacmel. Jacmel is on the southern side of the island of Hispaniola and is a beautiful old colonial town surrounded by tropical beaches.
The HODR volunteer program has about 110 international volunteers on the base at any one time. They are mostly Americans with some poms, too many Canadians and a few token Aussies for some balance and perspective.
In addition there are about 30 Haitian guys who show up and work with us every day. Mostly they are top guys as I’ve outlined before. Some of them are dickheads.
I got one guy removed from the program because he was a shifty swindler. He was slimy, lazy, and ingratiated himself with people and then asked them for money or things, like phones, shoes, whatever. The reality is that, politically incorrect as it may sound, most people, when they first arrive, have a rich white person/poor black person complex and feel they owe these guys something and oblige the con artists. They have a great racket going because there is such a turnover of volunteers.
I went through the process with Dave Shakalaka myself when I got suspended. He kept insisting on taking my money so he could pay for things, and I never seemed to get any change. Everything was always 20-30% more expensive around Dave but he never did anything such that you could finger him for it. This went on for a while as I had to rely on his help while I had no accommodation but I drew the line after this conversation:
“Hey man what you do today?” Dave leaned against the wall with his hands behind his back, grinning slimily. He looked slightly sheepish, like he knew he was about to ask something that would probably get a bad reaction.
“Don’t know, probably just hang around at Joe’s.”
“I need some money man.”
What the fuck? I was already 99% sure he’d been ripping me off but this was a new approach.
“Can I have 500 Goud?”
“What for?”
“I need to buy some new shoes man, look at these ones!” He gesture to his sandals which looked fine to me. They were the third set of footwear I’d seen him in…that day.
“Dave, I’m not buying you new shoes. I told you yesterday I don’t have much money.”
Dave shrugged and raised his eyebrows. He wanted to appear reasonable. I wondered what was coming next. “Yea man, but we friends remember? Your money is my money.” Wow! If nothing else I had to respect the guys front.
“What? That‘s ridiculous. My money is my money and I’m not buying you new shoes.”
Anyway after that I told him to his face he was dishonest and a thief, and pushed to get him kicked off the program. Other people came forward and said they’d had similar experiences and that was it for Dave. His other problem was that he didn’t work very hard on site. He would pick up a sledgehammer and blow a block to smithereens, shouting loudly and drawing attention to himself…if there were women present. Everything he did was demonstrative and calculated to draw the girls eyes. He would speak in Spanish because it sounds more emotive, even though nobody else on the team could speak Spanish. Except me. One day he was saying in his loudest most emotive Spanish: “We’re going to the beach to play with horses! We’re going to the beach to play with horses!” Sure Dave. When I explained to everyone what he was saying he looked at me a little embarrassed but mostly resentful. At any rate it worked, because a moronic, loud, stupid, fat girl from New York called Cassandra fell “in love” with Dave after being in Haiti for 10 days and was still sending money from the US months later when I left. When we kicked Dave of the program it deprived him of access to stupid rich people and naturally he was upset.
To the guys credit, he was a good con artist. He showed me a receipt for a money wire from the US, from Cassandra for a few hundred dollars. Good on him, and good on her, maybe they'll have have shifty, annoying babies together.
I learned a few things about con artists in Haiti. They rip you off but never leave direct evidence of having done so. Then when you confront them about it they act extremely hurt that you could think such a thing of them and try to convince you it was misunderstanding. They try to make you feel bad that you think ill of them, so that you back down and they can ingratiate them selves again. A popular trick in Haiti, for the guys who I had stern conversations with, was to tell me that only God judges them and if they are what I say they are then God will pass judgment to that effect at the gates of Heaven. Stern stuff.
Jesse James was a guy who lingered around the camp flexing his pecs at girls. He also kept asking for things, and newly arrived volunteers always opened their purse for him. He got told to go away as well, so there was lingering resentment about HODR from a couple of groups. I made a few enemies in Haiti to be honest, a quiet source of pride for me.
One day a letter was found on one of the bobcats. It outlined that the translator we used-Jacob-should not be getting paid, and that we should fire him. He needed to be replaced with a local from Leogane (Jacob was from a town called Gonaive).
If this didn’t happen bad things were going to happen to Jacob and his family.
Three days later management decided to roll back the local volunteer program. It was a Thursday afternoon and I had been down the road sinking a few beers and was feeling quite pleased with myself. At the HODR base there weren’t many options for release, but I found a good one. In fact, it involved alcohol, can you believe it. I didn’t drink very often but when I did everyone found out very quickly what was on my mind.
So when I got back to base that afternoon after a few settlers and saw my Haitian mates crying I wondered what was going on.. I stood up at the nightly meeting in front of 100 or so volunteers and in a calm and articulate manner voiced some objections to their decision.
That saga is another post in itself.
Speaking of volunteers, which I wasn't, Sangita was a girl from the UK. She was badly blocked up, in fact she hadn't had a successful trip to the toilet for nine days. That is quite a backlog, and one nobody else could understand given the soupy consistency of the average turd at HODR base. I took her to the hospital one night because she was starting to feel ill and she explained her problem to the doctor. Doctors love to use any issue as a teaching experience and before long there were eight or nine medical types standing around discussing options to treat her. Pills, potions, a saline drip to moisten things up a bit. One of the them suggested a digital manipulation to dig it out. I giggled and waggled my middle finger at Sangita, who turned pale.
I felt these guys were missing the point.
"What she really needs is an enema." That stopped conversation for a moment, and one of the nurses eyes lit up-she was the enema specialist. Sangita shook her head in mild embarrassment, but really that was what she was hoping for.
I asked if I could get one as well, two for the price of one, but the offer wasn't on the table. Did she want me to hold her hand while they inserted the hose? No thanks Tim. So I left and Sangita got her enema, and later that night did her first turd for nine days. When she emerged from the bathroom later that night she got a round of applause. Awesome.
There are plenty of smashed buildings to demolish and clear. So for the first month when you’re on a high from being in such a different, interesting place you work till you drop everyday. The shitty food is delicious and you relish the freezing bucket showers you take before and after work. Then you become a team leader and you get a kick out of running groups of people to continue the job HODR is doing.
I found that running teams was really satisfying, for a while. I had to work out how to get and keep people motivated to work hard, and also enjoy themselves and make them feel like they were contributing. Most of the people who come down to Haiti can contribute well, but truthfully some don‘t add much value. Having said that I felt it was our job to at least make them feel useful by giving them some small task they could complete because they had made the effort to get down here and help out, an act by itself which is very meaningful.
There was always a huge variety of people to work with-old, young, fit, fat, smart, dumb, etc. I would say some people are motivated to work and that others aren’t but coming here in the first place is quite a filter, lazy people don’t usually make it to Haiti. To sum it up, I liked some people at HODR and disliked others but respected almost everybody there. However, if you run the team well most people work properly. It was always satisfying to turn a rubble pile into a liveable plot of land again as well.
I found it easier to run teams with lots of girls because rubbling is a fairly repetitive job. That might seem like a strange connection but I think its because girls concentrate better than guys in general. So if you give them a repetitive job (like pushing a wheelbarrow) they will actually do it, and not come up with a helpful suggestion, or a better, shorter, different, faster, more efficient way to get the task done.
Girls understand that while running a site can be a collaborative decision making process, in fact it usually isn’t. They also won’t stop what they are supposed to be doing and pick up a sledgehammer and pulverise the nearest object for no reason.
Guys like sledgehammers. I get it. You break shit with them, work up a sweat, then walk away and let someone do the boring job of cleaning up the mess.
Some guys liked wheelbarrows too. They could run all day with them. Not me. I found it boring, and thought my talents were better deployed destroying things rather than shifting them around.
I’ve lead a couple of good teams and had a great relationships with the people in them. Then they leave and you teach another group the same things, and get them operating really well…then they leave…and it happens a few times you get tired of going through the same processes with new people, because you know where it will end.
So by week six I had decided to start something different. I was still out in the field a lot but was spending more time in the office. By office I mean concrete enclosed space with four industrial sized fans circulating air. There is a tenuous internet connection and dress code consists of thongs, footy shorts and…that’s it. That’s what I wear anyway-despite the practical nature of this attire you are still in danger of sliding off the metal chairs from the sweat lubricating the seat.
Anyway some Harvard Business School students came to Haiti I guess so they could put the HODR project in the Life Experience section of their C.V. Some of them were quite useful. For example they had skillsets in organising committees/discussion groups to disseminate methodologies to ascertain measurable, deliverable and tangible outcomes in relation to proactive group-based post act of God/cataclysmic natural event debris relocation, or rubble removal as the rest of us call it. One of them wanted to get locals in touch with a microfinance organisation called Finca to dish out loans to the local small business owners. I followed up on this and had a grand plan to set up HODR as a central part of the economic recovery of the region, and wanted to collect names of people who would be suitable for these loans and get them in touch with the finance providers.
So I organised a seminar for the Finca rep to speak to our volunteers. This guys job in essence was to sell micro loans, so I should have known better than to invite him to speak, having been a shady financial products salesmen once myself. Anyway I heard “Finca” mentioned perhaps 20 times in the first 5 minutes, and then the guy really got animated.
He was wearing a typical friendly African dictator/evengelical preacher button up long sleeve shirt-brightly coloured with gold stitching and slogans on parts of the fabric. He had large gilted rings and a bulky gold watch hanging loosely on his wrist. He had small square glasses perched on the end of nose, meaning his head tilted back and he stared down his nose when addressing you. His shabby trousers were held up by a worn belt and gleaming black shoes poked out the bottom. He took a deep breath, smiled, and spread his arms wide, pausing…“In Leogane you have some serious problems my friends! It is Finca who is the answer to your economic problems! Finca will help you feed your child and satisfy your women! Finca wants nothing from you but your partnership in this great vision of Finca’s!”
Then he started levitating and with a halo around his head and visions of God crackling around him he begun to berate our guys, loudly, for their ignorance, scepticism, rude questions and general intransigence in the face of the overwhelming logic and unparalleled opportunity he was offering them.
It seemed that he just wanted to five Finca discount these guys' money and I knew it was a failure when the guys started sniggering and left to help bring out tools for the afternoon session (something I’ve never seen them help with before) but I decided to call it a learning experience.
I pushed it, writing up a plan to get anybody with money, be they public, private or NGO, to channel their funds through us-we have experience on the ground with Haitians and could them direct funds efficiently. I sent it to management where it was met strongly and decisively with apathy and disinterest.
That was pretty frustrating as I thought that apart form the economic effect on Leogane, it could have helped HODR raise funds from donors by giving us a long term, sustainable program we could point at when in fundraising mode.
So at the end of week seven I had had enough. Most of the people I initially made friends with had gone and been replaced by others who I wasn‘t interested in, or lacked the energy to get to know. In my mind the general feeling around HODR had changed as well. It used to be a place where everybody worked flat out but in an uplifting way, where small things were done for you for no thanks and you did small things for others even when you knew they would never know it was you. Inspirational people had met me when I first started, and now were gone.
In my mind it seemed like small acts of selfishness and stupidity are more the norm and the workforce has changed composition, so that instead of strong proactive people it feels more like a babysitting adventure holiday. I had obviously burnt out. I just had no interest in Haitians, for a variety of reasons. It is very difficult to help people when many of them only see the opportunities you present them as zero sum games. I knew there was every excuse in the world for these people, poverty, lack of education, disasters, exploitation. After a while I got to the point where I stopped caring about the sad stories and have started wishing people here could learn some accountability, and learn to help themselves.
I knew it was me, not the place because whilst lying in my tent one night I heard two newbies chatting about how positive the atmosphere was at HODR and how proactive people were-they sounded the same as I had two months earlier.
I was essentially, bored and jaded and sick of living in everyone else’s pocket. Many of the Haitian guys who work with us are excellent in ways I’ve outlined previously. Conversely, many of them are useless to the point of frustration and as a team leader I’d lost patience. For example, it would be at least 35C here everyday, with 80% humidity or higher. One of our local guys, called Job, showed up day after day wearing a beanie, long pants and a baggy collared shirt. I told him the beanie at least was a stupid idea but he continued to wear it as a fashion statement.
So one day when he sat down at work overheating I threw his beanie away and told him it was a shit idea, through a translator. I explained that because he wears inappropriate clothes and has to sit down the rest of us have to do his work for him and that tomorrow he needs to grow up, just a little and wear proper clothes to work.
I forgot these guys never had role models apart from retarded American rappers. It wasn't their fault, but they needed to learn.
The point is, stupid little things were getting to me and I’d lost some perspective on what was going on. I needed to do something different.
As a result I decided to go to Jacmel. Jacmel is on the southern side of the island of Hispaniola and is a beautiful old colonial town surrounded by tropical beaches.
The HODR volunteer program has about 110 international volunteers on the base at any one time. They are mostly Americans with some poms, too many Canadians and a few token Aussies for some balance and perspective.
In addition there are about 30 Haitian guys who show up and work with us every day. Mostly they are top guys as I’ve outlined before. Some of them are dickheads.
I got one guy removed from the program because he was a shifty swindler. He was slimy, lazy, and ingratiated himself with people and then asked them for money or things, like phones, shoes, whatever. The reality is that, politically incorrect as it may sound, most people, when they first arrive, have a rich white person/poor black person complex and feel they owe these guys something and oblige the con artists. They have a great racket going because there is such a turnover of volunteers.
I went through the process with Dave Shakalaka myself when I got suspended. He kept insisting on taking my money so he could pay for things, and I never seemed to get any change. Everything was always 20-30% more expensive around Dave but he never did anything such that you could finger him for it. This went on for a while as I had to rely on his help while I had no accommodation but I drew the line after this conversation:
“Hey man what you do today?” Dave leaned against the wall with his hands behind his back, grinning slimily. He looked slightly sheepish, like he knew he was about to ask something that would probably get a bad reaction.
“Don’t know, probably just hang around at Joe’s.”
“I need some money man.”
What the fuck? I was already 99% sure he’d been ripping me off but this was a new approach.
“Can I have 500 Goud?”
“What for?”
“I need to buy some new shoes man, look at these ones!” He gesture to his sandals which looked fine to me. They were the third set of footwear I’d seen him in…that day.
“Dave, I’m not buying you new shoes. I told you yesterday I don’t have much money.”
Dave shrugged and raised his eyebrows. He wanted to appear reasonable. I wondered what was coming next. “Yea man, but we friends remember? Your money is my money.” Wow! If nothing else I had to respect the guys front.
“What? That‘s ridiculous. My money is my money and I’m not buying you new shoes.”
Anyway after that I told him to his face he was dishonest and a thief, and pushed to get him kicked off the program. Other people came forward and said they’d had similar experiences and that was it for Dave. His other problem was that he didn’t work very hard on site. He would pick up a sledgehammer and blow a block to smithereens, shouting loudly and drawing attention to himself…if there were women present. Everything he did was demonstrative and calculated to draw the girls eyes. He would speak in Spanish because it sounds more emotive, even though nobody else on the team could speak Spanish. Except me. One day he was saying in his loudest most emotive Spanish: “We’re going to the beach to play with horses! We’re going to the beach to play with horses!” Sure Dave. When I explained to everyone what he was saying he looked at me a little embarrassed but mostly resentful. At any rate it worked, because a moronic, loud, stupid, fat girl from New York called Cassandra fell “in love” with Dave after being in Haiti for 10 days and was still sending money from the US months later when I left. When we kicked Dave of the program it deprived him of access to stupid rich people and naturally he was upset.
To the guys credit, he was a good con artist. He showed me a receipt for a money wire from the US, from Cassandra for a few hundred dollars. Good on him, and good on her, maybe they'll have have shifty, annoying babies together.
I learned a few things about con artists in Haiti. They rip you off but never leave direct evidence of having done so. Then when you confront them about it they act extremely hurt that you could think such a thing of them and try to convince you it was misunderstanding. They try to make you feel bad that you think ill of them, so that you back down and they can ingratiate them selves again. A popular trick in Haiti, for the guys who I had stern conversations with, was to tell me that only God judges them and if they are what I say they are then God will pass judgment to that effect at the gates of Heaven. Stern stuff.
Jesse James was a guy who lingered around the camp flexing his pecs at girls. He also kept asking for things, and newly arrived volunteers always opened their purse for him. He got told to go away as well, so there was lingering resentment about HODR from a couple of groups. I made a few enemies in Haiti to be honest, a quiet source of pride for me.
One day a letter was found on one of the bobcats. It outlined that the translator we used-Jacob-should not be getting paid, and that we should fire him. He needed to be replaced with a local from Leogane (Jacob was from a town called Gonaive).
If this didn’t happen bad things were going to happen to Jacob and his family.
Three days later management decided to roll back the local volunteer program. It was a Thursday afternoon and I had been down the road sinking a few beers and was feeling quite pleased with myself. At the HODR base there weren’t many options for release, but I found a good one. In fact, it involved alcohol, can you believe it. I didn’t drink very often but when I did everyone found out very quickly what was on my mind.
So when I got back to base that afternoon after a few settlers and saw my Haitian mates crying I wondered what was going on.. I stood up at the nightly meeting in front of 100 or so volunteers and in a calm and articulate manner voiced some objections to their decision.
That saga is another post in itself.
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