Bon Fet Saint Bernadet

     February 18 was the Feast of St. Bernadette Soubirous, better known as St. Bernadette of Lourdes. I forgot all about it. I did not even know until I saw the sign Friday in Martissant, a suburb of PauP. John, one of our drivers, was taking Pierre and I to the airport to drop Pierre off for his flight to Miami and then DCA. Pierre was going home to spend THON weekend (http://thon.org/) with his friends up at Penn State. He will fly back to Haiti on Monday. We were riding in the Everest with the broken air conditioner so the windows were open as we moved slowly through the early morning traffic. The smells of the Martissant fish market came through the open windows of the Everest. As John guided the Everest into the merging traffic, I stared out the open window at the line of cars that filled the street. Multi-colored tap taps, SUVs of all kinds, cars, dump trucks, tanker trucks, school buses (for public transport, not for school children), and motorcycles darted their way through any spaces that they could find between the traffic. I had seen the church many times before on trips into PauP but I did not know its name. This day I saw the large banner hanging from in front of the church: “Bon Fet Saint Bernadet”. I sat up, leaned forward and tapped Pierre on the shoulder to point it out to him. He turned around to look. John also turned and he said it was a Catholic church. It was l’Eglise St. Bernadette. Clean and cream-colored with blue trim, the church stands out in the grime and dust of Martissant. You can even see the church quite clearly on Google satellite. Further down the street there were more banners celebrating St. Bernadette, some were signed by local politicians. It looked like it was a neighborhood festival. I tried to look for more details but the traffic has heavy and obscured my view. Soon we were past Martissant and entering PauP.

L'eglise St. Bernadette

     This day the traffic was as bad as I’ve seen it in PauP. It is always bad in front of the main market. This time the traffic jam was not due to container traffic coming out of the port. But there is always something. We were in three lanes of traffic in front of the market heading into the center of PauP. There was little traffic coming from the opposite direction in a single lane. I watched a large, fully loaded truck inching forward towards us in that lane. As it rolled past I could see the two Haitians who were pushing it! No tow trucks here. If your vehicle breaks down, push it along if you can. Our three lanes squeezed down to two, then to one. Trucks and tap taps lined the other two lanes, dropping off people and goods. A man is pulling a wagon filled with sacks of charcoal. The wagon has two wheels and two long poles attached to the side, like the kind of wagon you would harness a water buffalo or a draft horse to. But here in the streets of PauP, it is not an animal but a man who is pulling this wagon filled with sacks of charcoal. I once saw a man pulling a similar wagon that had half an automobile body (the front end of a car) lashed to it. Twenty-first century transportation meets nineteenth century transportation. These wagons are clearly very heavy. The man has a pole tucked under each arm and his hands are closed over the poles. He leans forward and pulls his load forward under the morning sun.

     This place sucks away your spirit. I like to tell people that the longer you stay here, the more you get used to things and you accept things the way they are. There is a danger in that. Traffic jams in PauP? You get used to it. You can’t change it. Mountains of trash along the street and in the drainage ditches? You get used to it. It is such a normal scene that the Haitians probably don’t even “see” it. I’m sure there are things I saw before that I don’t “see” anymore. It’s normal. It’s Haiti.

     I tried to “see” things again. I saw people walking everywhere and crossing the busy streets anywhere they could find a break in the stream of traffic. Vendors walked between the lanes of traffic selling ice water (ice in little plastic bags), bottled water, sodas and energy drinks (yes, there are energy drinks even in Haiti), bread, pastries, cell phone chargers, and steering wheel covers. I saw traffic signals that don’t work. I saw buildings that are under construction or abandoned. It is not always easy to tell which is which. I saw piles of trash burning on the side of the road. I saw young men with rags in their hands walking along the slow moving traffic and wiping the dust off windshields for five or ten gourdes (about 25 cents). I saw a few of the remaining tent cities (“internally displaced persons camps” is the politically correct term) from after the earthquake. I saw hundreds of children in uniforms of different colors and designs going to and from their schools. The girls wear dresses. Many of the boys wear ties. They all have backpacks.

     So what is the connection between the feast of St. Bernadette and PauP? There is none. Bernadette was the firstborn child of a very poor family. Wikipedia claims that Bernadette contracted cholera as a child and suffered from tuberculosis as an adult. No, there is no connection. The UF lab where I am working studies cholera and tuberculosis, but I don’t. No, there is no connection. I’m just writing down a random collection of observations as we drive through PauP on our way to the airport. I’m trying to keep my eyes open. And I am trying to maintain my enthusiasm, my passion for my project.

     We dropped Pierre off at the airport and I hugged Pierre goodbye. Then we got back into the morning traffic and headed back past the market on our way out of PauP. Suddenly the smell of diesel fumes was replaced by the smell of freshly squeezed chadek (Haitian grapefruit). I glanced over and saw piles of chadek, peeled, squeezed and whole, on the side of the road. We were passing through the produce section of the market. I breathed in deeply. I was hungry. We had left Christianville before breakfast. I could use a little ji chadek (chadek juice) right now.