Some days when we drive through PauP, I get the impression that things are getting better. Certainly, things are better than a year or two ago. Most of the tent cities that went up to house the internally displaced population have disappeared although I have no idea where the residents were relocated. Some of the grand post-earthquake plans for rebuilding Haiti included housing although those plans have mostly not been realized. But the tent cities are gone.
A lot of building is going on in PauP. The airport terminal has been rebuilt. Passengers no longer deplane onto the tarmac but pass through a jetway into the air-conditioned terminal. The chaotic baggage claim area is larger and a baggage carousel emblazoned with ads for Prestige now makes it much easier to find your bags. New government buildings are going up, as are new luxury hotels. Still, in some parts of PauP it is hard to tell whether a building behind a construction fence is going up or waiting to be torn down.
Although earthquake debris has long since been hauled away, trash is still everywhere. However, in some neighborhoods the trash is swept up into large piles and trucks come by to pick up the trash. I have seen people sweeping the sidewalk in front of a large government building at the end of the day. Mounds of trash accumulate in front of the main market and then are picked up and hauled off. People still can be seen picking through the trash for something to eat or something that they can sell. I watched one man with a machete slashing open plastic bags on a trash pile and rooting through the trash looking for anything of value. Then there are goats and pigs and dogs that roam over trash piles looking for something to eat.
Traffic signals are slowly being repaired and put back in service and actually work in some parts of the city. At the busiest intersections that still have no traffic signals, police now direct traffic. But there are still intersections where chaos reigns and only the steely-nerved driver dares enter the mix.
I continue to be amazed at how many streets in PauP, the capital city of Haiti, are in such deplorable condition. Even the main road from Tabarre to the airport is in a horrible state. The road that goes past the U.S. Embassy in Tabarre is almost as bad but at least it is being repaired. Traffic is engulfed in a haze of dust as it slowly makes its way down these roads. The good roads that run through PauP and connect it with Delmas and Petionville are usually jammed with traffic. Makendy knows the streets of PauP and he knows shortcuts to take through the neighborhoods. He will not hesitate to make a U-turn on a busy, traffic-clogged street to take a less-travelled road. We went down one of these side streets recently. At the foot of a short descent, there was a huge mess at the intersection: a mixture of rocks and rubble on top of a road pavement that was completely broken up. An SUV was stopped in front of us. The driver got out and walked around the front of the vehicle and leaned over the front wheel. He was switching the front-end wheels into 4-wheel drive! I had never seen anyone use 4-wheel drive before in a city (unless there was snow or ice on the roads). As we watched, Makendy nodded toward the shifter to his right and proudly told me that the Everest had 4-wheel drive also but that he could activate it from inside the vehicle. We waited as the SUV in front of us used its 4-wheel drive to pull its way over and through the intersection, then it was our turn. Makendy deftly drove the Everest over the broken road and debris without using 4-wheel drive and we moved smoothly across PauP using his short cut.
We were soon on the road out of PauP and into Carrefour where traffic slowed as we moved in single file across a small river/drainage ditch. To our right a new bridge is under construction. It has been that way since I arrived in October. Every time we pass the bridge on our way in or out of PauP, I look for progress. Not much has happened in the last two months. Like most things in Haiti, it is getting there, but slowly.
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