Meer, Me, and the Mountain Loop

     Meer and I have been taking early morning hikes up into the mountain. We get up a little after 6 am, get dressed and head out the door. Meer leads the way through the C’ville gate and along the road behind the C’ville school. We turn left up the road that leads to Haiti Health Ministries (HHM), one of the sites where my STI study will take place. We go past the site of another mission called Shepherd’s House. Their compound is very large and they have a soccer field. We continue up the road and then it begins a steep climb. It is rough and the going is slow. The road is rutted and there is nothing but rock and stone. There are generally a few people on the road and several moto taxis but otherwise it is quiet. The view from the ridge opens up on the plain that extends down to the coast and the Bay of Port-au-Prince. We walk along the ridgeline and then down the hill until we reach the main road that brings us past the Marechal soccer field and finally along the back of the C’ville school. All told, the loop is a brisk 45 minutes.

Marechal

     Saturday morning, I head out alone on Meer’s mountain trail loop. The end of Ramadan is approaching and Meer is still fasting. Meer worked late last night so he wants to sleep in this morning. It is about 8:15 am and the temperature is near 90F. The sun is up above the mountains to the east. I greet the guard at the gate and let myself out of the C’ville compound. As I walk along the road behind the C’ville school, the women at the food stand are already cooking the food that they will be selling during the day. I greet them and they greet me in return (they recognize me by now) and I walk along the road that is quickly filling with moto taxis. There are a lot of them this morning. I try to walk along the edge of the road to stay out of their way. Several young people are at the corner filling up buckets of water from a faucet that is hooked to the C’ville water system.

Haiti Health Ministries

     I turn left and walk up the road toward the HHM campus. HHM is closed now for two weeks for vacation. Everything is quiet there. Twice earlier in the week, I saw things on Meer’s mountain loop that I had never seen in Haiti. One morning near the HHM compound we saw a young blan woman walking a dog on a leash. I had never seen a dog on a leash here before. As if that wasn’t strange enough, the dog was a German shepherd. I don’t know how the poor puppy can stand the heat. The only other time I had seen a dog on a leash here was a drug-sniffing German shepherd at the PAP airport. At least that dog was working in an air-conditioned building. The second unusual thing we saw was a group of five Haitian teenager boys jogging down the mountain road. Yes, they were clearly runners in training.

     Along the road there are goats and cows and a few people. I reach the ridgeline and turn right along the road. I look back over the coastal plain. There are fields under cultivation, pastures with cows and goats, and the two large mission compounds. As is true throughput Haiti, the mission compounds are fenced in communities. HHM is large and encircled with a cyclone fence. They had recently completed an expansion of their campus and moved out of the tents that had served as their clinic into very nice facilities with tiled floors, windows, lights, and a cool natural ventilating breeze circulating throughout.

Shepherd's House Ministry (foreground) and
Haiti Health Ministries (background)

Shepherd’s House Ministry is further up the mountains and partly built into it. A tall concrete block wall partially encloses the compound and obscures it from view from the road. From the ridge, the size of the compound is evident. I did not realize it was that large. A group of young men are playing soccer. I can also see a basketball backboard and hoop and what appeared to be either a gazebo or a moon bounce. A few solar panels dot the roofs. The large mission buildings are in contrast to the varied construction of the homes along the loop trail. Haitians live in homes made of concrete block, sheet metal, thatched vegetation, or tarps such as the popular sky blue tent material from Samaritans Purse. Such is Haiti, a country of contrasts.

     The air is hot and the sun is beating down on the large, bare rocks that litter the road. Even though it had rained quite a bit last night, the road is mostly dry with only a few scattered puddles of water. In spite of the heat, I am wearing my jeans. They are my protection against mosquitoes. I had also sprayed my arms with Off Deep Woods for protection on my bare skin. I am wearing an Under Armour heat shirt but I am soon sweating right through it. I pass an old man walking along the road. He looks at me and says, “Ou mouye”. I nod. Yes, I am wet. “Fa cho,” (it’s hot), I reply. He laughs.

     I continue my walk along the main road through Marechal heading back toward the C’ville school. I greet a pair of young girls who are walking in the opposite direction. They stop and ask me if I am Haitian. I laugh. “Non. Je suis americain. Mwen se amerikan", I reply. They giggle and walk on. Sometimes I think I’ve been down here too long.