So once again I found myself sitting in the back of the sisters’ Land Cruiser speeding west down the National Route 2, headed for Baradères. Father Jacques had come to Port-au-Prince the day before to pick up our team from the airport. Three parishioners flew in for the graduation ceremony for the Philo class from our school, the College St. Jean Baptiste in Baradères. The trip had turned into a mini-medical mission because of the chikungunya epidemic that had gripped the island. Our team was bringing down large three bags each of acetaminophen to treat the symptoms of Chik fever. Their flight was arriving at 12:40 pm. Father Jacques and Kendol, Sister Denise’s driver, would get them at the airport and then pick me up at Christianville on the way to Baradères. At 2:45pm I received a phone call from Father Jacques. He had picked up the team and they were stuck in Carrefour. Traffic. Maybe another hour. At 4:00pm, another call. They were here. I gathered my backpack and the extra eight giant bottles of acetaminophen that I had brought down (part of our church’s generous donations) for treating the Chik fever and headed out the door. We got on the road at 4:15pm. I figured about a five-hour drive so we would be on the mountain road up to Baradères after dark. Just like my first trip there.
It is World Cup time and as we drove up to Baradères, Kenol had the Land Cruiser’s radio dialed into the Holland – Spain match. The announcer gave the play-by-play in French in the typically animated fashion that is football broadcasting. When a goal was scored, the classic “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL”filled the inside of the Land Cruiser. Holland crushed Spain 5-1 so we heard plenty of, well I’m not going to type it again.
We stopped at Eva’s for gas, bread, and drinks. Father Jacques picked up eight loaves of sliced bread. The inside of the Land Cruiser was already filled with our team’s bags and food that Father Jacques has bought in PauP. Supplies were also lashed onto the Land Cruiser’s roof. Cynthia sat in front next to Kenol, the driver. Jacques, Stephanie and I sat on the bench seats in back. Two cases of Prestige were stored under the benches.
The traffic got heavier and slowed down as we entered Carrefour du Fort. More than a dozen vendors lined both sides of the Route National #2 in front of the Total gas station. They were all selling mangoes. We came to a stop and as we did, about six vendors (all women; I don’t recall ever seeing a man selling fruit or vegetables on the road or in the market) raced up to the Land Cruiser carrying their mangoes neatly piled in pyramids in shallow wicker baskets. Jacques carefully opened up the rear door of the Land Cruiser and examined the mangoes of the first (lucky) woman who presented her basket. Jacques picked out two bruised mangoes and told the woman that he did not want those but would take the rest. She quickly agreed but said that she had other, nicer looking mangoes she would give him in place of the two bruised ones. Jacques placed the mangoes he wanted in a black plastic bag that the woman had given him and the woman returned to her stand to find the nicer ones. A second woman took her place in front the Land Cruiser's rear door. Jacques examined another basket of mangoes and bought them. The first woman returned with the new mangoes and Jacques paid her the 100 gourdes for all six large beautiful fruits. Mangoes always seem to be in season somewhere in Haiti and the country is full of them. Mangoes fall out of the trees in C’ville when I walk to the lab. They lie on the ground waiting for someone to collect them or they start rotting in the hot sun. I wonder, as I often do during these trips, why there is no mango export industry. The fruit appears plentiful and it is not possible that Haitians are consuming all the mangoes produced on the island. Father Jacques told me later that Haiti does export mangoes. Nevertheless, between 4 and 5 million tons of mangoes go uncollected, unsold, uneaten (all of the above?) and rot on the ground every year. Why can’t they do better? It is a plentiful natural resource and another paradox of Haiti. A bountiful fruit yet so much waste.
We slowed down as we drove through Miragoâne. Jacques was on his cell phone. We stopped momentarily. Then we drove on. We stopped, again. Jacques threw open the rear door of the Land Cruiser and Father Castille climbed in with his backpack. He was returning from a wedding and had spent the night at his mother’s house. As usual, vehicles always fill up on any trip. We drove on and a few minutes later we slowed down again and Father Castille told Kendol where to stop. He opened the rear door and a tall man handed Father Castille his clothes. Jackets, shirts and pants cleaned and pressed and on hangers covered with a clear plastic bag. It was just like picking up your dry cleaning back in Silver Spring.
We sped along the National Route 2 as it turned south into the mountains towards the opposite coast. Suddenly Kenol slowed down and came to a full stop. A truck was stopped in our lane facing us. There was an accident. A crowd of Haitians was gathered on the right side of the road around a blue pickup truck that had run off the road into a drainage ditch. The truck’s driver gestured to Kenol to back up and he climbed into his vehicle. I could see that the truck was not part of the accident as I first thought but that it had a towline attached to the pickup that was in the ditch. We backed up and the truck driver slowly put his truck in gear and moved forward. The towline grew taut and the crushed pickup truck slowly rolled backwards out of the ditch. The truck stopped and the driver undid the towline. It looked like an old fire hose that was just tied from one vehicle to the other. The truck moved away and Kendol slowly advanced the Land Cruiser past the accident scene. The crowd grew more animated. As we drove past, I saw a shirtless young man swinging a sledgehammer on the passenger side of the crushed pickup. A woman was trapped inside and this was their only means of extricating her. Kendol was talking almost non-stop now on his cell phone. He was telling his friends about how this pickup truck had sped past us earlier on the road. It was driving much too fast, he said and now the pickup was smashed up on the side of the road. I wondered how many times a day this same scene plays out in Haiti, on this same road and on other roads in the country. I have seen it before but usually the twisted remains of the accident. I had never arrived on the scene so soon after an accident. We all witnessed the response. There were Haitians helping Haitians. Regular people. There were no police to direct traffic and coordinate a rescue response. No fire trucks, no EMTs or rescue vehicles. No “jaws-of-life” to extricate the trapped woman; just a man with a sledgehammer. I saw an ambulance drive away shortly after we arrived but it appeared to be carrying passengers, not accident victims. I could not be sure. As we drove down the road past the accident scene, a man was placing large leafy branches he had cut down from a tree in the middle of the road. This was the Haitian highway equivalent of safety flares or orange cones. It was to warn drivers of an accident ahead. We drove on. Kendol had one hand on the steering wheel and the other on his cell phone complaining about bad drivers and bad outcomes.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Chilling with Customs in PAP
I planned to fly back to Haiti for a week in mid-June to meet with some people about my project and also to attend a graduation ceremony at the school that my church supports in Baradères. The beast arrived in my lab in Bethesda three days before my departure. The beast is the GeneXpert IV, a real-time PCR machine that I was going to use for rapid diagnosis of Chlamydia and gonorrhea. The GeneXpert is a loaner from Cepheid, the manufacturer, who agreed to lend me the instrument for one year for my STI surveillance study. The instrument itself is not large but with its shipping case, it was a beast. The wheeled shipping case is a heavy black plastic cube about 18 x 20 x 24 and weighing 67 lbs. Perfect for safely shipping the instrument but it proved to be a red flag for Haitian customs.
As is our tradition, early Thursday morning Pierre drove me to DCA for my flight to Miami. I had no problem checking the beast at Reagan National. Overweight? No problem. You just pay extra, which I did. During the flight, I tried to think about what might happen at customs in PAP. I had never been stopped there before and I was almost certain that the beast would be my ticket to a special interview with a customs agent. It was.
I collected my suitcase and the beast in baggage claim and got in the line that moved slowly past a customs agent who collected our papers and then directed people (seemingly at random) to another room for bag inspection. I was selected. While I waited for a customs agent to appear, I watched a family of five being questioned about what they were bringing into Haiti. Acetaminophen, the father explained as the rest of the family looked on anxiously. The customs agent pulled out a Costco-size bottle of acetaminophen from their open suitcase. I had eight of the exact same bottle in my suitcase. And I had the beast. This could be bad. The customs agent asked a few more questions and let the family go.
Soon a young man appeared. It was my turn. He asked me in English to open my suitcase. I did and he was soon looking intently at the top layer of 30 boxes of rapid diagnostic test kits for syphilis. What are these he asked? Test kits for syphilis, I answered. He directed me to open a box. I did and he looked curiously at the individual packets and then pulled one out and inspected it. He returned it to the box and asked if I was a doctor. Yes (why not? Otherwise it gets too complicated). Okay. He told me to close the suitcase and turned his attention to the beast. He told me to open the case. I carefully undid the latches and soon the customs agent was staring down at the beast.
I told him what it was and explained that it was on loan from the manufacturer and that it was for medical purposes. He looked at the laptop that comes with the beast and informed me that I needed to declare the beast and pay customs duty. How much? I asked. It depends on how much the beast is worth, he replied. I have no idea, I said; it is on loan. I showed him the contract with the manufacturer that explained that the beast was on loan to me. It was not enough. The young man wanted to know how much the instrument cost so that he could calculate the customs duty. He pulled out a smart phone and asked me how to spell the beast’s name, GeneXpert-IV. The customs agent typed it in his search engine. He had an app for searching prices, very smart for getting an item’s value. But I knew, and the young agent soon found out, that no amount of searching would yield the actual price of the beast. Medical and scientific instruments that are this expensive do not have their prices listed on any web site. The young agent searched and searched and re-typed the name and searched again but he came up empty. Now the room was empty, too. The last passengers who had been selected for inspection had long since left. The young agent sighed. You can go, he finally said. I carefully re-fastened the latches on the shipping crate, pulled out the handle, thanked the customs agent and left the room. It was not until I exited the airport building into the hot sun that I realized that I had gone toe-to-toe with Haitian customs. I had stared them down and won.
Outside in the reception area, I found my Christianville driver and we loaded the beast and my suitcase into the Land Cruiser. Danette was already waiting in the Land Cruiser (her flight had come in at about the same time as mine but my detour through customs delayed me almost 20 minutes). What’s in the big box, Danette asked. One of my instruments for the STI surveillance project, I said. In reality, it was a small victory and a big step forward in actually getting the project underway. Welcome to Haiti, beast!
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| GeneXpert IVV shown here with desktop computer |
As is our tradition, early Thursday morning Pierre drove me to DCA for my flight to Miami. I had no problem checking the beast at Reagan National. Overweight? No problem. You just pay extra, which I did. During the flight, I tried to think about what might happen at customs in PAP. I had never been stopped there before and I was almost certain that the beast would be my ticket to a special interview with a customs agent. It was.
I collected my suitcase and the beast in baggage claim and got in the line that moved slowly past a customs agent who collected our papers and then directed people (seemingly at random) to another room for bag inspection. I was selected. While I waited for a customs agent to appear, I watched a family of five being questioned about what they were bringing into Haiti. Acetaminophen, the father explained as the rest of the family looked on anxiously. The customs agent pulled out a Costco-size bottle of acetaminophen from their open suitcase. I had eight of the exact same bottle in my suitcase. And I had the beast. This could be bad. The customs agent asked a few more questions and let the family go.Soon a young man appeared. It was my turn. He asked me in English to open my suitcase. I did and he was soon looking intently at the top layer of 30 boxes of rapid diagnostic test kits for syphilis. What are these he asked? Test kits for syphilis, I answered. He directed me to open a box. I did and he looked curiously at the individual packets and then pulled one out and inspected it. He returned it to the box and asked if I was a doctor. Yes (why not? Otherwise it gets too complicated). Okay. He told me to close the suitcase and turned his attention to the beast. He told me to open the case. I carefully undid the latches and soon the customs agent was staring down at the beast.
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| The beast in its box |
Outside in the reception area, I found my Christianville driver and we loaded the beast and my suitcase into the Land Cruiser. Danette was already waiting in the Land Cruiser (her flight had come in at about the same time as mine but my detour through customs delayed me almost 20 minutes). What’s in the big box, Danette asked. One of my instruments for the STI surveillance project, I said. In reality, it was a small victory and a big step forward in actually getting the project underway. Welcome to Haiti, beast!
Monday, May 26, 2014
Memorial Day
I am back in the U.S. and this post has nothing to do with Haiti.
Today is Memorial Day. This morning I drove up to Yeadon, a suburb of Philadelphia, to visit the cemetery where Mom and Dad are buried. I had not been back to the cemetery since Mom’s funeral in November 2012. Dad died in November 2010 a few weeks before my wife, Bedou, died. Today I wanted to go to the cemetery to see Mom and Dad. The sky was blue and bright with sunlight. I pulled into Fernwood Cemetery and drove slowly down the narrow roads that separate the sections. I parked along the side of the road and walked down the gentle slope toward the bottom of the section where the gravesite was. I stopped and scanned the rows of headstones trying to find Mom and Dad. The cemetery had placed American flags at the gravesite of each veteran buried here so I looked for a flag. Dad had served in the Seabees in the Pacific during World War II. I found the gravesite. I had only seen a picture of the newly carved headstone that now included Mom’s name and dates. It fit nicely on Dad’s official military headstone. They were together again as they had always been.
I thought for a long time about what Mom and Dad had done for us, for their family, friends and neighbors. They gave so much, loved so much, and shared so much with everyone around them. They showed me how to be a good parent, not directly, but by the way they were parents to my brothers and I. If I did well raising my kids, it is due in part to the way my parents raised me.
Today is Memorial Day. Thank you, Dad, for your service. Thank you Mom and Dad for being my parents.
Today is Memorial Day. This morning I drove up to Yeadon, a suburb of Philadelphia, to visit the cemetery where Mom and Dad are buried. I had not been back to the cemetery since Mom’s funeral in November 2012. Dad died in November 2010 a few weeks before my wife, Bedou, died. Today I wanted to go to the cemetery to see Mom and Dad. The sky was blue and bright with sunlight. I pulled into Fernwood Cemetery and drove slowly down the narrow roads that separate the sections. I parked along the side of the road and walked down the gentle slope toward the bottom of the section where the gravesite was. I stopped and scanned the rows of headstones trying to find Mom and Dad. The cemetery had placed American flags at the gravesite of each veteran buried here so I looked for a flag. Dad had served in the Seabees in the Pacific during World War II. I found the gravesite. I had only seen a picture of the newly carved headstone that now included Mom’s name and dates. It fit nicely on Dad’s official military headstone. They were together again as they had always been.
I thought for a long time about what Mom and Dad had done for us, for their family, friends and neighbors. They gave so much, loved so much, and shared so much with everyone around them. They showed me how to be a good parent, not directly, but by the way they were parents to my brothers and I. If I did well raising my kids, it is due in part to the way my parents raised me.
Today is Memorial Day. Thank you, Dad, for your service. Thank you Mom and Dad for being my parents.
Friday, May 16, 2014
Life, and Death
I am sitting in the boarding area at the PAP airport, waiting for my 9:40 flight, American Airlines 377 to Miami. I am on my way back home. We left C'ville on the yellow school bus this morning at 5 am and arrived at the airport at a little past 6. On our way through the central market, I saw my most disturbing sight yet. Our driver pointed to his left. There was the body of a man lying in the middle of the road, crushed and broken, arms extended above his head, his lower body splashed open. It looked like the man had been run over. From our seats in the bus, we were higher than we would be in a car or in the Everest. My first thought was that it was a large animal. But even in the early dawn light, we could see the body all too clearly. It was a dead human being. Traffic slowed down to maneuver around the body. We drove around the body, too, just like everyone else. How long had the man been lying dead in the road? Minutes? Hours? I have no idea. No one was there to stop or direct traffic around the body. There were no police. Two UN trucks drove past in the opposite lane on our left. We drove on. To the right of us, the market was coming alive with activity as people unloaded their goods from trucks and tap taps. Less than 20 feet from the bustling outdoor market, there was a dead man lying in the street.
I have heard people say that life is cheap in Haiti. I did not want to believe it. Today, I think I do.
I have heard people say that life is cheap in Haiti. I did not want to believe it. Today, I think I do.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Why the Pastor was Angry
Someone just asked a simple question: how was the wedding reception? That question triggered a reaction that I never expected. The Pastor was clearly offended by something that happened to him. He had presided at the wedding ceremony but at the reception, he felt that he was not treated as he should have been treated, as he deserved to be treated. He gave few details, but one got the sense that he was not treated as a very special guest. He grumbled that Catholic priests are paid when they do weddings but that Protestant ministers do it for free. It’s not fair. We should charge them, he cried. So he proclaimed to all of us that in the future he will only agree to preside at weddings under certain conditions. He will insist on being treated royally. They should send a car, a limousine, to pick him up. He should be seated at the table with the other officials (I don’t know who they are) so that he would be sure to be served first in case there is not enough food for everyone else in attendance. I did not ask what other conditions he would demand. I was too disgusted by his arrogance and hubris. And this attitude was coming from someone who is a Pastor, a minister, someone who professes to follow the example of Jesus Christ. I wonder what Jesus would think of the Pastor’s attitude toward his people.
Another wedding took place the same day in a town about 30 minutes west of the Angry Pastor’s wedding. The pastor who presided at this wedding did not arrive in a limousine. No one sent a car for him. He took a tap tap. This pastor did not ask for money. In fact, he helped bring the musical instruments to the wedding reception. He did not sit at the official table. He ate with the other guests. And he did not demand that he be treated royally. Angry Pastor should take a lesson from his brother pastor. He can learn a little about humility and service to God and his people. It is a wedding. It is not about the Pastor.
Did the bride and groom err in not giving recognition at the reception to the man who married them? Certainly. But that is not an excuse for Angry Pastor to act in such an unchristian-like manner. To my mind, it is a petty issue, not worth ranting about to everyone.
Another wedding took place the same day in a town about 30 minutes west of the Angry Pastor’s wedding. The pastor who presided at this wedding did not arrive in a limousine. No one sent a car for him. He took a tap tap. This pastor did not ask for money. In fact, he helped bring the musical instruments to the wedding reception. He did not sit at the official table. He ate with the other guests. And he did not demand that he be treated royally. Angry Pastor should take a lesson from his brother pastor. He can learn a little about humility and service to God and his people. It is a wedding. It is not about the Pastor.
Did the bride and groom err in not giving recognition at the reception to the man who married them? Certainly. But that is not an excuse for Angry Pastor to act in such an unchristian-like manner. To my mind, it is a petty issue, not worth ranting about to everyone.
Chik is Here
Chikungunya fever is here. Florence Duperval, the Minister of Public Health and Population, made it official on May7. It was only a matter of time. Chik was already in the Caribbean and cases have been reported in the Dominican Republic so we were waiting for the last couple of months for the first cases to be reported in Haiti. Now it is official.
The chikungunya virus is spread by Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, the same mosquitoes that transmit dengue virus. According to the CDC (http://www.cdc.gov/chikungunya/), symptoms may include headache, muscle pain, joint swelling, or rash. People at increased risk for severe disease include people with diabetes or high blood pressure, two conditions that are very prevalent among Haitians.
UF-EPI Haiti Lab 1-Gressier is ramping up for Chik surveillance. This week Millé, one of the Haitian technicians who works in the arthropod lab here, came in and pulled out all the mosquito traps. He spent most of a day just hooking up and re-charging the batteries needed for the equipment.
We have been getting many anecdotal reports of Chik. Makendy told us that there are “lots of people” with really bad fever. Some people have muscle pains so bad that they cannot walk. Others complain that it feels like they are carrying a large weight on their shoulders. Several members of the family of one of the C’ville workers have the fever. The clinic at the C’ville school has reported at least 25 children with fever. Millé is trying to get the addresses of where the students live so that he can go out to their neighborhoods and set traps. Some of the students live as far away as Mariani (a suburb of PauP) and Carrefour Dufort (west of Léogâne). Chik is not likely to be a local disease.
I think people are worried. Maybe not scared, but worried. This disease is new. The population is naïve and has never been exposed to this virus before. People will get sick.
I had stopped using Deet a long time ago. Now I’m spraying it on every morning to try and protect myself from the mosquitoes. Just trying to be as safe as possible.
The chikungunya virus is spread by Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, the same mosquitoes that transmit dengue virus. According to the CDC (http://www.cdc.gov/chikungunya/), symptoms may include headache, muscle pain, joint swelling, or rash. People at increased risk for severe disease include people with diabetes or high blood pressure, two conditions that are very prevalent among Haitians.
UF-EPI Haiti Lab 1-Gressier is ramping up for Chik surveillance. This week Millé, one of the Haitian technicians who works in the arthropod lab here, came in and pulled out all the mosquito traps. He spent most of a day just hooking up and re-charging the batteries needed for the equipment.
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| Mosquito traps |
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| Mosquito trapping equipment |
We have been getting many anecdotal reports of Chik. Makendy told us that there are “lots of people” with really bad fever. Some people have muscle pains so bad that they cannot walk. Others complain that it feels like they are carrying a large weight on their shoulders. Several members of the family of one of the C’ville workers have the fever. The clinic at the C’ville school has reported at least 25 children with fever. Millé is trying to get the addresses of where the students live so that he can go out to their neighborhoods and set traps. Some of the students live as far away as Mariani (a suburb of PauP) and Carrefour Dufort (west of Léogâne). Chik is not likely to be a local disease.
I think people are worried. Maybe not scared, but worried. This disease is new. The population is naïve and has never been exposed to this virus before. People will get sick.
I had stopped using Deet a long time ago. Now I’m spraying it on every morning to try and protect myself from the mosquitoes. Just trying to be as safe as possible.
Sunday, May 11, 2014
PauP: Getting Better but Still Bad
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.
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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