Citadel de la Ferriere

For a country receiving imported - subsidised by foreign aid – rice and generally the ultimate developmental petri-dish for a World Bank economic rescue plan, I was pretty flummoxed to learn that Haiti has the largest historical strategic military structure, i.e. a Citadel, in the Western Hemisphere. The Citadel de la Ferriere is unseen from Okap (Cap Haitien) but it was literally bored from a 1000 metre above sea level mountain peak, which is the tallest in northern Haiti, and from there you can see over 50 km towards Okap and beyond.

20 mins away from the Citadel

It was built by the eccentric but very smart general, Henri Christophe, who became the 2nd president of Haiti (after the founding president Jean-Jacques Dessalines, disliked by some then for his autocratic ways but  today an national icon, was assassinated), and self proclaimed King of Haiti (wanting to outdo all pretenders, modelling his court along the lines of the Prussian royalty of the time). He appropriated all assets to the freed slaves, creating an agrarian system of self sustenance and surplus provision to government stores. The French still eventually made off with a lot of loot, ears down and tail between legs, after a thorough whooping of a  Napoleonic army against a well organised and motivated battalion of freedom fighters. At one siege that lasted 20 days, 1,300 rebels held off 18,000 French loyalists and expeditionary forces.

View of the town of Milot from Sans Souci Palace

 

Path to the Citadell looking back at the twin hills looking over Milot

Roi Christophe assembled the best educated lot to build a palace at Sans Souci at Milot,  at the beginning of the path to Citadel de la Ferriere, with the intention of building a new capital city safely inland under the watchful eye of the Citadel. The monolithic Citadel was built in just 7 years. Hundreds of lives were lost but the walls, some over 10metres thick, and the impressive array of weaponry in readiness of a French re-invasion showed the sheer motivation to make good the liberation. I was amazed as to how much can be done in such a short time without sophisticated machinery but with organisational precision (never mind the occupational fatalities) that would make today's construction managers blush with embarrassment.

Past the halfway mark and looking North towards the Atlantic

The San Souci Palace was largely destroyed in an earthquake in 1842, but my 78 year old guide – César, enthusiastically showed me the significance of the few visible bits of structure remaining, including a sculpture  from one of the Italian states with its nose chopped off  for some reason that César told me and I forgot! He also pointed out where the gardens, stables and schools were located including a canal system bringing cool, clean water from the mountain. The water still trickles down and its damn tasty.

What was left of the Palace with random tourist blocking the view (Oh, that'll be me)

César, born in 1933 in Milot – the town where San Souci Palace is located, started doing this work as soon as he turned 18 in 1950. Coincidently the president at that time put a lot of effort into building an all weather road up to the Citadel and restoring some of the run-down parts of it. Subsequent prezzies including the infamous Papa Doc François Duvalier threw in money to keep the maintenance going. Well, that's national pride for you, never mind all those corpses in unmarked graves, Mr Duvalier.

César, veteran tour guide

I was a bit concerned that I would get a guide that was no better than a parrot, like those awful open top bus tours you sometimes get in London but César skilfully told the story of Roi Christophe like he was there himself. I tell you, this story is best told with a folkloric lilt to it. For example, it is historically written that he committed suicide in 1820 but the César version has tales of a man possessed, driven to madness by voices in his head, leading him out of the Citadel without an escort but in civilian clothes, unable to cope with his visions and finally shooting himself with a silver bullet somewhere in the valley. Well, good old César kept talking and entertaining me as we struggled up the 3 hour walk to the Citadel. This is the same guy that got me running down the hill later on so I don't miss the Tap-Tap (modified pick-up public transport!) back to Okap.

Rock gardens near the Citadel

A bit of flora to contrast the clay rich but barren and deforested hills

His French was pretty good, and like a teacher he kept on pausing,  turning around, looking at me straight in the eye and asking me if I understood what he just said. In my mind I was always compelled to tell the truth lest he scans my brain for lies. I was the only tourist, of the few that came that day, who walked all the way. Horse ride vendors were constantly cooing for me to hop but I kept telling them, look I got legs! Otherwise I saw van loads of tourists (probably American, no prejudice to Americans, but I just had a hunch!) on their way up. At a stop in an intermediate car park I watched with glee some NGO officials and diplomats trying to hop onto a horse (or horse like creature, neither horse nor mule nor donkey, as somebody here told me). It was not a pretty sight.

The West end of the Citadel with the shape of the bow end of a ship

 Alfred Hitchcock, this is Vertigo! The crocodile-like Milot hills from Citadel

Before reaching the top the view is already amazing, with a folding mountain range to the East rolling towards Dominican Republic, mostly stripped of its trees and dark red earth, looking South towards the river pierced valleys and plains of the central plateau, west towards northern Haiti and finally North towards the deep blue Atlantic.

More entertainment awaited me, on top of the hoards of nattering and idle horse owners, snack and souvenir hawkers and 'guides' near the entrance, I found that one tourist had fainted (probably American). As his guide and a travel colleague were helping him come to, he vomited and somebody mentioned something about what he ate before coming up. He was part of the (probably American) lot of tourists that came up in a van. As I sipped my Coca Cola (from America but bottled in Port-au-Prince), wiping 3 hours worth of climbing-up-the-hill sweat, and sitting on an old canon, watching the scene unfold, I started thinking about what Mr. Henri Christophe would have thought of all this.

Neatly arranged peppercorns.....no, cannon balls

What should I do with all these cannons? Take a snap with my Canon

Mossy, rusty, unhappy, unwanted cannonballs

The guide took me towards the 2nd entrance to the Citadelle facing West towards it's exposed flank, protected by a fortification on a little hill. In the outer courtyard, there is a neat arrangement of canonballs of all sizes. Despite the vast redundant arsenal, an informer tells me that several cannons get stolen each week, sometimes the guides themselves sell them to tourists on the sly.

The Citadelle was built for the ultimate 18th century battle and seige. The thick stone walls and bricked roofing were built, with one end the shape of a ship's hull, to withstand a seige for many days. There are fake passages everywhere to fool the infiltrating enemy, and infact guide him to his peril in the form of a soldiers bayonet or a 100 metre fall from an outer wall.

Right, all I need is a matchbox...

The nerve centre of the whole project, the high command quarters

Where the hanging gardens and pond used to be, the 'interior of the ship's bow'', surrounded by living quarters

The fleet of high projectile French made medium range cannons as well as long range ship busting English cannons, salvaged from previous battles. The English ones were donated of course (my enemy is your enemy - some things never change). Some could launch cluster cannonballs that explode mid-range and release little cannonballs for multiple damage (an early form of smart bombing...effectiveness hasn't changed much today, looking at NATO experience in former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan).

The unmistakable British coat of arms with the 'Dieu et Mon Droit' motto

 

Napoleon's imperial insignia on the French canon

 

More French canon's not far from Henri Christophe's masoleum

 

A canon that actually looks like it was once ready to fire something

The Arsenal was pretty impressive until it blew up during  Henri Christophe's reign, killing his son. Today, as you walk around the Arsenal, you can see the cracks in the tortoise shaped building from the explosion over 200 years ago and smell the sulphurous funk that remains from the spent gunpowder.

The Arsenal

 

The interior of the Arsenal

There were all sorts of innovations in the fort, a cool room in the deepest part , with a water pool that can freeze at night, due to the high altitude and cool conditions, allowing storage of perishable foods like meats and vegetables. The roofs of the citadelle have curvy channels and drains that direct rainwater to supplement the groundwater wells, once again enhancing the self-dependency of the place, a virtue that is yet to return to Haiti today.

Don't take your child here to do 'kaka'.....a 30 metre drop!

 

Some more of that vertigo...

Red moss on the outer walls

There were entertainment facilities, including a billiards room, for the soldiers and education rooms for the children of the royals and higher officers. Haiti at the time seemed to have a critical mass of skilled people: architects, artists, carpenters, foundrymen, military strategists, teachers, doctors, engineers. It explains the short construction period, despite its labour intensivity and high casualties.

Views from the top

On that pictorial conclusion to a picturesque experience, I can only say that my favourite photo was that of  a simple, neat and clean adobe house on the way down. No blood-letting, no folklore, no military arrangements, the only hint of nationalism being the pride of ones home.

K.

R7BTE6SNTHP2

Trou d'Enfer

"Haiti is dead!",declared a friendly man at the market town of Ti Buk(or Petit Bourg......Ti is "small" in Creole) in the River Petit Bourg valley."Only a miracle can save her now!" Or something to that effect. His English was sketchy but his communication was perfect. Most Haitians that can speak English either worked/studied in the US, Canada or in the Bahamas and it is rare to meet one out in the sticks. Otherwise, being fluent in French won't help you much in the bundus. As with most country folk anywhere in the world, they don't take too much liking to change, and will appreciate any foreigner that can communicate in Creole.

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We  waded across this river over 4 times on the way up

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I was invited by some friends of the organisation, from another org called SOIL, to take a weekend trip west of Okap to Borgne (pronounced Oboy by Haitians....part of the Creolisation of the French language) and then do a 6 hour trek up a river valley, across a couple of mountain ridges to an area called "Trou d'Enfer" (it literally means: Hell Hole). At Trou d'Enfer, SOIL has some water projects, trapping spring water and piping it to villages in the area. AIDG are interested in working with SOIL and the community to build a pico-hydro scheme, so it was a worthwhile trip, both for work and pleasure.

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The ascent begins

Oboy, built similarly to Kap, with lots of clustered buildings at various stages of construction, has a different character. Everybody knows each other, and everybody knew Sarah, an American with SOIL, because of her presence over the years working with the community there. In fact she is so popular in the whole region, that there was lot of stopping and chit chat on the way to Trou d'Enfer and back!
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Boy playing with frisbee on Oboy (Borgne) beach

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Oboy faces the Atlantic Ocean and sits on the west end of a small bay with a beautiful sandy beach. It once had high times, with electricity, a decent hospital and plenty of commerce. Commerce remains, with a big market day on Saturdays, and apparently they have an awesome Carnival / Saint Feast Day (however you want to look at it) in November but electricity stopped back in the 80s. The supplier, who had initially set the generators up for the hospital, decided to call it a day and left the country, most probably for political reasons. Haiti was at the throws of turmoil when Baby Doc Duvalier was overthrown by the military junta (typial Latin American story, unfortunately....dictator in, dictator out).

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Sleeping creole piggy....probably couldn't take anymore of that dodgy fruit

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The route to Trou d'Enfer apparently used to be possible by motor vehicle in the 70s but there is absolutely no trace of that, in fact some of the pathways are difficult to navigate with donkeys. Many years of hurricanes and  erosion can do this. The mouth of the river, near Oboy, will undergo a change of course. Oxfam and the municipality are involved in digging a canal to redirect the river that is notorious for flooding the town during hurricane season. As we passed it we were discussing the speculative nature of redirecting flood prone rivers against unpredictable weather systems. Even some of the river valley farming, close to the river bed, despite being on the more fertile soil stood to gain bumper harvest or lose all the crop in a flood. It's like a high stakes gambling game.

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Halfway to Trou d'Enfer and the Atlantic Ocean is still visible

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It was Saturday morning and as it was market day, the "path" between Oboy and Ti Buk was busy with people, mainly women, carrying goods such as plantain, breadfruit, rice, yams, grapefruits to the Oboy market. There are several river crossings on the "path" where people trudged through knee deep water, barefoot on a pebbled river bed with their goods gracefully stationary on their heads. I was a bit of a spectacle navigating these 10 metre river crossings like bambi on skates. One of teenage girls asked me if I needed assistance, and with hundred's of eyes gazing waiting for the next comical blunder, I politely declined and continued wincing at each footfall.

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 The Trou d'Enfer river. Somewhere in this area will be the Picohydro site

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Ti Buk has a bigger market, with anything for sale, from Made in China stationery to home made chocolate bars.  Ti De, one of the guys with our group has lots of friends in this area as he comes from here so we stopped for some breakfast on plantain and beef soup, an ice cold Cola and chit chat. Yet another river crossing awaited us as we continued up the river valley, observing the mobile "banks" (literally, lotery desks with tellers waiting for your numbers to bet on one of the US lottos) in brisk business, and naked kids doing somersaults into a deep section of the river, and more arrivals to the Ti Buk market.

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A local church and community centre at Trou d'Enfer in the afternoon sun 

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The uphill began and we left the main river and crossed hill passes. From this point i appreciated how knowing people from the area is important. Paths deviating in all directions, and identical folding hills and ridges all around, you needed to be with someone who knew where they were going. Our first stop was at a homestead at the top of a hill with a strong mobile signal, from where the Borgne mobile mast is barely visible and the dark blue Atlantic glimmers in the midday sun. Later on we passed by a community clinic, and chilled for one of our banter and shade breaks (there was always someone with time to talk to us). Most of the conversations were in Creole, which I am still struggling to understand but I got to hear from the doctor there that the only thing still hanging on is the immunisation programme, otherwise anything else is community healthcare in name.

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This is what happens after wading in water all day on a hot day.  The tan effect

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When we finally arrived at Trou d'Enfer there was still enough light to have a look around the river for a couple of hours, which at this elevation cruises through the mess of well worn rocks, at some point forming little waterfalls and pools. In fact there's a great spot to have a bath and swim at the same time without getting carried downriver or getting stuck in a vortex. We stayed with a family in the area, who from the number of pots and pans and crockery hanging from the ceiling and shelved in every nook and cranny, are experienced hosts. This far away from the town, cash is not necessarily king.

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Dogs playing poker. The short one at the back looks like the boss

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Most food is grown here for subsistence or exchanged. Otherwise if something needs to be bought in town, market day is great for exchanging goods for cash and making purchases of things from batteries to clothing to grain. I very conveniently couldn't locate my torch in my time of need, at dusk in one the rooms deep in this traditionally built house. The earthen floor and low door frames were the ultimate trip hazards for a person of my height. Oh, and add all the toddlers running around. My mobile phone sufficed as the torch until someone else came along with an oil lamp. Eating in the shadows of the oil lamp made me instantly nostalgic of the Kenyan sticks, and one thing that is priceless is a clear starry night, bathed in moonlight flickering off the running river. And no mobile phone reception! Peace.

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All smiles, considering it's only 6am!

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And the grapefruit juice out here is to die for! That and avocado for breakfast with steaming hot sugared Haitian coffee. Despite this and other tantalising treats that are to be had, made possible by successful harvests, the people out here rely on their relatives working in the urban centres to keep going. Medicines, balanced diets and clean water is still a luxury out here. Some of the kids you see have kwashiokor symptoms from malnourishment: reddened hair and protruding tight bellies. I have to say where we were the kids are better off. The water is not as contaminated as in the Haitian central plateau where the damming of Lac Peligre in the 1950s destroyed the natural clean water sources, the environment is still intact in terms of avoidance of deforestation and erosion, and there is a government office that seems to function.

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The Trou d'Enfer family and me!

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In addition to the water distribution system, AIDG want to scope out and build a picohydropower installation (around 100W...think 3 30W light bulbs). The primary function would be to run for water filtration units that use ultra violet light to kill microbes. If the need is greater, it can supply lighting to some of the homes, and charge mobile phone batteries to serve rural Haiti's insatiable appetite for fully charged phones in readiness to request a buddy in town for some credit. I will be involved in surveying the site,  seeking local partners, and designing the generator system, the powerhouse of which wont be a fancy generator house with blinking panels (like the nuclear power plant in The Simpsons) but.....a turbine in a bucket. That's picohydro, my friend.

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 3 of the 5 girls (or were there 6?)at the Trou d'Enfer house. I failed to remember their names.

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So, I will expect to be back in Trou d'Enfer again at some point in November. I will make a point of asking why it isn't called Jardin de Paradis (Garden of Heaven). Maybe it's a voodoo thing or maybe some fuming French cartographer named it whilst subdued by malaria, TB and cholera at the same time.

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"Im going to have a dump at the dry toilet", said the cheeky devil.  :-p

K.

Buying a Chicken in the Village

Our 2 main running biodigesters are within the city. That means that getting the cow dung requires planning and logistics from a countryside farm into town. Luckily AIDG Haiti has made a few buddies with  small dairy farms and the farms are pretty much in what you would  call suburbia, though that description is a bit of a stretch in an informal urban  sprawl. 

The evening before we have to deliver about 8 buckets, with lids, for the farmer to load them up (with you know what) the following morning for us to pick them up. On one of the occasions that I tagged along we walked into an opening with a cluster of houses, a dairy farm in the back and an enormous US Army tent, apparently donated to a tailoring co-op. If that wasn't bizarre, as I was walking into the compound with Isnido, trying to be as cool and local as I can, I didn't realise that an old lady was trying to talk to me in Creole. My cover was blown, so to speak, and I had to unleash my broken and battered franco-creole.

The savvy granny had her radar on and knew when a potential sale was apparent. She decided that she wanted to sell me one of her chickens. I hesitated then I asked Isnido to open negotiations. She started at 75 Haitian dollars (H$) but Isnido skillfully brought it down to H$ 50. This is the equivalent of about US$6. Now at this point I have to warn you about the currency conversation smokescreen in Haiti, a joy to the street trader, a curse to the gullible foreigner. For starters, the Haitian dollar does not exist.

Before you start thinking about cowry shells and trading with salt, the H$ is a dead currency but a common point of reference, even on restaurant bills. The main currency is the  Haitian Gourde, which is five times the value of the fictitious H$. Therefore the Gourde to US$ is 40:1. It takes a while to grasp 3 currency exchanges at once, whilst coming to terms with the value of things (and this varies a lot depending on whether the item is imported or made locally), and doing mental arithmetic at the same time.

So when Isnido told me the chicken costed H$50 I thought he meant 50 Gourdes which would be 5 times lower than the selling price. In my confusion I assumed that a chicken would be worth the value of a ball of chewing gum. To my embarassment as I whipped out just a 50 Gourde note, everybody looked at me funny. Isnido whispered to me that its in H$, as he returned the note. Doh!

So I removed a note that I thought was a 50 Gourde and continued to rummage for more but Isnido told me to stop. I had just handed him a 250 Gourde note.  The  colour and size of the 50 and 250 Gourde note are similar, and when they are marked (in Haiti, most marked notes are at the point of vapourisation, from overcirculation) even more so. More blushes.

To save face I insisted on examining the chicken, which was a spring chicken by the way. So in addition to handing over the shit buckets, half the village was chasing after the chicken for a whie. After it  was caught, I gave it a good look over. Apart from some feathers missing, it was in good condition.

Now any village scene has a United Nations of domestic animals roaming  around. Well this one had goats, chickens, dogs, cats, ducks, even guinea fowls (otherwise it was one hell of a wierd looking chicken). There was this really poorly looking puppy lying there. Miserable, drowsy, infested with sores and no doubt infections, and circled with flies. I started talking about it but savvy granny was already shoving the poor pup aside and wanted to sell me a healther looking but mangy dog. I'm not sure where my morbid expression was intepreted as another potential business opportunity. Non mesi (no thanks in Creole), madame!

K.

Lost in Translation

The AIDG office is in the centre of the tightly gridded city. All roads parallel to the coastline are lettered and roads going towards the coastline are numbered. The story goes that the French colonialists had them named in words after they were built, but during the American occupation after the 1st World War, the yankee doodle dandy solders couldn't pronounce the damn names and being all military in attitude, decided to codify all the roads in numbers and letters (this is not the last time in my blogs that the US will be blamed for everything!).

View from 2nd floor balcony. The lady is walking down Rue H. The car is going down Rue 25.

The building, taking up 3 floors has the office space on the ground floor, Isnido's family on the 1st floor and visitors and interns on the 2nd floor. But 1st and 2nd floors have balconies, which are great for escaping the inside stuffiness and absorbing the breeze from the sea and hills. Also great for just watching the hustle and bustle below. The photocopy shop next shop every now and then blast music, and Ive recently noticed, giving certain songs to much airtime. All the music here is great by the way, they mainly play Haitian music of all sorts of variety, I think the only genre I wouldn't expect being played here is heavy metal. There is a roof terrace for doing the laundry. It has great views of the centre-ville and the port.

View from rooftop of surrounding hills

On the 2nd day, I was given a tour of the ongoing biodigester installations, one at school and another at a seminary. In a nutshell, for all you regular folks, cow dung powers the generation of biogas for use, in the case of the current projects, for cooking. A mixture of fresh dung and water is poured into an airtight arrangement of modified plastic tanks (and/or or brick basin), creating a nice atmosphere for good bacteria to grow and generate the gas. Pathogenic bacteria are killed in the process and the effluent that is created can be used as fertiliser.

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The seminary biodigester was built as part of a training session for the local winners and runners-up of a business plan competition in Cap Haitien organised by AIDG earlier in the year. The winners are more commercially oriented i.e. more focussed on bringing "widgets to market then taking over the world" and the runners-up are technicians in general, and will need support to get a good business model. The business plan competition was not without its politics and confrontations as you will learn in later blogs. I was lucky to arrive when the dust was just settling.

The seminary Biodigester

On the third day, our voluntary translator, Emmanuel arrived in Cap Haitien. He is a Haitian based in the US, with an excellent knack of flipping between English-French-Creole-Spanish mid-sentence. He did the written and oral translations during some introductory technical training for the business plan competition winners, given by the AIDG programme manager from Guatemala. At a press conference organised by the 1st prize winners, Coopen (Cooperation pour l'exploitation de la nature.....exploitation of a green kind, of course!....multiple meaning in Creole-French!), I learnt that translation can be a headache here because after a Haitian stands up (whether its the press or Joe Public) to ask a question, he will make a long statement turning it into an observation complete with several reasons, inadvertently answering the question. Other times, it will be a speech and the translator has to interrupt.

Steve Lee talks about AIDG at the Coopen Press Conference

The Road to Kap

Some of you may or may not know that I am in Haiti on a renewable energy internship with a small NGO called AIDG (check out www.aidg.org). I got here in Cap Haitien last week and I hope to do the internship for upto 7 months.

Well, the jury is out on what Haiti is like and where the nation is going. But I can tell you there are more signs of a recovering country than a failed state. Infrastructure is pretty poor and so I couldn't just fly into Cap Haitien, though its international airport (the smallest international airport I've ever seen by the way) gets some light aircraft from Florida, the Bahamas and Turks & Caicos Islands.

After short stay in New York (getting there from London), I took a horrifically early flight at 7 a.m. to Santiago, a fertile economic hub to the north west of the Dominican Republic. Thank God the JFK T8 food court was open at 5 am because all American Airlines were going to give me was very very cold water. And while I'm on that topic, what's with the USA and excess air conditioning! The plane was a massive tubular icebox, and the irony was that most of the passengers who were Dominicans (from the Republic that is) were happily sat without a need for blankets. I clutched mine like Charlie Brown, sleep deprived and cranky in a pressurised, freezing, bumpy and dry environment (and the movie selections were crap) of a barely solvent (financially that is, wouldn't be surprised if it was solvent in the rain!) half painted A.A. aircraft.

The arrival in Santiago was smooth (the customs official barely looked at me), though I wouldn't say the same about the  bag carousel that after an eternal wait spewed baggage like dodgy dinner. Santiago has a lot of vehicle dealerships, mainly for SUVs and agri/industrial related vehicles, considering that it is just the 2nd largest city of a country with 10 million people. "Santiago de las Treinta Caballeros" (Santiago of the 30 Gentlemen) is the full name of the  city. Didn't see the gentlemen but on approaching the centre I saw on the top of a hill a phallic "Monument to Heroes of the Restoration", formally known as the "Monument to the Peace of Trujillo" until the assassination of the vainglorious and not so gentlemanly dictator, Raphael Trujillo.

We entered the city limits and the taxi driver put his seatbelt on (hmm). I was dropped off at the Hotel Colonial (in commemoration of the Christopher Columbus landing or the hundreds of years of civilisation, looting and pillage?) where I was to stay for just 1 night, in a room with a view of the other building's wall but at least with air con (the sun wasablazin!) and cable TV. If you went to Spanish school anywhere else in the world, just leave your phrasebook at home. Republican (Dominican, that is) words stick together like blue tack and accelerate like pinballs. You never know whether the shopkeeper is telling you something or is asking you for something. At least the lady at the eatery across the road was friendly and demonstrated the differences between the puzzlingly similar Dominican (Republic, that is...OK, lets call it DM!) Peso, unlike the pharmacist who couldn't understand my request for iodine tablets and rehydration salts as if water-borne disease is as rare as smallpox. Maybe if I said something nice about baseball I would probably communicate better as they as baseball nuts here. A lot of DMs become major leaguers in the US. But in Haiti, baseball is as uninteresting as rugby to most Indians.

I only spent 1 day in DM, and I got the feel of a chilled out and friendly people despite a history of dodgy authoritarian politics, international intervention, confused national identity and a love/hate relationship with Haiti. I was to take a 4 hour coach ride across the northern border to Cap Haitien. You are probably picturing a humid, rickety and noisy Leyland, sat at the back of the bus next to a fat smelly lady, clucking chickens and getting kicked by a billy goat. But oh, no. You just pay some money at the Caribe Bus Tour office and they stick you on an air-conditioned coach with fully reclining comfy seats, and hot food served by a hostess. Border fees all paid for in the fare so you don't even have to come out of the coach.

Another surprise, the whole road to Kap (Cap Haitien) was pretty smooth though the countryside contrasts were stark when we crossed the frontier. The crossing was eternal as a couple of Haitians were importing a lot of goods, and both DM and Haitian officials needed a bit of sweetening to smooth out the passage of the aforementioned goods. It was like a pantomime as I watched the scene from inside the bus of the Haitian gesticulating with his hands and the pot-bellied border official looking passive and emotionless. Meanwhile the hostess is catching up with old pals at the border, with the shoe shine boys playing sign language with the foreign looking passengers, looking for business. Finally the hostess distributed water bottles amongst the officials and the pantomime was over.

My first sight in Haiti was Styrofoam. Styrofoam boxes all over the river bed, where many were washing their clothes and bathing. The same Styrofoam in which my lunch was contained. Styrofoam is cheaper than a calabash, porcelain, clay plate or banana leaf but unfortunately doesn't germinate into a Styrofoam tree! Another Haitian passenger on the bus who has clearly been away for a while was tisking audibly every time we saw open sewers, random dump sites and clusters of shacks. However, as we edged away from Ouanaminthe, the border town, the scene got more country but the rice fields were in smaller plots than in DM, a marker of more subsistence farming than farming at an industrial scale. Houses were wooden, some thatched and a couple of stone buildings. The land seemed quite fertile but there were bits where it seems the land dried out, perhaps from over farming or deforestation.

I saw the first MINUSTAH (the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti. check out: http://minustah.org/) base, and a couple more followed upto the city, with mainly Uruguayan and Chilean troops. We didn't see the sea until arrival at Kap, as Haiti is more vast than I thought. The plains are interrupted by mountain ranges before hitting the sea but the main road was flat all the way. The outskirts were random arrays of shacks of breeze block, timber and metal tightly packed, some stacked on top of each other, developing country style, with the steel rebars exposed at the top. This area of informal settlement, is just outside the colonially designed gridded downtown end but they line part of the coastline including all the plastic waste and raw sewage seeping out of the slums and the defunct USAID storm drains. The city was heaving with activity at 4pm, with the "tap-tap" public transport modified pick-ups whizzing by, traders balancing their whole shop of their heads,scooters, 4wDs etc. The ocean drive, known as the Boulevard, starts of with the smelly port and ends with a couple of nice bars and restaurants (but this isn't no Miami Beach, don't get me wrong!).

I was received by Roudelin and Isnido, the Haitian AIDG staff and Steve, the Director of Operations who is around for a month to help steer the AIDG projects. I'm playing catchup with this blog and I shall do my best to do an entry a day to keep y'all tantalised. So, welcome to the nation that whooped the Napoleonic army in 1804, still widely respected by many Africans for that feat and its initial enlightened period but the butt of "poor country jokes" elsewhere. Bonswa, en Creole Haitien!

K.