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

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