On the Road to La Tremblay

Although the team was looking forward to staying near our work site, we instead ended up commuting daily from the Methodist Guest House to and from La Tremblay, which gave us a glimpse of Haitian life in Petionville, Port-au-Prince and along the highway.

As we passed through the heavy gate of the security wall surrounding the Guest House complex and entered a narrow alley men were repairing and recycling electronics and building wooden furniture. At the corner where we turned onto the road in Petionville, a women were baking and selling fried plantains and fried chicken. From that point on the sidewalks are packed with vendors selling food: fruits (including grapefruit, oranges, guava, watermelons, etc.), sugarcane, nuts, roasted corncobs, live chickens and rabbits, flavored drinks; clothing (some sent over from the States and resold) and shoes; furniture; fuel (generally watered down); pills (probably expired); mattresses; charcoal; ...

Behind the street vendors are small shops (many painted in bright pastel colors), such as beauty shops and barbers; lottery sales; food markets; construction materials stores; …

Both women and men balance loads of produce, buckets of water and other items on their heads atop a wrapped towel (chapeau).

There are a few gas stations, but most vehicle repairs take place out in the open with limited power tools.

People waiting for tap-taps (taxis) peered at us as we drove by. Some saw our wheelbarrows and other work gear loaded on the top of the van, smiled, pointed to the top of the van, and called out "Thank you!" (Maybe they were actually thanking us for the commode we also had strapped down atop the wheelbarrows!?) We felt very welcomed by all the Haitians we met and received much joy from the many smiles and waves we received.

In addition to passengers, many of the tap-taps were loaded down with products headed to market. On several occasions we saw live goats trussed to the tops of tap-taps.

Children walk to and from school along the shoulder of the busy highway. We also saw mothers carrying small infants bundled in a blanket as protection from the sun walking quite a distance to a hospital.

The traffic on the highway, which is the main route to the Dominican Republic, included armored UN vehicles, dump trucks hauling rubble, flatbed trucks loaded with rebar and bags of cement, inter-country buses, tap-taps, hand-pulled carts, tractors pulling multiple trailers loaded with harvested sugar cane and workers, and motorcycles. Sitting in the front of the van was quite an experience--sometimes there were four vehicles abreast coming at us on the two-lane highway. Virtually at the last moment, after much honking of horns, one of the vehicles would give way (or overtake) with everyone proceeding with very little room to spare between each vehicle. Motorcyclists frequently drove in both directions between oncoming traffic.

With the hot, dry weather we experienced, there was quite a bit of dust and haze (from cooking over charcoal fires and some smoldering trash). We saw agriculture, including plantain trees, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. Mountains rise steeply from the flat valley floor.

People obtain filtered drinking water from a variety of sources, ranging from small, sealed plastic bags (not bottles) of packaged water sold by individual vendors to large Culligan jugs available at gas stations and other stores. A few community pumps provide unfiltered water.

At one point we made our way past a slow moving funeral procession with mourners walking behind the hearse. It was another reminder to us that life in Haiti, like elsewhere, comes to an end. Unfortunately, life can be particularly short for many Haitians, due to limited access to clean water, sufficient food and adequate medical care.