Haiti’s official ‘no white people walking’ policy

That title’s not far off the mark.  My first year in Haiti, one year after the earthquake, there was an official UN policy that didn’t allow any affiliates (mostly white) to get out of their chauffeur (all black) driven cars and walk in the streets of Port au Prince due to ‘security’ issues.  But here I am 3 and a half years after the earthquake and there are still no white people in the streets.  There were plenty of white people on the plane, and occasionally you’ll glance a bit of whiteness in a passing vehicle or in a truck of machine gun toting blue hatters (the UN patrol).  But color is such an odd phenomena in Haiti…I guess I think more about it since my daughter is a shade of brown but it’s truly striking.  We’ve met a lot of important Haitian politicians and business people, who are indeed native Haitians, but the people with money look white.  Social standing here is directly and starkly determined by the shade of your skin.  Light skin Haitian – rich, dark skinned Haitian – not always bad, but a crapshoot. 

Today we went to a factory in the city center, and got invited for an unscheduled visit to a new factory compound at the nearby town of Carrefour tomorrow afternoon.  The area was described as a bit scary, I think the words that were used were ‘the slums of Port au Prince’.  To which I thought, are you f-ing kidding me?  Sorry for the language but that’s what I was thinking.  I mean, what have we been driving around in for the last 3 years?  How is it possible that I haven’t seen the worst of it?  Apparently I’ll find out tomorrow on our impromptu trip to the outskirts of Haiti.  Before heading to Carrefour, we’ll be in a couple of factories in the morning, so chances of my getting to blog tomorrow night after such a full day are slim.  But I’ll try, because we fly the following day to the north of the country on what I’m lovingly referring to as the ‘chicken and pig’ flight, and it’s unlikely I’ll have reliable internet access for the rest of the trip.  We’ll be visiting the new factory compound in Caracol (for those interested in the political happenings in Haiti, there’s rumors of moving the capital from Port au Prince to that location – Google it).  Then we’re heading to a rural area to spend the night and visit another factory compound the following day.  I’m excited and a little apprehensive about our jaunt to the north, but if I can survive a hotel gas explosion, I think I can make it through a 20 minute flight on Chicken and Pig airlines.  But seriously, a Haitian friend of mine said it’s not that bad (no actual chickens and pigs) but that you can see the pilot and it’s ‘a little bumpy’ getting over the mountains.

As for today, I hid my towels in the morning (it worked), but this time they disappeared in the afternoon.  Completely unexpected!  So when I got back from the factories I couldn’t wash up, but there are worse things in Haiti than being stinky.  I’m trying to adapt to this whole towel snatching thing, but clearly it’s a moving target.  We went to dinner at a recently opened sushi restaurant nearby – yes, sushi in Haiti!  I have now officially broken all of the health warnings/rules for travel to Haiti, including raw fish.  FYI…it tastes just like sushi in the US.  Fortunately, our program host just happens to be a gay man who knows all of the hot spots.  It’s amazing how no matter where you are in the world, a gay man can find all the good restaurants and nightlife, and that’s not a trivial task in Haiti.  You’d never know the place was there from the street, and I’m pretty sure Google maps won’t get you there, so thank goodness for ‘gay man GPS’.  I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that I don’t get food poisoning, and don’t even get me started about malaria.  The Haitian mosquitoes seem to be completely oblivious to American bug spray.