Haiti and issues of race.

In continuation of my last post, perhaps what needs to happen are some movements within Haiti. I experienced one of these a couple of weekends ago. Some of my friends from PUCMM are Haitian and are involved in starting up a company that is working to promote tourism in Haiti. Yes, they have the job because they need the money, like every college student (trust me, I’ve seen their apartment-a couch or two wouldn’t hurt them :P). But they all decided to put so much work into this company to bring people into Haiti. They are educated men-they know what people outside of the country think about Haiti. They have also come to the DR and seen how much tourism has helped out this country’s economy (…more or less-the problem with tourism is that it’s an unstable sort of income that is susceptible to the economy of other countries and to natural disasters everywhere…but still.). They want to improve their own country by working hard to get people to come to Haiti to just see what it is like. Haiti is such a beautiful country and if people could just see that, they would want to come. Well, we went. And it was an adventure for sure…

First off, let me just say that our guides are from the south and we went to Cap-Haitian in the North, where they had never been before. The guy who started it lives in Miami now so he told them where he’s been going for the last few years and they went off of that. We were definitely safe with them and we so appreciate the work that they did for us and the friendships we have built with them. Nothing that happened was in any way their fault, and they remedied every situation the best that they could. That being said, it wasn’t that bad I just feel the need to add a disclaimer haha. You will understand if you choose to read on…

First, crossing the border. So this is how it works: you go through immigration/emigration on the DR side, cross a bridge that also serves as a market so it is crawling with people, and go through immigration/emigration on the Haiti side. On the bridge, 5 minutes into Haiti, one of my friends had her camera stolen right out of her hand. There was this huge ordeal because a guy there was pretending to be with immigration and he was not. So he was asking for our passports and for some money and our guides knew better than to give it to him so a fight broke out (in Creole, mind you; none of us knew what was going on until after all of this had passed). Finally we pacified him by letting him check our passports and we went on our merry way. But in the confusion, my friend’s camera was incredibly stolen right out of her hand and she didn’t even notice until after the fact. Crazy. Sooo we made it eventually. We were stopped a lot along the road to Cap-Haitian to have our passports checked. A van full of white people draws attention in the DR but it draws 10 times more attention in Haiti. Most of them were good cops, some were a little rude and intimidating but none of them were really bad. The scary thing was just not really knowing.

Next comes the hotel. The guys had to pay in advance to get this hotel so they couldn’t change it without us having to pay more. So we decided to tough it out for 4 days. “Tough it out” means that one time there was running water and we got showers (over days of trekking through incredible heat). It means that the air didn’t work most nights. It means that there were bed bugs and we had bites all over our bodies (but that’s not as bad as it sounds, because thankfully bug bites don’t really itch, they just look bad). It means that there were tons of mosquitoes. It means the toilet didn’t flush most of the time. And that there was one lightbulb in the whole room, and at night we couldn’t have the fans on and the light off at the same time. It was rough. Thankfully they found another, much nicer hotel while we were there that they can use for the rest of the trips.

When we finally got settled in to our hotel after arriving we went to some beautiful fortress ruins by a beautiful beach. We spent some time just hiking around and exploring. Nearby was the other, much nicer hotel so we spent some time exploring that and just sitting on the patio watching the waves roll in. We came back content but sweaty after hiking around in the Haitian heat...to find no water for showers :) So we went out to eat as we were and enjoyed a dinner without a time schedule: eating, talking, laughing, sharing, and dancing on the patio.

The next day was a little bit rougher. We went to the citadel, which was built during the Haitian revolution. We had the option of taking a horse up to the top of the mountain, but thought it would only take about an hour to make the trek so most of us declined, with one exception. As soon as we began the climb we were surrounded by a hoard of people yelling and pushing and pulling us to try and convince us to pay them to take us up the mountains on their horses. It was so hot and confusing (it was hard to tell what language they were speaking to us a lot of the time and we kept getting separated from each other) that a few other people gave in and mounted horses pretty shortly thereafter. Being prideful, without a single goude or peso on my body, and a little wary of the strangers pushing and pulling us all over the place, I continued on with many of my friends. But it was HOT. So much hotter than in the DR (not really sure why, it’s not that big of an island, I’m not sure how there was such a drastic weather difference hah). And it was rough going. And I have no idea how long we were walking but we eventually learned that it was 7 kilometers to the top. Which is just shy of 4 and a half miles. Which would take almost an hour to walk if you were power walking on flat land, not climbing a mountain. Finally, after we were about half way up (I was walking with my friend Tyler) we caved and Tyler paid for horses for him and me with barely enough money for two of us to get a horse the rest of the way up. It was a physical relief but not an emotional one! The horse kept slipping on the rocks and I could feel it was even more tired than I was. But, we finally made it up the mountain. And I think it was worth it in the end. The Citadel and the view from the top were more beautiful than words could possibly describe. We walked around to see the views and we walked through the fort. We got to see the canons that pointed through every window and went on the rooftop where the men would do their workouts. The view from there was breathtaking. After spending some time exploring we made our trek back down. Some of us had paid for a horse up and down, but those of us who hadn’t decided to walk down and just stick together more this time. Then a friend and I decided it would be fun to run wildly down like children. My shins didn’t think it was so fun. But the rest of me did and neither of us wiped out! And we got off that mountain faster, so I would say it was worth it ;) We got to the bottom faster than everyone except the people who took horses down and sat next to a tantalizing mini-waterfall, dripping in sweat. The children were playing naked in the pool. It was really tempting to jump in with them. If only running around naked was still acceptable in this world…But anyway, everyone else eventually made it down and we continued. We couldn’t go back the way we had come because it was closed for some reason so we had to go the long way around, naturally. We finally got back, walked to find a tap-tap (this is what they call Haiti’s version of guaguitas-except they’re really just like trucks with tarp over the back so everyone sits in the bed of the truck and you tap twice when you want out-hence, they call them tap-taps) and made it back to the hotel…to find that se fue el agua otra vez (there was no water. still.).  Our guides went down and exchanged some creolian words with the man downstairs and eventually there came some water. We decided to group shower por si acaso (just in case), which was a good idea, since it went pretty shortly after it came. We got ready and went out to dinner, where I tried Creole sauce, which is super spicy and I am not a fan. We got back exhausted, but it was okay because the next day was a beach day!!

            To get to the beach the next day we all hopped in the back of a truck that was uncovered. This wouldn’t matter except for the fact that we barely fit and started out almost falling out and then were twisting and turning through mountain roads hah. But we made it unscathed and got on a yola to glide through some of the clearest, bluest water I have ever seen (including all of the other Caribbean beaches I had the fortune to visit!). It was gorgeous. We got to this little beach that was carved out of the mountainy forest surrounding it and there we would pass the entire day. We ate lobster and crab and all sorts of good things for lunch. We explored the coast and found starfish and more sea urchins. We drank milk out of coconuts. It was a beautiful day spent with beautiful people. Timeless beauty. A little piece of heaven in the ordinariness of life.   

            We took our yola back and got back in the truck and precariously made our way back once again. We got ready (with or without water this time, I can’t remember for sure but I think what had happened is that we had filled up water bottles so we didn’t have water but we bathed with the water we had saved) and went out to our last dinner together. It was a great time.

The next morning we made our way back in the guaguita and had to pass through customs again. Then, we had to cross the bridge again. The same man was there. And he remembered us. It was trouble right from the get-go. He came right to Josh, the most hot-headed of our fearless leaders, and began pushing him as soon as he refused to hand over our passports or money. Clement and Soumaho, the other two, were holding Josh back and people were beginning to swarm around us, all speaking a language we don’t know. I felt okay while Clement and Soumaho were holding him back, because the situation seemed mostly under control. And then Soumaho and Clement joined in. This is when I got scared. They are quite level-headed, peace-making men. They don’t want to cause problems. I felt that the situation had lost control when they had no choice but to try and defend themselves and everyone else involved. Finally, after standing by and watching and laughing this whole time, the Argentineans from the UN stepped in and let us through after checking our passports. Which brings me to another sidenote: The UN in Haiti is virtually useless. We were told and witnessed on various occasions that it’s like these people are on vacation. They just sort of hang out and go to the beach and nobody’s there to tell them to do any different. It was quite aggravating. But fortunately, the ones at the border stepped in eventually and we made it across the bridge and through customs on the DR side and onto our guaguita to go home. We eventually made it and all got in wonderful, coveted showers and enjoyed traveling through a country in which there is (almost) always toilet paper in the bathrooms. :)

         On the way home there was an interesting dynamic. Like I had mentioned before, when we rode through Haiti we were stopped often so that the guards could check the white peoples’ passports (I don’t mean to offend anyone by using direct terms, I have just become accustomed to calling it like it is in my conversations about race and ethnicity in the DR).  On this ride back from Haiti to Santiago we were stopped just as frequently but this time they literally only checked the Hatians’ passports. Every single time. I was sitting next to my Haitian friend and had fallen asleep on his shoulder. And still they asked for his and not once asked for mine. I got to thinking about the injustice of it all. And about where else this would happen. I didn’t have to look much further than our own country. Isn’t this something that would happen with a truck full of migrant workers from Mexico? Haven’t we seen thousands of cases of injustice towards our African American and Mexican American brothers and sisters in particular, not to mention the other minority groups? Why is there more trust and preference given to me, simply for having white skin? I once overheard an international student who is often mistaken for being Haitian, although he is actually from another island (which one, I cannot remember at the moment), speaking about the issue. He is on the receiving end of much injustice, and he mentioned that Haitians in general haven’t really done much to help the issue. He says that they get stereotyped as causing fights all the time and the reality is that even though far from all Haitians cause fights, enough of them continue to do so to perpetuate the stereotype. This was an interesting thought to me. It only gives further insight into how complicated the issue is. Does the stereotype perpetuate the action or the action the stereotype? Who can say…All I know is that I have looked into the eyes of beloved people who have been wrongly discriminated against because of some stupid stereotype that reaches much farther into the spectrum with its discrimination than do the people who are actually perpetuating it. And it is heart-breaking.