the clearest water i've ever seen through

And I went to the beach last Sunday.

In fact the beach is not in Port-au-Prince but this one in particular was not too far away, about 1h drive from my friends' place, 1h more for me to get there because I'm up in the mountain where it's fresh and you hear the birds in the trees at the sunset and sunrise.

Normally I'm not much of a beach person, lying around one whole day, getting sunburnt, let alone a resort goer, but you gotta do with what you have and I we had a great time in the end!

Comments on the beach day before the pictures:

Besides the distance and the possible difficulty to get to the beach, most of them are not public, no not free of charge. Maybe it wouldn't be safe if the beach would be free... or if it would not be behind a restaurant most of the locals can't afford. But I wouldn't know and doubt that I will go to any public beach for the whole period of my stay here.

It was an all-included price. It was forty dollars. Versus zero when I go to the beach in Europe, it just doesn't make sense to me... 4-0 and in US dollars. The lady kindly converted them into Haitian gourds as we all have local cash. It included a meal, 3 drinks and, of course, the entrance to the beach and the swimming pool. Free water unlimited. And TV screen to watch the world cup final.

We didn't set foot on the pool because it was crowded soon after we arrived, but I think we got the best option - the beach was quieter and we could lay under the palm trees. The beach was unattended. Haha. They make us pay to enter and they don't even have a lifeguard to keep an eye on the swimmers, check the wind currents... But truth be told, there was about no current nor waves.

The water was, for a Portuguese, like soup. Temperature wise. It's way too easy to enter, no chill in the belly, we dive right into. Going back to the Atlantic won't be easy.

Despite the fact that there is lunch included, there are several beach merchants, selling from coconut water or lobsters to an array of decorative objects. They make instant friendship with you and politeness obliges you to say how pretty things are (even when they are not). I'm not usually the kind that gives tips for this even though you feel pressured when they tell you about the three kids home they need to feed. I got a free souvenir from one of them, made me feel even worse, but now I can say I own a shell spelling Haiti. 'Mesi anpil!' (Thank you very much!)

There are water taxis! And they cost 5 dollars for a ride along the coast (which we swam instead). They were getting more business than the lobster merchants too.

And now the long-awaited pictures :)

what they will never tell you: 'ceci n'est pas un bar'

A bit of an episode that happened to me Friday.

After work, we decided to go for a drink with a colleague, I want to learn some créole and he wants to learn some Portuguese so we could exchange informal classes.

Something that simple actually ended up being pretty complex stuff in this new lifestyle.
You should know that us, part of this organisation, have certain security rules for moving around and one of them is that we need to have one car from the org dropping us and picking us back up - so, in conclusion,  with very few exceptions and also certain limitations, we have a driver and a car at our disposal for work and leisure time.

My colleague had in mind a bar which was new to me and so he told my driver the name and address of the place. He would meet me there as he had to take his car, and given the rules I should not board any car that is private. So this meant that us 2, we took 2 cars to get to the same bar.

After just a few minutes, the driver tells me we arrived and he drops me in front of a green and orange wall, a guard from the other side. The place is called 'Concern', green letters. I get to the door and the guard opens the door to me, he looks inquisitive so I explain that I'm coming for a drink and that a colleague of mine is just on the way to join. He gives me a chair to sit outside, just inside the wall but outside the house and goes to find someone.

Someone else comes from inside and I explain the same again, it could be that the first guy didn't speak fluent French (not all Haitians do, créole is the dominant language). He asks me the name of my colleague, I tell him and it doesn't ring a bell. Weird. Awkward. I ask him if the place is closed, that I don't mean to disturb and we can go somewhere else. But he says that I can stay there or come inside, no worries. I stay put. I start wondering where did I get myself into, what kind of café this is, just one week after arriving to Port-au-Prince could I already be putting myself into trouble. And I don't have my colleague's number.

But my colleague calls soon after luckily. He wonders where I am. I thought I was in the bar we were supposed to meet in. I explain him the location based on a store across the street, the guard also gives me the full address and after some minutes he finally gets there.

So apparently I went to the wrong place. I decide to be more specific and ask the guard if this is a bar... to which I finally get the answer I was looking for: this is not a bar. This is the office of an NGO, a private building I had just so elegantly trespassed without anyone telling me so.

We call back my driver, go again in 2 separate cars with my driver following my colleague's car, and we get to the proper bar we were supposed to go to in the first place. All within 1km radius or so it seemed.

This showed me a bit of what local culture seems to be like, how welcoming and polite they can be to the point that they won't stop you entering a private house, they won't kick you out when they see you must be clearly mistaken and they won't even pressure you to figure it out. They give you a chair to sit in instead :)

Of course it makes a difference that I am a white girl, carrying a backpack and being dropped by an NGO jeep, but this delicate approach would probably not be the approach in many other parts of the world.

And I did learn some new words! 'Bonswe, mwen relé Claudia. Mwen sotie Portugal.' (Good evening, my name is Claudia. I come from Portugal)

PS: this weekend I also went to the beach - photos on the next post!

"é que hoje fiz um amigo e coisa mais preciosa no mundo não ha"

(because today I made a friend and there is nothing more precious in the world)

Dear readers,

I just wanted to share with you that I made my first Haitian friend today. Outside work. Chances are that I will maybe add at least one more from the office, but not just yet. And of course a superficial friendship but hey, that's always the start!

I braved myself into a new part of town after work as there was a movie screening in the French Institute. Upon arrival... slight panic: I was the only white person in the room. After 7 days of overprotection I didn't know whether that could be an issue. I decided to stop thinking bullshit and sit down.

In the middle of a movie about Rwanda, mixing football and memories of the genocide, there was a scene that looked like it could be a street in Port-au-Prince, where the narrator said how one can never be completely safe. That at the sight of a group of people, dressed in a certain way, walking in a certain way, in a certain part of town... the fear comes back again. A guy sitting next to me whispers 'it could be Haiti' and as much as I wanted to say 'yeah, i thought the same', I felt it would have been rude and what do I know yet. So I just said 'I wouldn't know'.

Casimir was there because of a photo exhibition he was participating in and to which he so proudly invited and guided me through.  The photos were the output of a workshop where they each created their own homemade photo camera out of an empty box (eg. a milk container or a shoebox). You make a small hole in one of the sides to let the light in and from the opposite side you will get a reversed image of reality outside. So you get black and white photos, positive and negative sets of pics.

Like this. It's called sténopé or pinhole camera (I think) in English.

PS: Casimir actually had a really good, semi-professional camera. The sténopé was just for fun. And an iphone. Technology seems to be a very democratic trend :)

“for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinements of even an attractive cage.”

(said Amelia Earhart, one of the first women aviators)

I've got a confession to make. It's been 6 days now and I'm starting to feel jittery with the ivory tower we live in. It's great, spacious, lavishly green (the irony, remember there is only 2% of the country in green?) and we even have a pool! But it's been 6 days now that we go mostly home to work and work to home. The city is calling me!

The exploration will have to be in a different way this time, for security reasons. Tomorrow the French institute with a movie screening. Soon enough I'll go check out the Observatoire. A view point of the city. It's on the green area of the map. Heard it's beautiful. And to see things from the top, to get some fresh air, to feel the breeze, always brings me back my freedom.

how come you don't know Cristiano Ronaldo?

So on my first week, we get a visitor coming into the office... He is about 12 years old. At first he acts shy and he talks to my colleague, says hi, banal stuff.

I start realizing he is the son of one of our colleagues and since we're in the World Cup craze, my colleague starts teasing him about who he supports. He seems to be for the US first of all as he is an American citizen (many Haitian mothers go to Miami to give birth so that their children can have the nationality and thus much more mobility in their future). Then he is slightly supportive of France. Must be the weight of history.

But my colleague makes it really hard for him... she tells him Belgium will will against Argentina. For your information: my colleague obviously comes from chocolate land otherwise who would ever believe so :), and most Haitians tend to support Argentina and Brazil, probably due to the geographical closeness.

I think he cared more about playing football - or even coming to check up on what we were doing - than on the World Cup thing, so he smiled without reacting much to the provocation.

He gained some courage and came a bit closer, already smiling. He asked me where I was from and I said Portugal. I added that it was the country of Cristiano Ronaldo. Hopefully that would help. It did. But the second day he came, a bit closer, a bigger smile, he asked: "tu connais Cristiano Ronaldo?" (do you know Cristiano Ronaldo?). I even bragged I was his age and born on the same day (I think); but no, sadly I don't know him.

He asked a more difficult question next: "Pourquoi tu ne le connais pas?" (how come you don't know him?) and so I did a 3 minute cultural presentation of Portugal with the help of GoogleMaps, where I showed him my home city and then... far away... somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic the archipelago of Madeira, where CR7 was born. Where I've never even been (yet!) And then we wondered off in the map to the UK because I heard the guy plays for one team over there.

Pretty good topic to start a cultural sharing considering my complete ignorance on football history. Haha.

He continued talking and between the low tone of voice and perhaps a bit of creole mixed, I felt silly asking him to repeat what he said about 3 times, so I was only following about 60% of what he actually said. I hope this gets better and easier soon.

We had to leave for lunch break and I felt like taking the kid along with us. His mother was not there at the moment so maybe next time. We invited him to come over to our house on the weekend. I could tell he wouldn't mind at all. Both me and my colleague are sort of in love with the cute boy.

Before leaving with his mom in the afternoon, he left us each a slice of pizza
Good thing school holidays are on, would be nice to have this kind of interruption every now and then :)

PS: this is not him - I still don't know how and when it is appropriate to take pictures of people.

16H25, 01/07, 23 KG - I got here!

And here am I, again in a country I had never thought I'd go to and I am here to call it home for the next months.

I started reading some things before and the past days I got even more info so let's start with some data. This is as far as objectivity will go in this blog, you should be aware of it :)

In 1492 it was discovered, in 1804 it becomes a republic. This was the first independent black nation, wow right!

150 million francs (modern equivalent of $21 billion) was the debt France imposed to the country in return for its independence.

In May 2010, the World Bank seems to have finally waived on the country's remaining debts. The value of the waiver was $36 million. (Wikipedia)

On January 12th 2010, the country got struck by a really strong earthquake (7,0 magnitude in the Richter scale). The numbers are unclear but there could have been from 40,000 to 300,000 of deaths. Many governmental and commercial buildings collapsed, 80% of the schools in the capital were destroyed. The financial impact of this catastrophe is esteemed to have been 8 billion dollars, or around 120% of the country's GDP (World Bank).

Misery seems to enjoy company and in October 2010 an outbreak of cholera was identified and until now more than 8,500 people died from this epidemic (UN). This is a problem of public health which requires better hygiene habits and access to clean/treated water and sanitation infrastructures (ie. it all starts with latrines).

50,5% of the population lives in urban settings (UNFPA), particularly in the capital, which condenses the investments, the NGOs and the health, education, work services.

50% of the population is below 18 years old, 90% of the primary students are educated in international or church-run schools (versus public schools, which are neither for free) and illiteracy rate is around 52% (Wikipedia and PNUD).

Its life expectancy is the lowest (62,5 years old) and its fertility rate is among the highest in the Americas (2,98% children per woman, according to CIA).

In fact, 77% of the population lives with less than 2 USD per day (World Bank), so it's not surprising that people wouldn't have access to the most basic rights of education, health, proper living conditions. It is the poorest country in the Northern hemisphere.

1% of the population holds half of the country's wealth (or 2% holds 85% of it), making it one of the most unequal countries in the world (see Gini coefficient).

Added to that, only 2% of the country is forested and due to intensive agricultural practices as well the soil has lost its productivity up to 75% (PNUD).

But there is more to Haiti than these figures.
And without the specifics of the dates, names, indexes, a lot of other nations have been in a similar place - and got out of there.

The next posts will be about everything else that numbers can't tell. About my experience and therefore a very subjective and biased account of the matters that I will live here. But that will definitely shape my world view in a different way that media tries to.

Let's try again, shall we?

Four years later, I have decided to bring this blog alive again. There's a new place to tell you about. And there is a new motivation to use this space better, more frequently. And there is a wiser, more experienced, more stubborn Claudia. To share the best that my eyes will see.

By words, most of the time though. But as much as I can, there will be photos and other material too.
I hope the warmth will come across right over to your side of the world. I hope you will feel part too.

That's my goal.