Up up and away!

Most of you probably know that I really like to climb things. (I really dislike climbing down, but that rarely stops me anymore). Trees, roofs, sculptures, monuments, ruins...pretty much anything is fair game. Mountains have a special pull, and I have a mental list of heights that I desperately wanted to climb but didn't have time to (the Petit and Gran Pitons in St Lucia, and the bluff at Corrymeela, especially), and that I am itching to return and conquer. The orphanage is settled into the base of the mountain ridge that marks the southern edge of Port-au-Prince, so I've been looking at these mountains every day for months, and Friday I finally got to climb them!

Thursday night I looked at googlemaps and sketched what looked like it might be a route to the top on a piece of notebook paper. In several places the paths didn't connect and I just drew arrows to signify "climb straight up the hill until you find the other road". I also tried to add terrain features, and contour lines to help me follow. Mostly it looked like modern art. 

Friday morning we set out after breakfast, armed with water bottles, granola bars, and my oh-so-high-tech map. We started by just continuing up our road until we were out of the city, and the dusty road started to snake along the base of the ridge.  Eventually we decided to ditch the real road, and follow a path up a ravine (this was one of my arrows on the map). 

We know up is the general direction we want. And this donkey-path is going up. Let's do it.

Only half-way, and the view is already incredible! Also, when did the path disappear?

Whatever, paths are for sissies. I'll just climb up this ravine that's so steep it had to be terraced to be in any way useful.

Eventually we were basically rock-climbing up terraces, and then carefully picking our way across the terraces to avoid stepping on beans and corn growing there. How the farmers get up/down there to take care of the crops, or haul out the harvest, I do not know. There were lots of beautiful flowers, rock lizards, and best of all, singing birds! The only birds around the orphanage are pigeons, so it was so nice to hear and see beautiful song-birds.

Zandolit (pronounced zahn-doh-leet. Sounds so much cooler than 'lizard')

After pulling my way up one particularly tricky ledge, I turned to warn Nate about a loose rock, and then turned to find myself nose-to-nose with a cow. I about had a heart-attack. The poor cow probably did too. I squealed something very intelligent along the lines of "IT'S A COW!!!" and nearly fell back down the ledge, but caught myself, saying, "oh, it's a cow. Okay, just a cow. cool. whew." Then Nate and I stood there puzzling and puzzling over how in hell the cow got to be tied on that terrace, or was ever going to leave. If we could barely climb up or down, how was a cow going to do it?? Still wondering about that one. 

So she kind of looks threatening in this picture. But she's actually just pouting and backing away. She'd probably never seen a white person before. Now the poor thing believes in ghosts.

After stopping for a rest, passing some farmers who were quite amused to see two white kids struggling up the ravine, and encountering several varieties of stinging/thorny plants, we finally made it to the road. Probably the happiest I have ever been to see a road before (and I am using the term 'road' loosely here). This was probably the nicest part of the whole hike. The road followed a very gradual incline and wound along the side of the ridge, with incredible views of the city and ocean. 

Look how it's like we're level with the clouds. Crazy gorgeous.

 

We met an adorable donkey, a very threatening, smelly, and HUGE bull, who was luckily tied a fair ways off the road (so glad I didn't run into him coming up the ravine!), and lots and lots of really cute goats. After seven months here, I still had yet to touch a Haitian goat, they're very skittish. So with all these goats staked out by the road, and theoretically unable to escape, I was on a mission. But no matter how slowly and non-threateningly I approached, I always got rejected. :(  

King of the hill.

"Just because I'm small and cute doesn't mean I'm stupid. There is nothing in your hand."

At one point we came around a bend and saw one of the most impressive trees I have ever seen, growing out of the side of a cliff. And, of course, I climbed it, much to the amusement of a bunch of little kids who came around the bend and were shocked and delighted to find a blan way up in a tree. I'm pretty sure I overheard this conversation: 

boy - how did she get up there? 

girl - she climbed. duh.

boy - no she didn't, blans can't climb trees.

girl - that's stupid, yes they can. 

boy - no they can't! 

girl - well how did she get up there then? 

boy - ummmm...

And yes, I did climb all the way up and then down from there without help.

Shortly after this we decided to leave the road and start heading in a more upward direction. We followed a footpath that led us through a tiny village tucked into some trees, where we skirted nervously around an angry dog, tried to avoid stepping on a flock of spazzy chicks that couldn't figure out which way to run, and surprising the heck out of several old ladies and giving them something to talk about for the next week. Then the path led us out of the trees and steeply up a grassy slope. By this point Nate and I were both exhausted (we don't get much/any exercise here, so we're really out of shape) and I was stopping every hundred feet or so to rest.

Paths are for sissies? Yeah, well, that would be me at this point. My legs are done with working, thanks very much

The "top" of the mountain turned out to be a rather vague concept, and every time I thought we were there another little ridge appeared. Finally I stopped short in front of a farmer's field, unable to walk through it without destroying all the new corn. We decided this was "top" enough, and plonked down underneath a convenient tree to eat the snacks we brought and drink the last of our water (why did we think one water bottle each would be enough?). The view was breathtaking, the breeze was lovely, the grass was comfortable...so of course I fell asleep. Only for a few minutes, I think. Oops. I earned it, I guess.

Post-nap victory picture

Now that we had a second wind, we decided to wander down the mountain by a different way. We could see that we had come a lot farther east than we'd intended, so we decided to start by walking along the crest of the ridge. Here I FINALLY found a friendly goat.

Aww hey little buddy. So glad I finally found you. 

Later we started walking past some huge mansions, apparently a good road comes up the backside of the mountain. We were able to look out over to the valley and dry riverbed (dry until rainy season starts next month), and pick out Dr. Bernard's house. There were farms and fields laid out over the hills, like a green patchwork quilt. I was surprised at how much it looked like a mountainous version of Ireland. The soil is so rich here, and the land is capable of producing so much! The problem is that it's difficult to farm on steep hillsides. But with terracing, patience, and tenacity, they do it.

Eventually we left the crest and started winding down the hill. At one point we found raspberry bushes along the path. They were only half-ripe, but I was so excited I ate a whole bunch anyways. Beyond that we found a very large cow standing in the middle of the path. Not as menacing as the bull, but nearly as large, and very much not moving. We faced off for a while, and then without thinking I took a step forward and did a cow wave (for those of you not in the know, this involves moving your arms up and down kinda like you're doing the wave in a stadiu). To my surprise and delight, the cow lumbered off the path. Apparently that arm wave is the universal sign for "move, cow".

Continuing down the hill, the path got worse and worse, until we were rock-hopping along a deep washed out gully. We heard voices calling "blan" and looked back to see two men and a woman standing a little ways behind us motioning for us to come back. They were wearing the uniform of the work crew we'd seen working on the road at the very top of the mountain, and they told us that the path we were following had fallen away from the mountainside a little further down and was very dangerous. They asked where we were going, and when we said Ft. Mekredi they all beamed and motioned for us to come with them down an alternate 'path' that they could follow without hesitation, but I could barely make out. So we zig-zagged down the steep mountainside behind our new friends, hopping down rocky slopes at high speed. I felt like a very tired and dehydrated mountain goat. After nearly an hour of descending so quickly my ears were popping, we came to the edge of the city, and one of the guys stopped at the first vendor we passed and bought water for all of us. So kind of him, and he had no idea how much I needed it; I was starting to feel woozy. After threading through a tangle of alleys we popped out on our street, just above the orphanage. Our guides led us to our door, smiled goodbye, and then parted ways to their own homes. I have no idea how far out of their way they went to bring us home, but we were so so grateful! Yay for random kindness of strangers.

(P.S.Thank you to Nate who took all of these wonderful pictures!)

Life is good...

...because I have this to play with every day.

Three of this, actually. :D

(PS: Darren - you cannot simply cannot argue for hedgehogs in the face of this picture)

The other side of the island

At the beginning of March I went to the Dominican Republic with my parents to visit friends from Virginia who are living in Santo Domingo for two years on a state department posting. I took the bus from P-au-P to Santo Domingo, but I made the newbie mistake of trying to travel across the border on Thursday…which happens to be market day. Fail. So I paid for that by spending over four hours crawling through the border, moving about a bus length every 20 minutes. But I didn’t have it so bad, it was actually the most comfortable bus I have ever been on, and we got to watch a bunch of movies. Four Jim Carrey movies in a row (dubbed in Spanish), then No Country for Old Men (Spanish subtitles), and then German crime thrillers dubbed in Spanish with English subtitles. Quite the experience.

 I was rather flummoxed by the whole customs system at the border. It’s so random and inefficient I think they would actually be better off not even trying to regulate things. It’s not for the faint of heart. The bus stops next to a building that doesn’t look any different from the others, everyone is ordered off the bus, and the driver has all of your passports (or so you’ve been told) so you’re standing in no-man’s-land between countries with no passport. Nerve-wracking to say the least. Then you see a large group of young men shouting and arguing in Spanish and Creole, hauling all the luggage off the bus. You run over and finally establish that they’re just porters, trying to grab your bags and carry them inside for you…for an exorbitant fee. I told them very firmly in three languages to unhand my baggage because I wasn’t going to pay them, and carried my things inside, where a man (supposedly a customs official, with no ID or uniform) directed me to place all my bags on a table, then he dumped them all upside down, roughly searched through the pile, and then tried to convince me to pay him for his trouble. First he asked in Spanish, but I was listening for Creole and didn’t understand. Then he tried Creole but now I was trying to listen for Spanish, and didn’t understand again. He gave up, so I just packed up my things and went back outside, to see that about half of the passengers had simply collected their bags and were waiting by the side of the building. No one seemed to notice or care that they were skipping the customs building entirely. Eventually all the luggage and passengers were chaotically bundled back on the bus, and we crossed the border, although I still had no idea who had my passport, if they had shown it to the proper official, or whether I was entering the country illegally. A few hours later the driver’s assistant finally got around to handing back everyone’s passport, and I saw that it had been stamped. So at least one part of the border crossing was semi-regulated.  I guess they just trust that the passenger on the bus is really Cecelia, not a 50-year old Indian man named Jamil who’s stolen her passport.

Immediately after crossing the border it was like being in a whole different world, not just a different country. Hard to believe it was the same island. Just so much more developed, and not so devastatingly poor. The courthouse and police headquarters in a little podunk town about an hour after the border was bigger and nicer than many of the national government buildings were in Port-au-prince…before the earthquake. After 10 hours on the bus we finally started coming into Santo Domingo, which was so much larger than I expected. As I told Dad when I got off the bus, “I didn’t realize Santo Domingo was, like, a real city, with roads and buildings and stuff!” Yes. Not so eloquent, but really, I was surprised by roads without potholes, and skyscrapers, and shopping malls. Also parking lots! Those don’t exist in Port-au-Prince. 

I had a wonderful time with my parents and our friends the Conaways. We stayed in their lovely apartment (enjoying the 19th floor ocean view), toured the state department offices where Mary Sue works, and visited the orphanage Vern works with (Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos, the same organization that runs the children's hospital where mom works in Haiti). There we got spoiled with yet more adorable children, toured the bakery and got fresh bread, visited the special needs house, and then got invited to tea with a bunch of the volunteers at the house of the orphanage director, who happens to be Irish, so the tea was wonderful. I got to meet several of the orphanage volunteers, as well as some peace corps volunteers who live in the area, and hear about what they do.  

Kattia, in the special needs house at NPH Casa Hogar in the DR.

After all that, we headed to Vern’s favorite restaurant, which happens to be on a beautiful beach.  I’ve been looking at the Caribbean ocean every day for six months and FINALLY got to actually touch it! We did a lot of snorkeling; in one 20 minute swim I found at least 30 kind of fish, lots of coral, a sting ray with ruffly edges, and a 3-foot long sea snake. The next day we joined a very international group (Spanish, French, German, Danish, Russian, Dominican, and Haitian) for a boat ride out to an island called Catalina where we spent the afternoon snorkeling. Dad and I were standing on the empty beach talking about how this would be a perfect place to take some Captain Jack Sparrow pictures, if only we had a bottle of rum…and we looked down at our feet and there was an empty green bottle tucked into some seaweed at the waters edge. Many silly pictures followed.

Captain Jack Sparrow..."but why is all the rum gone?"

Caribbean! Beautiful, blue, very warm water.

Sunday we walked around the Colonial Zone of Santo Domingo. Lots of very old buildings built by Columbus, or someone related to him. In a church where lots of famous people were buried, we stopped to admire a fresco on the arched ceiling. A tourguide jumped in to explain that this fresco represents hell on the left side, and heaven on the right. “When I die, heaven is where I want to go so I can be with John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Michael Jackson.” An interesting trio, no?

We also visited a big fort (apparently I didn’t notice the names of any of the things we visited). We walked the walls and turrets, climbed on the cannons, sat on the more modern tanks and machine guns on display, and explored the castle at the center. Later, at the impressive ruins of the oldest hospital in the Western hemisphere we saw more pigeons than I have ever seen in one place, ever. And consequently, no one actually wanted to walk into the ruins for fear of being pooped on.

At the end of our walk we met up with a large group of the Conaway’s friends to have dinner at a restaurant where all the waiters were dressed like pirates. Lots of fun, and fantastic food. The next day after dad left for the airport, mom and I returned the colonial zone and just wandered around window shopping, eating ice cream, visiting the amber museum, enjoying the sunshine, and walking home along the ocean. It felt more like Europe than the Caribbean, and a whole world away from Haiti. That night we decided to go see the movie Rango. We sort of forgot that of course the movie would be in Spanish, but honestly I think it might have been even funnier in Spanish than it is in English. I’ll have to watch it again when I get home and compare. Despite not understanding most of the dialogue, mom and I still laughed our heads off and had a great time.

On Tuesday we took the bus back to Haiti with a ridiculous amount of luggage (Mom brought all sorts of supplies for the children’s hospital and therapy center), and enjoyed the beautiful drive through the mountains to Port-au-Prince. The border crossing was much faster without the market day crowds, and this time they didn’t even bother taking the luggage off the bus. Mom spent a few days with me at the orphanage, and then went over to the NPH hospital in Tabarre, where she did pool therapy and started to train some of the Haitian employees in pool therapy as well. I went to visit her right before she left, and had a great time playing with kids in the pool, playing with the kids in the abandoned baby room at the hospital, and later going out for drinks with several of the amazing NPH workers. Our group consisted of an Irish physical therapist, two Argentinian physical therapists, a Canadian nun/occupational therapist, a German social worker, two Haitian girls my age, and then my mom and I. A ridiculously fun group of people, and I could totally see myself being them in a few years.

La Cucaracha

Recently someone asked me what I am most looking forward to about going home in May (little over a month away, what? where did the time go??). Without even thinking about i blurted out, "Going 24 hours without seeing a cockroach". I stopped to think about it, and really? What about ice cream? Or hot showers? Or my family? But let me try to explain.

I think it's fair to say that I am less phobic than the average person when it comes to dealing with cockroaches. My first experience with them came freshman year of college when I ran across the hall to figure out why my hallmates were screaming and standing on their desks...and then patiently chased the cockroach out from under the bed, caught it in a plastic cup, and let it go outside. Yes, really.

Then there was the movie Wall.E, with the cute cockroach sidekick. How could you not love that faithful, indestructible little guy who closely resembles a cricket?

As an RA senior year my attitude towards the little buggers hardened, as I was responsible for making sure that people didn't transport them or their eggs upstairs or into other dorms from storage boxes in the basement of my building.

I was expecting to deal with lots of strange insects in Haiti, and I have seen some beautiful spiders, waged war on tiny but vicious mosquitos, been perplexed by the steady nowhere to nowhere trek of miniscule ants trooping across my walls, and been bitten by a horde of angry red ants I mistakenly invited onto me when leaning against our little roof garden. That one actually ended with me whipping my shirt off and madly slapping myself trying to get rid of them all. I'm sure a bunch of neighbors saw me and were permanently convinced that I am insane, but there was nothing else to be done. I must say though, that the cockroaches here really go above and beyond the call of duty. First off, there are apparently several different types. I didn't know this. There are the tiny roaches which can be found in every crevice of the kitchen and dining room, no matter how often we scrub it or chase them out with boiling water. There are the medium size ones that at least have the decency to scuttle out of sight when you turn the light on. We mutually scare the hell out of each other in the bathroom at night, when they panic not knowing where to hide from the sudden intruder, and I flip out because in their panic they ran across my foot.  And then there are the giant ones, and they fly. Cockroaches are not supposed to fly. They scuttle, they are stealthy and sneaky, that's why we don't trust them. But flying puts them almost into the 'bat' category, and that I simply cannot handle. After the appearance of one of these sends me (and all the other girls) screeching from the room, we regroup, remind ourselves that we are at least a thousand times their size, arm ourselves with flip-flops, and attack without mercy. We maintain an uneasy equilibrium.

Recently the situation has gotten out of hand. I think that the sudden spurt of activity from our resident plumber/handyman has forced several communities of cockroaches out into the open. A few days ago I was attacked by a particularly frenetic one while in the shower. Later a medium-sized one appeared on my bed, sitting innocently next to my pillow. In broad daylight!! That combined with picking a few small crawly ones off my pant legs prompted me to take apart my entire room searching for the source. I found nothing, no purse-like garnet egg capsules, no hidden homes underneath the mattress, not even a few loners hiding underneath my dresser. I was at least comforted by knowing they're not living in my room, they just find it a desirable vacation destination. I still slept that night with my bed pulled out away from the walls into the middle of the room (not sure how this was supposed to help, but it made me feel better) and had dreams that the pantry downstairs had been invaded by a horde of cockroaches 6 inches long and for some reason I was expected to sleep down there.

So, ice cream? hot showers? family and friends? All wonderful, and I'm very excited for them, but now that my creepy crawly buddies have invaded even my dreams, they are officially the number one thing I am excited about leaving behind.

Kembe

Back in February, I started asking around to figure out where the nearest Catholic church is. After a very tangled chain of questions/people, I established that a very ambiguous "we" think the blue and white church you can see across the ravine might be Catholic. Armed with that information, Nate and I ventured out one Saturday morning and attempted to find it. This was more difficult than it sounds, because to get there you have to go all the way down the hill, get across the ravine, and then work your way back up the hill trying to maintain your bearings through windy narrow streets. After several dead ends and much backtracking, the blue and white bell tower finally popped up in front of us, and we found an office tucked in the wall of the courtyard where I was able to ask what time mass was the next morning. She told me 6am. I was so excited about the chance to get to Catholic mass that I didn't even realize this would mean waking up while it was still dark. But, get up early I did, and stalled until it wasn't quite 'dark' anymore (although it sure wasn't 'light' either!) before setting out for mass. And I was so glad I did! Turns out the service didn't actually start until 6:30, (more like 6:45, Haitian time), but getting there early meant I actually got a seat. The church was absolutely packed, even by Haitian standards. And mass was wonderful, great worship, the congregation was awake and involved, and everyone clapped after the sermon! (Don't know why, but this made me really happy).

One of the colorful characters I've met in our neighborhood is Madam Girard. I think she's probably over 60, but still a ball of energy. Her house is situated about 2/3rds of the way up the hill with a clear view in all directions, and she takes it upon herself to know everything about everybody in our neighborhood. When you need to coordinate something, or find someone, you mention to anyone within earshot that you'd like to talk to her, it spreads by word of mouth across the neighborhood, and 10 minutes later she appears. Last week she appeared unexpectedly on Friday afternoon and announced that she was taking me to church. I was very confused; this was the first I'd heard about it! And unfortunately I was in the middle of something and couldn't go with her. A few days later I realized that she was probably trying to take me to Stations of the Cross, a prayerful meditation on Jesus' walk to Calvary that happens in Catholic churches around the world on Friday afternoons during Lent. Yesterday I made sure to keep my Friday afternoon clear, and headed over at 3:15 (Madam Girard was pretty sure it started at 3:30), and arrived to a nearly empty church. Shoot, apparently it's not happening. Now what. Frustrated, and wanting to escape the piercing stares and whispering I inevitably attract whenever I go anywhere, I tucked myself into a pew in the corner and bowed my head. Crankily I thought, "Well, I walked all the way over here, I might as well stay and pray for a while." Thank goodness when I don't make time for prayer, God steps in and makes the time for me.  Thirty minutes later, more people started to trickle in and it became obvious that something would be happening in the church eventually, so I decided to wait around until it did. Gradually the section I was sitting in filled up, and I realized I had unknowingly chosen a seat in the tiny old lady section. I was surrounded by very short, mostly deaf, at least 70-year old women. This got awkward later when every time we stood up I literally towered over everyone around me.

Deciding to wait around for something to happen in Haiti can be a rather large commitment. Sometime after 5pm the priest arrived and the Stations of the Cross started. By this time the church was full, and I have never seen people take this meditation so much to heart. For starters, it took over 2 hours to get through the 14 stations. Very few people had programs, but everyone seemed to know the accompanying prayers and songs from memory. The songs that go with the stations are more like laments. In American churches, they have an unfortunate tendency to become emotionless dirges sung by less than enthusiastic participants (Americans just aren't very good at music, I'm starting to think). But here people poured their whole heart and soul into these songs, and sang them lovingly, powerfully, as the laments they are; reaching into places of pain and suffering in their own lives and connecting that to Jesus' suffering on the way of the cross. I suppose in most of the Stations of the Cross I've ever led or participated in, the meditations have centered on the emotional anguish. Yesterday I realized that in America we tend to have little to no experience of physical suffering, and we too easily gloss over the physical suffering of Calvary. It's hard for us to relate to, it's messy and uncomfortable. But here in this church, on a steep hillside in a Port-au-Prince slum, I was probably the only person there who hadn't experienced physical suffering as a part of daily life, especially during the past year. Carrying a cross up the hill to Calvary? The women around me could relate, they've carried water weighing nearly as much as themselves up the steep hill under an unmerciful sun every day of their lives. The people who gathered in the church were tired, coming from the end of a long week. Here was a place to pour out their suffering, their pain, their despair, and know that Jesus carries it all with them, every step of the way. They drank in the words of the service like they were filling up on strength and energy.

There's a creole phrase, "kembe", which literally translates to "keep", but also means "hold on" or "stay strong". It encompasses a lot of Haitian life: the patience, the waiting, the quiet strength. As we ended the last station, with Jesus lying in the tomb, the final words of the priest "kembe, zanmi(friends), kembe" followed us as everyone drifted out of the church and hurried towards homes in the enveloping darkness. Kembe through another week of life and pain and uncertainty. Kembe until next week when they will gather to pray these stations again, and again every week until finally...Easter, the victory, the symbol of everything we kembe for.