After a couple of days in Mexico City fighting the flu, and
on the trail of artists Frieda Kahlo and Diego Rivera, we arrived in familiar
London, with people who queue patiently and the palest skin we had seen in a
long time. This was the first time we had been in an English speaking country
for 6 months, and it was hard to get used to hearing our mother tongue, after
speaking, listening and even thinking in Spanish for so long.
We had the most wonderful time hitting some more of the
London sights, and catching up with good friends PJ, Rob, Corisha, Emma and
Jacqui. We visited Westminster Abbey, the Churchill War Rooms, went to a Fulham
– Norwich football match, Highclere Castle (where Downton Abbey is filmed), and
Windsor Castle.
It was so good to spend some more time with Rob to get to
know him, and we thoroughly enjoyed staying with him and PJ in their lovely
London apartment. We had great catch ups over home cooked dinners, with bottles
of wine and Cuban mojitos, and talked about future plans, travel plans, and the
last 6 months.
Like Cuba, it was very hard to leave, especially not knowing
when we would see some of these friends again. But of course these are all
friends that no matter the distance or time apart we will always be close.
And this was just the beginning of our next adventure – Turkey, Jordan,
Israel, Palestine, and Egypt!
Our trip to Cuba was much anticipated and not even the 6
hour wait at Port au Prince airport could dull our excitement. We were picked
up by our friend Roberquis in Santiago and had a great reunion with our ‘Cuban
family.’ The next 10 days in Santiago were a whirlwind and despite having great
intentions to catch a siesta in the afternoon (to recharge the batteries for
another night’s dancing) we rarely manged it, as there was always something to
do – or more than likely some home cooking round at Jorge’s to eat. (Thanks
Lourdes!).
Along with two lovely Kiwi girls on their medical electives, Sophie and Alex, we had no less than 2 rooftop parties to attend complete
with a blow up pool, dominoes, rum, dancing and roasted pig (that being for Jorge
and Lourde’s 25th wedding anniversary). We made the most of the
Santiago carnivals and parades and spent time back out at Chivirico with
Fernando’s family where we learnt to make tamales the Cuban way (and then
remake them when Fernando senior wasn’t happy that they were perfect).
Whist in Santiago we also commenced our first set of Salsa
classes with Rafa (not to be confused with Rafa of Cuban Fusion in Wellington).
He was a perfectionist and soon had us much improved technique-wise, and tired
out after our 2 hour sessions.
Following a sad goodbye in Santiago Lou and I moved onto
Trinidad, a beautiful colonial town on the central southern coast. Apart from
the throngs of tourists we had a good time practicing our moves on the dance
floor. Also it was my birthday and Lou had organised Roberquis to come up and
spend a couple of nights with us for a ‘joint birthday’ as his birthday is in
August as well. A few rums and cigars later and we found ourselves on the dance
floor having a great time. We also made it out to the beaches during the day
and walked up to a beautiful waterfall that was close to Trinidad. And what did
I get for my birthday? A Cuban Cowbell used in the local son and salsa Bands.
We continued working our way up to Havana for our next
series of lessons led by Raimond and Marion. They were equally tough but a lot
of fun and we ended up going to a couple of night time dancing sessions with
Raimond. As luck would have it the Havana Carnivals were also in full swing and
we had a couple of nights out watching the parades, one with a great (and
sporting) couple from Italy, Claudia and Adriano, who came along also for one
of our night time dances.
We managed to pack in heaps in our three weeks and one blog
post just can’t quite do it justice. Almost certainly we will be back to Cuba
as we both feel a real affinity with the country and our friends there.
This blog post is the last instalment of our time in Haiti. The reason for the delay was simply that internet access in Cuba was too slow to consider an upload. So we have a bit of catching up to do. We hope you enjoy the post below that initially took the form of an email to a friend and is accompanied by two videos. The first video was put together by us for the global board of COHP so they could see what the school’s end of year graduation was like. The second is a potpourri of clips from our time in Haiti.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Northern hemisphere. Everywhere you look there are images of people dealing with extreme poverty – children carrying water on their heads, people living in tents constructed of found materials, USAID tarps and unsealed roads wrecked by rain and hurricanes. This situation was made considerably worse by the January 2010 earthquake, however it was certainly not the catalyst. Haiti was systematically pillaged by French, British and American Colonial powers at several stages of its life. Haiti has a very proud claim to being the first independent slave colony in the world following a revolt in the late 1700s/early 1800s, however the French insisted Haiti repay it not only for loss of land, but for the slaves. Essentially, Haitians paid the French for themselves, at an estimated cost of 21 billion USD in today’s terms. It is not hard to see why this country has struggled to get on its feet.
The people are of West African descent and are very dignified. They are kind and gentle but have a certain wariness of foreigners, due, in part, to the large presence of NGOs and their out of proportion security measures. You will not be able to outdress a Haitian on a Sunday and the children come to school immaculate - despite the trials of living in a tent city. Our experiences travelling and talking to them are that they like a joke, are honest and like you to know that Haiti is not represented by Port au Prince (there are many beautiful areas in the country that we were lucky enough to visit). They also have their own ideas about Haiti’s reconstruction – but it seems this is an unheard voice.
It is hot in Port au Prince and dusty. The electricity comes on occasionally as the country does not have enough to allow fulltime access. Most people cook over charcoal stoves (which has led to major deforestation and consequently land erosion), and the staples are rice, black beans and bananas. People get around by “tap taps” - on the back of brightly painted utes – aptly named as you tap on them when you want to get off, or motos. The housing is concrete made mostly of poor quality mountain sand (part of the reason so many homes were demolished in the earthquake) and people mostly spend their time outside the houses as inside is dedicated to sleeping quarters. There is however an upper class who, on the whole, do not seem too worried by their countrymen's conditions and they live in large homes, higher up the mountain where it is cooler and are driven around in the standard landcruiser 4wds.
The other large user of these 4WDs are the NGOs – approximately 560 separate organisations at its peak. Haiti is known as the “NGO Capital of the world” or the “Republic of NGOs”. Whilst the value that they contribute is immense most people we talk to are very cynical about the efficiency of these programmes, as there seems to be little co-ordination of resources, and not enough accountability for their outcomes (or lack thereof). There are all the big names here – the very strong presence of the UN (usually seen being driven around in large vehicles as security protocol does not allow employees to walk, or in the form of throngs of unnecessary UN Peacekeepers). Also are Sean Penn and his foundation, the Clinton foundation (big cigar wielding Bill), World Vision, Care, Caritas, Red Cross, Medicine Sans Frontiers, Save the Children, any number of matching t-shirt clad US mission groups. And us.
If you ask most Haitans what they want, they want a job. 60% live on $2 or less a day, and 50% live in $1 or less a day, and living here is expensive, especially food. We can't understand why - this place really has the feeling of a Caribbean South East Asia. We guess it is because they are such an import dependent economy, and the NGOs and elite families have severely inflated the prices.
Most rubble has been cleared and in a drive downtown only certain areas would suggest there had been a large earthquake. In saying this, there are plenty of empty lots where large buildings once stood, many buildings still half crumbled, and the symbolic destroyed presidential palace. There are no longer any tent cities downtown - the government paid each tent 500 USD to leave and rent or rebuild - an offer worth taking as they were going to be made to leave eventually, but certainly not enough long term.
The majority people were in the tent cities because they had no accommodation, some needed to move there because they had lost employment and could not afford the rent, some just moved there for the free water and electricity as it was a better option than their current dwelling. There were up to 1.5 million people living in tents post-quake, the number is now possibly still as high as 500,000. The camps occupied every vacant space of land – building sites, parks, the President’s front lawn, and the prestigious Petionville golf club. There are many horrific accounts of domestic and sexual violence in these camps due to the close proximity of living quarters, the lack of electricity (the tents were plunged into darkness when the sun went down), and the lack of security. We heard that in one camp there were only two latrines for 2000 people and girls are scared to go to the toilet a night for fear of sexual attack.
The camp next to the school has a real permanency to it. We visited this tent camp, the home to many of the school children. This was an extremely humbling experience. These people have lived in this “temporary” state for 2 and a half years now. Chelsea Clinton noted on a visit to one camp that the average time for people in Africa to live in this type of accommodation was 10 years. A sobering thought for the Haitians, and a reminder for the urgency to help them reconstruct their city better than it was. The camps are where the waterborne diseases such as cholera have been prevalent, but also many types of contagious skin infections, stomach bugs, and other infectious diseases.
Another issue that has been amplified since the earthquake is the tragedy of the restavek children. As the quality of education in the provinces has historically been very poor, if provided at all, parents have sent their children to live with families in Port au Prince (often people they do not know), to be sent to a city school, and in return the child will work for them. Essentially this is child slave labour, but it is entrenched as a culturally acceptable option for poor families living in the provinces. Not only are these children made to work by the host family, they rarely get to school and are frequently physically, mentally, and sexually abused. It is horrifying to think of children in this situation, and more horrifying to know that it is socially acceptable for many people.
In our minds Haiti needs a solution bigger than the patch up disparate approach that is occurring now. The things going well include a reasonable government, still a lot of resources from overseas and the potential of newly found mineral reserves in the mountain regions - something that must be carefully protected to ensure it benefits Haiti and not just the politicians and multi-national corporations that often do so well out of poor countries.
Our work at the Children of Haiti Project (COHP) School involved helping to feed the kids breakfast, snack and lunch, Lou taught an english language course, I taught computer skills (one computer, 10 students and they are VERY quick at learning). At other times we were just regular helpers and play toys for the children. The principal of the school is quite frankly amazing and has given up lucrative international school and UN jobs to continue her work at COHP. She also cares for the school community - taking mothers in to have birth control depots, sending cans of milk to the tents to feed starving children and taking her own students to the doctors if required.
Our experience in Haiti was nothing short of phenomenal. On leaving we hope we managed to contribute a little to the country as we certainly got a lot from our experiences, which will no doubt shape the rest of our lives.
