MotorCycling in Hayti

In late February 2001 I bought a new Haitian motorcycle. I had finally gotten tired of trying to figure out how to take the tap tap everywhere. And waiting interminable hours for room on a return trip of course. (Most of this text was written at one of the cyber cafes in Cap † Haitian and sent via my Yahoo web mail account.)

Moto Cap carries Honda and Jialing motorcycles. Jialing are one of the many Chinese hondas. They license the designs. Perhaps they actually buy tooling from Honda.

Anyway, Jialing makes a 70 cc step thru basically identical to the Honda Cub. They also sell a 125cc trail bike which looks very nice. The prices for those are $1300 for the step thru and $2100 for the 125 SL.

Moto Cap also had one different Jialing. The JH100 moto is a duplicate of the Honda super 90 design. I always admired those Super 90's and restored 35 year old models go for $2500 or more in the US.

This brand new Super 90 plus ( or Super Cent ) cost me $1400 usd. It has an electric start added to it even. Everything else is just as it was in 1965. The wiring is not up to Japanese standards tho.

The shop was closing so I took the battery with fresh acid in it rather than wait for delivery. It would be next wednesday before I could get in again. It took me three hours to get the battery mounted, working on the sidewalk in front of the Hotel Universal in Okap, with all the street hustlers around 'helping'. I bought food for all the street boys, and I gave 20 $HT to the one who was actually helpful.

I parked it outside the Hotel that nite, with two locks on it. They have 24 hour security guards, but this morning the handlebar was out of adjustment and the right foot peg and brake pedal were bent. Lot zenglendos ( other bandits, bad guys) tried to steal it in the night. Not my zenglendos, I was assured. The hotel lets me park it inside the Delco room from then on.

The 125 trail bike would be a better machine, but a $700 usd savings and my lust for a super 90 plus won out. Also, I can just leave it with zamni'm (my friends) in Saint Marc when I leave if selling it is too much trouble. I could rent storage from Moto Cap for my next visit as well.

The actual Honda brand motos are much more expensive. A trail 110, a very good strong moto, costs $4,000 usd. The CT 200, an agricultural model with a generator style pull start, costs $6,000 usd.

I told Madame Antoine, the patron of Cap Moto, about the Jawa moto from Czechistan. They sell the Skoda auto from Czech republik as well so I thought she might be interested in the Jawa.

I also told her to look into the Ural moto from Russia. A two wheel drive sidecar rig designed for the Siberian outback, the one place I can imagine with worse conditions than Haiti, costs $6500 or so in the US. They can go places that no jeep could ever go. They were designed to fight the wehrmacht in the winter of the Urals. But, for now, my super 90 plis is just the ticket.

Yesterday, tuesday the 5 of March, I rode my Haitian sport moto south from Okap to Plaisance and up to the top of the morne.

Once past Vertierre the road opens up and traffic is smooth. Most of the road is quite good. This day was for putting some klicks on the moto, to loosen it up with cooling off periods. Too much time has been spent in the city on this new motor carrying a passenger. Not good for break in.

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On my previous approach to Okap I was struck by the mysterious wonderfulness of Plezans/Plaisance and wanted to return with the freedom of stopping wherever I liked to take photografs.

I motor thru Limbe, which is not so awful when taken slowly. There is a nice spot just south of Limbe where a set of carved signs for the "Petite Frere" point to a hounfour off the road. This was a nice counterpoint to the abject ruin of most voudou emplacement one sees nowadays. Limbe is just inland from the Bay of Accul (spelled Akul en kreyol), where Christophe Colombe once stopped.

Over the hill from Limbe to...Plezans. (Plaisance en francais) How has this valley escaped from, or drug itself out of, the pile of fatra and caca (trash and, well, caca) which most Ville are entombed in? The streets are clean, the curbs and gutters clear, the streets even have signs. The houses are old country houses, freshly painted, Lakay voudou (voudou houses, country houses) in the center of la ville. The Cathedral is clean, the Baptist and Adventist churches call themselves "temples".

This is some mysterious Disneyland of Haitian country life, altho unseen by those needing such encouragement. Few foreigners pass thru here I'm sure, save an occasional missionaire.

I had one roll of slow film left in my Lomo.

South of town the road climbs again, clinging to the edges of the steep hills as it climbs to the pass at Pilboro. All of the hillsides have terraces, no mountainsides are being burnt down for chabon. Beside the road on the mountainside are little decorative iron sheds that look like bus stops. They are brightly painted, ready for inclusion in an animated story of ti-machann andeyo.

These are in fact marketplaces. I did not realize it on the tap tap ride in. In one of them I stop to take a photo of myself with mwen sport moto Haitienne.

Two young women suddenly appear from the steep path beside the road, unloading jars of confiture. The signs on the side of the enclosure begin to make sense now. These are advertisements for "produit 100% natiral", "li gou!" "Li bon!", "Li produit lakay!"
(gou = tasty bon=good lakay=house)

I bought a jar of zorange konfit, (orange preserves).

Going up the mountain I offer a ride to a young woman who passed me at the produce stand. She asks me for money for machin instead. I refuse this, figure that she is Pe (afraid of) blan and start to leave. She calls me back and mounts the back of my Jialing super Cent sidesaddle. We serenely mount the hill where she dismounts at the marketplace at Pilboro.

Pilboro is where the majik ends, being within the baleful influence of Gonaive. The top of the hill is scarred with gravel excavation and the marketplace is trash strewn and chabon tainted.

After a short excursion on the side road towards the Teleco towers on the mountain top about a kilometer away I returned to Pilboro with another hitchhiker, a machete carrying mountain man on his way to market.

I bought un zed and kat fig (zed=egg fig=bananna) from the market women, who were wondrously tickled to have a foreigner on a motor bike stopping to chat. This does not prevent them from attempting to cheat me of course. After about 15 minutes, showing the pipe smoking maman machann my tabak and pip, the young woman whom I brought up the morne showed up. I asked her "ou pare?, ou tourne?" (pare=ready tourne=return). Wi, she replied. Ok, monte, and she gets on sidesaddle again. "Mwen choufer, sa taxi" I explained to the bemused marketeers, who were then thrilled and excited by the idea.

We left, cruising slowly down the mountain, the powerful super 90 plis loafing along at 30 klicks in 4th gear, dodging the holes in the road with effortless arcs. What a pleasant ride down the hill. We slow at the konfit stand, calling out to the girls there "li gou! li bon!" laughing along our way.

Soon I figure out that 'kenpe la' means she wants off. Ok, dako. She says 'muchos gracias', never having believed that an american would behave thusly.

I raced down the hill from there, gravity lending its assistance to my sport moto haitian. The brakes are just about strong enough to stop me solo, and I flow thru the sharp bends, snicking cleanly thru the gears back into top. This thing could actually use another gear between 3rd and 4th.

On the straights I reach a thrilling 65 kilometers per hour, the valves starting to float. Perhaps my clutch is slipping at full chat? Dunno. I'll worry about that tomorrow.

Back into Plaisance, the center of rural beauty en Hayti. How is it that such a place exists amid all the depression and apathy of poverty?

Sunburned and tired, I took a nap in a field just south of Akul du Nord. Overlooking the fields bordering the swamp land set by the baie de accul, I fell asleep to the sound of cows in the field and one hard working tree butcher cutting limbs off a large cottonwood with a machete.

The next day I am sunburned and my clutch cable sticks. I'll try to figure out how to lubricate it. Perhaps the clutch itself is not bad. I have 350 klicks on the Jialing super 90 plis now, and had a good day.

name: motohayti.html
created: May 30, 2001