Earlier you wrote:
> Lyall,
>
> Thank you very much for the photo.  Please, tell me about your trip.
>
> I hope you had a great time in Haiti.  How was the hotel stay?  Which
> places did you get to visit? How was your visit with my father?
>
> Impatiently waiting your reply.
>
> Marcel

I did have a great time. I used St Josephs as a home base as you and Corbett recommended. I coverted the St Josephs brochure into an html document for them, by the way.

Right now it is here at Saint Josephs Home for Boys, until Michel gets an internet connection working. I did visit haitifocus in PVille for them and got an application. In french, which Michel doesn't read. He can't figure out how to get his ACN account working, and I didn't get time on their computer to see if I could figure it out.

First I spent a few days wandering around PauP and PVille. Downtown PauP was pretty discouraging, about a million too many people, mostly living on piles of trash in the streets. Mostly polite, tho. I felt no danger from crime at all, which was quite remarkable considering the living standard. There were no packs of abandoned street boys risking their lives to smash and grab cheap jewelry.

Of course, I was Selmen turist en Haiti as I liked to say.

Then I took the Bis to Cap Haitien.

That was great. I spent a week in Okap, at the Park Hotel out by the airport, and at Hotel Universe downtown. The Park had a bunch of Haitian Americans doing business there, and lots of the young people learning english. So, it was a good place to study my 'survival creole' book.

Cap Haitien was a great relief after Port au Prince.

The marchand's sweep the streets and sidewalks and a city truck actually comes to pick it up. Gardeners are busy maintaining the town square. The water front is being rebuilt, with a new breakwater and new road. Unfortunately the city budget is probably all aid money, I realize just now as I am writing this.

East of Cap

On the eastern beach out by the Park Hotel there are two refugee boat hulks, one of them cut in half and partially disposed of. One of the business owners there is a bus driver in New Jersey part of the time. That was cool, as I am a bus driver here. We talked about union stuff, diesel engines, electricy generators and inverters.

The electricity in Okap is out about half the time, and the municipal water pressure seems to rely on the power being on. I liked staying at the Hotel Universel downtown the best. After the locals got used to seeing a blan walking downtown I felt quite at home.

I flew back to Port au Prince. Having already done the bus and having spent a week in the Cap, I wanted to get back. The flight was kind of shocking. Parts of the landscape look like the moon, nothing growing at all on totally bare hillsides. I discovered that many Haitians (both in Haiti and in the US) do not like foriegners commenting upon this at all.

After a few more days at St Josephs I took a bus ride to ti Riviere in the Artibonite. I went with Cedano, of the St Josephs staff. He comes from there and once worked in the Catholic church there.

I had read of Petite Riviere on Peter Costano's web site story covering the elections in 1985[?]. He mentioned a Christope era palace [which he refers to as the "palace of 365 windows"] in that article and I wanted to see it. Not much to see really, just an old government building now used as a school and various government business. It's well built, but didn't seem so much a palace as an administrative building. I don't see how it could have 365 windows, but I'm sure it seemed more of a palace 200 years ago.

I always made friends on the bus, everyone is very friendly and happy to see a blan practicing mwen gen de semen en haiti worth of kreyol.

I liked the artibonite. Its worked quite hard, from what little I saw in a one day trip. Irrigation canals everywhere surrounding the houses and rice fields. Ti Riviere itself is a little too far from the canals and gets very hot.

We took a tap tap back to the highway, where we waited in vain for a bus. Eventually one of the big trucks stopped and about 25 of us got on. That was a fun ride, looking down from the back of a camion as we went thru St Marc and the other settlements.

I had helped a bunch of the women get up into the back of the truck by pushing them up from behind. It's quite a ways up there and all of the women are considerably shorter than I am, and some of them not real strong. I was a bit disconcerted to realize that the citizens were talking about me after a while. I thought they were being rude and didn't understand why, as I had been nothing but polite. Cedano didn't tell me anything, but after a while another gentleman told me that the women were gossiping and wondering whether I was 'cut'! Was I Circumcised?! I made a gesture as if to open my pants to show them and they all broke out laughing.

My next journey was to Jacmel. Mwen fou pou Jacmel. I stayed at the Manoir Alexandre for four nights. The Alexandre was a beautiful place, a 19th century grand house built of cast iron and wood panelling. The main guest rooms are on the third floor with cooling winds all of the time. Breakfast on the veranda is included for $16 US per day.

Many fewer people in Jacmel speak english than in Cap Haitien, but by then I had almost two weeks worth of kreyol. Jacmel is beautiful and clean but is obviously much poorer than it used to be. There are warehouses and industrial building which have probably been closed for decades. I was told that Papa Doc closed down the customs house there because Jacmel was a center of opposition to him.

Whew! I didn't realize that I would write so much. This looks like an outline for my formal writing about my trip. I have done a page about my last day in Haiti, when I discovered the teachers strike downtown. I was hoping to walk a picket line with the strikers, but it was more like an insurrection than a labor dispute.

P.S.

Oops, I didn't mention my meeting with your father.I made my way to Studio Wah PauP just before my vwayage[?] to Jacmel.

The street is one that has been almost taken over by street merchants, but there is still room for an auto to squeeze it's way thru. Two signs sit defiantly on the pavement, announcing and marking out parking spaces for Studio Wah. It is ignored, and filled with merchants.

I made my way inside and asked about Marcel Wah Sr. The Mademoiselle in charge came out and said that she works for you. She spoke good english and told me that Marcel Sr was not available. This was after going around the back of the store.

I stood and talked with her, telling about my acquaintance with you via email, and that you had told me to stop by to say hello. It is a very orderly store, well equipped. I don't really recall how long we spoke but after a while she went around back again. Upon returning she then invited me around back and into the house.

I was shown into the living room and introduced to Marcel and some other family members. He is not used to speaking in english, apologizing for his proficiency. He explained that he had been painting, working on a particular section that had to be finished.

We went to the store next door where Marcel bought me a beer, refusing to let me pay for it. The young men of the neighborhood had seemed to be a bit less than friendly when I first arrived on the sidewalk, even when I was speaking with the Mademoiselle proprietor. Everyone was very respectful to Marcel when we came out and seemed to look at me with some tolerance which had been absent at first.

He then invited me up to his room where he returned to work. I stayed a little while talking, and took three pictures of him. I sent you the one that you referred to.

He told me some things which were surprising to me. He said that Americans were now very unpopular and to be careful. He said never change money on the street, which I don't, but I had been impressed by the absence of menace.

He said that he never gets involved in politics, and that Aristide had brought new american style gangs to Haiti. He was very down on Aristide. This surprised me very much, being a sentimental american lefty, altho I had heard of considerable disaffection with the current political setup.

****** [aside]

Later I spoke to an older man on the street who called me over to talk. He spoke good english and asked me what my nationality was. Made wary by your fathers warnings, I told him Canadian. Didn't matter, he didn't like them either. He asked me if I was an Imperialist! Hey dude, I'm a unionist! He said that the Americans were ordering Haiti around. I advised him that it was Bankers that were ordering Haiti around and that it was the same for all poor countries now.

I told him that I was a bus driver and a trade unionist, not an imperialist. Imperialists probably don't walk down Dessalines blvd alone very often. Then I said that if Haitians in the US would invest in Haiti that they wouldn't need foreign aid and bankers to order them around. He seemed to admit to the truth of that.

****** [/aside]

Marcel introduced me to an adopted [?] daughter, who came into his room while I was there and giggled at me. He spoke of a plan to develop a rustic vacation village on some land he has [on the southwest peninsula?] which was awaiting road construction. I gave him my name and address, altho it didn't seem to me to be a serious prospect.

I thanked him for his graciousness in seeing me [I trust before I wore out my welcome] and left, paying my respects to the household below. There was one gentleman there who spoke good english and knew of St Josephs. I don't recall his name, I'm sorry.

name: selmen.html
created: 24 Jun 1997,
modified: