Category Archives: Haiti

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Surviving the Port-au-Prince Airport: a shining example!


Two days ago I promised and am here today to deliver a post about the Port-au-Prince airport—so here we go.

First a bit of background—

Just before my first trip to Haiti during the last week of March 2010, 8 months ago, Toussant Louverture International Airport had only recently begun operating in any remotely routine way since the January 12th earthquake.  Before March the only real way to get to Port-au-Prince from outside the country, if you weren’t a plane carrying emergency relief supplies, was to fly into the Dominican Republic and  endure an 8 hour drive across the island of Hispaniola to the Haitian capital—a route Sara took a few too many times.

So—in March when my plane landed in Port-au-Prince, things were, shall we say—chaotic.  Though a band played Caribbean steel drums for the passengers deplaning, what I discovered inside the warehouse-like building that was then, and is still, being used for immigration and baggage claim was more akin to an episode of Survivor than anything remotely resembling an airport in any nation’s capital in the entire Western Hemisphere. 

The passing glance immigration “officials” gave my passport and travel documents, moving me on with a stamp and a wave, though disconcerting, was nothing compared to the pandemonium I discovered beyond immigration—utter and complete pandemonium in a cavernous space mountained with luggage we were meant to ultimately “claim,” without any apparent procedure, without any remotely organized way for passengers to examine and sort out which suitcases belonged to them.

This masqueraded as “Baggage Claim.”

However—there was what initially seemed one saving grace—namely an assortment of limp-along luggage carts—costing a mere arm or leg—though they may have settled for a finger or toe had we gotten down to the anatomical nitty-gritty.  Initially this seemed a hopeful development—hopeful until I realized there was no way—literally no way in hell—one could wheel a luggage cart anywhere in that room so strewn with bags it looked like the contents of a small Samsonite store room had been turned upside down and emptied on the spot.

Then it hit me—the only conceivable escape—meant asking for help.  I considered tears but decided in the interest of minimizing the look of vulnerability that is the American way in the face of Haiti’s seeming systemlessness—a more proactive assault of an airport employee was in order.  I didn’t care what it cost, I was willing to pay any and all “special fees” in the ultimate interest of baggage possession.

And thanks to one heroic airport employee, I ended up not having to assault after all—I got my bags.  For apparently, underneath the mountains of seeming disorder, there existed a system, invisible to me, but some protocol for baggage retrieval that worked for my new Haitian friend.  Because, I promise, in not more than 5 Port-au-Prince minutes he returned with my VERY over-weight bags— 88 and 89 pounds respectively.  The suitcases were full of household items, including an entire set of butcher knives—since Sara, when purchasing her first kitchen tool in Port-au-Prince (a manual can opener that would have cost less than 2 dollars in the US) had paid a grand total of 22 dollars and 66 cents!   Inevitably fearing that the most basic of kitchen utensils were going to cost at least a month’s salary, if not a small life-savings, I hauled nearly half the inventory of William Sonoma in with me.

Ultimately, I exited the airport that day into a desperate crowd of newly-homeless Haitians, needing nearly everything, from dinner to a warm bed and a roof over their heads. But I found Sara—I survived!

Survived, only to return to the scene of the crime a week later—the first of anyone remotely associated with Sara’s NGO to leave the country through the newly-opened airport. 

Since no one knew what to expect, I arrived an optimistic 2 ½ hours before departure—seemingly plenty of time.  Until 2 ½ hours later, I still hadn’t made it into the terminal itself, crowds of needy people were thronging the facility so intensely.

I called Sara a number of times from outside the airport that morning, convinced I would miss my flight.  She assumed I was over-reacting—until— I called after finally making it inside—terrified.

“Listen, this is not a workable way to leave the country—someone needs to come get me—I’ll get out of the country some other day, some other way—any other way.  I swear, Baby, this is not an option.”

“But what line are you in?”

“Line!”  I screeched.  “You assume there’s anything remotely resembling a ‘LINE!’  This is more swarm than line, more stampede than queue!”

Quickly gathering her wits, recognizing my psychotic break was imminent, Sara, disaster response specialist that she is, yelled at me over the cacophony and clamor, “Listen!  Remember!  You always do best when things are really, really bad.  You do bad really well!”

“Yeah.  Okay.  You’re right.  I’ll call you when I get to the gate.” Click.

And though it may have been foolish to assume I would EVER get to ANYTHING remotely resembling a “gate”—I knew—I knew in that moment that I would be fine—that I would survive.

I knew in that moment that I could do Haiti.

I knew—

Yeah—I DO do bad really well!

And though Haiti IS really bad—it’s getting better.

Though it’s still the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, the airport in Port-au-Prince has improved since March. 

Though it’s still chaotic and dangerous because of that chaos, though “baggage claim” still doesn’t resemble that of Miami or Houston, we now know it helps enormously to have Samuel’s escort through the chaos (see post from several days ago).

Though, since March, Haiti has suffered a hurricane, cholera, and a fraudulent presidential election, the Haitian people carry on.

They are resilient.

They shine—

Tiny lights twinkling from the darkest corner of the Caribbean!

So remember, like the Haitian people, to shine this Christmas—shine!

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Re-naming America?


(I know I’m supposed to be blogging about Haiti and I promised a post today about the Port-au-Prince airport—but, I swear, the issue I address below is an “event horizon,” of sorts.)

In case you missed it, yesterday, BabyCenter.com posted its list of top 100 names for 2010—an annual event that’s more than making a name for itself!

So—I hate to ask a seemingly indelicate question.  But—What’s up with baby names these days?

Why are the first names of most newly-born kids in the US names that merely decades ago would have been nothing other than good, old-fashioned last names?

Why are we so obsessed with family names, we’ve nearly abandoned the sacred tradition—centuries, rather millennia in the making—of assigning “Christian names” to our newly hatched Madison’s and Mackenzie’s?

I know the American “family” is in decline.  I know many now say America a “post-Christian” nation—(which is itself a misnomer, I might add).  Does this underlie the confusion? 

Seriously!  What’s up?

Why is every Tom, Dick, and Harry now named Taylor, Devon, or Yale? 

And what about these names with oblique, more often than not overt, allusions to the aristocrats of academia? 

My own nephew, born last month, is named “Rhodes”—God bless his little, “high-IQ-ed” heart.  I know his grandfather is a professor, and his aunt, yours truly, spent WAY too many years not making NEARLY enough money in academia—(thus, the high dollar move to blogging)—but that’s a lot of pressure on a little guy!  How’s that for a “you-better-make-the-grade-or-else” kick-in-the-ass?

Now, I know I should keep my family out of this.  I know my brother could and probably should kill me. (But he has a really great sense of humor; his name is “Tyce,” by the way, if that tells you anything about the DNA of naming in my family.)

I know, as well as you do, that a rose by any other name should smell as sweet, but what about poor “Baby Rose?”

Why has she morphed into little “Reagan?”  Yes, I kid you not; she’s number 66 on this year’s list of most popular girls’ names in the US.  I love the old Gipper as much as the next left-leaning, non-Bible-toting, “doesn’t-give-a-hoot-about-Hollywood,” Democrat in America.

But—PLEASE!

Enough is enough!

My mother called me “Kathryn” for a reason.  I was named after my grandmother, her first name, I might add.  And there were a total of three “Kathy’s” in my kindergarten class—I was born in an era, now sadly past, when “normal” naming still happened in America—was right up there with good breeding!

Speaking of breeding—does it say anything about all that’s vogue in naming that my dogs are “Ralph” and “Lucy?”

What’s next?

BabyCenter.com has itself used a “top-secret algorithm” to determine what names will climb in popularity next year, and according to the “online parenting and pregnancy destination” the boy’s name “Max” is predicted to “gain momentum in 2011”—climbing from its current spot at number 46.  Are the sons (and daughters) of America already being named after their canine companions?

Or am I barking up the wrong tree?

(And tomorrow—I’ll yap about the Port-au-Prince airport—I promise!)

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Risk Management in Port-au-Prince: a note of clarification


My blogging buddy Lisa (again at “Notes from Africa”) raises an important point in a comment to yesterday’s post—one, in fact, that helps me realize just how lost I sometimes am inside my own perspective—looking at Haiti from the inside out—(not that I’m a real “insider” by any means).  It’s just that, as the name of this blog suggests (“reinventing the event horizon”) to come to Haiti is, in many ways, to cross a virtual “event horizon.”  Things get twisted here, turned inside out, spit out, inverted, and reinvented!  So I should try untangling a few details for the sake of clarity.

More specifically, Lisa notes how casually I mention someone from security, namely Samuel, not meeting my plane and how that makes me sound like some kind of celebrity. 

Now the fact of the matter is—when Samuel escorts you through the airport you do FEEL like a celebrity—by-passing the lines at immigration and security check points.  However, this perception has more to do with how well Samuel does his job, than anything about my status as a 5” 2’-artist-writer-nobody hoping, sometimes even praying, to get through the chaos, the outer edge of insanity, that IS the Port-au-Prince airport. 

And even more importantly to do with the insanity itself, the degree of danger, the security risks Sara’s NGO cannot afford to take, and the willingness of my partner herself to forgo as much risk as possible where MY safety is concerned.  In other words, the woman loves me.  What more can I say?

But about the risk itself—

Port-au-Prince is a dangerous place.  The risk-management folks at Sara’s NGO, for example, won’t allow her to travel through the traffic, streets still clogged with rubble from the January 12th earthquake, to the airport itself without an armed escort, in addition to a driver.  In fact, any expat working for the organization is NOT allowed to drive outside of Petion-ville—never supposed to drive alone—even in the relative safety of our upscale suburb where President Preval himself lives.  We drive with seatbelts on, windows up, doors locked.  It’s harder to be pulled from a car that way.

To violate these rules would be to face the wrath of Richard, head of security for the organization’s operation in Haiti, the one responsible for the safety of a few ex-pats too many, someone we affectionately refer to as “Papa Bear.”  Not to mention the wrath of Jack at headquarters in Atlanta!  (Jack sometimes reads my blog, so I need to give him the credit he’s due.)

On average—there’s a kidnapping a day in Port-au-Prince—usually of foreigners, often of expats working for NGOs on earthquake reconstruction.  And in fact, a number of these kidnappings actually happen in Petion-ville itself, since most NGOs have set up their operations from this location.  

Though most of Port-au-Prince proper was left in ruins following the earthquake, much of our small suburb was still left standing.  The actual earthquake only measured a magnitude 7.0, but because there’s no building code, to speak of, in Haiti, people take engineering shortcuts to save money and establish shelter without “excess” expense.  These kinds of structures pancake in the face of earthquakes. Remember the earthquake in Chile soon after the one here.  It was a magnitude 8.0, but because of rigidly enforced building codes, the country ultimately suffered far less damage than Haiti did.  

In Petion-ville, however, people have the funds to build safer structures.  These more stable buildings survived the earthquake with far less damage, so it’s in these that NGOs have set up offices to oversee the recovery process.

But about the danger itself—back to the risk of kidnapping—

I should specifically mention an “attempted” but soon failed abduction that took place outside the gym where I work-out most mornings.  In this instance, the Haitian driver was let go because he supposedly “had no money” to pay a ransom, while the “foreigner” (as they’re referred to here) was essentially car-jacked (but soon escaped)—physically unharmed, thank God—though I’m sure emotionally quite unsettled by the event.

Around the same time, the wife of the Petion-ville chief of police was assassinated just yards (meters) from her house and another NGO employee was shot and killed by gunmen while working “in the field”—essentially anywhere outside of Petion-ville where reconstruction is taking place.

The bottom line, actually, is this—

Sara oversees operations, on the ground here in Haiti, for a large NGO that works in almost 100 countries around the world—one that, for legal reasons, is forced to manage risk quite closely—so the security protocol is extensive.

It means that every day I live with two armed guards outside my door—in shifts that rotate every 12 hours.

It means sometimes a security escort at the airport.

Why the airport specifically, you might ask.  Ah—that “outer edge of insanity”—that’s tomorrow’s story to tell—

—“Adventuring at the Port-au-Prince Airport:  Another Event Horizon Redefined.”

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Mud-Wrestling with God: Holiday Thoughts from Haiti


I know I should be bringing you important updates about current events in Haiti—about the cholera epidemic that’s killing folks by the thousands and about the obvious fraud in Sunday’s presidential elections.  But I need a bit of a break from such serious matters today.  So it’s in this spirit of departure from the muck and mire of disease and politics, that I bring you a story about my recent up-close and personal encounter with, well, muck and mire.

(Now, I must confess that the idea for this post—the reminder that meditating on mud can make for marvelous writing, came yesterday from a blog I’m newly in love with called “Sunshine in London.”  I discovered this blog from another site I REALLY like called “Notes from Africa,” and I’m learning lots about being grateful, thankful for even these muddiest of matters, from a series of posts at “Grandeur Vision.”  These three blogs are all well worth reading!)

At any rate, I realized yesterday I had not shared my own adventure with what we might call, for lack of a better term, “mud-wrestling.”

This encounter with the muck and mire that can be Haiti toward the end of the rainy season happened several weeks ago—just days before Hurricane Tomas actually brought that season to an official, if no less muddy, end.  I was returning from a two week trip to the US for an honest-to-goodness American vacation.  Sara and I don’t get many of them.  Though we travel a lot, traveling for pleasure is not usually part of the package.

So I was returning to Haiti feeling somewhat rested—ready to get down and dirty, though not exactly knee deep, in the challenges ahead.

Or so I thought—

I should have known it didn’t bode well when our security folks didn’t meet my plane and I had to make it through the Port-au-Prince airport without the special assistance Samuel provides.

But, I wasn’t terribly worried.  I survived the fight for my baggage.  I fought the good fight, the get-out-of-my-way-or-I-may-have-to-kill-you challenge that is getting one’s bags and getting away with one’s life.

I had not only gotten my bags, I had survived my driver surviving the traffic, gotten my groceries, gotten my dog, gotten inside my gate, gotten beyond my front door and down a few steps—

Before falling flat on my ass in a river of mud.

Not just a little mud, I might add—much mud, deep mud, muddy mud.

Muddy facts:

1.  My neighbor on the mountain above had been digging a new drive.

2.  It had rained a lot on that newly dug drive.

3.  The newly dug drive in its now liquid form had flooded my floor with a good inch of mud.

4.  I was not entirely pleased with his development.

Until I thought of something Sara says when it rains here in Haiti—something she thinks about when it seems the torrents of wet will never stop falling—especially at night when damp dark soaks the soul of a person—

Especially a mother, holding her baby, in a make shift tent—barely a tarp over a mud slick floor—

I thought of that mother.

that baby.

that floor.

I thanked God for my mud.

I thanked God for my floor.

What are you thankful for this holiday season?

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A Haitian Tale of Two Cities


Sara and I finally left out house this morning, left our home in Petion-ville for the first time since election fraud plunged Haiti into violent protests. Sara insisted she had too much work to do; I wanted out for any and all conceivable reasons—a Haitian version of cabin fever—I was not so much climbing the walls as I was willing to bulldoze them down the mountain, if doing so would assure escape—from our guards, the fence, razor wire spiraling above, our personal crown of thorns—

I—Wanted—Out!

But getting out was strangely anti-climactic—

As the streets were quiet and, though not literally deserted, they were largely empty of the activities I see most mornings driving to the gym—fewer vehicles, only a handful of children—little girls, usually braided and bowed, hand-in-hand with parents or one another, on their way to school, uniforms laundered and pressed.  These children were largely absent this morning.

So I exercised—I worked out—ultimately working out next to nothing in a gym whose wall of fifth floor windows overlooks the whole of Port-au-Prince—below the bay, the grit and grime of the city itself and treeless mountains circling beyond.  It’s a lovely view, as long as you don’t think too much about the details, about what’s actually happening there—the poverty, the hunger, the cholera, the fraud.

As long as you don’t think, you’re not sickened in the least—

But now I’m home—safe behind these walls privilege provides—nauseated by trying—wanting—

 A truth, any truth—

The news I read online doesn’t so much offer conflicting stories—as differing ones:

–A Reuters’ piece published by Yahoo News  saying presidential candidate, Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly has reversed his call to have election results annulled, insisting now the votes should indeed be counted.

—The Haitian Times  indicating that Martelly is now calling the process “ an electoral coup d’etat,” promising that he will “contest the elections if he is not declared the winner”—that he’s the people’s choice.

The bottom line is this—

In Haiti it’s hard to grab hold of any singular story—

In Haiti there’s a soup of story—

In Haiti the story is itself unsafe—a cholera of narrative and news—

Here in Haiti there is story so dis-eased—dis-ease so full of story, there simply is no rhyme or reason to be had—no heads, no tails—and yet so many tales to tell . . . .

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Ghost of Hamlet Haunts Haiti’s Presidential Election


Things sound eerily quiet here this morning in my little corner of Haiti—especially after all the angry, sometimes violent,  protests yesterday against election fraud.  I can only image that, like me, folks are reluctant to go out into the streets.

The big picture looks like this, however:

Haiti held nation-wide elections yesterday for president, senators, and other lesser offices—elections that were to have been scheduled for last February but were delayed following the earthquake that leveled most of Port-au-Prince on January 12, 2010.

Yesterday ballot boxes were said to have arrived at polling stations already filled with votes for the protégé and future son-in-law of current Haitian President Rene Preval—Jude Celestin.  Mid-morning yesterday 12 of the 18 leading opposition candidates alleged “massive fraud” on the part of Preval and Celestin’s Inite (Unity) coalition and called for election results to be cancelled.  These candidates included former first lady and front-runner in pre-election polls, Mirlande Manigate, whose husband again ran for president in 2006, coming in second.  In that election Manigate was denied the legally required run-off, even though Preval failed to get 50% of the vote.

(And we think politics in the US are bad!  This makes the Bush/Gore Florida controversy in 2000 look like child’s play.)

It has seemed for months that things weren’t likely to be fair, not so much because hip-hop star Wycliffe Jean was denied a spot on the ballot, but more importantly because no candidates of the truly grass roots opposition party Lavalas (still figure-headed by former President Aristide), were allowed to run for any office.

It seemed surprising yesterday, at least to me, that thousands of protesters took to the streets even here in the usually quiet suburb of Petion-ville—led by candidate and entertainer Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly and joined by Wycliffe Jean himself.

(The noise kept our dogs unsettled and barking into the night.  Actually though, we were bothered no more than that.  And to be honest, ours are not the quietest of canines to begin with!)

Today there’s a planned march on the presidential palace, during which protesters, we are told, will call for President Preval to resign. 

But damage to the palace itself during the earthquake last January, the palace on which protesters will march today, may suggest, at least in metaphoric terms, that something is indeed “rotten in the State of [Haiti].” 

The ghost of Hamlet here is haunting?

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Haitian Election Update


Election day hasn’t even ended here in Haiti, but already UN helicopters are circling over-head and violent protesters have begun rioting, not only in Port-au-Prince, but here in the quiet suburb of Petion-ville, as well.

Most of the presidential candidates, except Jude Celestin, the protégé of current President Preval, are contesting results that haven’t been announced yet, since ballot boxes were said to have arrived at polling places already stuffed with votes for Preval’s future son-in-law.

Things don’t look good. I will continue to update as long as internet service is available.

Please keep Haiti in your thoughts and prayers!

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Haitian Presidential Elections and a DNA of Hoarding


Haitian presidential elections are tomorrow, and in preparation for post-election violence, people are stocking up on food and drinking water, ready to remain in their homes should angry protesters flood the streets once election results are announced.  Most NGOs, Sara’s included, plan to remain closed on Monday, believing that if history is any indicator, security problems are inevitable.  My Haitian French teacher told me that after the last election, she was unable to leave her home for 5 full days, and she expects the same this time around.

However, Sara and I may have gotten to the grocery store a bit too late this morning, a day after most Haitians had already stocked up.  The shelves, though they were not empty, were terribly picked over, and, for example, there was not a baguette in sight (and very little fresh produce).  But we got the fundamentals and finally found French bread at the bakery near Sara’s office.

At any rate, we are well-supplied in the event of violence or political unrest: plenty of fuel for the generator, batteries for emergency lighting, and a solar powered radio to hear election results via our guards.

We are so well supplied, in fact—that Saint Sara is laughing at me as I write this, pointing out that, including the 4 cans of diced tomatoes I bought today, we now have a grand total of 13, and including the 2 I purchased this morning, we now have 14 bottles of salad dressing—blue cheese, balsamic vinaigrette, and honey mustard varies all lined in lovely rows.  Not to mention the 15 two liter bottles of Coke Zero, equally well-ordered.  Saint Sara’s soldiering of the surplus, so to speak

Okay, okay, I admit it—I’m obsessed.  I over-shop.  I over-stock.  It’s a sickness. 

But couldn’t I blame this on the political climate here in Haiti, the potential for civil unrest, the need to be well-supplied in the event of disaster?  Yes­—

—But I blame it on the DNA—

—Claiming, as my grandmother did when my aunt asked why she had so much toilet paper—a floor-to-ceiling-sized pantry full—

“I’m keeping it so all the hoarders don’t get it!”

What supplies are surplus-ed in your pantry?

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Colonialism Challenges Thanksgiving in Haiti?


I had planned to post the following yesterday, had not the old sit-down-Thanksgiving-dinner-for-23 gotten the best of me, eating up any time I might have dedicated to posting what had, for the most part, already been written:

Let’s face it.  Planning Thanksgiving from here in Port-au-Prince has had its fair share of near disasters and we haven’t even had the dinner yet.  That’s not till tonight.  But it’s in this spirit of near calamity I’ve been writing all week about my misadventures trying to make this holiday happen here, ruminating in posts over the past several days specifically about the shopping and oven-related challenges that have nearly derailed my efforts.  Today, however, in honor of the day itself—a holy day, of sorts—I’m pondering the moral implications of hosting a feast for folks with plenty to eat in a country where children will go hungry today, will have gone to bed last night with not a drop of dinner and woken of this morning with no real breakfast to speak of.

This dilemma has its roots in a system that got started centuries ago.  In fact, some have argued, that Haiti’s economic challenges originated in the kind of colonialism our American Thanksgiving actually celebrates.  Now I like my Macy’s parade and other Thanksgiving traditions as much as the next guy.  But frankly, I find it uncomfortable to be highlighting this event from a place where colonialism couldn’t have gone more wrong.

Let me clarify—by offering the following facts.  You ponder them and tell me your thoughts.

–Christopher Columbus landed here on the island of Hispaniola in December of 1492, setting up Europe’s first settlement in the New World.

–When the Spanish arrived an indigenous population of as many as 8 million welcomed them, but in fewer than 20 years only 50,000 remained, most of the Indians having been killed by diseases first brought to the island by Europeans, namely yellow fever.  Thirty years later only hundreds had survived.

–With the loss of an indigenous labor force to mine for gold, the Spanish and later the French, needing manpower to work their sugar plantations, began importing slaves from West Africa, until by the beginning of the 19 century, as many as 500,000 may have occupied the island.

–Because the population of slaves was so high, compared to the few Europeans actually in residence, and because the French were so brutal in their abuse of slaves, soon-to-be ex-slaves revolted and won their independence from France in January of 1804, becoming the first independent ex-colony in all of Latin America.

–Because Haitian political leaders wanted to trade with France and wanted their country’s legitimacy to be recognized by the US, they agreed in 1824 to pay France 150 million francs to compensate the former French plantation owners for lost income, effectively paying an indemnity, effectively buying their freedom, the freedom of an entire nation of former slaves.

–The Haitian government was not able to pay off that debt until the middle of the 20th century and was forced to hand over to the French tax revenue the government might otherwise have invested in infrastructure, roads, schools, hospitals, an electrical grid—none of it established in Haiti as it was in the US by the 1950s.

–Some have argued (see Paul Farmer’s Uses of Haiti), that it is this fallout from former colonial rule that has left Haiti destitute economically and vulnerable politically to the kind of pre-election violence we’ve seen in Haiti this week (elections scheduled for Sunday, November 28th).  Some have said this continued servitude has left Haiti without the basic services a government can establish with tax revenue—left it without a building code, for example, and therefore structurally vulnerable to a 7.0 magnitude earthquake—left it medically vulnerable without enough hospitals to manage the cholera epidemic we see raging in the streets of Port-au-Prince today.

The bottom line is this—

I feel uncomfortable celebrating a holiday that essentially celebrates friendship and feasting between colonizers and an indigenous population.  It feels wrong, in a lot of ways, border-line hypocritical, especially with hunger, malnutrition, and a lack of clean water killing thousands just down the street in Port-au-Prince proper.

I don’t mean to imply it’s wrong to celebrate, as we would have back home.  Rather, I’m suggesting that this awareness has troubled me for most of the day—a sore spot on the conscience of someone of European descent, celebrating the holiday of the (sometimes brutal) colonizer in a place so ruined by the colonial system.

What are your thoughts about this?

Note: the Thanksgiving dinner was fabulous, thermostatically-challenged oven and shopping snafus not-with-standing. I promise to share details in upcoming days.

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Thanksgivng Haitian style: a shopping list


Yesterday, promising a series of posts this week about the difficulties Sara and I face trying to celebrate Thanksgiving from Port-au-Prince, I outlined what I called the “oven-related challenges” that could jeopardize our thankful feasting this Thursday.

Today, however, shopping-related issues take center stage—the consumer-driven hazards that could take down even the most well-intended and tradition-centered of holiday celebrations.  In fact, it may be that the more one tries to model any Thanksgiving feast in Haiti on the one Grandma would have catered, the larger the obstacles threatening it loom.

So, buyer beware.

Wisely, Sara and I anticipated some of these issues and brought back from the US several Thanksgiving menu items we thought might be needed—imagined we wouldn’t find here, even in the expat-oriented grocery stores in Petion-ville. 

But as you might expect (those of you who know my pathetic track record when it comes to poor packing), I anticipated incorrectly—finding here in Haiti what I did bring back but not bringing what I didn’t find.  Just my bad Thanksgiving luck!

Except for canned pumpkin—that is. 

Here I hit the pie-filling nail on its not-so-proverbial-pie-filling head.  I swear there’s not an ounce of Libby’s to be had on the whole of this damn island—cherry pie filling, yes—canned yams, yes—canned pumpkin in time for Thanksgiving pie-baking—no sir—none of it—anywhere.  And believe me, I have looked. 

But we need not worry.   I may not have a thermostatically controllable oven to bake the pie in, but I have a full 29 ounce can of “America’s Favorite Pumpkin” to put in it.

Now about the celery—

Here I should mention having a bit of scare yesterday morning trying to find this vegetable, almost as essential to stuffing as sage itself.  Standing in Giant Market (right here in Petion-ville), I came so close to a celery-induced heart attack, I was imagining, “What would Jesus do?”  What would the son of God himself (assuming he were a turkey-stuffing kind of carpenter) use in his stuffing were the stalks of stringy stuff not available?  If he turned water into wine, could he turn carrots into celery?

But, again, you need not fear, as Saint Sara herself performed the miracle, finally finding what she called a “not very robust” celery (but a celery-looking substance nonetheless) in the grocery store near her office. 

Catastrophe averted.  We are that much closer to a celery-ed stuffing inside our bird that’s to be roasted at a temperature the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will themselves determine.

Then there’s the chicken broth—

Yesterday Sara sent me to the super market for some cans of it, among other things.   Actually, Giant carried the item in both the Swanson and Campbell’s variety—the Swanson, carton-ed with no added MSG and the Campbell’s, canned with all the blood-pressure-raising MSG one would ever want.  And being a health-conscious, not-wanting-to-consume-excessive-amounts-of-salt American, I selected the broth without MSG.  In fact, I tried to check out with three cartons of the stuff, since Thanksgiving dinner calls for broth in both the gravy and as a moistening agent in any well-celery-ed stuffing.

Here’s the hitch.  Though the store stocked the Swanson’s (over-stocked it, in fact)—they wouldn’t sell it to me.  And, if sheer quantity were any indication, wouldn’t sell to anybody, for that matter.  They couldn’ t figure out the price.  So, when, after thirty minutes of trying to determine one, no member of the sales or management staff could still settle on the number of Gourde to make me pay, I suggested they charge me anything. 

“Over-charge me,” I even offered—a concept they seemed not to grasp—though they seem to get it well enough when selling products on the street and doubling the price when any non-Haitian tries to buy.

But undeterred and unwilling to waste any more of my time-is-money American minutes, I gave up, bought the cans of Campbell’s, and headed home, risking ill-health all the way.

So the bottom line is this— the shopping obstacles, though they were multiple and at times bizarre, did not obstruct in any hugely significant way.  These were more imagined obstacles than obstacles of real substance—

So Saint Sara, the wise and proper packer, was (as she is in all things) probably right about this, as well–

—Since the anticipated shopping obstacle was, like the celery itself . . .

. . . “not a very robust” obstacle after all.