The WTF's of Haiti

Our instructions went like this: When you are in the car and parked leave the car running in case you have to make a quick getaway. If you are leaving the car everyone goes, no one stays in the car alone. Do not go to City Sole. Lock everything all the time. Don’t eat or drink anything from the street. They sell alcohol right on the street corners, we were told the bottles are tampered with.

There is a pole we pass everyday on the way to the worksite that has at least 25 meters on it. You know the kind that the Consumers man comes and reads at your house. The “man” must come and read these 25 meters and then he doesn’t have to walk down the cliff to the individual houses to get the readings. How he knows which one goes to what I have no idea.

Energy here is sporadic and most people don’t receive it. The people that are on the grid also have a converter (some kind of contraption that takes energy and charges batteries that they then can use when the energy stops flows, which is often) and a generator so they always have lights. Other people walk around in the dark using their cell phones to see steps and objects in their paths. It gets dark around 6:30 here in Haiti, because the sun is up at like 5 a.m. That means there are a lot of people walking around in the dark in Haiti. Those that want the energy, but can’t afford it steal it. They connect long strings of wire to each other and then they loop it over the power line. What they do with this I have no idea, but now that I know how they do it I see them everywhere. Good thing their houses are mostly made out of concrete because the fire hazard has got to be huge, not to mention the shock potential.

Physics lesson: I work on the flat (sea level) I live on the mountain (way up), the streets are narrow with little gutters running along the sides to help shed rain water. Problem: When it rains in Haiti it comes down like a fire hose. Gravity pulls the water down it collects stuff, like rocks. Not just dirt and gravel, but football sized rocks that come off the mountain. We are trying to drive up the mountain against the now growing river that is overflowing the gutters and is racing toward us with the rocks and stuff. The rental call which we are driving has a very small wheel base and is very light………as we ascended against the deluge up one of the more vertical climbs we encountered that spot where loss of friction and gravity was greater than our upward momentum. This is known as the “fuck me” point. We then had no choice but to back all the way down the hill. Luckily there was only one other car behind us that had to figure out where to go; otherwise it would have been a real problem. I watched the mountain erode before my eyes. Two hours later we made it back to Satigny our Bed and Breakfast.

The trucks that go up the mountain with water and bricks are scary to follow even when it is dry if they lose forward momentum there are few escape routes available to anyone. We have seen the outcome of some of these accidents. Thankfully our drive gives those vehicles some “oh shit” room.

There are a few local crazy people we see regularly. They must have a similar schedule to ours. You can tell they are crazy because of their amazing clothing choices (consisting of many layers and some articles worn on the wrong body part) and their ability to talk to air, or argue with air, or dancing to music only they can hear. Everyone just lets them do their own thing and it appears they eat. My personal favorite is the naked man that walks along the road slinging little pebbles at the cars.

One of the houses we are working is a mobile home. ( I don’t recommend transporting them via the ocean, they don’t travel well) It was brought to the sight and an block apron was made for it and then some unlucky schlep had to get under it and pull the axels. The steal supports created ribs that run under the frame that are only about 8 inches from the ground. In between them there is more space but not much, these spaces run across the width of the mobile home. I was partially under the home looking where the plumbing needed to be connected for the plumber when I got a weird feeling I was being watched. My eyes had adjusted to the dark and so when I focused down the length of the home I could plainly see a goat blinking at me; a big pregnant goat. They sat the trailer down on her without seeing her, trapping her. A plan was needed. She had already been under there for days and was only able to scoot along on its elbows, I had never seen a goat crawl until that day. Since I was the only one small enough to squeeze under the steal ribs I said I would get a rope and try to tie is around the goats horns and we could forcibly pull her out. I did not appreciate at that time how much goat shit had accumulated under that trailer. I got to her after a lot of crawling but all I could rope was her butt. I couldn’t get her to turn around. When I tried to push her around she crawled to the other side of the trailer. My partner Chris took a sledge hammer and broke the blocks out of the other side and stuck his head under. He was close to her head. My other co-workers slid in a long piece of wood and I could get her to stay put by prodding her. I told Chris to get the rope around her horns and I would try and pull her legs sideways because that is the only way she was coming out (on her side). When he reached in she baaaaaaa right in his face he almost wet himself. I yelled that she wasn’t going to bite him and to stop being a Sally. I was the one lying in the heat amongst the goat shit, with my chest being squished and the smell beginning to affect my disposition. He finally got the rope around her neck and the pulled her right into the beam. I thought they were going to break her neck. I got a hold of her hind legs and pulled for all I was worth. She flopped on her side screaming and they got her head down and pulled her out. The mobile home needs some repair now, but at least smelling like dead goat it won’t. We put boards over the holes, but when we came back today to work on the plumbing a dog had gotten under there and had a litter of pups. They are still there. Dogs have teeth.

Drinking water is hard to come by and people can by it on the street in little pint sized plastic bags. They bite a hole in the end and squeeze it into their mouths. We take our water to the site in a big camping thermos and drink it throughout the day. Our workers will also bring their water to work; in bleach bottles. I couldn’t believe it and when asked they tell me that they rinse it out before they drink out of it…… They also said that some people will use oil containers, but of course they wash it out first.

Haiti has a lottery similar to ours, there are numbers randomly selected and you win money if you match the numbers. What we don’t have is a side business where you bet on the parts of the winning numbers. This is not run by the lottery at all, but by private individuals. They are called “banks” you see them everywhere. They are little sheds brightly painted. You bet on the numbers of the lottery, like the last two, and if you pick them you win a little money from that “bank”. There is no regulation on most things.

When you leave town there are these opportunistic entrepreneurs that sell gasoline on the side of the road. They sell them in milk jugs and the gasoline all has different colors. I guess there are a lot of people that buy it because these little stations are everywhere. We were told the gasoline is stolen.


The bakery we go to in the morning for our lunches has an armed guard.