When I travel, I feel like every thought I have is suddenly relevant. Every experience is worth taking note of. The plane smells like fart, and peanuts. The woman at the end of my row is illiterate and has asked me to fill out her customs forms for her. I love her for this. I’m terrified she’ll speak French at me and figure out I’m an idiot.
The thing about Haiti is that nobody comes here on vacation. No one at the airport booked a flight to Port-au-Prince just ‘cause. I find I’m curious about my fellow travelers’ stories in a way I never usually am. If asked on a flight to Dallas-Ft. Worth what I’m doing in Texas, and I’ll stare back, full of pity for the person who thinks I’d actually spend anymore time than I absolutely have to in Texas. “Nothing,” I say, “It’s just a connecting flight.” Where to? they might ask. The answer is usually either New York or Long Beach, but it doesn’t matter much either way. “Somewhere better,” I reply.
Not so with Port-au-Prince. I want to know everything about everybody. The black families speaking French I freely assume are Haitian, and they instantly become intimidating. Please don’t speak to me in French, I think at them, and it seems to work. I smile like a mute tourist and they let me be. Then there are the old white men in pressed suits, all flying first class or carrying cards that say executive platinum. Businessmen, diplomats, drug traffickers. I couldn’t care less. I lump them all into “Rich people” and I hope no one thinks I’m one of them. There’s the almost white-haired Swedish couple in flowing cotton shirts and glinting silver cross necklaces. The do-gooder missionaries. God be with them. They look like the Targaryens.
But then I see two young French girls in jeans and button downs, with a quiet elegance that seems to come only from not being American. What is their story?
And more to the point, what is mine?
Hearing the boarding announcements in French is somehow what does it. I’m actually doing this. I’m going to fucking Haiti. Whatever information I know to the contrary, no matter how many maps I look at, I still imagine that the Caribbean being in the Gulf of Mexico, and Haiti is somewhere south of Alabama. Wracked by disease and oil spills and probably bears.
I don’t know why I thought I could do this.
But the plane full of other people whose stories I can’t quite figure out is comforting. What are they doing here? Together I think we form this collective of people who don’t have an real niche. Or at least, not an obvious one. I like us. I like being part of this group, even if I’m the only one who knows about it.
No one has yet asked me what I’m doing in Haiti. If they did, I’m not sure what I’d say. “I’m a journalist,” I imagine saying, tossing my hair aside and basking in how cool they’ll think I am. I’m a journalist. Lie. I’m a college student. I’m a journalist intern. I’m supposed to teach people how to use Final Cut and update websites. Like I’m qualified to teach anything.
I don’t really think of myself as Here to Help. I hope I can help somebody do something, but I don’t see myself as someone who came here to Help People. Mostly I came because I was bored, and I couldn’t bear to spend another summer in an office in New York or DC. Haiti? Sure, why the fuck not? But I don’t want to be useless here either. I just don’t imagine that I can do much of anything. Against centuries of colonialism and corruption, and the sheer devastation of the earthquake, I don’t kid myself that I’ll be that important. I’m just looking to have a good time.
I’m reminded of two teenage blonde girls I saw about a week ago. They were standing next to a busy intersection, collecting money for a trip to Haiti. They had large poster board signs colored with bright marker, reading “HELP US GET TO HAITI! THE ORPHANS NEED US!” This was in La Jolla, an affluent part of San Diego someone once described as “a great place for old people and their parents.” I pulled up beside them and chatted, told them about my trip. One of the girls had been to Haiti before, and I asked her what I should expect.
“It’s crazy!” she gushed, “but the people are amazing. Just the joy that they have, amid so much poverty. Their joy is amazing.” I zoned out then, immediately seeing this girl’s face plastered in the middle of a crowd of big-bellied malnourished black children on a college recruiting pamphlet.
“Sarah spent the summer volunteering. With orphans. In Haiti” the magazine ad would say. Underneath would be a pull out quote from Sarah. “Just the joy that they have! They taught me so much!” I drove away shivering.
I hope the people here will teach me something, mostly because I’m not sure I’m qualified to teach them anything and someone ought to learn something from this experience. I’m just still wondering how the hell I ended up here.
–
The house I’m staying in is an off-white compound of dormitory-like rooms surrounded by an eight-foot barbed wire fence. It reminds me a bit of the compound where they found Bin Laden, and for some reason this is comforting. My room has air conditioning (score), a bed, and a closet. It’s simple, and I love it.
The first thing I do is break the closet door. Not on purpose, obviously. The lock is jammed and I can’t get the key out. Great, I think. I’ve been in the country five minutes and I already broke something. I settle down to take a nap, made nearly impossible by the sounds of the preschool right outside the building. It seems silly to put down a mosquito net just to lie down for an hour, but if I don’t it keeps hitting me in the face. Plus it makes me feel like a princess.
I wonder if Bin Laden felt like a princess in his compound too. Do they use mosquito nets in Pakistan? This is the kind of thing I have no reason to research, but probably will. In fact, I’ll probably spend a lot more time on it than I will on learning anything about the country I’m actually in.
(Side note: I just rolled over and accidentally pulled down the mosquito net. Ten minutes, and I’ve broken two things. I feel like the UN.)
I know just about nothing about Haiti. I’m about one step above thinking the country’s biggest problem is tigers. I read The Black Jacobins well enough to write a paper on it for a class, and promptly forgot everything it said. None of it is really relevant now, and a lot of it isn’t even strictly true.
Compiled here, for your pleasure, is a comprehensive list of everything I know about Port-au-Prince:
1) The founding father of Haiti was named Toussaint L’Ouverture. He was a cool black dude a long time ago who led a slave revolution and kicked out the French. There is at least one street (that I have seen) named after him.
2) There is a preschool right outside my room and they have chickens. I don’t really know if they’re the ones with the chickens, but somebody outside has chickens. Or at least a chicken. Maybe a turkey. Or a kid who makes weird noises.
3) It’s hot.
4) It’s dusty.
5) Everything’s kind of greyish white. The walls are all painted with advertisements and the cars are all decorated, but the dustiness of it takes over, like a layer of age.
6) Everything looks pretty broken.
7) Just about everyone speaks Creole, except me. Just about everyone speaks bad French, including me.
8) The nicer houses are all surrounded by eight-foot-tall barbed wire fences and look kind of like that compound where they found Bin Laden.
9) The food is bomb diggity.
10) The water is cholera diggity.
I hope to add to this list as time goes on, but for now, that’s really all I got.
