Haiti: The Golden Sixteen Hours

Today's view from the ground: Ouest, Nippes, and Grande-Anse Provinces, Haiti - Friday

The "golden hour" has two meanings for me: twilight, when photographs of even the most inane subjects are fascinating and alluring, and the first sixty minutes of a medical emergency, when or actions dictate the survival of a patient. I knew that Friday wold be memorable, but I did not think it wold be as dramatic as it turned out to be when I left Communitere just before dawn.

I was determined to meet Bridget and Kate in Pestel, where they had gone the previous day to fight cholera and work in a village health clinic. That mission also included Danny, a medic I had written and spoken to several times and created a kinship with but never actually met. I was supposed to leave with them, but a meeting about GAI's future detained me in Port-au-Prince. Instead, Friday involved every type of ground transport that a traveler can expect to find in Haiti, and a few others as well.

I had already sorted my supplies for the trek across three-quarters of Haiti's long southern finger-like peninsula, and I had discovered my camera had been stolen. I could not be bother to mourn even the photos that I had taken of the journey to the Dominican border and back, as I was very excited to be alone and roughing it in a region I had never seen. Port-au-Prince was already proud and bustling at 7 A.M., when I walked along Boulevard Dessalines in search of a ride west. It took me until 8 A.M. to find one, as I was carelessly walking along Boulevard Dessalines in the wrong direction.

I hitched on a government gravel truck to Petit-Goave and got on a tap-tap to Miragoane. The combination of rock dust and chicken-bus dirt rendered me filthy by 10 A.M., when the tap-tap lazily circled Miragoane's transport circle just outside town. I stopped to ask someone which road I should start down if I was heading to Grand-Anse Province, and that person introduced me to Dieudonne Basteau (the given name means "given by God"). He is a short man who seemed to be smiling even when he was upset, and he insisted on following the Haitian tradition of holding his new acquaintance's hand.

Dieudonne loaded me onto a tap-tap headed north into the remarkable center of Miragoane, a coastal city with a gorgeous ruddy cathedral and sun-bleached shops and homes stacked up the steep hillsides leading down to the placid gulf below. A grain ferry was bound to points west along the north coast of the peninsula and he hurried me towards the bashful harbor to catch it, as I could avoid the arduous land journey. I had missed the boat by fifteen minutes.

He felt bad about leading me away from the transport hub and offered to drive me by moto to Bahadel, the boat's next stop, if I could help him get the insurance on his new bike. Since I have government identification (and, of course, a new government stamp), I was able to do so after the insurance agent sniffed both credentials for a few minutes until he was satisfied that a blan in a Haitian medic uniform, which he had never seen, was not in fact a charlatan. I took the risk of jokingly saying "zo ayisyen," a colloquialism meaning I have Haitian bones, and he grudgingly stamped the papers and freed Dieudonne's ride.

On the moto, I was closer to Dieudonne than I have been to most men. Since I was carrying more than fifty pounds of medical supplies and personal effects in my backpack, I had to slide up right behind him so he was practically in my lap. We raced along the newly-paved coastal road for a few kilometers until we were forced to stop by a grisly scene. Two motorcycles had collided and one had then hit a public works truck. Three people were on each moto, and all those involved in the accident except the drivers were children.

One boy had exposed grey matter in a massive head wound and was clearly done for. The other four injured were stable but it took nearly all the trauma gear I was carrying to stop the bleeding and prepare them for transport to the nearest hospital in a pickup truck that was also stopped nearby. Once the children and their parents, one of which was still wailing at his loss, were on their way, we continued west past the edge of the pavement and onto the rocky journey to come. Just as the transition came, a Red Cross truck blasted past us, almost running us off the road.

Just before Anse-a-Veau, a river passed over the weak road into the azure gulf. It was swelled to a greater size than usual, as the road was completely obscured and one unfortunate vehicle had been washed into a ludicrous side angle off in the current. A group of men stood ready at the east side of the river to carry people across on their shoulders. Since my pack and I weigh 200 pounds together, I declined the ride and instead revved Dieudonne's moto across the shallowest part of the river that I could see while I held my legs over the handlebars. I managed to keep control of the bike until the opposite bank, where I spun out and dove into the sand. The Haitians laughed as Dieudonne was carried like an emperor to my side by a frail man, also smiling at my stunt.

In Anse-a-Veau, a sleepy fishing village with a picturesque flat town square, the moto got a flat. Dieudonne had it fixed at a local garage while I negotiated with a boat captain to get me to Pestel. He wanted more than US$200, which I laughingly declined. Three kilometers further on, the moto's flat reappeared. With not much more time to lose, I bade farewell to my God-given guide and began walking west, eventually giving an old woman a cigarette to let me ride behind her on a donkey towards Petit-Trou.

That town, or "Titwo" in Kreyol, was slightly bigger than Anse-a-Veau and far more colorful. Lovely blue roofs and walls match the sky and the sea, which stretches out of a tiny bay into the gulf beyond. Tiny tubs of boats, propelled by sails made of rice bags and tarps, bobbed into the quiet wash, adding flecks of white and red to the cerulean scene. I walked to the port, where a fleet of Crosslink boats bearing the insignia of the missionary organization Food for the Poor sat idle near the bay. I sought the owner of the one outboard motor in town, who refused to take me out at such a late hour. He then agreed but charged me more than the captain at Anse-a-Veau, when I balked. I explained the urgency of my situation to other townspeople, who all said it would have been easier to find a boat in Miragoane, and they also tried to convince the owner to bring me out. He still refused. A man sitting in a pickup truck told me the only person who could convince the owner of anything was his cousin, the head of the local Red Cross, who had passed Dieudonne and me earlier that day going the other direction. As I learned this, the sail of the grain ferry began to come into view. My heart sank, as did the chances of my arrival in Pestel.

All of Titwo was now alive with excitement and determination surrounding the new blan in their midst, and everyone tried calling the cousin until he finally motored back into Titwo. He heard my story, related in broken Kreyol, and exploded at the engine owner, who sheepishly agreed to haul me out to the shipping lane and intercept the ferry. We roared after the ferry as the sun burned orange before its nightly banishment. We finally caught up to the boat, another tub stacked dangerously high with a pyramid of rice sacks. The bewildered captain allowed me to board for the journey to Pestel, which was skipping Bahadel anyway, for 200 goud (US$5). The only way I could board the overloaded sailboat was to climb to the top of the pyramid and lie flat on it, still wearing my backpack. I stayed like that until the sun disappeared and the sky unmasked its nightly abundance of stars as we drifted silently out of the gulf into the open ocean.

Once the sky was awash with stars and the waxing moon smiled upon me again, I flipped my body over to look up. After ten minutes of stargazing, I heard the captain begin singing quietly and I fell asleep, arched over the rice and my pack. I awoke as Pestel's light loomed tantalizingly close on the horizon. It was nearly 9 P.M., and the Friday night scene was beginning in town. Music skipped over the sea like a playful bird and the sound drew us into port. I walked up the main street of the seaside town and got some fried chicken over rice and beans at the restaurant, perched precariously over the center of town. The owner directed me further up the hill to the health clinic, where I expected to find my friends. Upon arriving, neither the doctor nor the attendants, who had only three cholera patients, had heard of a dozen blan health workers. I was stunned and exhausted.

After four attempts, I got Bridget on the phone. She told me they were outside Pestel in a village called Joli Guibert. The doctor knew it, as it is home to the mission where my friends were staying. He said it is a four-hour walk but a moto could get me there in thirty minutes. I gave Fero, a young driver who works at the health clinic, US$10 to drive me up the mountain. It was more than the journey from Port-au-Prince to Pestel had cost me.

The road got worse and worse as we continued on, and the moon was shaded by trees. My backpack bounced up and down, nearly pulling me off the moto several times. I tried to look up at the stars to regain my balance, but I missed turns and had to look ahead again. Fero stopped at a man's house for gas, and the man came out with a jar that had held vegetable oil at some point. A Land Cruiser passed us going down the mountain, and Fero struggled to keep the moto going. Five minutes later, he lost control and the moto slid out from under us. I landed on my pack and was fine but for a few scratches. Fero was fine entirely, as he had landed on me.

Just before 11 P.M., we approached white lights and the roar of a generator. Several unfamiliar white people sat under a pavilion tent in front of a small house in a nicely-appointed terrace. Fero gave me his phone number for the future and bade me good night. I introduced myself to the white people, who knew me by name. One was Shelly, the gynecologist who Kate had mentioned was going to the mission as well. Kate was asleep but Bridget was awake to meet me with a long hug. Danny and his team had been in the Land Cruiser, taking a pregnant cholera patient to the health clinic I had just left, and returned to meet me with surprised smiles. I had finally made it.

The trip had taken sixteen hours and cost US$18. If I had left on Thursday with Kate and Bridget, the trip would have taken six hours and cost more than US$100. A strange cast of characters had helped me on my way, and it also appears that three children may have died if Dieudonne and I had not missed the boat from Miragoane. I fell asleep in the storeroom with the other men and prepared for my first shift as a village health clinician.

That's the view from the ground. Next stop: Joli Guibert.