Last day in Haiti, and the final trip of this piece of work (developing staff support) that began very soon after the earthquake.
Yesterday was “meant” to be a quiet last day spent with friends, in closure, taking care of things that needed tending to.
Instead, chaos. Traffic–which feels terminally congested beyond any normal measure of congestion, since the onslaught of International Aid, was incomprehensibly immobilized. ANPIL ANPIL BLOKIS. Everything took 1-2 hours more than usual. And I had three stops, throughout the day, to close this work.
When a friend promising transportation didn’t come through, when those who came through with rides were caught in the nightmarish “BLOKIS”, I was late for everything. And then, at the end of the day, my only way home was a ride in an insufficiently “up kept” car, with no defrost, barely functioning windshield wipers, driven by a lovely many who did not know the area I needed to get to at all.
A torrential downpour, horizontal and vertical lightning, immense thunder booms resulted in flooded roads. Flooded roads that were swarming with vehicles trying to get home at the end of the day. We sat, for 30 minutes at a time, to budge a few feet.
The driver, unfamiliar with an automatic (especially an old, worn out automatic) vehicle, could barely see due to a fogged up and unyieldingly wet windshield, glare, and his increasingly “tet chaje” (literally, charged head). After the first hour, the car broke down, and as just as they were a collective relief when traffic began to move, we were blocking the road.
What transpired after (for three hours after) was sometimes stressful, sometimes amusing, sometimes fascinating, and sometimes very uncomfortable. People yelled, honked, screamed. Driver of large vehicles sat on their horns–some barely missed us if they were moving and didn’t see us to to the downpour, the lightning, the dark I called friends, at times calm, at times on the verge of tears, at times angry. All I wanted to do was be home with my dear friends and family here, and watch the sky turn evening colors from the same porch that has given me solace for many years—especially since January 12th. Its the place where I sat every evening when I first came here, and stayed on this safe and comfortable home, alone. Its where the 350+ stories and 25+ group histories moved through me as tears, rage, incomprehension, weariness, inspiration, hope, human connection.