A drive through almost any part of Haiti is a dramatic study in contrasts, whether entirely within the confines of the sprawling city of Port-au-Prince, or from there to one of the provincial villages. One day, a wrong turn made while seeking to follow an alternate route around the chronically all but impassable airport region, I was led into am endless succession of decreasingly passable lanes, the likes of which could only be found in the US in the most remote wildernesses of northwest Arkansas or the far West. For an hour (still within the city) I wandered past clusters of rude houses under construction, huts, an occasional gathering of small shops (most of them barely larger than a respectable outhouse)… and here and there a grand house, hidden behind its cloistering high walls. Squalor, hard work in progress, luxury, all mixed together in this outback within a city.
The trip from Port-au-Prince to Jacmel has become familiar to me, and yet every time I make it I am once more overwhelmed by yet other contrasts. To leave Port-au-Prince to the southwest, one must endure some of the worst congestion and worst squalor of the city. A single through street (often scarcely worthy of the name, the National Highway #1) leads from the waterfront of Port-au-Prince to the southwest. A beautiful bay to one side, most often masked by hovels or piles of disorderly shops; steep hillsides to the other, hiding in their folds beautiful homes, even mansions. One endures… perhaps an hour. Finally, liberation… the road leads on into bayside country, gardens, fields, hamlet after hamlet of shops and homes. Then comes the turn to the south… and upwards, unrelentingly upwards for mile after mile. Bayside views give way to mountain vistas unsurpassed anywhere, heart-rendingly beautiful… and heart-breaking in their barrenness for, with rare exceptions, all the trees have been stripped away to provide, first, fuel for the sugar refineries, and later desperately-needed fuel for the peasants of the countryside and city. One may pass truckload after truckload of sacks of “charbon”, charcoal, the half-incinerated remains of the few trees which have managed to survive or push their way back skywards for a few years. Hillsides so steep it is hard to imagine how one could stand up on them… covered, where there yet remains a little arable earth, by row upon row (each row a couple of feet higher than the one below) of peanut plants. In the distance, the mountains reach into the clouds… the highest peaks (10,000 ft. +) higher than anything east of the Rockies. Finally, the summit is attained, and the view breaks out to the south… below, the coastal plains, beyond the Caribbean.
Along the way, one passes steadily from one village to another. Not a half-mile without habitations, peasants walking from one village to another, the inevitable tap-taps, pickup trucks or ancient schoolbuses bearing their human burdens, packed like sardines in a tin. Not degradation, but hardship, incredible hardship. Then, suddenly, in a village, a little open space covered by a leafy roof, and a crowd of people, enjoying an hour’s relief from their labors… and somehow, it’s all alright. This doesn’t relieve us of our responsibility, but it brings it to a human scale. No one with a conscience can pass through this without knowing that it presents us with a challenge, both material and spiritual, a Word direct: Go and proclaim!
Down, down, down… and finally the little town of Jacmel, a miniature of Port-au-Prince in its crowdedness, its confusion, its warren of streets, but on a more human, less terrifying scale. Here and there, survivors of an earlier, gentler era: tightly packed Victorian buildings, brightly painted; shops for the tourists (what tourists!? intrepid they must be!). Here are all the makings of a little mecca for adventurers… but daring and determined they must be. Beyond, the sea.
And finally, I arrive at
my destination… a little seaside hotel, a few miles from town, cast by
its proprietor as “a little bit of paradise”, advertised at its gates
“a portion of profits go to the SOS Children Fund.” I came here first
in desperate need of regroupment from the shock of Port-au-Prince. I
return because I love it… and because the natural inquisitiveness,
religious interest and openness of the people of Haiti led several
young folks on the first visit to follow me down the seaside and turn
my only “hike” (less than a half-mile as it turned out” into an
inquirer’s session. With fear and trembling (two years ago) I
undertook to explain Church history, in French, to a small group of
adolescents. Today, they are still few (and mostly different ones),
but every time I come, they come, and we talk some more. Some of them
have more than once made the (for them) awesome trek to Port-au-Prince,
solely in order to come to church services. Of such seeds is the
Kingdom sown.
Here, a cellphone. There, a peasant dragging, or being drug by, an ass.
Here, a busy international airport. There, a few yards away, an impossibly skinny cow picking in a garbage-heap.
Here,
a beautiful mansion. In what was once its coach-house, a shop renting
plywood for concrete forms… it’s too expensive to buy.
Here, within, a shop with the latest fashions from Paris. Directly in front, a garbage-strewn street so clogged with vendors it is all but impossible to walk.
Here, a great city. Nowhere to be seen a restroom accessible to the public… with predictable results.