Chewing Cane

A blog post by Adam. We are living in sugar cane country. Here in La Romana it seems that Central Romana, the country's largest sugar cane producer, controls everything. They own most of the city's waterfront property (a wonderful place for a walk or run if you're white and you're able to get past the security guards). They operate the city's fanciest hospital. They developed Casa de Campo, one of the DR's most exclusive and largest resorts, complete with four golf courses. And now that the sugar cane harvest is on, they have people working at their plant 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, churning out lots and lots of sugar.

All of that sugar cane comes from the fields surrounding La Romana, including all of the land around Guaymate, where Melissa is volunteering.  So in late November, while Leah was staying with Mina, Melissa brought home some raw sugar for us to sample.  The challenge is that if you don't buy sugar in a bag, you have to rip off the tough outer layer, before sucking on the sweet interior. Since I'm sure you're dying to see how this is done, here a few pictures to give you an idea...

Ripping off the tough cane exterior.

Almost ready for consumption.

Finally....sucking on the cane.

Mina, enjoying La Romana's finest crop.

History and Friendship in Cap Haitien

A blog post by Adam. Happily, our plane from Port-au-Prince landed in Cap Haitien without incident. We had a reservation at an extremely expensive hotel, and so we decided to stop by a cheaper alternative on our way, just to see if we could save a substantial amount of money. As it turns out, something about the smells, lack of light, and general security concerns made the the cheaper option a questionable proposition for even thrifty Sean or me.

The nicer hotel was much nicer, with good light and pleasant smells. Better than the hotel itself, however, was its location. Across the street from a bay, a long even clean streetlight-illuminated sidewalk straddled the sea wall along the water. Each of our three nights in Cap-Haitien we would stroll on this walkway, accompanied by Haitian walkers and students, who came to do their homework beneath the rare operational street lights. It was the nicest urban landscape we saw in Haiti and it was only steps from our hotel. Instantly we felt worlds away from Port-au-Prince.

Cap-Haitien would thus be a very different experience than our previous three days in Haiti. Whereas the capital had been an opportunity to experience Haiti's contemporary arts, Haiti's second city would be our chance to go into country's past. Our first stop was the Citadel and San Souci, possibly Haiti's most spectacular sight. Christophe, who ruled northern Haiti immediately following independence from France, built this impressive fortress and palace about 200 years ago. As always, the journey to the sight was as eventful as the sight itself. It involved a taxi, a tap tap, a walk, and then a long time on a horse up into the mountains. It was well worth it. The Citadel and its surroundings were like nowhere I had been. It is no wonder that this fortress built to protect Haiti from foreign invasion was never attacked. 

Melissa with her horse, Fifi.

Sean and Delcia pose with the Citadel

The Citadel with a view of the hills and the Caribbean in the background.

Christophe's palace, San Souci, was destroyed in an earthquake following his suicide (he was about to lose power and decided he would rather die than be ruled by someone else). Still, from what remains, it's clear it was a palace to rival any European palace of the time.

San Souci, still impressive even without a roof.

At its prime, the palace was full of busts imported from Europe. Today only this bust remains.

Having seen the splendor of Haiti immediately following independence on our first day in Cap-Haitien, we spent our second day seeing a little more recent history - the architecture of Cap-Haitien. While both humans and nature have destroyed the city five times since it was first founded several hundred years ago, its downtown still boasts beautiful architecture, full of color and balconies.

An example of Cap-Haitien architecture

Our final stops in Cap-Haitien included the bank and the city's only ATM machine, where we met a Chilean UN peacekeeper, a visit to the local beach, and a guest visit to a merchant marine English class. Once again Haiti's contrasts were ever present. The spectacular Citadel, beautiful architecture, and incredibly welcoming Haitians (the merchant marine school welcomed us in like we were celebrities...we were after all tourists in Haiti, which shocked them) in stark relief against a city with little infrastructure (only one ATM!), a history of violence (hence, the peacekeeper...although the peacekeeper said that the violence of a decade ago had mostly disappeared and his mission was now focused on various aid projects), and a lot of trash (it was the dirtiest beach I've ever seen...so dirty that we opted to stay out of the water).

After three blog posts on Haiti, I think it's pretty clear that it isn't such an easy place to travel (I even said so much in my first post). It's the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and the signs of poverty are ever present, even amid the country's tremendous artistic, historic, and natural beauty. Ultimately, it takes a certain kind of traveler to make the trip, and we were lucky enough to have friends who were up for the adventure. Leah, Sean and Delcia were wonderful travel companions and turned a challenging experience into an adventure. And of course without Melissa's French, it's hard to know how we might have survived. Going to Haiti was undoubtedly a unique opportunity, but I'm pretty sure I would never have done it alone. I'm happy I did it, but I'm even happier I had such great friends and a wonderful partner to do it with. 

Darkness and Art in Port-au-Prince

A blog post by Melissa and Adam. Haiti was an amazing and intense experience. And it started as soon as we arrived at the border. First, we had the interrogation. Then we had a slow going gravel road for many miles. And then we had the traffic. As we came into Port-au-Prince we rolled to a stop, at one point moving about five feet in a 30 minute span. Not only was traffic overwhelming, but this city of more than 2 million people was dark. Yes, it was night (after all, more than 10 hours had passed since our "six-hour" bus left Santo Domingo), but night in most cities is full of bright lights. Surrounded by hoards of people and cars and no electricity, the bus crawled through Port-au-Prince's suburbs, finally arriving 11 hours after departing. We were no longer in the Dominican Republic.

We were exhausted, but we decided to rally for a Thursday night RAM concert at the historic Olaffson Hotel. RAM is a Haitian "roots" band, that plays into the wee hours without fail every Thursday night. The music was loud and fast and the large band was accompanied by a trio of tireless dancers (check it out yourself here). While the darkness and crowds of hours before were one side of Port-au-Prince, this artistic music was another. In the days to come we wouldn't see tourists, but we would see more darkness, corner stores lit by candlelight and a vibrant culture teaming with artists and musicians.

We spent three days in Port-au-Prince. On our first day we visited both the national museum and the Iron Market. The museum was small but good - we learned a bit about Haitian history and saw the anchor from Columbus' Santa Maria. We also learned about Konpa, another form of  upbeat Haitian music. The Iron Market was beautiful in its own right, newly reconstructed following its destruction in the 2010 earthquake. We had our first taste of Haitian visual art, which was as colorful and interesting as the music from the night before.

The entrance to the reconstructed Iron Market.

More impressive than the Iron Market, however, was the informal market around the Market. For blocks and blocks and blocks (perhaps we should say miles and miles) the market spread out in every direction. The market had completely taken over some streets, leaving just enough space for a trim human to walk between stalls. On other streets, horns honked incessantly as drivers tried to weave through traffic, vendors, and endless streams of pedestrians. Everything was for sale. A small sampling of items for sale included rusty computer parts, food (prepared and raw), phones, shoes, clothes, books, hair products, plastics, and lots of bagged water.  And on the few patches of ground not occupied by human beings there were tons of trash, much of it a thick carpet of discarded plastic water bags. The trash presented a sad contrast to an otherwise lively market scene, including the beautiful Iron Market.

Your average Haitian market stall.

That night we made a picnic dinner on the terrace of our hotel, which looked over much of the city. Here and there lights appeared below, but it was far from a bright scene. With night falling on the scenery below, we planned a trip to Croix des Bouquets, an area of town with blocks and blocks of Haitian metalwork artisans. We hoped the next day's trip would bring more art and less darkness.

To get to Croix des Bouquets we had to take a tap tap, or the perfect representation of Haiti in vehicular form. Only in Haiti would public transportation become such an elaborate work of art. We also have rarely had a louder, less comfortable ride. Tap taps come complete with a blaring staring system and people are packed in like sardines. Nonetheless, with assistance from helpful and friendly Haitians, we safely made it we made it to the metal work center.

A tap tap, complete with a note to God in English (perhaps specially made for us non Haitian Kreyol speakers).

Not be topped by the tap taps, the art in Croix de Bouquet was also fantastic. Made out of pounded out, discarded steel drums, the men worked tirelessly. Some women in the shops told us that they made metal work, but we never saw a woman pounding the metal. The artists used rudimentary hammers and chisels to pound out delicate works of art. They created everything from trees to scenes of Haitian musicians to miniature tap taps. We likely visited at least 15 workshops, and purchased far less than we appreciated.

Pounding out art in Croix des Bouquets

This is an example of a finished product from a website that sells Haitian art. 

We returned to our hotel in the early evening, took a rest, and then headed out to find a nearby restaurant. Our hotel was located in one of the nicer parts of the city, full of very large houses and good hotels. Like the rest of the city, however, there were no street lights and very limited sidewalks. And as it turned out, there were no restaurants either, despite mention of restaurants in the guidebook. We returned to the hotel, where we ate our final dinner in Port-au-Prince. Whereas the day had been a feast of one of Haiti's greatest assets (the art), the night was a reminder of Haiti's struggles (a lack of light and tourist infrastructure).

Our final day in Port-au-Prince included a visit to the city's labyrinthine cemetery (full of art and disorganization), a stroll to an art collective (lots of phallic art), and a quick stop in Petionville, one of Port-au-Prince's nicest neighborhoods (where we bought yet one more piece of art). We ate some lunch and headed off to the airport. We leisurely waited at the terminal with Sean and Delcia, prepared to fly to Haiti's second biggest city, Cap Haitien, and Leah awaited her flight to Santo Domingo.

After 30 minutes of waiting we realized only Leah was in the correct terminal (international flights only). Upon realizing this fact, we frantically said goodbye to Leah and jumped in a cab to the domestic terminal (a ride that lasted 2 minutes and cost $25 US...and this was after a bit of haggling). It was a chaotic end to a chaotic mix of positive and sad feelings about our time in Port-au-Prince. We wondered what surprises Cap-Haitien would offer as we boarded a very small plane Melissa feared would go down somewhere in the mountains along the way.

Adam in front of our little plane, ready for more adventures.

Tourism without Tourists

A blog post by Adam. Crossing into Haiti was not quick. The Haitian boarder agent looked Sean and me up and down, scoured over our passports, and riddled us with questions. Everyone else (including Melissa and Delcia) went through in under a minute, but he spent a good five to ten minutes with each of us. Luckily a representative from the bus finally saved us, exclaiming the bus was about to leave without us. His suspicion could have been for many reasons. Our beards. Our matching Toros hats. Our strange zip-off travelers pants with lots of pockets. Or perhaps it was the fact that we claimed we were coming to Haiti as tourists.

As we soon learned, few people come to Haiti as tourists. People at our hotel estimated that five percent of their visitors are tourists. The rest are people working for NGOs or visiting the country on mission trips. The Lonely Planet states that two-thirds of Haitian tourists visit one beach on Haiti's north coast via cruise ship. Apparently they are told they are visiting Labadie, and never told they are in Haiti. And then there was our experience. We didn't talk to a single person who was visiting Haiti as a tourist. And every Haitian we met seemed shocked that we were there just as tourists. 

So who were the foreigners in Haiti if not tourists (since, as you might imagine, everyone we met at our two hotels was not Haitian)? There are business people. One American man at our Cap-Haïtien hotel was in eel baby fisheries. That is he caught baby eels in Haiti and shipped them live to Hong Kong where they became adult eels and then became dinner for humans. Apparently he had come to Haiti because Canadian and American eel fisheries no longer exist. Thank goodness Haiti has eels (and likely few regulations to control overfishing). 

But perhaps even more than business people there are NGO workers and their groups of volunteers. At our Port-au-Prince hotel there were a group of volunteers from Utah helping at a rehab center. As we would later learn, there are over 3,000 NGOs working in Haiti. With all those organizations and with all that money you might expect big things. 

It is possible that the NGOs have helped with post earthquake recovery. From what we saw there aren't lots of obvious signs of the devastating 2010 earthquake. Two of Port-au-Prince's most prominent churches are still in rubbles, but the tent camps and the various destroyed government buildings have mostly been carted away. That said, just about all commerce takes place on the streets and sidewalks, not inside buildings. Was it always like this because business people can't afford to pay for storefronts, or because the buildings are now too unsafe to occupy? Either way, even if the NGOs have helped with recovery, they certainly haven't elevated poverty in this very poor country. 

Which is strange, because the one thing they clearly have contributed to is the cost of traveling. With no budget travelers and instead primarily NGO workers with deep pockets, short term mission groups accustomed to North American prices, and foreign business people, Haitian hotel and restaurant prices are as high (or higher) than Israeli prices. And this in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. So in a strange way NGOs may have created worse conditions for tourism.

This is incredibly unfortunate because it's not so easy to travel in such a poor country to begin with. And then to have such high prices. Because aside from poverty and prices there are are many reasons for Haiti to be a tourist destination. First, it's proximity to the U.S. and Canada (where many people happen to speak French). Second, it's art and history are fascinating. The food is good too. Still, a thriving tourist industry is likely years or decades away. And so for now, most people who read this blog may have will have to stick with my brief trip-tick in the following blog entries....

Highs and Lows in the Dominican Alps

A blog post by Adam. First off, I don't think there is anything called the Dominican Alps, but I liked the way it sounded. There are, however, a series of mountain ranges in the Dominican Republic, with the largest in the center of the country around the quaint town of Jarabacoa. Being in the mountains, it's a bit cooler than the rest of the country and a popular weekend getaway for well-to-do Dominicans from Santo Domingo and Santiago - the DR's two largest cities. With a three day weekend and a visitor (family friend/pseudo cousin/god-sister Leah Ralph) in town, we decided to make it our own weekend destination.

We picked Leah up in Santo Domingo where she had been studying Spanish for a week and continued on up into the mountains. We had a reservation at Sonido del Yaque, a community based resort located just outside Jarabacoa. After a bit of searching we found the parking lot - a 45 degree sloping patch of gravel located just off of a curve of a narrow mountain highway, hovering inches above a series of ramshackle homes. We parked, wondering how we would we ever get the car off of this most precarious precipice. We then proceed by foot for 15 minutes down an extremely steep horse path to the village of Calabazas and Sonido del Yaque. When we arrived we were greeted by several friendly women who had no idea who we were and knew nothing about or reservation or the lunch we had pre-ordered. They agreed to whip up some rice and beans and we agree to wait, pondering our options. The rooms were the right price (it would be $12.50 for the four of us), but very basic (toilet, no toilet seat). The location was pretty, but swarming with biting insects. It was secluded, but down a very long path. It directly supported the community, but then there was the parking lot. By the time they served the food an hour and a half later, we had come to a decision. We would abandon the low lying Sonido del Yaque for a free and empty home perched high above Jarabacoa (owned by a Clinica de Familia board member). We treked back up the hill, solicited the help of a local to rescue our car from the parking lot, and went on our way. Already, we had experienced some ups and downs.

Before settling in at the free ridge-top house, we ventured farther up the mountains to Finca Altagracia, a coffee farm owned by Dominican American author Julia Alvarez. We took a tour through the beautiful grounds, picking a few of the sweetest oranges we have ever sampled along the way.

On our tour at Finca Altagracia.

After spending the night at the extremely comfortable home (complete with toilet seats), we ventured off higher into the mountains for a canyoning adventure. It included hiking and swimming through a river, jumping off rocks, zip lining, and rappelling down three waterfalls, one of which was about 100 feet tall. Mina declined to join us, but she happily documented our feat with her camera:



Melissa coming down the final waterfall.

All alive at the bottom.

That afternoon and following day we climbed up to and down to a few other dramatic waterfalls. The pine trees, the slightly cooler temperatures, and the silence at the mountain home where we slept, made it truly feel like a different country. It was wonderful.

Another beautiful waterfall.

A final waterfall.

Still, the high point was not the beautiful scenery but rather our time with Leah. I had never spent time with Leah without lots of other family around. It was great. She was so adventurous (she led the way on the canyoning adventure) and so easy going (if we had opted for Sonido del Yaque I have little doubt she wouldn't have objected). She had good stories and the great laugh that reminds me of her mom. Not that I was all that concerned, but she proved to be the ideal travelling companion. It's so nice to grow up and find that family (the people you're kind of stuck with for better or worse) are people you want to be around, people you would chose to spend time with of your own accord, not just out of obligation.

And it was good to be around family, including Leah, because we experienced one of the lowest moments of our six plus months away from home on our last night in Jarabacoa. We learned that our Great Aunt Margaret had passed away. We suspected that this might happen, given the fact that she went onto hospice just before our trip began, but it still wasn't easy. Only two weeks earlier my Great Uncle Sid had said she was doing so well. Mina, Leah, Melissa and I stayed up late talking to various family members on the phone and processing feelings of shock, sadness, and guilt for being so far away. We remembered Aunt Margaret. How she had always been so kind to us. How she always fed us so much. How she was always so committed to our Uncle Sid. We remembered Passovers together and Thanksgivings together. Just as it had been comforting to be with Mina to remember our grandfather, it was now helpful to have additional family, Leah, with us for this very low point up high in Jarabacoa.

Palito de Coco (an epilogue to the Constitutional Court Blog Post)

A blog post by Adam. This was originally part of the previous post, but it was so long I had to break it up. This will be shorter. I promise.

Amidst the craziness of the recent Dominican Constitutional Court ruling striping citizenship from thousands of Haitian Dominicans, a different kind of craziness swept the country. That is Palito de Coco craziness. 

Palito de Coco is a coconut treat sold on the street. It is a little ball covered in red syrup served on a stick. I don't know where you can get it in La Romana, and when I saw it in the capital something about the red syrup scared me. In other words, I have not tried it.

But the Palito de Coco sensation has little to do with red syrup or even coconut. Rather, it is all about a Youtube video featuring an undocumented Haitian Palito de Coco street vendor. Similar to other street vendors, this vendor accompanies his sweet treats with an extremely catchy tune. It is so catchy, in fact, that someone recorded and uploaded it to the Internet. It wasn't long before everyone was talking about it, it started getting play time on the radio, and people began singing it to one another on the street, at the beach, or even at work.  In a matter of weeks it became the Dominican Gangnam Style and it's singer became a national superstar.

You can't help but love it. You also can't help but wonder how an undocumented immigrant becomes a hero (now with his own music video) while the government dashes the hopes of thousands of undocumented immigrants. It is a crazy world.

With few answers, at least we can enjoy Palito de Coco...

Click here for his newly produced music video, including background dancers.

Flashbacks to Israel (and the Iraq War)

A blog post by Adam. What happens when you it takes more than a month to finish a blog post? Long. Winding. Endless. If you feel like that's enough for you, read no more. If you want to experience it for yourself, don't say I didn't warn you...

Israel and the DR really don't have all that much in common. Different language. Different religion. Different food. Different landscape. Different kind of loud (Israelis and Dominicans can both be loud, but Israelis are pushy and Dominicans are joyful).

And yet, over the past few months I've often reflected on Israeli injustices as we've watched a terrible injustice unfold here in the DR. The issue at stake is the rights of Haitian Dominicans, a topic I've blogged about twice (If you refused to visit countries with problems..., A final walk in Santo Domingo). When we first arrived, there was a growing movement of Dominicans of Haitian descent demanding Dominican citizenship and the official identity cards that come with it (necessary for everything from going to high school, to getting married, to legally working). The Dominican government generally denied Dominican citizenship to people born in the Dominican Republic to undocumented Haitian parents, leaving these people essentially stateless. Still, with much effort some Haitian Dominicans had indeed convinced the state to grant them IDs, including one of Melissa's coworkers. When we first arrived, the Haitian Dominicans we met said it was just a matter of time before everyone born in the DR, regardless of their parents' background, would be granted Dominican citizenship (and IDs).

Then on September 23 the Constitutional Court ruled that people with Haitian parents would not be granted citizenship. Even worse, they stated they would examine records back to 1929 to determine who no longer qualifies for Dominican citizenship. People who had never known any home but the DR were no longer Dominican and apparently never would be (the decisions of the constitutional court can not be appealed). Not surprisingly, international condemnation was widespread, from CARICOM (Caribbean intergovernmental organization) to Amnesty International. It was bad. Bad enough to be a top story in the NY Times...Interestingly, since I started writing this blog entry, many countries, including Spain, have come out in support of the ruling, agreeing with the court that this ruling helps the government better define the status of undocumented immigrants. I can't help but wonder if this is driven by these countries ambivalent relationship to their own undocumented immigrants.

By now, the Dominican government has completed it's review of documents back to 1929 and only found 24,932 children of foreigners who were "irregularly registered," including 13,672 descendants of Haitians. In other words 13,672 people who were formerly Dominican citizens are now "Haitians" although they've never set foot in Haiti. On top of this, there are many thousands more Haitian Dominicans who never had citizenship and never will (these are people who were so hopeful about a change in the law when we first arrived).  In total, including the 13,000 newly stateless, there are likely at least 35,000 (and probably many more) stateless Haitian Dominicans in the DR today.

I just don't understand why the DR has chosen this route. As far as I can see it's not just bad for humanity, it's also bad for the country. Just days after the court's ruling there was a lengthy article in a local paper lamenting the fact that only one quarter of Dominican jobs are in the formal sector. According to the article, the informal economy, "does not contribute to social development with taxes and thus benefits from subsidized transport, subsidized energy and infrastructure paid for by the formal sector." I'm not an economist, but that doesn't sound good. And yet, denying citizenship to people who know no country aside from the Dominican Republic, essentially forces all of these people into the informal sector (or worse....my guess is not being allowed to go to high school might be related to criminality...remember, without documents you can't go to high school, let alone get a legal job). What then is the point?

Which brings me back to Israel. In Israel we saw all sorts of policies that seemed bad for the country. Some of these policies affected Palestinians and others affected Israeli citizens (Ethiopian Jews and Bedouins). In many cases there has been international condemnation, and yet, the government moves forward. Why? And why is the same thing happening in the DR, a country seemingly so different from Israel? And what about the US and the Iraq War? What is it? Xenophobia, racism, revenge, stupidity? Some things I may never understand...