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Day 21, Or, My First Roadblock
Jul. 25th, 2010 09:52 pmLast night I was in the office working on some Coq proofs (or trying to, anyway) when M., another volunteer, came in and asked if I wanted to go on a hike to see a waterfall tomorrow (Sundays are our day off). I didn't require much persuasion. So today at 7am, 17 of us stood outside the mini-bus M. had reserved, which (they'd promised her) would be big enough for 15 people. The bus seated 10, including the driver. But not to fear, they could send out a second bus for just $20 more! So whatever. And before long, we took off along a series of increasingly bumpy, then increasingly steep roads to go see the Bassins Bleu. Eventually we were on a winding mountain road that just went up and up and up. But then the road was closed! Fortunately, the driver asked some local people and we got directed to a route that would get us to a different point along the river. We kept bouncing up impossibly narrow gravel roads (one of which had a "22% Grade") sign.
The plan had been for an hour-and-a-half hike to the waterfall, but Plan B ended up taking us almost all the way there in the buses. Oh, well. The experience when we arrived was more or less what the Lonely Planet guide said it would be: local people offering to be our guides, us saying "no", them following us anyway. We walked over rocks and through the river to see the first two waterfalls, which had me thinking that I'd seen better in Ithaca (or Oregon, for that matter). To get to the third waterfall, Bassin Claire, we had to rappel down a cliff (using a rope supplied by the guides who'd attached themselves to us) for a short distance -- though once we got there, I realized we could have just as well gotten there by swimming.
Bassin Claire, well, that was worth seeing. We took off whatever we were wearing our swimsuits on the rocks and jumped into a very blue pool surrounded by pale cliffs, and the braver people in our group (not me) climbed the rocks next to the waterfall to dive into the water from about 50 feet up. (Actually, I thought I was really brave for jumping in from the lowest rock, which was about 4 feet above the surface.)
That was pretty fun, then we ate the food we'd purchased at a gas station supermarket along the way (bread soaked in evaporated milk for me, because I'd already eaten the bag of Combos I got.) We split into two groups, one of which headed straight back to base; the rest of us wanted to go see Jacmel. This was sometime between 3-4 pm. After an even more impossibly bumpy ride, we got to a very crowded but still pretty beach in Jacmel. We didn't end up going in the water, although it looked like that would have been fun. We did have some beer, though I had rum, which I poured into a coconut that I bought and drank out of it, mixed with the coconut water. (I also ended up with about twice as much rum as I wanted, and paying accordingly, due to language barriers. Oops.) We figured we needed to leave before 6 if we wanted to get back to the base not too much after dark.
That was all fine and good, until -- once we were back on the main, winding mountain road -- we got to a roadblock. At first, we thought that there had been an accident and people had blocked of the road in protest over the police not arriving. Then, it started looking more like the roadblock was a political demonstration (we never quite figured out what the protestors were protesting). So we all got out of the bus and tried not to look too American. Fortunately, there were a few fruit stands, and I used a deft combination of French and pointing to acquire three huge avocados and a big bag of guavas for 50 gourdes (a little over US$1). The guavas turned out to be different from fresh guavas I've had in SoCal -- much harder, with less good stuff in the inside, but the pulp is still delicious. Somehow there was something reassuring about the presence of women selling fruit and, slightly in the distance, a group of children singing -- this didn't seem the setting for a violent riot to break out. But it was getting dark, and we started to wonder how late we'd be waiting. There was an alternate road back to Leogane, but it would take 4 hours instead of 2, and none of us liked the idea of being on those roads after dark -- plus, what if there were more roadblocks? We ran into another HODR volunteer who'd arrived in a different group who said he'd heard that it was announced at a UN security meeting that the roadblocks were systematically being erected by "militant groups" (I don't know what that's code for). We thought it would be best for us to go back to Jacmel and spend the night in a hotel there, but our drivers were pretty set on getting back to Leogane, and thought the roadblock would be lifted soon. Fortunately, they were right, and without too much to-do we were on our way.
There was something very strange about being on a car ride that was that long and not seeing any lights (aside from our headlights) anywhere. Towns and cities aren't lit up at night here. The hills look more mysterious in the dark than they probably have a right to. And the moon was full.
We made it back to base at 8:30, I ate an avocado for dinner, the end.
For reasons I'm not sure I'll articulate now or at all, I'm leaving Haiti a bit more than two weeks earlier than planned; I was planning to leave for my mental health break in Puerto Rico this Friday, and I still am; I'm just not coming back. I'll be back in Portland late at night on August 2.
Anyone who's leaving here gets to make a speech at one of the daily meetings if they so choose. Something one of the volunteers said during her speech was something like -- "even when you try to give, you always end up getting more than you give." I've come to see that that's true, and also that what Haiti has to give would be mostly wasted on me. That seems like a waste, and so I'm leaving to make space (if only figuratively, since new volunteers don't come here on a moment's notice) for people who have more passion for the work that remains to be done here. I've also come to see that whether you love what you're doing and love the reasons for what you're doing shows through in your work, even if you're just shovelling rocks. This is less to say that anyone has a great passion for shovelling rocks in and of itself (which they probably don't) and more to say that there's a difference between "someone should do this" and "I want to do this"; a difference between wanting to change a situation out of an abstract sense of justice and out of love for the people involved; and thinking about those differences, it makes me feel more and more uncomfortable to fake what I don't feel. Even for two weeks.
If this all sounds like a giant cop-out, then maybe it is. But I just can't see how I can serve anyone by being here out of a sense of obligation; not when I can see around me that most of the other folks volunteering at HODR are driven by so much more than that.
Maybe someday I'll be back, maybe not; in the meantime, I'll do what I do best and what I love most, and try to sit with the painful reality that that isn't something particularly relevant to anyone's immediate needs.
The plan had been for an hour-and-a-half hike to the waterfall, but Plan B ended up taking us almost all the way there in the buses. Oh, well. The experience when we arrived was more or less what the Lonely Planet guide said it would be: local people offering to be our guides, us saying "no", them following us anyway. We walked over rocks and through the river to see the first two waterfalls, which had me thinking that I'd seen better in Ithaca (or Oregon, for that matter). To get to the third waterfall, Bassin Claire, we had to rappel down a cliff (using a rope supplied by the guides who'd attached themselves to us) for a short distance -- though once we got there, I realized we could have just as well gotten there by swimming.
Bassin Claire, well, that was worth seeing. We took off whatever we were wearing our swimsuits on the rocks and jumped into a very blue pool surrounded by pale cliffs, and the braver people in our group (not me) climbed the rocks next to the waterfall to dive into the water from about 50 feet up. (Actually, I thought I was really brave for jumping in from the lowest rock, which was about 4 feet above the surface.)
That was pretty fun, then we ate the food we'd purchased at a gas station supermarket along the way (bread soaked in evaporated milk for me, because I'd already eaten the bag of Combos I got.) We split into two groups, one of which headed straight back to base; the rest of us wanted to go see Jacmel. This was sometime between 3-4 pm. After an even more impossibly bumpy ride, we got to a very crowded but still pretty beach in Jacmel. We didn't end up going in the water, although it looked like that would have been fun. We did have some beer, though I had rum, which I poured into a coconut that I bought and drank out of it, mixed with the coconut water. (I also ended up with about twice as much rum as I wanted, and paying accordingly, due to language barriers. Oops.) We figured we needed to leave before 6 if we wanted to get back to the base not too much after dark.
That was all fine and good, until -- once we were back on the main, winding mountain road -- we got to a roadblock. At first, we thought that there had been an accident and people had blocked of the road in protest over the police not arriving. Then, it started looking more like the roadblock was a political demonstration (we never quite figured out what the protestors were protesting). So we all got out of the bus and tried not to look too American. Fortunately, there were a few fruit stands, and I used a deft combination of French and pointing to acquire three huge avocados and a big bag of guavas for 50 gourdes (a little over US$1). The guavas turned out to be different from fresh guavas I've had in SoCal -- much harder, with less good stuff in the inside, but the pulp is still delicious. Somehow there was something reassuring about the presence of women selling fruit and, slightly in the distance, a group of children singing -- this didn't seem the setting for a violent riot to break out. But it was getting dark, and we started to wonder how late we'd be waiting. There was an alternate road back to Leogane, but it would take 4 hours instead of 2, and none of us liked the idea of being on those roads after dark -- plus, what if there were more roadblocks? We ran into another HODR volunteer who'd arrived in a different group who said he'd heard that it was announced at a UN security meeting that the roadblocks were systematically being erected by "militant groups" (I don't know what that's code for). We thought it would be best for us to go back to Jacmel and spend the night in a hotel there, but our drivers were pretty set on getting back to Leogane, and thought the roadblock would be lifted soon. Fortunately, they were right, and without too much to-do we were on our way.
There was something very strange about being on a car ride that was that long and not seeing any lights (aside from our headlights) anywhere. Towns and cities aren't lit up at night here. The hills look more mysterious in the dark than they probably have a right to. And the moon was full.
We made it back to base at 8:30, I ate an avocado for dinner, the end.
For reasons I'm not sure I'll articulate now or at all, I'm leaving Haiti a bit more than two weeks earlier than planned; I was planning to leave for my mental health break in Puerto Rico this Friday, and I still am; I'm just not coming back. I'll be back in Portland late at night on August 2.
Anyone who's leaving here gets to make a speech at one of the daily meetings if they so choose. Something one of the volunteers said during her speech was something like -- "even when you try to give, you always end up getting more than you give." I've come to see that that's true, and also that what Haiti has to give would be mostly wasted on me. That seems like a waste, and so I'm leaving to make space (if only figuratively, since new volunteers don't come here on a moment's notice) for people who have more passion for the work that remains to be done here. I've also come to see that whether you love what you're doing and love the reasons for what you're doing shows through in your work, even if you're just shovelling rocks. This is less to say that anyone has a great passion for shovelling rocks in and of itself (which they probably don't) and more to say that there's a difference between "someone should do this" and "I want to do this"; a difference between wanting to change a situation out of an abstract sense of justice and out of love for the people involved; and thinking about those differences, it makes me feel more and more uncomfortable to fake what I don't feel. Even for two weeks.
If this all sounds like a giant cop-out, then maybe it is. But I just can't see how I can serve anyone by being here out of a sense of obligation; not when I can see around me that most of the other folks volunteering at HODR are driven by so much more than that.
Maybe someday I'll be back, maybe not; in the meantime, I'll do what I do best and what I love most, and try to sit with the painful reality that that isn't something particularly relevant to anyone's immediate needs.