Approaching the end of another adventure, we get up at 3.30, in Madame Clem's house, Au Centre village, and set off in pitch dark before 4am up into the hills to catch the bus to Port au Prince. Luckily here the mobile phones have built-in flashlights, my Maglite flash gets feeble quickly so I trade, the villagers could do this walk in the dark, it's the twice weekly market route, and the daily work and school commute for many.
Somehow it seems quicker than usual to reach the top in the dark, or at least it comes unexpectedly for me, probably because it's cooler at night. The path is mule- and walker-width, all slippery stones that roll underfoot, between flatter muddy stretches, not as slick as feared when the rain started again briefly at 3am - it was never really hard rain yesterday and intermittent, extraordinary luck. My friends have been worrying about whether I will make it to Beaumont with them, (many other options have been discarded, taking a motorbike to another town in the opposite direction further along the bus route for instance, as that road is now too slick for safety) - I don't really have any choice as my flight is the next day, and they are babying me as usual.
We are a group of four men and two women, three of us (Timo, myself, and Timo's nephew Blaise) going to Port au Prince, and the other three are self-appointed porters of the luggage! The men wear their "house" shorts, so that their long pants will not be splashed with mud they will put them on at Tita's house which is right where the bus stops. Once there (it only took an hour and twenty minutes in the dark, as opposed to my usual hour for the walk) I change clothes and wash the red mud off my feet, though the stains it leaves on light skin will be there for several days. Our 'porters' take off the camouflage jackets they wore against the night chill, it's 5000 ft above sea-level here, and they are often chilled when I am relishing the coolness. They are all small except Timo, and wearing various types of ladies' flip-flop sandals - whatever fits goes. Once it's light every sack and bag is repacked, (a great quantity of fruit, beans, maize, and cassava bread is accompanying us). The sun lights up the tops of the coconut palms opposite, and a neat little black hen with four chicks searches the verandah for crumbs from our bread rolls, we drink té sel, a bouillon cube and some herbs infused in hot water. The hedges are entirely hibiscus bushes, and in Tita's garden five or more grapefruit (shaddeck) trees have at least a thousand ripe fruit. Timo has gone off to return the cassava-seller's basket and get onto the bus at an earlier stop in town, in case of problems. Several more young men arrive to say goodbye at 5am - almost the normal hour here and no hardship, and to get their instructions for the upcoming week, all seem to be involved in Timo's village projects. People start going past en route to the big Tuesday market. Even here in the town a boy of six or so goes by with a bundle on his head, wearing absolutely nothing but an undershirt that barely reaches his navel. No-one takes notice of course.
My knees are still shaky from the descent but this whole trip I have not fallen once, assisted by the mainly dry weather and the Landsend hiking sandals!
The bus driver had phoned us at 2.45 to say the bus had left Jeremie, 3 to 4 hours drive away, so it's expected around 6.30. There are reserved seats for us! Last time we had to do this trip by motorbike (without helmets or in one case, brakes!) for four and a half hours to meet another bus halfway to the capital, the Jeremie-PaP bus never left at all that day...
At 6.30 the bus does arrive and we are aboard and moving in five minutes in spite of an argument... the reservations were made days ago but the money was couriered to the wrong bus driver so this one wants Timo to pay again. He doesn't and it all settles down. The tickets cost around 500 Gourdes or 12.50 US depending on the price of gasoline... Blaise is alone at the back where suitcases keep toppling onto him, I have my privileged seat left front behind the driver with both a window and an air-vent, plus Timo between me and the world... he has even paid for an extra seat so that we are not squashed! It's a quieter crowd than my last trip, mainly adults and a couple of trussed fighting cocks, plus the jokey conductor. We make excellent time all day but this is due to the recklessness of the driver, which causes much muttering and complaint - he "klaxons" constantly, hovers in the opposite lane where the road is wide enough to be two-lane, forces smaller vehicles aside and takes corners too fast. The bus company, Ange de Dieu (Angel of God), has three buses but five drivers, this one is new and thought to be 'too young'... Our bus is Ange de Dieu 3, though the only wings are those painted on the plywood Boeing 747 that forms the luggage rack on top. Two young men ride atop to stow luggage, covering it with a tarpaulin if it rains, they also clamber up and down to remove loose rocks from the road, help with flat tires on this and passing buses, plus running repairs, and couriering envelopes and packages in care of the driver. The bus is an American school bus ( I wish I knew what vintage) with the capacity figures carefully removed... extra seats are added by means of selling three tickets for each double seat and then another for the aisle, where a piece of plywood with a cushion is placed across the gap... we are now 7 across rather than 4 per row! At least there are no goats or piglets...
The first half of the route is less than two lanes wide over muddy pot-holed flats and alarming slopes of rolling fist-to-head-sized stones, (a Belgium firm has just started the contract to improve and asphalt all the way to the western tip of the island, 35 years after the plan was first proposed). There are frequent hamlets and villages, smartly turned out schoolchildren trot along in gingham shirts and matching skirts or shorts between peasant farmers with mules, bundles of harvested bean-stalks five feet wide on their heads, tied up in huge cloths ready to be dried and threshed. Vendors, or marchands, some walking with their tables on their heads so that they appear to be caged, carry their wares in buckets or baskets in each hand. Almost all the livestock is small and scrawny, little black horses and pigs, mainly brown mules and goats, scavenging dingo-type dogs. There are many children not enrolled in school, tagging along in rags or a shirt but no shorts.
After the 10am "lunch" stop at Camp Perrin, where a small restaurant serves a good styrofoam box lunch - baked chicken drumstick, mildly spicy sauce, rice and beans, a leaf or two of salad and crispy fried banana slices - for $2.50 (100 gourdes) - with bottled soda at 5 gourdes or 12c US - we are back on the tarred road, except where the surface has eroded completely or on the detours caused by flooding last year.
Now we go faster than anyone except the driver would like...
After Au Cayes (Les Cayes on many maps) one of the carnival-barker style vendors jumps on and persuades for an hour, talking non-stop and handing out candy, samples of some tonic in a rum-bottle cap, and spraying perfume about. He doesn't seem to sell much of his stock of lotions and potions for the effort. Other vendors jump on and off at different corners, with cold sodas, trays of fried foods (hot-dogs, crispy banane pesé or fried plantains, other crunchy bits), cassava bread in giant circles folded in quarters, a sort of gingerbread, and peanut-brittle-type sweets...
The road slows at Leogane, where the market is strung out along the road for several miles it seems, the marchands wearing their huge traditional straw hats, wider than their shoulders, against the coastal heat.
We reach Port au Prince at 3pm, very early, in spite of five stops to help the bus in front of us with an unexplained mechanical problem and once a flat tire, at Dichetty not long after we'd gotten going. There were also several "chat" stops with other drivers of heavy vehicles, and a police check of the driver's license and vehicle papers.
Our first sight is the harbor - three ancient-looking fishing boats under sail, a motor-skiff full to the gunnels with men and nets, then a solitary fiberglass 40' yacht and a motor-trawler (confiscated?) anchored next to a police station, behind them is the modern container-port. Then the city, flat but growing by the hour towards the Apocalypse, up small hills with the smoke of smoldering piles of trash visible for miles, reeking of plastic. This is Port au Prince.
Anything that can be bought in a store can also be bought on the sidewalk or between the buildings where an illegal concrete shack hasn't already filled the space - witness: wedding dresses, iron gates, carved bedsteads, out of date medicines in blister packs arranged in huge cones exposed all day to the sun, coffins, violently colored orange drinks poured into used bottles with a straw, refilled without washing or replacing the straw for the next customer!
At the stop along Grand Rue (Boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessalines) at last - the bus pulls up close to a pile of spare tires, constricting the doorway, we step down into the fumes of heated rubber as a blow-torch is used to weld patches onto the inner-tubes. (It reminds me of how bicycle tires are repaired without patches or glue in the villages - a string is tied tightly around the pinched-off damaged area, so that the tube resembles a loop of warty sausage). The game-birds squawk as they are handed down, the first sound they've made all day. Men wait with wheelbarrows to take luggage to taxis, we are being met here, so deprive them of their rightful work, causing consternation. It is so unusual for a foreigner to take these buses that no-one quite knows what to make of me, the most obvious "étranger" being a white female... Even speaking French and some Creole will never make me part of this society, where I will always be an observer, and in a small way an adventurer.
