(no subject)

[the_siobhan]

Port au Prince manages to be both the most depressing and the most invigorating place I have ever been.

The entire city is grey when you see it from the air because everything is built out of cement. On ground level it is incredibly dusty. Walls have tipped over into piles of rubble that cover the sidewalks, giant potholes have fallen out of the roads. Gratings have rusted away from where they used to protect people from falling into the storm drains leaving gaps large enough to swallow both me and BC. The street our guesthouse is on is nothing but a alleyway between the houses with a crumbled rock surface. The cement crumbles into dust that blows over every surface. The water isn't drinkable. There is electricty for just a few hours in the evening.

And amid all this are millions of people. The walls of every building are covered in things they are trying to sell; clothes, paintings, jewelery, toiletries, candy, furniture - I saw a kitchen sink at one point and howled. Everybody dresses in bright colours and the school kids wear matching uniforms. I'm fascinated by the women who seem to comfortably manage the unsteady footing in dresses and high heels. The cement buildings are often half-finished with rebar sticking out of the top; as people earn enough money to buy more cement they add another room or start on the next floor. When a floor is finished they paint it in bright oranges and pinks and greens. The tap-taps - buses built out of flat-bad trucks with tin roof and benches running down the sides - are a riot of paint with religious slogans painted everywhere, even on the windows.

There are people everywhere - I guess there's not a lot of point in hanging out in the house if you have no power. They are fascinated by us and just crack right up when we wave or say hello. A surprising number of them speak at least a little bit of English. People offer us directions and ask where we are from on a regular basis.

I'm itchy from about a million bug bites, headachy from the sun (it's hanging about three inches over my head, I swear) and I'm wishing I brought my boots because the streets are brutal on the feet. And I'm having a whale of a time.

Comments

[cris.livejournal.com]

their tap taps kinda sound like our jeepneys (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeepney).

population density has always been one of the more striking differences between the developed and developing world. that and general pungency of food and fruits left to ripen on tropical streets.

[panic-girl.livejournal.com]

So here's a question; if there's scanty electricity, where's the wireless (I assume) coming from?

[redcountess]

Wow, I couldn't do it, but it sounds amazing :)

[cris.livejournal.com]

have private generator will travel, I assume.

when I was growing up in the Philippines, most middle class family had some type of diesel electricity generator in their backyard to make up for the frequent brownouts and power outages. Owning a refrigerator would've been pointless otherwise.

[panic-girl.livejournal.com]

Perhaps that, but I was thinking more along the lines of, given that the country's infrastructure is such that the electricity doesn't work, how the heck do they have internets?

[cris.livejournal.com]

ah.

well, I can't speak for Haiti, but in general, power outages tend to be more like power rationing than a general outage. Even in the midst of an outage, you'll still find critical infrastructure like, say, hospitals running with full electricity. It's usually a combination of trickle flow from the power station supplemented by on-site generators at the facility.

it's not that electricity doesn't work, it's just electricity as a public utility isn't available all of the time. so people who can afford to, make do with their methods for generating shortfall.

[eveofdstruction.livejournal.com]

You are my favorite travel writer ever . It sounds amazing.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Here the hospitals have to run generators. The power goes mainly to the big factories, the UN building, the government buildings.

Sister Mary has a bank of batteries to store power for during the day. She shuts off anything that takes a lot of juice (like the fridge) but apparently the wireless is ok.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

As cris said, it's not that the electricity doesn't work, it's that there isn't enough to go around.

Those who can afford it can manage to get it. We can afford it.

[panic-girl.livejournal.com]

So same goes with the internet then? My question is more about the internet than electricity. Is it DSL? Cable? Satellite? Curious is all.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

Satellite. There's a dish on the roof. Sister Mary has a wireless router in her office.

[panic-girl.livejournal.com]

Gotcha.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

population density has always been one of the more striking differences between the developed and developing world

I think that's part of it, but not all. Those of us in the Anglo-Saxon world think that being all insular in your own home is the global norm, when it's not[1]. There's more people in public spaces in most of continental Europe than there are in the English-speaking world. There's people everywhere in Argentina too, and while their standard of living may not quite be ours, it's hardly the developing world. But the social norm there is to take the whole family and hang out in public places.

[1] Or it could be an artefact of a good portion of the year being too bloody dark and cold to go outside.