Tourism in Port au Prince

Easter Sunday. Just coming to midday and I'm trying to motivate myself to work this afternoon with little success. Why work when there is a load of books to read, gorgeous weather and walks outside and a balcony to lounge on? Not to mention blogs to write...

Anyway, my flat is looking fantabulous at the mo - Mary and I went on a bit of a shopping spree at a plant shop (not entirely sure what they're called) and bought loads of plants, both large and small. The place now looks a lot more lived in. Add a rug or two, and some bright paintings and this will finally be a home.

Our shopping spree was just after a pretty satisfying morning sightseeing around Champs des Mars - a huge area comprising most of the tourist sights in PAP including their Presidential Palace, a number of statues to the founders of Haiti, museums and green spaces. Except for a number of child beggers pestering you, a great place to just lounge around actually.

As promised, here are a few pics. This one of me modelling the palace itself:

And this severe looking bloke is Toussaint L'Ouverture, the original former slave general who first defeated the French before being betrayed and captured by them and die of starvation in a French gaol:

And this is the most famous article of their Constitution written in 1801 - three years before the world's first black republic became a reality. Erected by Aristide and with bird droppings on it, the monument still has a pride about it. For those of you who can't read French, it translates roughly as "Slaves cannot exist on this territory. Slavery is abolished forever. All men born here live and die free."


There's something so stark and yet so passionate about those simple statements that made it profoundly moving - especially the mention of dying free. Reading about those times while being here has hit home to me emotionally just how soul-grindingly awful those times were, and the sheer pride Haitians have in their defeat of their victory over their former slave owners. Makes you realise the huge ambiguity that they feel towards the huge number of foreign NGOs, not to mention the huge UN mission here.

After that, we walked around the market nearby which struck me as very similar to many African markets I'd been to before. And then we found our driver and had an extremely overpriced lunch at the Hotel Oloffson - a hotel made famous by Grahame Greene's book "The Comediens" and, in its heyday housed two former Presidents and a number of artists and celebrities. Very much like most of the other places Grahame Greene appears to have stayed in, it has that faded spendour about it, along with a slight seedy quality. Definitely atmospheric but not really a place I'd really want to stay in...



I have never really like Graham Greene in the few books I've read by him - he's one of those writers that I read more because I feel I should than because of any real liking for him. I find his complex characters fascinating, and he was certainly extrememly perceptive about the political and social intrigue in the places that he visited or lived in. However, although I'm certain that it was well-earned by him (unlike the vast majority of those who proclaim themselves cynics), I cannot much like his patented world-weary cynicism and detachment. It always strikes me as the easy way out - both personally and artistically. I think I find it even more frustrating because he is one of the few popular writers who do write intellligently about countries and issues that I'm interested in. And really, does that Catholic guilt thing have to turn up in every single book he writes?

Anyway, better conclude with a pic of the sunset from my balcony as I promised my cousin. Not bad, huh?

Enforced laziness and hot sex on my balcony...

Was planning on spending Good Friday in the office tying up a number of loose ends without the incessant bother of other people (other people - grrr). Planned exactly what I'd planned to do today, got everything ready right down to getting my boss to come in in the morning to turn the server on (don't ask). And what happened to These Best Laid Plans? Came into the office, turned on the generator, turned on my MP3 player plus portable speakers, danced around the office to Guns and Roses exhorting me to live and let die, turned on my computer. Nothing happened. Turned on the lights. Nothing happened. Turned on the fan. Nothing happened. All this while the generator was happily humming in the background.

Fuck.

The really annoying thing was that I thought about saving a lot of the stuff I needed onto my flashdisk yesterday afternoon but decided against it because I knew I would be coming in today and wanted a complete evening off. I kept thinking that if only I took a few minutes to save stuff, I wouldn't be in such a fix. "If only" - the most dangerous words in the English language.

The upside to all of this was that I basically just spent this afternoon on my balcony in my bikini (yes, I finally plucked up the courage to wear it. On a private balcony.) sunning myself and reading a romance set in the Middle Ages with knights and outlaws and Robin Hood, and plenty of hot sex. There are worse ways of spending a sunny afternoon...

But now, I've got the guilt. So much to do, and very little time to do it all. Am currently hosting our new Assistant Country Director of Programmes until her new flat is ready towards the end of April. She is a fantastic Ugandan lady with oodles of experience and with a definite appreciation for the importance of finance (not to mention a Cordon Bleu chef - we lucked out there!). We've been spending a long time talking about the structural issues of our organisation: mostly unsustainably number of tiny projects that we have and the frankly ridiculous number of sub-par staff we have to manage them.

Coming from a relief background, I'm used to working with severe chronic shortages of staff managing fewer but much larger projects completely funded by institutional donors. I'm also used to working in an environment where things move extremely quickly out of necessity and which is basically completely results-orientated. I know that in a development context, how you do things is often just as important as what you do and that you can't expect things to move as quickly when you're trying to "build capacity" as opposed to just getting things done. But bloody hell, is it frustrating. And the sheer lack of discipline in terms of financial management is really annoying simply because we have the luxury of a large amount of unrestricted income.

Our structure here makes no sense. We carry out 18 different projects with a total funding of around EUR5m. You can do the sums but it's basically a nightmare to manage and really really bitty to the extent that I'm not sure how much sustained impact we can be having being spread out so thinly. And we have one Project Manager for each project. Count them. They are not even managing their entire project budget - just the direct costs - and we still have one Project Manager for each project. And they still have difficulties managing their budgets. And don't talk to me about how much they're getting paid.

Anyway, rant over and onto pleasanter things: planning on doing plenty of touristy things tomorrow (Champs de Mars, here we come!) so get ready for some gorgeous pics. Thinking also about picking up some nice works of art for my rather bare flat. Hmmmnn. Something to take my mind of the amount of work to do on Sunday...

Voudou Rock - bon bagai!!

Hell yeah, baby...

It's about time, I know: I've been here 6 weeks and this is the first Haiti gig I've been to. Apart from that small Karnaval thing. But my God, the Boukman Experience were fucking amazing. Screaming guitars, merciless hypnotic djembe drums, haunting vocals... Got to that part of the night when I was so tired I was falling asleep on my feet but still couldn't stop dancing. Give me some dead chickens and I'm so there.

This isn't really typical of their music but I really love the retro feel of this video. This probably says a lot about me but I find the bit when the signer unceremoniously kicks the woman off the stage to be really funny:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBSuIy-C0Dg&feature=related

And while I'm in a YouTube mood, here's THE Karnaval song for 2008 sung by Ram with an appropriately cheesy video. You laugh but don't tell me you're not tapping along...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6PFMTSFseo&feature=related

The song's about Jean-Jacques Dessaline, the man who defeated the French and declared Haitian independence in 1804. He's the one who ripped out the white out of the French flag (the Haitian flag is still blue and red) and declared that no white man could possess property in Haiti. Of course, he also massecred any remaining whites on the island declaring that "we have repaid these cannibals, war for war, crime for crime, outrage for outrage." Not surprising that he's less of a popular figures outside Haiti than his predecessor Toussaint L'Ouverture who had the good fortune to die in a French gaol before having his chance at revenge. And needless to say, he is an extremely popular patriotic hero over here.

Looking back on what I've written on this blog so far, it's been mostly navel-gazing and very little about Haiti itself. This is mostly because I haven't had the chance to find out much about the country -most days I work, go home, work some more, read a little and then sleep - yes, tres exciting. I'm very sheltered from the realities of life here - I've been so busy at work, I haven't even had the chance to visit the field proper to see the kinds of projects we do. And even outside work, because of security we normally drive everywhere (yes, in those 4WD that I used to sneer at before I became an aid worker), and most of the people that I mix with socially outside work are other expats. Hoping to change this in the near future...

In terms of my initial impressions of the country, I'm not sure how much they can be trusted. For instance, I feel very safe walking around Petionville - it was only when I started to hear more and more stories of kidnappings for ransom and near misses that I started to take the security guidelines a lot more seriously - especially when most of the stories came from local staff.

Another thing I have trouble with is the male/dynamic: when I was talking to my flatmate last night about the case studies she's been evaluating as part of the micro-finance project - one of the things that she mentions that really struck her was how socially acceptable it is for men among the poorer classes to not only have a number of women "on the go" in mostly informal relationships (which is sadly not all that uncommon in the world) but also to not suppport their resultant families in any way when they leave. Even middle-class men apparently have this attitude of "why not". What's more surprising is that the women apparently expect this from the very beginning but still allow themselves to be used - and this is more out of emotional needs rather than economic necessity being as these jerks don't stay around long enough to be economically useful.

In my experience, this only seems to happen when there is a large power gap between men and women, and where there are no other compensating social pressures such as religion or custom which, whatever their faults, do force a certain amount of responsibility on the men. However, my impressions were that gender inequality in Haiti was much less than in other countries I've worked or travelled in. A large amount of this is evidently class-based, but Haitian women as a rule don't seem to be wilting flowers who are prepared to swallow any amount of abuse from their menfolk.

Anyway, don't know how this blog went from voudou rock to gender issues but probably should stop there. All the best and hope no one sticks any pins into your doll tonight...

I'm still alive...

I survived last weekend. And, with the full benefit of hindsight, it was mostly pretty enjoyable. I could have done without that tortuous climb up the mountain pass (think of that bit in Fellowship of the Ring without the snow) where I had to stop every 5 seconds to relieve the pain in my thighs while locals with flip flops and half their worldly possessions on their heads scampered past, but I did it. Yay me!

Have to say, though, that the views themselves were gorgeous but not sublimely so – perhaps I’ve been spoilt by other parts of the worlds (most recently, Jordan) but what struck me most about the mountain scenery, at least on the first day, was just how bare it was. And it wasn’t the natural starkness of a semi-desert, but an artificial emptiness brought about by decades of concentrated deforestation – often with the odd surviving lone tree. It’s actually rather heart-breaking to see and think that these mountainsides were once lush and verdant – apparently still are in the neighbouring Dominican Republic.

Anyway, here are a couple of pics - judge for yourself:

And here's where we stayed the night. Had a fireplace and everything:

Group-wise, there were about ten of us: mostly my colleagues but some other hangers-on. One of the main reasons I went was the whole fellowship in adversity thing ie getting to know people that I’ll probably be spending a lot of time with. To a large extent, it worked in that I feel pretty much at ease with most of them. I’m not completely comfortable but then it normally takes years for me to get to that stage.

This week’s been pretty full-on with three days of MANGO training (most of which I skipped – naughty me ;-)) and our trying to finalise January accounts. Yes, we’re that late. It’s also been a definite learning experience for me. I’m still pretty slow but am getting the hang of things –and I have to say that I quite like this line manager experience: all I need to do is monitor and point out problems, and then get my minions to do the hard work of solving them for me ;-). Of course, it helps to have a pretty good team in place... That said, looking back on my times with my first NGO, I now have a lot more sympathy with my boss trying to line-manage an opinionated, outspoken employee convinced of the absolute rightness of her own ideas. I only hope I can be as patient as him.

In other news, I now have a new flatmate as from yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, I thought she wasn’t moving in for another week not having been informed to the contrary. So there I was, Saturday afternoon, enjoying a nap stark bullock naked [don’t judge me – it was hot] in my room when I hear someone coming into my flat calling out my name after I had stupidly forgotten to lock the door. So, had to greet my new roomie wrapped in a blanket.

Way to make a great first impression.

As for how I felt about it: initially rather annoyed not to have been given any notice (or say for that matter) as I had planned a nice quiet weekend. But then she is lovely and pretty easy to get along with, and it’s good for me to learn to live with someone else and to do that compromise thing. And I’ll only be sharing for a month ;-).

Final note: I’ve actually joined a gym. But that doesn’t mean I’ve become a gym freak – I want to be very clear about that. I joined it mostly for the sauna, the massages and the dance classes masquerading as aerobics. My first class? Hip hop. If nothing else, after my stint here, I’ll be able to shake my booty with the best of them. Hopefully without getting stitches after 5 seconds...