Eye on Haiti

Port-au-Prince, situated at the apex of the Gulf of Gonâve, is a place with many faces. Some of them are covered by high fences and walls with barbed wire; other houses in the city centre downtown have now trash and many people doing business in front of them. As a rule, the poor seem to be located in lower urban areas.

Making your way up can be taken literally here. Something which has been different in earlier days. This city did indeed enjoy an illustrious past; although I still have to meet the first person spontaneously mentioning it. But the city centre’s grid plan and streets with archways and the so called gingerbread houses in neighbourhoods as Pacot, Turgeau and Debussy do account for this history. In the early 20th century these areas were countryside seen from the city centre clustered around the bay.  Mansions are harmoniously incorporated in the hills,  watch over the rest of town and made up an art of tropical living at its very best. And still do nowadays; as long as you can afford. The style of houses and hotels was called gingerbread because they resemble a traditional American cake, but more accurately one should categorise them under Victorian architecture, with manifold tropical accentuations. Hotel Oloffson is the best known example after Graham Green used it as the decor for ‘The Comedians’, a book he wrote in 1966.  His story depicts the demise of the city during the  inital rule of “François Papa Doc” Duvalier. Under his reign, Haiti evolved from a place where the jet set from Paris and New York flocked together into a stiff dictatorship. The name of the para-military force ensuring the survival of the regime, the Tonton Macoutes, still echoes when talking about Haiti.

 

 

 

 

 

It is hard to imagine these past times when walking on the streets of Port-au-Prince today. One of the  landmarks of the city’s lost glory is a railway which at certain points still pops up through the chaos downtown.  Haiti was the first country in the Caribbean to have a tram line. Not surprisingly, as it was once considered “la perle des Antilles”. About 2,5-3 million people live in the city (it is difficult if not impossible to hold a census), which now also includes Pétionville, a previously separate town more than 300 meters higher than the city centre at sea level.  Pétionville is today an affluent suburb with many embassies and international organisations. In between one finds the above mentioned long-established neighbourhoods, and disorderly expanding popular urban settlements; buildings made out of concrete up, under and above each other. Without any form of planning. There is some effort for ‘regulation’, when streets are really becoming too small, but in shantytowns as Cité Soleil and Matissant living conditions are dire and still multiplying.

 

 

Whereas the country is widely known for its troubled political history, it is now very much a place talked about in a context of economic underdevelopment. The food riots of last year account for the kind of dependency the country finds itself in today. Most of its industrial output is for export, often through ‘zones franches’, areas designed with special perquisites (read: tax exemptions) for mostly foreign companies. The share of local production of food in total consumption is 42 percent.  52 percent is imported and food aid counts for 6 percent. Although Haiti has the capacity, and although rice from the Artibonite region is much better in taste than the imported American rice. Explaining this dependency goes further than Haiti’s current  economic woes. Football games are continuously interrupted with commercials for diriz Tsjako, an American brand. It’s not only food you import, it’s also a culture. Children go to school and get the cheaper American rice for lunch. Often available through food aid which made “school feedings” a priority. If man is what he eats, Haiti doesn’t take much share.

Besides all its difficulties and restrains on taking matters in its own hands, a strong ‘racine’ or roots remains deeply settled in Haitian society. The usage of drums, dance and music, the carnival, vodou, Haitian art and Kreyol all compensate in a fierce way for a feeling of oppression which dates back to the early days of slavery. “First they took us away from where we were living, and now that we are here, they still don’t let us live like we want’; that’s how somebody translated it to me. Hence this dualism in Haitian society: past versus present, reality versus aspirations, human versus rights. But particularly rich versus poor.

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