Haiti

Extreme Luthierism- Haiti Day 2

Haiti- Day 2
“Language Barrier? What language barrier!?”
I wake up early this morning feeling pretty bad. I am not sick or anything, I am just feeling so out of place. Two big trips, back to back, I think, was a mistake. Ecuador took so much out of me…..all in a wonderful, great way, but it left me feeling emotionally and physically depleted. Of course, I blame Njål and all my new Tango friends for the physical part!! 🙂 Anyway, I should know better than to come to a place like this so drained. When I woke up this morning, I just lay on that hard floor, with unbelievably loud noise coming in the open windows and thought, “Seriously, Anna….what the hell have you done”. I just feel so low.
  BUT……I am not so down that I have forgotten two things…..one, this is a life-time opportunity.
And two, I can be of real service here.
Oh, and a third thing….I asked for this.
  So…..I will work on my attitude and I will come around. I suspect by early afternoon, I will be my old cheery self again. 🙂
  For now, we are walking to the market down the street to change our US dollars into Gourds. We leave our house and immediately walk by a tent city. It is a bit overwhelming. There are people selling all kinds of things on the streets, and the atmosphere is somewhat chaotic! Traffic consists of tap-taps, cars, motorcycles and the occasional UN truck with machine guns on the back, all vying for the 2 free feet of space on the road. Steve, one of the violin teachers here is wonderful….he gently pulls me back each time I step out into the road. It will be a miracle if I don’t get run over!!
    The market was small, but interesting and had just about anything you could want…from rum to frozen Friday’s Potato Skins. My favorite part, however, was standing in front of the cleaning products with Rob and the others, studying the Ajax, furniture polish and muriatic acid. We are trying to figure out what we can use to clean instruments and bows, and I have to laugh when Robert turns to me and says, ‘This really is extreme luthier-ism!”
   I, for one, can see why this wouldn’t be for some luthiers!! But for me, this is great! I do love the whole, ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ thing.

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However, I do suspect that by the end of the week, I will be putting face plates on bows, using plastic milk cartons. My bow teachers may just die….. 🙂 🙂
  Oh well, off to fix some bows!!
  So, it turns out that I was right……..It is now almost six and I feel somewhat better. I spent the day teaching two men, Tchoupy and Reginald, how to rehair bows. Without any interpreter after lunch, it got really difficult!! When I originally sent off the email to volunteer for this, I said that I do not speak the language, but that that wouldn’t be a problem. My dad said to me, “don’t you mean that you HOPE that won’t be a problem?“. To which I replied confidently, “No, that will not be a problem”. Well, he might have had a point!! You try explaining the angles of a bow tip mortise using nothing but sign language and my questionable drawing skills!!
    And to top it all off, every time I try to say ‘Oui’ I say ‘Si’. I have a lot of gifts and talents, but languages is not one of them. And actually, a lot of people here don’t really understand my French so well. Could be because I haven’t spoken it in 20 years! But they all speak Kreyol which is now officially the hardest language I have ever attempted. It sounds like a cross between French and Swahili, which should make it fairly do-able for me, but the accent is really giving me a hard time. I will keep working on it!!
After dinner…..which for the record, they set out at 3:30, even though we do not eat til 7:30……..in 98 degree heat……. Needless to say, I am not touching the meat here!! 🙂
  Anyway…after dinner, almost the whole group went for a drink several blocks away at a kind of upscale place. It is strange, you walk by tent cities and it appears that there is abject poverty everywhere. Then, out of no where, there will be a really nice place. Everyone tells me that Petionville, which is where we are working, was the nicest suburb in Port au Prince. As a result, there are these anomalies tucked away….a wonderful hotel with a swimming pool, a beautiful restaurant, a little market. All I know is that if my mother and father could see me walking through the dark streets of Haiti at 9:00 at night, dodging motorbikes and rubble, they would NOT be happy. But I am one of 14 people so I feel pretty ok about it. 🙂
    Once again, for the umpteenth time in the last few weeks, I find myself sitting at a table with a big group of people laughing and talking over each other in different languages. I am sitting next to Bernard, a violinist my age from Paris and we are exchanging stories about traveling. He is wonderful, wonderful and offers to go with me to the market to buy some souvenirs. Between him and Steve, my traffic guardian, I feel like I am starting to have some friends here.
   My first full day in Haiti is finished and I am interested to see what the rest of it holds. For now, as I brush the millionth mosquito away, I just really hope I get home without malaria!! 🙂 🙂
Bonswa,
Anna

We are not in Kansas anymore Haiti- Day 1

 

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Haiti- Day 1
  Well, I got up at 0’dark thirty and headed back to the airport. Wasn’t I just here?! In any case, it is time to go to Haiti!!! I am half excited, half scared and 100% unsure of myself. I have a sneaky suspicion that this time, I may just have bitten off more than I can chew!! Oh well, it is too late to turn back now!
My flights were fairly uneventful and late afternoon found me on a plane packed to the gills with church missionary groups all in matching Tee-shirts. You want to know who, six months later, is still coming to Haiti? Missionary groups!! I have to say, I was pretty impressed, although if the looks I got when I ordered a gin and tonic are any indication, they weren’t so impressed with me. J
   When we finally landed, my anxiety went up a few notches. The original airport is condemned…something about big cracks in it from the earthquake. So we had to depart the plane, get on a bus and travel to a temporary terminal. We got off of the bus and walked into a huge warehouse-like room full of a million people, all talking loudly over one another and sweating in the 98 degree heat. I quickly got through the first wave of immigration, (now I have a cool ‘Haiti’ stamp in my passport!) and immediately was swarmed by men. Some guy grabbed my ticket and carry- on, admonishing me to ‘wait right her’ and took off through the crowds. I stood there in shock and realized that some guy had my luggage info and I had no idea who he was!!! He had a badge of sorts, so I felt like there was a good chance that he was supposed to be there, but I couldn’t have picked him out of a line-up if my life depended on it!!! So I dove into the crowds that were circling the big pile of luggage that was being unloaded. He saw me and came back, saying, “wait here, wait here”. I tried to explain that both my huge bags were black and that he didn’t have a snowballs chance of finding them in all of the other black luggage, but before I had a chance, he was back with my bags. I finally get the idea that this is a tip-driven system and dig through my bags for some money. By the time I get through everything I have gone through three porters and am $10 lighter. J
  As the second porter deposited me in front of the customs woman, she looked at me stonily and pointed at my big giant black bag. “What is that?” she said. “Umm…tools for rehairing bows?” This was the part I had been dreading. All of the news in the US had been talking about the fact that Haiti was charging a tax on all relief supplies being brought into the country and that they were seizing stuff left and right. I had an itemized list with values on it, but who is to say if they will believe me? This was fairly obscure stuff I had here!!
I immediately pulled out a letter that Robert Cain, the fellow luthier, had prepared for us. It explained who we were, what we were doing and where, all in Kreyol, the local language. She read the letter, studied me for a moment and said, “Thank you, enjoy your stay in Haiti”.
!!!!!!! I can’t believe it!!!!
I am so happy to not have to pay the tax. I had the money set aside, but anything that I do not have to pay to the government, I can donate to the St. Trinite Music program, so I am ecstatic. J
My relief and joy quickly disappeared when I exited the building and found myself in front of a chain link fence holding back hundreds of men shouting at me. “Taxi?! Taxi?!” they said. Or, ‘Sister, do you need a hotel?!?! “ The sun is beating down on me and I do not see anyone with a little white sign saying ‘Anna Huthmaker-Bow Queen’ on it. One of the men looked at me and said that if someone was there to meet me, I had to walk a block down the side walk to meet them. Hmmm…..I don’t know about this. That looks as if you are leaving the relative safety of the airport. He saw the reluctance on my face and shrugged, saying that it was the truth and that I didn’t have to believe him if I didn’t want to. Oh well….in for a dime, in for a dollar. Off I went, down the sidewalk.
   Luckily, I soon heard my name being called and looked up to see three volunteers from Appleton University in Wisconsin. Sarah, Sarah and Jordan were huddled in the shade waiting for me and Keith, a band director from Connecticut, and before long we were being bundled into two vehicles and heading out of the airport. Everyone else is in a van and I am in a pickup truck with a strange man that doesn’t speak any English. As he lurches out of the airport into the Haitian traffic, the full effect of where I am hits me. We immediately pull onto a road that is teeming with drivers that are accelerating and braking with all of the energy of Salmon swimming upstream. There are cars everywhere honking and vying for space, most of which seem like it is there personal mission to drive everyone else off the road. I am not kidding when I say that pedestrians are jumping out of the way for their lives and the wild dogs that are everywhere seem to have a canny sense for how to dodge the insane traffic.
The heat is stifling and the smells….well, they are terrible. We drive next to a giant tent city and all I can see are people everywhere, cars everywhere, trash and poverty everywhere. As we drove past devastated buildings I feel my chest constrict. I truly feel like I have entered hell.
    I took a few deep breaths and told myself that I had that length of this drive to be overwhelmed. But that when we got to the church, I had to pull it together. As it was said to Frodo in the Lord of the Rings, “You can’t get anywhere by being shocked and sad”. And I wasn’t going to be that girl…the one that dissolved into tears every time she saw something terrible. That is not what the people of Haiti need, and if I am going to make it here, that is certainly not what I need.
  We drove for about a half hour through tiny, winding streets full of so much smog, noise and trash that I thought I would go crazy. However, we finally pulled up in front of a church behind the van full of my new friends and started to haul our stuff in. As we shoulder our way through the men standing in front of the door, I wonder if it is as dangerous as it feels. I am so unsure about everything at this point that I am pretty sure that my head will explode!!
  But we all make it inside and into our respective rooms with no incident. Everyone is super nice to me, coming up to introduce themselves. I frantically try and remember names and wonder how soon I can actually just go to bed, without being rude. However, a quick invitation to go next door to the hotel for a beer turns into a nice evening getting to know the other volunteers and when I finally do unroll my sleeping pad on the floor of the office that I am sharing with four other women, I breath easier. This won’t be so bad…….
Bonswa,
Anna

We’re Gonna Dance Upon This Earth!
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