Bon Voyage

If the first 24 hours of the adventure are any indication of the coming months, there will be no boredom in Bayonnais. After a 3:30am wake up call courtesy of the Fort Lauderdale Ramada, our group shuttled to the airport where we boarded an 18-passenger propeller plane bound for Cape Haitian in northern Haiti. Sleep was out of the question due to the din of the propellers and the turbulence which was at times terrifying, but the opportunity to watch the sunrise over the Caribbean through the clouds countered any discomfort we may have had. The "airport" if you will call it that consisted of a single landing strip and a shack with a tin metal roof. Airport security was not, surprisingly, run by the same TSA that made up throw out oversized tubes of toothpaste in Charlotte.
The ground itinerary to Bayonnais began with a drive through the city of Cape Hatian, which I found to be unsurprisingly poor and unkept; it was an eye-opening experience nonetheless. The ensuing journey through the smaller towns, pastures, and mountains was more aesthetically pleasing although our entourage had us stop frequently when it appeared that some of the traveling merchants may have some desireable produce. Hot and exhausted, the crew tried anyway possible to catch a minutes rest on a bumpy ride aboard an old American school bus. Finally, just before dinner time, we arrived in the OFCB compound where we were greeted by what seemed like hundreds of excited children. We soon overcame our fatigue. Dinner exceeded expectations and we slept early, resting for the full week to come.

Introduction

I have chosen "The Haitian Hills" for the title of this blog in tribute to the 1946 novel written by Philippe Thoby-Marcelin and brother Pierre ,"The Beast of the Haitian Hills", which tells the story of an urban storekeeper who moves to the country side to make peace with his late wife. Almost immediately the protagonist, Morin Dutilleul, finds that the tradition and superstition of his new environment are far more powerful than originally anticipated. At the risk of depending too heavily on this prominent early Haitian work for inspiration, I will provide a quote from the editors of Time in their 1964 preface to the publication:

"Haiti--the western third of the island of Hispanola--has always been an enigma. The distinctive quality of its culture is sometimes clearly evident (it was the first constitutional state to be set up, peopled and governed by Negroes, for example), but more often the diffrences lie hidden in the deepest currents of communty life, in the villages where the ordinary daily routine presents a baffling exterior that an outsider can scarcely hope to penetrate. It is a land half cultured, half primative, with lingering traces of Continental courtliness dating back to the French rule of the 19th Century, mixed with vague residues of African tribal usages and quaint borrowings from other West Indian islands, the whole heavily overlaid with powerful superstitution."

During my three months in Bayonnais, Haiti, I hope to penetrate the surface of the enigmatic culture, to make some friends along the way, and to lend a helping hand whenever possible.