Haiti: Poverty, gangsters and UN party

nameless-berk (60)in #adventure • 6 years ago (edited)

How I unwittingly ventured into one of the most dangerous places on Earth. It might not have ended so well if my Couchsurfing host wasn't armed and ready at all times.

[24/02/18] Before I start the tale about my adventures in Haiti, let's have a look at the country's history.
Initially it's a French colony, to where they were importing a great number of slaves-africans to work on sugar cane plantations.
In the end of XVIII century the slaves rebelled and after a bloody war in 1804 the independent Republic Haiti was established.

Nowadays it is one of the most poor and unstable countries in the World, the poorest country of the New World, constantly suffering from famines, epidemics, natural disasters and coups d'état.
Not long ago, in 2011 there was a mighty earthquake just 25 km from the capital, killing hundreds of thousands and leaving homeless even more.
Right now many people still live in camps for internally displaced. Most of the people living in developed countries can't even imagine the conditions that haitians have to suffer there.

The country's population also widely believe in voodoo, mystical and religious practice widely known for its human-dolls and related curses. It's not only curses and zombies though, voodoo priests also practice defensive and healing magic, but this side is not well known to outsiders such as we are.
Anyway, right now there is fasting season, unfortunately, so nothing is going on in this regard.

And to this country I went from Puerto Plata bidding farewell to my German companion (Alexis left us a day before).
My prime objective was to get to the capital and find a ship going to Jamaica. Or anywhere else, really.
The fun began right after passing the border, when I got into (or, rather, onto) a bus going to Cap-Haitien.

In this country the locals mercilessly cram themselves into any public transportation available, with no regard to personal space and comfort, maximally using up all the available space.

It's very hard to be inside - extremely hot and cramped conditions, with sweating bodies pressing you from all sides.
So I climbed on the roof instead and the ride was just fine until the police noticed me and stopped the bus.

It's not like it was something special, there were at least 4 more men there, but I clearly stand out, so they checked my passport and told me to get inside to everyone's amusement.
Arguing didn't have any effect, so I had to get in. It was hard to even open the door, because it opens to the inside, crushing the people crammed in.

Since the moment I squeezed in, I couldn't stand it. So after a minute there I tried to explain to the locals that I want the bus to stop so I could return to my sweet spot on the roof.
Took me a long time to reach some understanding - they just nodded, agreed with what I say and did nothing. Finally, someone realized what the fuss is about and told the driver to halt the bus.
I triumphantly returned to the roof and hidden behind the luggage to prevent the same situation later.

Haiti is very dirty and dangerous place. Considering that 100% of its population is black and speaks French Creole, I stood out as an elephant in horse stables.
I've not been to Africa yet, but I had the impression that this is how Sub-Saharan Africa looks like.

Cap-Haitien greeted me with mountains of trash and rivers of filth, flowing among them. Wild slums create striking contrast with graceful colonial buildings.

Noise, stench and dust rise up from the streets to stain the sky. Well, maybe not that high, but high enough to reach the top floors for sure.

I stayed in the first motel I could find and went out to acquire some cash. Turns out, the local ATM do not work with my card, at all.
I find myself in such a situation for the 3rd time in the last 6 months, which is getting annoying. Luckily, this time I had some reserve USD, so I could get by without much trouble.

Having spent a night in the room infested with a terrible quantity of mosquitoes, I took a morning bus to Port-au-Prince where I already had a Couchsurfing host, Muhammad.
He instructed me to proceed to CIMO (Riot Police) Headquarters and make a police officer contact him as soon as I disembark from the bus. He mentioned that he is a police officer and this place where I will be dropped is dangerous, so I should not tarry.

The bus dropped me off near a camp for internally displaced people (echoes of the earthquake, I guess), and I walked to CIMO Headquarters as instructed.

However CIMO officers didn't seem to know him, after I showed his photo and contacts, they still didn't recognize him.
Luckily, back in Cap-Haitien I bought a local SIM card, so I contacted him myself through the Net.

He arrived in a police jeep and it turned out that he's not some nobody, but a Security Advisor for haitian President. Unremarkable at first glance, this guy is a total badass.
Born in Yemen, worked for UN, been trained in many countries and fought in many hot spots all over the globe including Africa and Middle East.
From all that experience Muhammad invented his own training system which then employed to condition haitian Special Forces, making them a deadliest unit on the island, feared even by superaggressive gangs of Port-au-Prince.
He even trained senior police officers in CIMO, I just run into newbies who knew him not.

Later we've been driving through dirty, crowded and constipated by traffic streets of the capital with closed tinted windows so nobody could see a white man in a police car.

"Everything here is very political", he explained.

During this ride I learned from our conversation that they fight local gangs on a regular basis.
Many neighborhoods in the city are not even controlled by police, but by gangs, and if the police really want something, they have to fight their way through.
He also called the place he picked me up from one of the most dangerous places in the World, to my surprise.

The criminal activity is so bad, he never goes out of his house without a gun or two - there's always a pistol in the car and sometimes a rifle, as well.

The outer handle of the passenger door in his car is broken intentionally to not let bandits open it while in the traffic.
Mugging and carjacking is very likely if you're not armed and ready to shoot first.

^{"...and then I shot him in the face 3 times...”}

To just get home through chaotic haitian traffic we had to use siren and flasher, pretending to be on duty and "escorting" an encountered car with some VIP.
Even so It took more than an hour, before we finally made it to a safe haven of his house with walled and guarded zone around a couple of apartment buildings where important/rich foreigners live.

Same evening we went to pick his friend Latif and then to a supermarket to buy some food. When leaving the parking lot we were hit by a reversing car.
The woman behind its wheel started bitching and insisting that Muhammad was to blame, somehow, and that he should repair her car. It was obvious, though, that it was her fault all along.

While they were arguing, Latif took a pistol from the car just in case the negotiation go wrong (there were other people in her car and a crowd was starting to form).
Fortunately, it never came to that and the woman finally realized Muhammad could talk back in Creol and won't be a fool here, so she backed off.

Having returned home and suppered, we were sitting on the balcony, overlooking the shining sheet of Port-au-Prince, a capital without skyscrapers or even just tall buildings.

^{Port-au-Prince at night}

"See that bunch of lights?", Muhammad was saying over some cocktails, "it's all bandits. And that one. And those three. It is all infested with bandits."

The next day he used his contacts to confirm that there is no ships going to Jamaica in the port, nor there will be. And the port itself is off-limits for random people anyway.
So I had to book the cheapest flight from Punta Cana (DR) to Bogota, Colombia. Coincidentally, the same flight Florian was going to board. He chose his ticket by same principle.
The flight was scheduled for 26 February.

^{Panorama of the city}

^{Close-up on the empty port}

Muhammad took me and Latif to a mountain with a panoramic view of Port-au-Prince, masterfully navigating narrow and crooked streets of a giant ghetto filled with trash, poverty and criminals, which is the haitian capital.
And in the evening I was invited to UN party, full of interesting people from all around the world, even from Bangladesh with which I often compare Haiti.
I have never hanged out with people like those, the UN agents, so it was quite exciting and memorable. It isn't everyday you get to participate in such an event.

Come morning I would leave for the East, there was the entire island to cross, and a border, which is never good news.
The time was short so I took a bus straight to Santo Domingo. The border crossing was long, noisy and chaotic. And there was a remarkable quantity of attempts to scam me, much to my amusement, mixed with annoyance.

And in Santo Domingo I got in the middle of carnival, again. They had an Independence Day, I even glimpsed a naval military parade near the coast.

I met my buddy Flo, with whom we agreed to join forces and travel through South America.

Those plans were never destined to become reality, as events took a horribly wrong turn, but this is another story altogether...

More photos:

^{Slums of Cap-Haitien}

^{Laundry day}

^{Typical street vendor}

^{The tallest building in Port-au-Prince}

To be continued...

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6 years ago in #adventure by nameless-berk (60)

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