Monday, October 31, 2011

images of jacmel



kerry lives in the back room of the wesleyan church in jacmel. the building was relatively unscathed by the earthquake, however the high concrete and stone fence which ran along one side was demolished, and now the local pigs have easy access to the yard (we were entrusted with the task of throwing rocks at them when this happened - i was never entirely sure why it was so terrible that they ate what appeared to be weeds, but i still dutifully collected handfuls of rocks and took aim...)










hermanie and migeline live in the other back room, and they often have visitors... this little girl spent the day at the church one day... she was a mischievous imp who chattered to me non stop in creole... far too rapidly for comprehension... she sat still long enough for her sister to very precisely arrange her hair.














on sunday the street outside the front gate turns into an immense, bustling market, teeming with people. i desperately wanted to take photos of this, however i suspect this would be a good way to start a riot... it's much like any market, with piles of fruit (mostly stacked on the street), live chooks and fish, jumbled heaps of clothes (second hand clothes from the states, which i think destroyed haiti's clothing industry) and shoes. but what was particularly striking were the charcoal sellers. clothed in black, hair tied back in black stocking cap, arms muscled from hauling charcoal; they were formidable looking women.



another distinctive feature of the market and indeed of jacmel in general is the number of wheelbarrows. i think this is by far the highest wheelbarrow to human ratio i have experienced anywhere in the world. in the market this requires tricky negotiation skills and some crazy human traffic jams. it seems you can transport almost anything in a wheelbarrow, however the best thing is hot bread or some kind of pastry, nestled in under folds of cloth, and steaming gently when the cloth is lifted for a sale.



out the back of the church is a narrow cinder block long drop (which the girls refuse to use at night because of the huge cockroaches), with the leaves of a banana plant gently rustling at the door that is always left open to admit light. from my perch on this toilet there is an excellent view of the lizards which leap in a strange bouncing fashion amongst the pile of cinder block rubble. one day while i was watching them one inflated his throat like a huge balloon. it was like david attenborough from the toilet...



one night, as i sat in the church liberally coating my body with my dwindling supply of DEET in an attempt to thwart the most insidious, skulking, dastardly mosquitoes i've ever experienced (they attack silently, frequently, and without a sting), men and women began gathering at the far end of the church for a prayer meeting. there was something hauntingly beautiful about their voices, rising unaccompanied in the dim hall, sorrowful harmonies like the spirituals of the slaves; a sound so beautiful it stopped me mid-DEET and made me very still. (that DEET was given to me by a most generous and excellent fellow way back in southern oregon.)



the streets of jacmel are lined with gracious old buildings which bear the scars of the earthquake and the toll of years... moto drivers run the gauntlet, dodging piles of rubble and refuse, negotiating the cavernous drains, and broken stormwater grilles, ambling pedestrians, donkeys, dogs, pigs and 4wds. baskets and basins perched casually on heads glide by serenely, the women (and sometimes men), swaying gently as the make their way down the streets.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

jacmel: bassin bleu



i spent this past week in jacmel, on the south coast of haiti. kel and i travelled up on saturday, and kel returned sunday for the school week, while i stayed and hung out with kerry, a very fun chick from georgia.

while kel was still there we went to bassin bleu, along with wesley, hermanie, immanuel, robert & migeline. i sat on the side of the tray with hermanie, migeline and immanuel, and we lurched up the mountain on a rough dirt road, past working donkeys and young children who yelled "blan, blan, blan" ("white, white, white")... it sounds a good deal like "blah, blah, blah", and is a universal experience of the foreigner in haiti (unless, i guess, the foreigner is black). it brings to mind immediately the often discussed question of what place 'foreigners' have in countries like this, which morphs into the wider question of the role of outsiders in poverty alleviation...






the path in to bassin bleu was green and leafy, and we walked under a cacao tree at one stage, with ripe cacao pods.
















there was a series of pools of increasing depth. the first was around 5m deep, the second about 18, and the third 25. to get to the third involved a bit of climbing and scrambling...







the second and third were great for jumping into, although no one else (apart from antoine, our self appointed guide) wanted to, which made me feel a little like they had to wait around while i had fun... to jump near the waterfall, you had to climb up the fall. this involved finding some pretty tiny toeholes, while the water sluices down over you - very fun, very fine.









the chick in orange with the hat is hermanie, with whom i spent the week swapping creole for english...












beyond migeline and immanuel you can see jacmel, nestled in beside the ocean...

Friday, October 21, 2011

bonswa ki soti ayiti



well, after running a little form filling out service on the plane to haiti (seemed to be surrounded by folk who either couldn't see or couldn't read - which is funny, cos they all spoke creole, with a couple with limited, heavily accented english, so it was a pretty hilarious process, with people passing bundles of documents to me up the plane, and me guessing the spelling of 'rues' and towns... there was a lot of mèsi, mèsi going on), i arrived at port au prince international airport without kellyanne's address on me - always a foolish way to try to enter a country... after spending some time in the immigration office (which was pretty hilarious), i was sent out (through immigration and customs, and right out of the airport) to get the address, so that i could go through customs and immigrations... and even when dan (the bloke picking me up with a sign that said 'skids'), got it a little wrong, the fellas in the immigration office (now my good mates), cheerfully worked it out for me and wrote some address in... i spent a lot of time grinning.





these pictures are pretty ordinary - but they happen to be the only ones i've taken since arriving... still a bit shy of taking my camera out - always struggle in places like this... the first shots are of people making beads out of cornflake boxes - i'll write more about this later, and about my first creole lesson, and other stuff later, but now kel and i are going to take a wander up the street for some tucker...




Wednesday, October 19, 2011

heading south...

made it through security with my suspicious thongs and am lounging in a slouchy drapey fashion on the thoughtfully comfy seats of gate 67A... way across the far side of the giant U jane is sitting at some other gate, on, i suspect, equally comfy seating (actually it's not that bad really)... will arrive in port au prince tomorrow lunch time to visit kellyanne for a month ... boring post i know, maybe you could write an exciting comment about what's going on in your neck of the woods to increase the interest factor... (in case you're wondering, pretty much anything counts as exciting at this end ...) just had one of those fun, mostly unintelligible announcements which i believe may have been telling me my flight's been delayed till midnight ... might be time to migrate to the floor...

i still have a backlog of photos etc that i'd like to put up, but have little concept of how easy that'll be in the next little while...

Sunday, October 16, 2011

hangin' in san jose...

so we've been staying in san jose with jane's cousin jade, and her husband and three kids: eli, addison & jemma...











the other arvo after school we headed down to santa cruz and spent some great time on the beach...


there was a whole colony of sea lions under the pier, most of them lazing indolently on the cross beams about 2m above the water; a few cruising around below....

one large one (not pictured) was periodically diving down and leaping out of the water in an attempt to land on one of the cross beams. initially it looked like he was being highly optimistic about his abilities, but he gradually gained height - then hit a form slump for a while, then, unexpectedly and with much cheering from the crowd which had gathered; he landed clear on the beam. he barked triumphantly, then flipped off, back into the water...

















addison, building a fort as the sun set (eli in the background in one shot, getting increasingly wet in the gentle surf)...















this is eli, working hard digging out the sand bank at capitola beach...










and eli and addison, both doing their duty diligently - long into the night - carving away that sand bank... the lights of capitola in the background...
















this is jemma in her shower cap...








and breakfast at home yesterday - a simple affair: pancakes, hash browns, eggs, bacon, fruit salad, yoghurt, nuts, syrup, coffee, juice, cinnamon rolls, etc ....

Saturday, October 15, 2011

goat rocks

the day of goat rocks was just an all round fabulous day... early on in the day we met some guys who generously offloaded a whole lot of snacks for our eating pleasure (and an easing of their load... win-win), even before that we'd wandered through beautiful meadows choked with flowers, and seen magnificent craggy mountains, and glacier-fed creeks tumbling down the gullies...


















we washed under a freezing cold waterfall which came straight from the snow - massive massive brain freeze...













and then had lunch and dried off while listening to mowgli recite the lorax in its entirety...





we climbed up through more astonishingly beautiful meadows, through snow, by a glacier, and along the most splendid knife edge ridge - through goat rocks... and far below us we saw the goats...

the photo of the peak through the trees is completely out of order, didn't mean to select it - but it looked cool so i left it in...

Friday, October 14, 2011

portland shenanigans

we got a lift from cascade locks to portland with annie and her dad. one of the 'american' things buttercup really wanted to do was go bowling (while drinking white russians), along with going out for steak and lobster.









this was during our bowling experience... (with a pitcher of pbr - which is probably far more american)







buttercup showing off his hula hoop style...













binky - wiz's friend who we stayed with and wiz and i eating out somewhere....











we visited a big rose garden where there was serious fines for picking the roses... there's fines for everything here, and all the signs tell you exactly what law it is you're breaking...













washington is far more remote in terms of resupply than the other states, so we posted almost all our food to ourselves at passes and ski resorts. this is our amazing resupply mess...





there was a random minature armchair on our walk between bowling alley and potential steak and lobster house (actually karaoke bar)...











this is wiz and buttercup singing 'du hast' (rammstein) in german... i was pretty impressed because the lyrics were written up in english, and wiz wasn't distracted by them... buttercup pointed out to us later that the english translation on the screen was completely incorrect...








wiz, buttercup and i celebrating two states, steak, and a hilarious visit to portland... (often i'm the only one in a photo with red-eye - those ridiculously huge skidmore pupils - but this is a rare single red-eye shot....)














hitching back to cascade locks took two hitches, and it felt like we stood out there on a pretty warm day for ages, but i think it was only about half an hour each hitch...