the titanic, digicel and a few random images...

tomorrow is my last day in haiti. my time here has passed far too quickly. i could quite happily move in for a year or too. the people have been fabulous; so many good people to connect with and learn from.

i've seen so many amazing and beautiful, and ugly and heart wrenching things, but it's been hard taking photos to capture many of the moments. i always think i'll remember the great images that i was unable to get photos of, however they fade from memory all too quickly. one i do recall was a bloke on the back of a moto in jacmel, a fistful of lobsters dangling from one hand, and a splendid looking fish from the other...

another was while driving in a tap tap (a ute with two rows of bench seats in the tray, with a cover) coming down route de delmas in the dying light of day. a group of dudes on roller blades came flying through the traffic grabbing hold of the tap taps and dancing around them, somehow negotiating potholes and motos and pedestrians. they were wearing green shirts (probably advertising voila, a phone company), and they were screaming through; really travelling. it looked like so much fun.

sometimes it feels like haiti is sponsored by digicel, another phone company. the red of digicel is everywhere - the street signs are digicel red, wall space everywhere carries painted digicel banners, there are digicel umbrellas everywhere, people wear digicel shirts...

and if digicel is the sponsor, the titanic theme music is haiti's soundtrack... the water trucks which supply the city play an ice-cream man style titanic, and so it's often background noise to my day. in bainet it would often float gently in on the breeze, and it sort of felt like it was somehow just the essence of haiti, coming in off the surf and through the rustle of the palms...

this is some girls walking home from church... they really get dressed up here...


this is a zaboka - avocado... the one on the left is normal size, on the right is how big the ones we've been eating lately are...

these are some fabulous girls i've been spending time with: kerry, who i stayed with in jacmel; sarah, who works for the same organisation as kerry; jill, kellyanne's flatmate; rachel - also works with kerry and sarah and who is their flatmate; and kellyanne... this is the destination of kellyanne's first attempt at driving on haitian roads - a hilarious adventure: the roads are a mess of yawning potholes and uncovered manholes, piles of rubble and refuse, pedestrians who have been crowded off the footpaths by street merchants and parked cars, dogs, pigs and goats, drivers who casually disregard any notion of road rules, while indignantly employing their horn for any perceived violation by others, and tap taps which stop and start erratically, ... added into this exciting mix is the fact that kellyanne has never driven on the right side of the road before, nor driven a 4wd. i spent a lot of time laughing while the 5 of us yelled to 'stay right, stay right... not that far right!'



and this is my dessert from the restaurant we ate at... coconut icecream - very tasty...


last weekend we visited fort jacques... (actually this one's called fort alexandre - but the area's called fort jacques) this was built around the time of independence (1804), and has a commanding view of port au prince... i don't think the cannons were ever fired, however you get the distinct impression the cannon balls would have struggled to clear port au prince or to hit any enemy threat...

possibly during the earthquake the cannon mounts were damaged, i'm not entirely sure. there was just a mass of them lying about...

you can see port au prince bay in the distance... it was quite cool up there, we were at a decent elevation...

below are wilkins, kellyanne, dan, jill - and valentin is taking the photo...

there are a great number of roosters about the place, in fact in both jacmel and bainet they crowed around the clock. it's a sound i particularly like... they're often quite attractive birds - like this fella...


there are a lot of good-looking hibiscus about...

this is jean graham, a teacher from quisqueya - kellyanne's school. we stayed with her and her husband out in croix-des-bouquets. it was so relaxing and delightful staying with them, and jean was the most marvellous baker - she'd just casually whip up soft pretzels, or great pizza dough, or cookies...

jean and her husband live next door to the csi orphanage - which is where her husband works. these are some of the girls there in one of the rooms - showing off their dancing skills to kellyanne... they had pretty amazing rooms with different colour schemes...