Life in Far Away Places: Léogâne, Haiti
After college I spent four years traveling and living in the developing world. A few months ago I returned to Long Island and started working for the Smithtown Messenger. This is the eighth installment of an occasional column about those four years abroad.
In the last column I wrote about visiting Haiti earlier this year and how poverty stricken and hostile Port-au-Prince was. I mentioned one nearby town I visited that made me think twice about Haiti, a place that represented the potential for a better future for the nation. That town was Léogâne, and it was almost completely destroyed in the January 12th earthquake. According to UN assessment teams, Léogâne was "the worst affected area" with an estimated 90% of the small cities buildings destroyed and no remaining government infrastructure. It is estimated that up to 30,000 people died, a truly incredible number when you consider the total population was roughly equal to the population of Smithtown (120,000).
After just a few days in Haiti Isabel and I needed to get back to the Dominican Republic where we were living, but I wanted to see someplace nicer than the slums we walked around in Port-au-Prince and she wanted to go to the beach. It seemed Léogâne could satisfy both of our desires so we woke up early and found our way to a bus using some basic French that we knew. When the driver thought we had reached our destination we were pushed off the bus in the rural area between the two cities at a restaurant with a private beach. I convinced Isabel to catch another ride with me and continue onto Léogâne, it couldn’t be much further I reasoned.
We were able to hail a passing pick-up truck and squeezed into the back. The town was small and we only knew we had arrived because our ride stopped and everyone else got out. We didn’t find anyone who spoke Spanish or English in the town so communication was a major issue but as soon as we arrived it felt like we were a world away from the streets of the capital. There was extreme poverty around every corner, but somehow the place still seemed tranquil, the people still friendly. With our fifty word French vocabulary we were able to convince a young man to take us to the beach on the back of his motorcycle, but when he let us off it looked like it was just a dead end as he sped away. We had mastered asking where the beach was by this point, “Donde est la plague?” we asked a boy sitting idly against a wall. I have no idea what his response was but Isabel and I started following him though a gate, then an abandoned field littered with garbage and palm trees and then finally to the beach. Isabel and I were both already in our bathing suits but as soon as we saw the water I knew neither of us would even stick a toe in. Garbage swayed back and forth with the waves as if it was seaweed and more garbage marked the high tide on the beach.
I’m not sure if the boy had expected us to dive in our not but he just waited there silently until I exhausted my French by asking him if there was a place to eat nearby, and once more he lead us through the vacant lot, this time to an empty hotel that also sold food. I think he actually worked at the hotel and as we waited for our lunch he and a half dozen other young men and boys sat around and watched Isabel and I play a game similar to tic-tac-toe in my notebook. They learned by watching us and were soon playing alongside us. They smiled widely when they won and waited excitedly to play again when they lost, and in the two hour wait for our food, it really felt like were had made some new friends. It was exactly what I had wanted to do that day.
After our long lunch and worried that we would never find the beach, Isabel and I decided to go back to where the bus had originally dropped us off in the morning on the outskirts of Léogâne. We had no trouble getting there and after paying a small entrance fee we were on the private beach with two dozen Haitians. The people at the beach were better off economically than most of their countrymen and better traveled, many had been outside of the nation and most spoke English. As soon as we entered a man came over and in perfect English invited us over to his table for a drink. Once in the water we met other people who were just as friendly and spent the rest of our day talking and laughing with our new friends. I had long conversations with one English teacher about Haitian politics and South American soccer and traded phone numbers with another man who traveled a lot and wanted to visit me in either the Dominican Republic or New York.
My first impression of Haiti was almost entirely negative. Besides the poverty and obviously crumbling and often non existent infrastructure, it seemed a very unwelcoming place. People were automatically hostile to me and I had none of those friendly cross cultural interactions I love so much when I travel. The place seemed hopeless. But not Léogâne, Léogâne showed me that Haiti could be beautiful, it could be intelligent and friendly, it could be so much more.
With the worlds attention focused on the capital, the first rescue teams did not arrive in Léogâne until almost a full week after the earthquake. I have not heard from the friends I made that one hopeful day in Haiti and everyday when I hear the latest news from the island I wonder about that smiling boy who led me to the beach and later scribbled his name in my notebook before we parted ways. I wonder if Léogâne would still give me hope today.