Haiti – Week 10 Well, now the owner of the hotel has bought a couple of geese. So about 5 a.m. the chickens start crowing, at 5:30 the geese start honking, and surely by 6 the donkey is braying. If I hear the donkey bray, I know I’ve overslept and better get in gear. I never hear the cows or goats until the evening and almost never hear the wild horses. If anyone knows how to get rid of mosquitos (short of spraying yourself down with repellant after you get out of the shower and before you crawl into clean bed sheets), please let me know. It’s not pleasant crawling in a clean bed with repellant on. I really need a solution. I kill them (or as many as I can) the night before but then a horde follows the maid in when she cleans the room during the day while I’m at work. The reason I know this is I have witnessed it on Sundays when she comes to clean the room. And I don’t even think about telling her not to clean on Sundays, it becomes a huge ordeal. No one can understand why you would not want your room cleaned; it’s a free service that comes with your room, no one turns down a free service. The one time I told her not to worry about cleaning it, she came back with the assistant manager girl and I had to explain to her (in what little Creole I know) that nothing was wrong, I just didn’t want it cleaned that day. Then the assistant manager girl came back with the manager dude and I had to explain to him (again, in the little bit of Creole that I know) that nothing was wrong, that I just didn’t want my room cleaned that day. So I guess it’s just easier to kill mosquitos because having to open the door three times to talk to people with mosquitos all around them was worse than just having one. The tap-taps. They really amaze me. As long as one headlight works and the horn blows, it’s on the road. No windows, some without a hood, all without brake lights or taillights, but it’s loaded down with people and charcoal if it will move. The motorcycles are worse; they’ll travel down the road at night with no taillight or headlight. Definitely ride that taxi at your own risk. Theft. As I told you before, theft is so widespread here that there are walls with razor wire around each business lot or upper scale home and all the buildings have bars on them. Theft is also very prevalent with employees (we’ve already fired a couple). The Haitian business owners have developed a method to combat this. It’s not fast, but it works. Normally you have to deal with at least 4 employees in a tiny little shop doing your business over the counter (all the merchandise is normally behind a second set of bars and you can’t actually get to it). After waiting your turn for about 30 minutes, you tell employee #1 behind the bars all the things you want specifying size, color, type, etc. (which is kind of funny because usually they only have one size, one color, one type, no variety whatsoever). She makes two lists of what you want. One to keep and one to give back to you. You give your list to employee #2 and he tallies everything up so you know how much it will cost (and he copies the list by hand). Then you go to employee #3 and pay him (and he copies the list by hand). Finally, after about an hour (now an hour and a half), you reach employee #4 who, yes, copies the list by hand then gets your stuff and places it in the window through the bars. The reason for all this is to make it hard for employees to swindle you. Each person has their job and is not permitted to do another. At the end of the day, the owner will review all the lists and make sure they match and makes sure the money matches too. The only way to swindle and not get caught is if all 4 employees are in on it. This is why it takes so long in each shop and why a trip into town is an all-day affair. Saturday I went to the street market in Cap-Haitien. Good gracious alive. I have never seen so many people, so thick, so crowded, so crammed together, and so many smells (no comment please). It was like a huge Wal-mart (which I hate and detest Wal-mart). You could find everything from glass and cookware to shoes and clothes to meats and vegetables. There were live crabs, live goats with hooves tied together ready to go, ready to eat fish, fresh fruits and vegetables, and the voo-doo section. Yes, I walked through the voo-doo section but I didn’t tarry long (actually, I didn’t tarry anywhere long, if you’re not buying then you’re a nuisance and they want you gone and out-of-the-way and don’t mind telling you so). As I said before voo-doo is very real here. The priest take colored bottles and put colored water in them, do whatever ritual they do, and you place the bottle next to whatever you want to protect. The good spirits in the bottle will protect whatever it’s sitting next to from the bad spirits. You may set the bottle next to a baby in a crib, next to a tree you want to be fruitful, or next to your house for harmony within the family. Before I told you the local money was Gourde (Goud), and it is. But I also told you there was another currency that I haven’t seen yet called the Haitian dollar. Well, that was right and wrong. The reason I haven’t seen it is because it doesn’t physically exist. It is a phantom currency that is used for value and is a real amount but there is no actual Haitian dollar currency. I know, it confuses me too. Most street vendors deal strictly in Gourde; however, most stores deal strictly in Haitian dollars. When the store tells you the amount you owe, you have to mentally calculate how many Gourde it is and pay in Gourde. 1 Haitian dollar is equal to 5 Gourde. So take whatever amount they give you and multiply by 5 to determine how much Gourde you owe. But you need to make sure first if they’re giving you the amount in Gourde or Haitian dollar. If you give them too much, don’t even think about getting change. If you’re curious, the exchange rate for Gourde against the U.S. dollar is about 43.6:1. In other words, 1 U.S. dollar is about 43.6 Gourde but most places (other than the tourist traps) don’t take U.S. dollars. Just finished John Grisham’s The Litigators (Wally is an idiot). We’ll see what book is next. Nazrul is here this week. He is going to implement our computerized CIS-Customer Information System so we don’t have to do all the bills by hand. 500 hundred bills a month is getting taxing. Nazrul is from another project in Bangladesh. Boy, I hope he’s successful. The couple of pics I gave you are of our hotel, the Puissance Divine (or Divine Power). When I say it’s the finest around, it is. You guys have a good week!
Posted on: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 13:53:41 +0000
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