15545: Lyall: short visit to SoDo (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: jedidiah daudi lyall <jdlyall@netscape.net>

   Last week we took a trip of two nights to SoDo. Saut D'O?  I went with
Thor Burnham (Bonhomme) and two women friends of his, both asian
americans fluent in kreyol.
One of the women works here at one of the banks for the poor, the other
formerly
worked here for a religious charity.

I was asked along mostly because of my car, a jeep wrangler with new
radiator, springs and
shocks. The jeep is pretty beat up otherwise but it gets there pretty well.

We went over Morne Cabrit which I had heard was virtually impassible but
it wasn't really
too bad. Impassible in a corolla, wi, but no problem for a jeep. Lots of
big trucks are up
there. Mostly big trucks up there actually. Passing thru the plain is
kindof nice. North of
Croix de Bouquet the country empties out, lots of abandoned fields with
a few scrawny
horses and cows. When the hills had trees on them there was water here.
Looking down from
Morn Kabrit there is a pretty little town on the northern edge of the
little lake which lies
west of the caiman lake. I suspect that this little lake is temporary,
and dries up later.

When we made it up to the plateau there was a ti market where we bought
juice, then
stopped down the road to have lunch. A konbit was working the perfectly
nude hillside
near to us. They do refuse to make terraces back in the country, so they
are farming
mostly rocks. Less than a kilometer away there is some flat land with
beautiful black
soil well planted in vegetables. The cost of transporting them 50 klicks
into PauP is
stupendous tho. The road hasn't had any maintenance since 1987
apparently, and
destroys the big rigs, which go as fast as they possibly can.

Considerable meandering brings one to Mirabelais. A lovely little town
with 24 hour
kourant. The plas in centreville is usually locked up as frequently
happens in provincial towns
and there is only one little market in town but a new hotel overlooks
the plas.
Thursday nights they have salsa dancing there I was told.
The hospital in town has recently been sold to a private company.
Formerly a public hospital, CityMed has taken it over and increased
prices so that few
can afford the hospital any longer.
I don't quite remember those manifestations demanding that the hospitals
be sold off.

The road west from Mirabelais is the beautiful new Preval road.
This was completed a few years back and is still in good shape as the
traffic is negligible.
A few potholes are starting to appear and a small amount of subsidence
is producing
minor cracks which should be tarred. I met a Quebecois engineer in St
Marc some years
back who was construction manager for this road. He spoke hardly any
english but told
me that most of his crew were dominican. I didn't like that idea at the
time but at least
the road got built. The last road project to be completed in  the
country I guess.

Small holdings are  scattered along the road and river with a lot of
tobacco hanging up.
This country used to produce world class cigars. The 1904 worlds fair of
St Louis
gave a gold medal to Haitian cigars. Today they don't know how to cure
the tabac and
most of it goes to country snuff. Passing thru the mountains on the way
to Mirabelais
we passed some of the usual idle men sitting on an ancient sugar cooking
pot which
was once close to a meter high. They had water mills to crush cane back
then too.

All in all the country around Mirabelais is the hayti of dreams. People
are mostly working,
it appears,  and the countryside is sublime.

Continuing down the valley we arrive at the turn off to Saut Do. Thats
what the sign said.
A half hour of little more than a walking pace brought us to the
compound of Concern,
an ONG where the women of our tour were staying. This is a former
private mansion,
with swimming pool and guest houses.  A training session for local
school teachers was
ongoing while we were there. Numerous goats made their way to the stew
pot and the
eating was good.

Thor and I stayed at the house of the Cuban doctor for la Ville Bonheur.
Ville Bonheur
is the actual name of the town, which had been without kourant for 6
weeks. Modesto was the
dokte kiban, and Maria a kiban nurse sharing the house with him. The
haitian goverrnment
provides the house and a delco. The Cuban government pays their
salaries, the amount
of which I did not enquire.
There appear to be no haitian doctors working at the clinic. There is a
limited haitian
support staff and the clinic itself is a nice little place, built by the
EU in the not too
distant past.

There is much water in SoDo. One can hear it running most places in
town. Running water
in the houses is not so frequent, for some reason. Perhaps they use
pumps which require
a delco. I heard running water over the fence from what I presumed was a
public bath
in the neighborhood. Small dams in the valleys would be a nice idea, to
arrest erosion
and aid recharging of the ground water. That would require some foreign
government
to get interested tho.

The city hall, or mayors office, was dechoukaj'd. It was not a 'hotel de
ville', just labeled
Marie de Ville Bonheur. We were told that the mayor had demanded the
halting of
a manifestation in la ville. Pep la told him to go to hell and he shot
someone. So, the
people chased him out of town and destroyed his office.

The new mayor was at the dinner at the Concern compound the second night
we were
there. I didn't mention that the purpose of this trip was to attend the
monthly dinner
at the Concern office. They host it for the cuban doctors of the
province and local
notables attend also. The new mayor is a woman. I was told that she is
the only
woman mayor in the country. The local electoral council must have had
some actual
work to do.
(addendum: this may be a three person mayoralty with one woman on it.
Are three person mayoralties uniform throughout the country?)

We walked  up to the falls the day after our arrival. Its a fairly steep
hill up from
ville bonheur and the plateau has streams running thru it, surrounded by
minor
peasant agriculture. Approaching the holy site there are disturbing
signs of neglect
and abuse. Trucks drive right thru the stream bed not 100 feet from the
edge of the
plateau where the falls, well, fall. peasant farmers are planting right
up to the edge
of the cliff as well. This isn't a national park?

The falls themselves are beautiful, once you get around the route to them.
Plantain farmers are burning within 50 meters of the falls but if one
only looks up
into the falling water I can see a hayti of dreams. Numerous pieces of
clothing were
on the rocks of the fall which puzzled me. I saw no one washing and
couldn't
understand why people would leave clothes here. Bonhomme opined that
they may
come over the falls from washing above. Later he clarified his remarks
with the observation
that many of the clothes are tied to trees by pilgrims, cloths in the
colours of erzili.

So, the falls of SoDo are a wonderrful visit and many thousands come
here in July
for the pilgrimage. I do fear for the long term preservation of the site.
Some park rangers are needed. An actual park is needed, and agriculture
and trucks prevented from destroying the falls.

Some local drama: there is a protestant mission here started, they say,
by an american
pastor retired from the usa military. Local people said that he was into
guns.
This mission has spent a lot of money here, having a huge compound just
up the hill
from the Concern office. They have been building a new church which must be
100 meters deep and 30 meters wide. Three sides of it are complete. The
old church
is a nice unit and I cannot possibly imagine filling that new church
larger than the
cathedral of Port au Prince. The entire population of la ville bonheur
couldn't fill it.

There is a micro hydro power plant up the valley which has a sign
crediting the mission
'in cooperation with EDH' for putting up this power plant. I never
figured out it they
have main lines from the valley as well or if this is the only
electricity supply for the
villlage. Anyway, whatever the source of kourant it had been out for 6
weeks.

So, back to the local drama concerning the mission. They say that the
local pastor had
effected a koudeta, trying to get the american funding sent directly to
him. The American
pastor was in exile from the town and the congregation, and town itself,
were divided into
factions for either the haitian pastor or the blan pastor.

After two nights we left Ville Bonheur and went down the valley
Artibonite towards
the sea. Route Preval was a true friend here, passing thru La Chapelle
and all the
little towns along the way. La Chapelle has a huge church and is a real
ville, with
electricity. Vast expanses of land cried out for commercial farming to
try to feed this
country, but peasant agriculture stumbles on at 10% of the production
possible from
this fertile land.

We did pass a fish farm in the rice country around Liancourt and Ti
Riviere. I'd never
noticed it before. Ponds were dug right next to the river and a
processing plant
was erected with a sign identifying the enterprise. This is good.

Unfortunately Route Preval ends up at Pont Sonde, a nasty dusty place on the
main route national 1.  This intersection of Route Preval and Route
National is so bizarre.
The main road has been worked on continuously for three years. Millions
of dollars worth
of trucks and rock crushers are hauling and laying limestone roadbed
between St marc
and Gonaives. Two years ago the road bed between Po Sonde and St Marc
was perfect, with
a smooth limestone surface. Today it is as bad as it was 4 years ago and
worse than 6 years ago.
They have never put any oil on the surface, much less an asphalt cap so
it all
blows away in the wind.

So, we slugged thru the dust of route titid to St Marc for a short visit
with my fami pov there
and then returned to Port.

p.s. Passing the lake of bois neuf there were more ponds close by the
road which I had noticed before
but never realized that they were fish farms.
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