20665: (Chamberlain) Riding the Apocalypse (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By JOSEPH B. FRAZIER

   CAP-HAITIEN, March 22 (AP) -- The electric blue bus sat with its diesel
engine warbling softly and spreading a gray exhaust that matched the dawn.
   That's as quiet as it got this day for the Apocalypse 4, a resurrected
school bus setting up for a damn-the-torpedoes dash across Haiti.
   At 5 a.m., hymns and brimstone radio sermons in Creole blast from its
open doors and ticket sellers begin squabbling for the business of arriving
passengers.
   This fading northern seaport of 500,000 inhabitants, whose once-elegant
boardwalk is long gone, was seized Feb. 22 by rebels who made it their
headquarters. Weeks of fighting have left it an armed camp -- battered,
looted, partly torched and on edge. For days in February, the road to the
south was a dangerous no man's land.
   Apocalypse 4 was tracing the route to Port-au-Prince, the capital, of
dozens of rebels who triumphantly journeyed south once they heard news of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's downfall and Feb. 29 flight.
   It was off across a Haiti most visitors never see -- not the numbing
poverty of sweltering urban slums nor the hilltop opulence of the few.
   The bus has seats made for two children. For the next six hours or so
they will hold three adults in conditions so cramped that people who can
afford to buy two seats.
   Around 7 a.m., the Apocalypse, with far too many people and a sense of
urgency not often seen, lurched onto the road.
   Meanwhile the Aleluya, Truth, God the All-Powerful, Beautiful Soul and
others had pulled out first. There seemed to be a need to catch up.
   Caustic graffiti for and against Aristide vanishes as Apocalypse barrels
up the narrow road past sugar cane, pastel concrete houses with vegetable
gardens, banana and coconut trees, coffee plants and clusters of goats, and
heads for the Bishop's Bonnet mountain.
   Passengers share their hopes, dreams and frustrations -- but these tense
days, not their politics.
   "I live by the grace of God, I'm not in politics," said a woman who gave
her name as Michou. "I'm going to see my friend, I have no job, I have
nothing. Send us some rice and beans."
   "Oh-oh, poor Haiti," said Marcel Morreau, who has a son in the capital
and whose hole-in-the-wall grocery was sacked in Cap-Haitien. "Nobody has
made it different. When do the Marines come?"
   That's by no means a universal view in Haiti, where some consider the
U.S. Marines an occupation force. But it's not all that scarce, either.
   The radio evangelist was getting hoarse, so the driver changes to softer
Haitian ballads -- while leaning on a shrill air horn.
   On one steep curve up Limbe Slope, Apocalypse blares a warning, gets an
answer and is looking at a twin, just as big and just as blue, right in the
eye.
   Both drivers lean on their horns. Neither slows down. A petrified
passenger looks out the window and sees only emptiness down the
mountainside.
   Highland towns flip by. Limbe. Plaisance. Ennery. The streets look
clean, the houses colorfully painted, flashes of red bougainvillea hang
over walls. Shops and some government offices are open. There's a cool
breeze.
   There is, no doubt, grinding poverty here as well. But if the
hopelessness that dominates some urban areas is here too, it seems hidden
behind the walls.
   A nearly deaf and retired Catholic bishop in white sits at the front of
the bus and gets deference. "He's higher than Aristide (a former priest)
ever got," confides a passenger.
   In the hot dusty lowlands, green hills are replaced by barren mountains
and cactus.
   Pressed for time, the driver skips a customary stop in dusty, rebel-held
Gonaives and makes a furious dash over a rough corduroy road toward St.
Marc.
   Passengers riding in the roof rack amid baggage and produce hang on,
somehow.
   Apocalypse finally makes a lunch stop in the quiet coastal town of Mont
Rouis, where Club Med tourists once frolicked. It's swarmed by people
selling boiled manioc root, plates of beans and rice, barbecued corn on the
cob, roasted peanuts, soft drinks.
   Flashes of turquoise sea and white-sand beach. Port-au-Prince isn't far.
Passengers laugh. Talk flows more freely.
   As Apocalypse glides through its outskirts, passengers call out "Chofer,
Chofer," hoping he will drop them in their neighborhoods. No such luck.
Insults fly toward the front of the bus.
   It pulls into the roadside terminal and some people, miles from homes
they just passed, give the driver a dirty look.
   It doesn't matter. "God is my boss." It says so right on Apocalypse's
front bumper.