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24580: lyall (talk) voyaging to the hills to see family
J.David Lyall <postmaster@lyalls.net>
So, after the trip over la morne avek Dok Phillipe on petit moto (two
weeks ago) I learned that we had passed by the zone of Mama. My Mother
in Law grew up there. Her father lives there now and she hadn't been
back since she left as a young woman. Like, 40 years since she's been
home. And it is about 30 kilometers as the raven flies.
Considerably longer as the paved road goes. So I started on a campaign
to take Madam and Mama on a trip andeyo/to the countryside. To see
Grann Papa. Eventually we got a trip together and ti Roxanne and Lu
and Mama and Lu's sister Beatrice and I all piled into the jeep to
spend some days at Cayes Jacmel and the zone below Seguin.
The days before Vendredi Sancte, Good Friday (March 25) were when we
could go. Rented a little house on the beach at Kabik in zone Cayes
Jacmel for 30 u$d per day. It would have been a nice vacation stay but
days of walking up and down the mountain were in store instead.
The trip down thru Port au Prince and Leogane then over the hills to
Jacmel revealed a U-joint going bad again. The Jeep eats U-joints for
some reason. Thursday morning was therefore spent hunting for the
proper part to ranje the jeep. Returning to the ti lakay on la plaj
found the family busy cooking up pots of food, seemingly for 10
people. We finally got going around 2 pm with buckets of food to take
to Grann.
Thru Marigot, detouring over the dry river to Peredo then begins the
climb to commune Seguin. The first section of road out of Peredo is
hand built of stones. Cobble stones. Sensible work; a good method for
building a road up there where stones are basically the only natural
resource. Some places were in need of repair but a dozen men with
picks could keep it in repair. If someone would pay them to do so. I
would be interested to know when and who did build that section of road.
Climbing up takes you thru zone Gwayav where a coffee project is
working and the Chinese are doing something. Perhaps they are working
this part of the Haitian Bleu zone. This is a pretty area at 4 or 5
hundred meters elevation. Cooled off but not in the clouds. Apre Sa
one begins the climb into the clouds. The rains haven't come this
year, the big river is dry while last year the ford was almost a meter
deep. Zone Seguin was in the clouds each time I visited this month,
however.
We finally came to a wide place in the road where Mama demanded kanpe
la. Stand here. Stop. Didn't look like a kafou/carrefour to me but
there is a pathway up the mountain once one gets out to look.
Now, Mama originally said that the lakou/compound was "de minwit" from
the road. Two minutes. After walking one minute from the road she
pointed up a cliff face and indicated we were to climb that. With a
two year old and buckets of food and a duffel bag of presents. The
path was at a slope of about 75 degrees much of the time and I sure
wished that I had my Baton Moise. Hand me down my walking cane. (Baton
Moise - Moses Baton)
After 40 minutes of climbing we reached the plateau/platon. Now, I had
thought that mama had to be in worse shape than me, she never leaves
the house that I can tell, but I couldn't keep up with her going up
that trail. And then the platon kept climbing; not as steeply, but we
must have gone up another hundred meters or more getting to the lakou.
And the air is thin up there. My heart needed help keeping up.
Finally we got to the lakou in the bananna grove. Plantains actually.
Banann en kreyol. With coffee bushes growing under the banann. Grann
Papa is bed ridden now but his wife of 35 years and his younest
daughter (27 years old she guesses) live there with him. Two babies
share the back room with the youngest daughter. My aunt, she is.
Matant. The house is as Vanite (Mama in law) remembers it, a stone and
mud shack of 10 by 20 feet with an earthen floor. It does have a tin
roof. The kitchen is a wood fire in a bananna leafed shed; sort of a
tent, an A-frame house about 4 feet high in the center.
Grann Papa was tickled to see me and spoke to me in spanish. Like many
country people he assumes that blan are spanish.
{digression: Many of the men of the country side go to work in the
Dominican Republic. San Domingue they call it. Matant's husband is
there now, cutting sugar cane.
There are no sugar plantations in Hayti these days to soak up surplus
labor from the countryside. The sugar that one buys in the marketplace
is from Mexico or Nicaragua or the D.R. Some small amounts of sirop de
canne are produced en hayti but granules are all imported it seems.
/digression}
I asked Grann how old he was. He doesn't know of course but recalls
that Borno was president when he was a child. That was the 1920's or
so? During the first occupation by the Department of the Navy. The
first road building period of the repiblik.
I tried to ask Grann if he remembered the period of the Marines but he
didn't understand me. He does talk about how the soil is exhausted now
and how much land he has had taken from him. How was his land 'taken'
from him? This I didn't attempt to figure out but property rules can
be very complicated. It could have been stolen and illegally
registered in someone elses name, the government could have taken it
legally or illegally, it could have belonged to the government all
along and assigned to someone else, or it could have belonged to
someone else all along. For 80 years? People do claim these things.
There are a lot of people on that platon these days altho it doesn't
seem so very poor compared to many places. There are few full sized
trees on le platon but there is grass by the pathways and the farm
land is half way level so it hasn't all washed away. Just around the
hill from the ti lakay there is a dried up streambed. It used to flow
all year long. They still have good water some walk away but many of
the 'source' on la morne have dried out over the years.
It was late afternoon when we arrived that thursday and we had to get
down the hill before dark. Getting going was difficult as usual and it
was almost 6 pm before we set off to find the trail back down the
mountain. A very rough trail to be hurrying on, carrying a 2 and a
half year old girl in the twilight.
Thursday nite in the ti kay on la plaj. The beach. Friday was Vendridi
Sancte, good friday and fish were hard to find. We had to take food up
to prepare a meal for the family. The port of Marigot was sold out by
the time we got there. Found fish in the peyizan market by the river,
luckily. An hour back up the hill took us to a different trail, higher
up the hill with a path reportedly less steep but longer.
Beaucoup cousin et cousann came around to visit with Mama Vanite and
Madamn mwen. Lots of little kids come around to stare at the blan.
Many of them had probably never seen a blanc before, but the grown ups
there say 'etranger' rather than 'blan'. I heard a new pronunciation
of 'sale' there too. 'salwi' is what one gentleman said. Salut is the
french I guess.
I talked with a neighbor woman who had made the walk to Kenscoff to
sell vegetables. Long walk. She agreed that it was about 4 hours to Ca
Jacques/Ka Jak from this platon and then 5 or 6 hours to Kafou Badyo.
She had walked to Duret/Kenscoff where the big trucks load produce
from the mountain gardeners to take down to market in Port au Prince.
I queried whether the prices paid at Kenscoff were better than down at
Marigot. Yes, they consider the walk worth the investment for the
better prices.
It is hard to consider that one basket of vegetables carried on the
head could yield a profit worth a two day walk. They consider it worth
the walk tho. Actually, going down to marigot requires almost as long
a walk I imagine, if you don't take the camion. The camion down to
Marigot costs 50 gourdes. 10 dola ht. Expensive, considering that the
tap tap from PetionVille up to Kenscoff costs 4 dola ht. Taking a moto
taxi up la morne costs 25 or 30 dola ht. 150 gourdes. A lot of money
for these people.
One cousann came around to visit with Vanite. Decades since they had
seen each other. He was a hard working farmer and had made the trip to
Kenscoff to sell. He'd been to work in San Doming as well. He has
considerable land and owns a mule. Bought the mule. I saw another
mule, but didn't see any bourik. Someone else is doing the mule
breeding. That would be a good business, one I've long wished to do.
Madamn and Se (my wife and her sister) spent the day cooking up a big
meal on the wood fire under the bananna leaf shed. Fresh fish from
Marigot and boiled banann and di riz. By the time it was ready it was
time to head back down the hill, not wanting to get caught in the dark
anko/encore. The youngest daughter, Vanite's sister, came with us,
wanting to discover where her house is. Apparently another of Vanite's
sisters lives above PetionVille near her, but she knows not where. How
many years since they have seen each other? Unknown, but a substantial
number.
So we headed out back down the hill in the fog, this time with a
bucket of food cooked on the hill and the same duffel bag, this time
filled with Banann and coffee beans. I couldn't carry that duffel bag
but Matant, a 27 year old woman, 6 months pregnant, wearing plastic
flip flops, carried that 40 pound bag down the hill faster than I
could walk with expensive lace up boots on my feet. Ah, we also were
carrying 4 chickens, poul, presents from the family.
We stopped off at 3 or 4 cousin's houses on the way down, one of which
was a substantial concrete house with veranda, a concrete yard and a
mule in the yard. It hangs over the edge of a cliff and I saw no
farmland nearby but he must do well with some land somewhere. The Mule
had a big sore on his spine where the pannier carrier rubs. Many of
the country bourique and cheval have this problem. They don't bother
to design the carriers properly. Dok Phillipe used to build proper
burro saddles which don't cut into the skin of these hard working beasts.
The parade down the mountain was about 9 people this time, with
various mountian cousin/cousann carrying whatever. When we reached the
road it turned out that another young woman (besides Matant, Auntie,
the young sister of Mama) was intending to ride into Port au Prince
with us. I guess Mama had told her she could come but there was no
room in the jeep. 5 people and baggage and chickens fill up a jeep
wrangler pretty effectively.
RaRa bands were filling up the road in the little settlements going
down the hill. We had to pay 50 gourdes to three different bands to
get thru. Two more bands down in the towns with electricity didn't
demand payment for passage. Having marching bands take over the roads
is one of those little pleasures of living en Hayti. I much prefer
marching bands and RaRa bands to crazy haitian drivers trying to cut
into a 10 foot long space between cars.
the great misfortune of this trip was that I forgot to bring a
camera. There are no pictures of all those cousine/cousann and grann
papa and le platon of zone anba/below seguin.
--
J. David Lyall
http://www.lyalls.net/