PÉTIONVILLE
For three nights in the final week of March as a full moon hovered in the Haitian sky and as pious folk prepared for national observances of Good Friday and Easter, I took advantage of a short break in classes – our last before starting the third term. I wished to expand my knowledge of the country’s contradictions so I visited Pétionville, the uptown enclave of the capital city, Port-au-Prince. (It was here I went to see the heart specialist some weeks before.) I traded my rustic bungalow by the sea for a spacious hotel room in a colonial, “gingerbread” hotel located on the town’s roundabout – below the terraced residences of the mountain ridge as it slopes toward PAP basin. Described as “almost normal” in comparison to western towns, upscale Pétionville, named after Alexandre Pétion, a founder/hero of the republic, is dominated by a central park, Place St-Pierre, around which the town revolves – a superb yellow church, Eglise St-Pierre, the city hall, the commissariat de police adjoined by the prison civile, a tax office, vehicle registration office, artisanal kiosks, a flower market and a school – all requisite to a town and perfectly at hand. The numerous shops and banks on the descending periphery of Place St-Pierre including western-style supermarkets (with armed guards at their doors) service an affluent clientele of sour-faced whites and uncomfortable-looking upwardly mobile Haitians – like the houses on the ridge the buildings are painted in an array of pastel colours which gives the town its lively character in the midday sun. The atmosphere could almost be Mediterranean if it weren’t for the prevalence of walled establishments and their narrow entrances guarded by armed security – the city cries out for open-concept street businesses with sidewalk cafés and restaurants, but there are none, I’m told, in any part of Haiti – due to the country’s harsh reality of poverty and crime. Street hawkers gravitate to Pétonville creating a constant flow of people and goods interweaving with the chaotic vehicular traffic.
At night many of them sleep on the lawns of Place St-Pierre under the unwelcomed glare of the streetlights. This is another aspect of Pétionville that is different than other cities like Jacmel – it is well lit at night. One evening I had dinner at “View,” a restaurant on an eighth floor rooftop with excellent panoramic sights of close by Pétionville and PAP in the distance – and could see how the glow in the night sky varied in the two places. And so I spent my sojourn taking long walks up and down the steep graded streets then returning to the sumptuous greens, whites and blues of my hotel to read, write, think and luxuriate in the swimming pool – feeling guilty for having the time and resources for such pleasures. Except for our Directrice who booked me into the hotel, no one in the world knew I was there – the mostly white hotel guests were preoccupied and the Haitian staff was aloof so I said hardly a word to anyone – and no one in the city knew who I was or cared. In this armour of anonymity I would often walk across the street from the hotel to sit in the park. I never saw a blanc in the park – or on the streets for that matter – except going from one shop to the next or to the bank in their all wheel drives – they rarely mixed with locals. As the sole blanc in the park it wasn’t long before the locals found me: at first a duo of primly dressed young women approached me – they were Jehovah Witnesses with the same message and literature (this time written in Creole) I’ve seen at home and internationally – surprised me somewhat that the quest for world religious domination had reached even these Haitian shores where Catholicism and Voodoo hold sway.
A few hawkers came and went then a well-dressed middle-aged lady looking a little distraught came up and started asking questions: Where was I from? How long was I staying? At what hotel was I staying? What was my room number? Without answering any of her questions I asked her why she wanted to know all these details. She replied that her brother was a great painter and she wanted to interest me in buying some of his work. I politely refused her offer but she didn’t want to take no for an answer – she just stood in front of me staring and waiting for me to change my mind – I surveyed the immediate park to see if she might have accomplices waiting in the wings but found none – I then insisted she leave me alone which she did. The next day the same distraught lady in a different dress approached me again and asked me to change my mind. The more I looked into her tortured eyes the more I became interested in the background of her life: I wanted to ask her the same questions she initially asked me and more – What brought her to this place? Is she supporting her family? Or is she working for a cartel? Who is she? But these were fleeting moments – I told her again I wasn’t interested and she promptly left. Seems I couldn’t cross, due to cowardice or arrogance, the threshold that would connect my world with hers. Another time a dapper fifty year-old man with a crisp linen shirt and pleated trousers (but with worn out shoes) started to talk to me. He was intelligent and said he travelled the world – had been to Montreal – knew many Haitian taxi drivers there – heard Ottawa and Toronto were great places too. He flattered and endeared me saying that he too was an artist – not the riff-raff who sold around the park but one who had paintings in the lobby of my hotel and other prestige venues. He pulled out a few of his pieces – they were ballpoint pen designs on pillowcases – he offered me one for free saying that he liked me and wished to give me something. I appreciated the gesture and the art but refused his gift thinking to myself that it was a pretext – and it was. He said he urgently needed some cash for a taxi to PAP. I told him I had no money with me and we parted. Wasn’t sure what to think when later I saw him at the hotel bar having a drink with the manager like they were old pals – he was not a street hawker but someone who possessed the resourcefulness to help in Haiti’s self-determination.
