Summer 2007

Sony and Madame Evelyn aren’t getting along, which forced me to redo the schedule so that they never have to go to the same place.  Since many of the recent trips have been long ones, this means that I alternated who would come with me in the Land Cruiser.  Madame Evelyn days have tended to be the fun ones - I am the only English speaker in the group, which forces me to do things like speak Spanish (always fun), play with kids to keep them occupied while Madame Evelyn does surveys (always fun too), and conduct qualitative interviews in Creole (always an adventure - basically I just ask the questions, understand part of what was said, and play the tape later to Sony so that we can transcribe and I can understand what was really going on).

On one of the Madame Evelyn days, we got stuck in a huge afternoon rainstorm.  After one of Madame Evelyn’s many friends invited us in for lunch, Madame Evelyn went off to find someone to interview.  In the mean time the driver waited with me while I played soccer with some boys in a little alley. 

Then it started pouring.  We didn’t know where to find Madame Evelyn, so we returned to the meeting place for the end of the day.  We were early, however, so only one of our interviewers was there. 

There was a big river between us and home.  The size and speed of the river grows by the minute in a rainstorm, which made the driver really concerned.  He decided we had to get the Land Cruiser on the other side of the river before we were forced to stay there for the night.

So I found myself with two Creole-speaking males separated by a big rushing river from the 3 females on our team for the day.  Apparently the driver’s plan was just to wait for things to clear up.  Pretty much everyone in our group had a cell phone, but somehow everyone only seemed to have the phone numbers of the people on the same side of the river as them.  Judging by the reactions of all the other Haitians, waiting it out appeared to be the only thing to do.  We watched the tap-taps (pickup trucks with Haitians in the back) accumulate on both sides of the river, and none of the drivers or people in the tap-taps seemed to think it was a good idea to try to cross.  After at least 45 minutes of waiting, things started to let up and a few brave guys got out and made it across the river. 

At this point our driver called one of the clinic directors to call another guy at the clinic to call Madame Evelyn to explain where we were.  After a bit without hearing anything back, I recommended that we send someone over to the other side to tell the ladies where we were.  The other two guys didn’t seem all that anxious to do anything.  It took me awhile to convince Bichener, the 18-year old interviewer to cross the river with me. 

So after a lot of convincing, I prepared for my second river crossing experience in Haiti.  This time there were no motos to get to the other side but a whole new set of challenges, not the least of which was the large crowd of Haitians that was standing at either side contemplating if and how to get across and laughing at the blan getting ready to go.  This time Bichener and I opted to leave all of our clothing, shoes, etc. in the car except for t-shirts and boxers.  We took lessons from those who had gone before about where to cross.  Just as we reached a dry spot halfway across, we saw the ladies being dropped off by the river.  Bichener seemed to think our job was over because apparently they had gotten the message about where we were.  I continued the rest of the way and met them at the river bank.  I helped two of them back across while Madame Evelyn opted to pay a guy a few cents to carry her on his shoulders to the other side.  This proved to be the biggest challenge of the day, although driving the rest of the way on rainy, muddy roads was no piece of cake.