Fresh air

We met a smiling Richard at 6am sharp in front of our apartment. A Haitian print-shop owner in Petion-Ville, he regularly decides to skip church on Sundays and go hiking instead. He told us he has an enthusiastic but unreliable following – sometimes the group is twenty, other times just two. Today we were only joined by one other person – a young German woman named Katarina. She gently reminded him that they haven’t had 20 people for a long time. He laughed and looked down, perhaps wondering whether the hiking group’s golden age had passed.

We began our 3 hour journey by walking up and out of town. The streets were already bustling, and a colourful parade of market goodies were being walked down from the mountains, steadily balanced on human heads and donkey’s backs. As pavement turned to gravel, and gravel to dirt, the road became quieter. The cinderblock grey of the city gave way to the lush green of the Petion-Ville hills.

We continued to push uphill, putting altitude between us and the urban sprawl below. The temperature was already breaching 30*C, but the breeze was a welcome reward for our early start. By now, the road had turned into one of the many trails that web together the community. We passed simple one-room homes, vegetable fields, and communal water taps. But the perfect pastoral experience was suddenly intruded upon by a small clearing with a carpet of plastic trash. The bottles, cups, bags and cans were evidence of a rocking party last night (or was it last year?). Unsurprisingly, waste disposal is far down the priority list for the government and families alike.

The trail continued upwards, yielding amazing views of the city bordered by mountains to the north and south, the ocean to the west and plains to the east. We walked with our necks craned to the view and relied on our hearing for surprises up ahead on the curving muddy trail. “Bonjou!” was the familiar greeting from the locals. The farmers – shovels and hoes in hand - beamed smiles as they let us pass. Other locals - impeccably dressed and impossibly clean - were trotting down the trail to church. When there were no other sounds, we could hear the call of church bells for mass. But as Richard explained, this was just pre-recorded sounds over the megaphones. The few bells that existed in the area became casualties of the earthquake. Continuing on, we would here rustling beside us, and a tied-up goat or cow would be inevitably there to stare vacantly back at us.

We then came upon more buildings. The first just looked like a damaged and graffiti-marked house from a far. A closer look revealed a Voodoo place of worship. A man emerged to marshal my photo taking, and then went back to his work. The next cluster of buildings was buzzing with children. A few giggling girls darted after each other, protecting some unknown treasure. Not far away, four boys swarmed around a home-made soccer ball, only briefly looking up to greet us before returning to their game.

Richard then told us that that we were nearing the end of our loop. Our complaining legs shuddered down the mountain and we re-entered the world of rubble, cars and road-side markets. A parade of UN SUVs passed us, probably heading for some weekend hotel escape out of the city. I guess our escape had been of a different variety, one where our view of Haiti was not restricted to the view from an SUV window.