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  18 Photos Matt Payne in Haiti

Haiti Countryside Photo/M.Payne
click to enlarge

LA SOURCE, HAITI (June 2010) — We made our way out of the city towards Jacmel and just beyond that, the village of La Source, a village that was just one day away from a new life.

The masses of people on the streets thinned as our journey continued over a verdant mountain range whose plush vistas looked out over the Caribbean Sea. The view was so breathtakingly beautiful, it could almost mask the heartache residing on the land, were it not for the clusters of the homeless resting on burnt out cars along the FEMA tent-lined streets.

At times the road all but disappeared under piles of rubble and fallen rock where children, living with - yet oddly unfamiliar with the term disaster, chased chickens and threw stones.

Jacmel had once been a vibrant tourist destination whose architecture and culture was the muse for the French Quarter in New Orleans though now it felt more like Post Katrina Ninth Ward than Bourbon Street. 

Haiti Countryside Photo/M.Payne

Our marginally paved road gave way to one of stone and dirt as we continued our trek towards La Source. 

While still impoverished, as we pushed deeper into the countryside alongside a river, the destruction gave way to agrarian shanties and campsites, most of which had been reassembled since the quake to resemble their original form. 

Once again, I rolled my window, the smell of rain and fauna replacing the smell of burning tires and dust that had been housed in my nose since my arrival to Port Au Prince. 

“Roll that window up,” said David. 

I looked around for the danger.

“Now,” he insisted. 

 As I did, the SUV cut left down an embankment, toward the river, picking up speed at a frightening rate. 

 Just as my window closed, the car slammed into a river of lazily voluminous water.  We plowed across like an elephant on a mission, barely raising the eye of a shirtless woman who watched, bathing along the shoreline. 

Once across the river, David smiled at my discomfort. 

“Almost there.” 

While I had morbidly entertained the idea of losing my life in planning my trip to Haiti, meeting that fate at the hands of a river hadn’t entered my mind.    

Chicken on Fence Photo/Jess Koehler

As we crept up a hillside, birds flit from headstone to headstone in a small cemetery under a thick canopy of exotic trees.  Pulling past one small two-room shack, followed by another and another, we finally stopped on top of a large hill.  Exiting the car, under the watchful eye of a tethered pig, we looked behind us at the village of La Source.  

The streets were filled, however the film crew, the Generosity Water people, no one I thought to meet was around.

Lizards and hens scurried as we walked back down the path we had just driven towards a small church where the village had been congregated to worship for more than three hours.  A trio of young boys that had somehow managed to avoid the one hundred eighty minute sauna-like service watched us while kicking around a soccer ball barefoot on a barren and rocky field.  

Observing me take a photo, the young boys surrounded me, eager to look at the screen, then demanding another photo be taken.  After taking several shots, sharing them with the giggling, elated youth, I realized that many of them had never seen their image.

Children playing soccer Photo/M.Payne
 click to enlarge

After the service, villagers including Josue and his brother Chrismedonnes, who served as the village’s de facto mayor exited the church, spiritually replenished, to return to their homes to prepare dishes for the feast that would be served following the fresh water cistern’s dedication.

Josue, a massive man, easily mistaken for a boxer or a bodyguard, wore his best suit, despite the heat and in honor of the day.  Chrismedonnes, equally polished, embraced each of us, welcoming us in Creole as part of the village.

The following day, TOMS Shoes via the One for One Movement, would be distributing a thousand pairs of shoes to La Source and fifteen surrounding villages. 

The program is simple.   For every pair of trendy TOMS purchased, a pair would be donated to children in need. One of our tasks was to help the children find shoes that would fit them and to insure that the shoes were given to the children, not stolen for sale on the Haitian black market.

Fitting for shoes Photo/Jess Koehler
 click to enlarge

Despite the looming anniversary of the quake, the village, much as I had hoped for, bustled with optimistic and anticipatory energy. 

Life, in La Source, was about to get better.

Having connected with my group I found myself with Patrick Shen’s film crew ­— a focused Bohemian-looking team on the fifth day of their forth trip to Haiti, and two representatives from Generosity Water.  Our band made its way to the home of an influential Haitian artist named Laurent Olivier. 

Despite the remote location of the village Laurent maintained a gallery in his small two-room house proudly displaying almost a hundred paintings.  After some time admiring the art, we made our way back to the home of Chrismedonnes where the women of the village prepared our lunch. 

Tired but gracious, these women with smoke-red eyes and cracked skin served rice and beans with fried plantains prepared over an open fire as Josue described his gratitude for the town’s new water source, repeating “I just can’t believe it,” with each pronunciation, his vision for the village coming closer to fruition.  

The women then returned to a small shack, some chopping wood from a woodpile while others plucked chickens, cooking them over an open flame.  

As our food settled, peacefully we adjusted to the humidity, our full bellies anesthetizing the emotional discord stirred in Port Au Prince a few hours earlier. 

The anesthetization that came from doing something normal turned to anticipation as Crismedonne blew the town conch, summoning the villagers for the well's dedication. 

With villagers arriving from several different villages, we made our way down a narrow trail to a gully where the cistern awaited its inaugural pour. Standing on top of the cement structure, Josue’s powerful voice, in Creole blessed the well to a crowd of emotional villagers crawling over one another to take a sip of fresh water as it streamed from the silver spigots. 

Cool clean water Photo/M. Payne
click to enlarge

Parents clapped as their children washed dusty ash from their smiling faces under a crystalline stream of water.  A few feet away, Patrick’s cameras rolled, capturing the magical moment as a blessed smile stretched across the face of the custodian from Princeton. 

What had been originally a film about the lives of custodians in privileged academia had dramatically changed the lives of thousands of people in a country most defined as hopeless.  A few short hours ago, I had erroneously condemned a nation, and somehow here I was as the prayers of Josue reverberated across the land, inspiring the thousands of other NGO’s who had dedicated their lives to helping these beautiful people.

That night, as massive thunderheads accumulated on the fringe of the mountains surrounding La Source, verses of optimism spilled from the souls of the village’s youth as they shared poetry for an electric gathering of freshly satiated Haitians. 

Fireflies and distant lightning fueled an ever-increasing buzz of joy as a funk band connected an antiquated PA system to a generator on loan to the village for a concert that was to follow the poetry. 

The women of the village set long table with giant bowls of rice and beans, plantains, and drumsticks while the our crew and the village’s men sipped casually on Prestige, Haiti’s most popular beer and painted the faces of the villages youngest while their friends watched, squealing with delight.  

As the band improvised their way through sprawling Haitian funk, we joined a group of kids sitting on a FEMA tarp in front of the makeshift stage.  Around us, the parents formed an unsmiling ring as the children began to first clap the beats of the songs, and then, one by one began to dance. I realized it was the first time most had heard live music. 

A conga lined formed as they jumped up and down, unaware of the high pitched feedback occasionally screaming from the microphones. 

Despite the lightning’s growing intensity and promise of rain, the band played on.  In a country so familiar with deluge, I assumed that they knew as well as anyone when would be the right time to shut shop.  Ridiculously I asked if they were concerned about the welfare of their instruments were it to start to rain and was quickly reminded that the instruments they played were all they had.

The band took an intermission and several “folks,” including myself took their places on the stage.  One of the band members reluctantly handed me his guitar and I noticed that the strings were red with rust from the humidity.

The thought that I had always dreamed of playing in a band and traveling had always been my passion but in a million years I wouldn’t have guessed that the first time I’d play for a large crowd it would be for hundreds of people in a mountain village of Haiti, crossed my mind.

I horrifically pushed my way on an a upside down guitar through a rendition of “Oh Boy” that would have made Buddy Holly turn over in his grave in what was the finest moment of my entire life.  I knew in that moment, that my fear earlier had been tragically misplaced.

After the ceremony, back in the car, we blindly powered once again through the river and proceeded along the barely tread road swerving to miss young children wandering in the sticky night. 

The owner of our hotel in Jacmel greeted us with cocked shotgun, followed by a welcoming grin.  We retired to the rooftop where we spent the rest of the night allowing our minds to settle over a half dozen more Prestige beers and a well-cooked meal including some meat that without prompt, we were assured wasn’t cat. 

Looking out over the powerless city as fires burned in front of dozens of decimated buildings now surrounded by tents, my mind reeled as one of the NGOs gave us the details of the TOMS shoe distribution that was to happen the next day. 

TOMs and Operation Blessings Shoes
Photo/J.Koehler click to enlarge

TOMS and Operation Blessing had brought nearly a thousand pairs of shoes to pass out to the children of La Source and the surrounding villages on TOMS behalf. 

We arrived back to La Source where we learned the majority of the children had gone to school for the day.  We also learned while we waited that most of the kids not only had to walk to school, but that walk included crossing the river that we had crossed twice the day before, only they didn’t have an SUV. 

They had to wade across, which to some meant that they had to swim.   Many of those kids forced to make that walk each day did so without shoes.  

As the villagers gathered around once again where we had played the night before, ominous rain clouds began once again to form.  Still high from the previous night’s good cheer, we began to give out the shoes, personally putting the shoes on each child’s foot to guarantee a good fit. 

Many of the parents offered familial smiles as if the night before had represented a lifetime of bonding crammed into a few short hours.  We had become, it felt, a part of them. 

Slowly the temperature dropped and as it did fist-sized raindrops began to fall.  Unhindered, we continued to pass out the shoes as the line of eager children continued to grow.  With each arrival of a child in need, the sky broke more and the wind began to pick up.  The boxes holding the well-organized shoes began to give way complicating the distribution process as the families and children watched, unflinching under the worsening weather. 

What had been a heavy rain gave way to a full monsoon and with it came heavy winds.  Quickly, we collected the shoes and made our way to the thatched shack where yesterday the women had set up our feast. Palm fronds blew from bending trees leaves blowing wildly at no one.

Once inside, we attempted to pass out shoes as countless people chaotically descended upon us making the process immensely more difficult.  As the ground turned to a pasty slush, the crowd grew restless and Josue and Chrismedonnes attempted to create a sense of order but the mind of the impatient mob could not be stilled. 

The small hut we were in swelled with mothers fighting to get their children shoes.  Adolescent boys became aggravated at the thought of not receiving their promised footwear as Chrismedonnes urged that we leave the village that had become so familiar as soon as possible because the river that we had crossed now three times would soon flood and we would be stuck there. 

Hearing that they may not receive the promised shoes, the growing crowd grew more restless and irritable.  Without option, we picked up decimated boxes of shoes and in a hastily carved path through a torrent of frustrated, screaming parents, crying babies, and violent rain, we fled.

My heart raced as we pulled away from the village as a handful of children whose trust we had gained twelve hours earlier watched us leave, leaving them shoeless.  

Though they had been promised shoes and would still get them, they wouldn’t get them that day which meant that until Operation Blessing could return and hand out the shoes in an orderly fashion, they would continue to walk to school… shoeless. 

Children of La Source Photo/M. Payne

We arrived in Jacmel as the rain stopped.  After another meal of beans and rice we wound our way back over the mountains to Port-Au-Prince where that night, we would stay at the Operation Blessing safe house, a stone’s throw from the airport that I had arrived just 72 hours earlier. 

Looking north out over the vast beauty of the verdant tropical mountain range stretching north to the Caribbean Sea, it was hard to believe that somehow beyond those beautiful vistas, there was a nation once home to millions, but now filled with the homeless; people who walked around like ghosts, shoeless, without adequate clothes, each too sad to mourn, too thirsty too drink and yet as I looked out and we rolled on, relishing in the power of La Source, all I could see was endless the beauty that was all of Haiti and somehow I was okay with that.

That night as I lay in bed, I felt tiny.  A voyeur, sitting in a comfortable bed where a few feet away, beautiful people slept in tents.  I struggled with my thus far inconsequential contribution to life, thinking of the heroes, both Haitian and from abroad that I had met and what they’d done. Though there was a much to be done, things were happening. 

One village at a time, one family at a time.  Earlier, in the trip I had been asked, “Why did you come to Haiti?” and I struggled to answer, until there sweating in the Caribbean heat, too inspired to sleep, it occurred to me- To come back.

From Hell to Hope: 72 Hours in Haiti, page one
From Hell to Hope: 72 Hours in Haiti, page two
From Hell to Hope: 72 Hours in Haiti, page three

Currently one billion people worldwide do not have access to clean water.  To learn more about what you can do to get involved, visit www.generositywater.com or viewater.org.

To learn more about Operation Blessing and their many projects worldwide, go to http://community.ob.org/site/PageServer.

To learn more about Artists for Peace and Justice, go to http://www.artistsforpeaceandjustice.org/.

To learn more about THE PHILOSOPHER KINGS, LA SOURCE and the films of Patrick Shen, go to http://philosopherkingsmovie.com/

While Haiti has disappeared from the headlines, its problems and need for support has not.  Whether it is money, time, or simply keeping the nation in your thoughts, small gestures make a profound difference. 

Follow Matt Payne at http://www.facebook.com/mpayne1016.  You can also visit his personal blog at http://mwpayne331.blogspot.com/ and http://oneweirdshoe.blogspot.com/.

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