Sunday - The Road to Blanchard

Drove up to Blanchard, through Petion Ville and Delmas, our driver Ronnie following Pastor Leon in his green pickup truck. When the paved road became crowded, they would leave it and drive through a maze of rocky dirt side roads, navigating somehow by heading generally downhill or by sight somehow. Honking at pedestrians or slower traffic, passing it. We saw one stoplight and one or two stop signs in all of Port-au-Prince. I’m not sure if anyone has street maps in Port-au-Prince; we never saw or used one and I can’t find anything on the web.

Back on the main road the traffic was heavy, grinding. Haitian taxis (taptaps) with American flags or reggae themes like “One Love” painted on the side, motorcycles, cars, SUVs, and trucks of all varieties in all stages of repair shared the road. Street side markets proliferated everywhere, women were walking with loads balanced on their heads – even stacked cartons of eggs! Lots of Lesly Centers where they have banks or lotteries, lots of signs for Digicel.

Generally on the way to Cite Soleil you pass two traffic circles – Liberte and Fraternite (I never found Egalite). At the Liberte traffic circle there are UN armored personnel carriers. There are controversial aspects of the UN presence in Haiti (to discuss later). One time some Brazilian soldiers in a APC directly in front of us pointed an automatic rifle at us.

Turned off the main road to Blanchard near the sign for a church painted on a white wall. Then it was all rocky dirt roads and alleys. Blanchard is a few miles north of Cite Soleil; it was once rural but now many of Cite Soleil's residents have moved their to escape the gangs and build a better life. Little concrete huts, shops, even a cyber-cafe and a video place line the roads in some places, in other places there are still open fields. Sometimes there are piles of garbage on the fields, with goats, pigs, cows rooting for forage. Goats and chickens are also often in the road. And people are walking everywhere, children in school uniforms (or not), women, men, bicycles.

Finally we reach the the Haiti Outreach Ministry's Blanchard compound (or L’Eglise Chretien Terre Noire). It is surrounded by a high cinderblock wall with a sliding metal gate painted dark red (there are a number of similar compounds for other schools or institutions in the area and they all seem to have the same kind of gate). There are a few vendors with food stands and other people hanging around in front of the compound. Some people are looking for work or just passing the time. On Sunday you could get your shoes shined for 5 or 10 gourdes. Religious Haitians really make an effort to dress up and look nice on Church day.

We drive inside...