On Space Shutles and Punky Brewster

July 8th, 2011

When I was little — up until about the age of 31 — I wanted to be an astronaut. I’m not sure that I’ve ever given up on that dream, although the chances of going back in time, joining the Air Force at the age of 18 and then working my ass off to become a pilot then hoping for the best (or going to college and earning a PhD in some sort of space-applicable science) seem fairly slim at this point. I was always fascinated by space, for as long as I can remember. I would read books, watch “Nova” episodes and Star Wars… you know; the usual stuff.

I was also a fan of “Punky Brewster,” a largely forgettable sitcom starring Soleil Moon Frye that ran for four seasons, starting in 1984. Not that it matters in this context, but the character of Punky was an orphaned little girl, who was being fostered by the commandant from Police Academy. And Punky wanted to be an astronaut, too.

On January 28th, 1986, I was in kindergarten, excited for two reasons: 1) That we didnt’ have to do any of that math crap for an hour or two because; 2) we were watching the space shuttle Challenger lift off from Florida on TV. Needless to say, the Challenger disaster happened. I cried, and cried, and cried. And I still do, when I think about it too much. I am not really able to look at footage or even photos of the disaster — it just affects me too much.

“Punky Brewster,” instead of dealing with something like this in the usual way of sitcoms (write the story line off and pretend it never happened) chose instead to deal with the issue head-on and wrote the Challenger disaster into the seasons two finale, “Accidents Happen,” which aired on March 9, 1986. It guest starred Buzz Aldrin and the message was “accidents happen, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying.” It was a good message and absolutely the right way to handle the “Punky wants to be an astronaut” storyline. I cried, and cried, and cried.

Today, July 8th, 2011, at 11:29 EDT, NASA launched STS-135, the final space shuttle flight. This is the last in a 30 year chain of flights, stretching back to April 12th, 1981. It’s very strange to think that this vehicle that has flown into space for nearly as long as I’ve been alive won’t be flying any longer. And it’s very sad.

Tèt kale is president now

May 25th, 2011

Tèt kale (TET KAL-ay) is a Kreyol phrase that means “bald head.” It’s also the widely-used nickname of Michel Martelly, the now-44th president of Haiti. He was sworn in on May 14th, 2011 and we went to Champs du Mars (the area around the National Palace, which is where the swearing in took place) an hour or two after the investiture.

In the week and a half since I took these photos, I’ve been both busy and sick! It truly is a magical time for me. I think I got the flu. Which wasn’t pleasant. But in any case, I’m feeling much better (not 100% yet, but better). So you finally get some photos.

This lovely couple were had set up shop directly across from the left wing of the national palace. When they saw our crew start shooting footage and photos, they caught my attention and demanded that I take a photograph. It’s honestly one of my favorite photos from the trip so far. They’re just happy, lovely people. His smile is great.

Francoise (in orange) interviews a young while Jean Marc shoots, Jasmine records sound and Siebren supervises. I’m never not amazed by the ability of people to carry things on their head. Fantastic.

An Interview

The UN was there, being all MINUSTAH (min-OO-stah): Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti — United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti. Thankfully, they turned out to be unnecessary that day. The general feeling was that of reserved hope and excitement. These troops happen to be Brazilian. Most of the UN troops like to throw an occasional thumbs up to the kids that inevitably stare at them when the drive past. For adult blancs, we get a nod or a small wave.

UN

Louvenson is taking photos of the palace. That large tower behind him is some sort of a memorial for Haiti. I’m not sure what it’s called. The large bowl on top is supposed to contain a flame. There were UN and PNH (Police National d’Haïti — National Police of Haiti) riflemen using it for a vantage point that day.

Louvenson Shoots

This gentleman stopped to chat with our crew. Honestly, the main reason I took his photograph is that I thought he looked very much like Dwayne Wayne from “A Different World.” It’s an okay photo on its non-Kadeem Hardison-related merits as well, I think.

This gentleman asked me to take his photograph. I obliged. He asked to see it afterward. I showed him, asked, “C’est bon?” He nodded, gave me a small smile and then bumped my fist.

"Take my photo, please."

This statue depicts Henri Christophe astride a horse. Christophe was also known as King Henri I of the State of Haiti, which was an independent nation that consisted of the northern part of what is now the Republic of Haiti. He was responsible for the construction of the Citadelle Laferrière, as well as the Sans-Souci Palace (“sans-souci” means “without mercy,” by the way). His statue in Champs de Mars is now surrounded by the tents and shanties of a few of the thousands of people who are still otherwise homeless after the 2010 earthquake. In Haiti, they refer to it as Douze Janvier.

Henri Christophe

Titid se nou!” means “Aristide is us!” “Titid” is an affectionate nickname for Aristide, which — even though there’s not an exact translation — means “Little ‘tide.” Other than that explanation of the language, I rather think this photo speaks for itself.

"Titid se nou!"

And, of course, we had video cameras rolling with the students. If you’d like to check out the videos the students cut together out of the footage, check out the Vox Pops Martelly album on our Vimeo page.

A visit to the Tchaka Danse studio

May 13th, 2011

I think it’s safe to say that I’m not a dancer. I think it’s also safe to say that “dance” (notice I did not say “dancing,” because “dance” and “dancing” are two different things — which is not to say that I particularly like dancing, as I really don’t, but I do enjoy slowly swaying back and forth under the influence of several stiff cocktails whilst holding myself up against Betsy) isn’t really something I enjoy.

Which is why it was odd that I found myself at a dance studio in Port-au-Prince. Located right on the edge of a large ravine on Avenue John Brown, it was mostly destroyed in the earthquake (hardly a shock). What’s interesting, though, is that even though they lost the area where they used to practice, they’ve continued to practice in a tiny, triangular area outlined by two gutters and a wall. Past the gutters lies a large ravine, over which you can see lots of tents and houses perched both on the cliff side and on top of the plateau opposite.

It’s nice to see that they feel passionate enough about their dance that they’ve continued on despite difficult-at-best circumstances.

In other news, yesterday was the first real shoot that the students had. They started at 5:00 am (which of course meant that I started at 5:00 am)  and filmed a day in the life of their petit marchand. I helped the group that filmed our local bar (surprising, I know). Videos will, I’m sure, be coming soon.

Isaac

The drummer

Drumming

The operator of the school chats with Haiti Reporters

View from the dance school

Dancing

Sandra

Siebren gets his shot

I’ve been busy

May 11th, 2011

So in case you were wondering where the heck I’ve been (and I’m sure nobody has), the answer is that I’ve been busy. Doing film stuff. But, I come bearing a peace offering: The first videos from the new term of students here at Haiti Reporters. It’s called “My Story,” and you can see them all at Vimeo. Several of them came out rather well, I think.

In other news, I’m rather excited for Betsy to be visiting in something like 25 days. For several reasons. But not the least of which is that by the time she gets here, it’ll have been a month since I’ve seen her. She told me she’s bringing the cats, but I think she’s lying.

Also, Madame Viecent made maiz moulin for lunch today. That was good. More later, including some photos from a dance school I went to yesterday.

Driving in Port-au-Prince

May 11th, 2011

On Teaching, Storms and Cats

April 29th, 2011

Ahh, teaching. That’s right; there was a reason that someone was willing to buy me a ticket to come here.

Teaching is — and you’ll pardon my French here — fucking nerve-wracking. Let me explain: I am not a teacher. I have no experience in teaching. And my French is so bad and limited as to be laughable. But somehow I convinced a pair of Dutch guys that yep, I’m your man. To be fair to myself, I do have more-than the requisite knowledge of the filming and editing process to comfortably teach an interested party how to make a video. But the language barrier. Oh man that language barrier.

For those that may not know, there are two official languages in Haiti: French and Haitian Creole (Kreyòl). Now, Kreyòl is largely derived from French, but the differences are significant. It’s entirely possible for someone who speaks French reasonably well to get by just fine in Haiti. That’s not me. I can order sandwiches, beer or rum (this is très important, and not only because I’m a drunk — beer is brewed with purified water, contains alcohol which further inhibits microbial growth and is packaged aseptically, thus it’s generally safe to drink from the bottle… also I’m a drunk), ask where the toilet is , ask how much something costs. Then I get a wall of sound, to which I unfailingly reply: “Je ne comprends pas. Repetez, sil vous plait?” Then they either look irritated or half-smile at the barely functional blan’ in front of them and repeat themselves. Sometimes slower, sometimes exactly at the same speed and sometimes faster (largely to fuck with me, I think).

But my French is improving. I understand a lot more than I speak. And I can read it rather well, in fact. Oh well. Another week or six and I’m sure I’ll get by a little better.

Yesterday, I got to experience my first real storm. We’ve had rain — even heavy rain — but it was nothing compared to the actual storm that we had yesterday. The wind blew the fruit trees nearly sideways and fired the rain against our house with surprising force. When the rain genuinely started, we could see the initial rush of water down the open sewer that lines rue O. Zamor across from the house. When the rain really got going, a pair of men living in the yard of a semi-pancaked house took off their clothes for a free impromptu shower. And then, as suddenly as it had began, it was over. It lasted all of forty-five minutes. The rain was nice. It knocks both the temperature and the dust down, if only for a little while.

(Aside: Yes, that is Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” playing as if it were some sort of 1980s Casio watch alarm in the video. There are water tanker trucks that play music to alert you to their presence. This is the Titanic music truck. There is also a “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” truck, and a Bach truck. I am not kidding.)

I think it’s safe to say that I love cats. And that really comes as a surprise to nobody reading this. It’s also safe to say that the Hotel Oloffson is one of the little oases of comfort in Haiti. Located in a gorgeous gingerbread mansion, surrounded by trees, a dance floor and a swimming pool, the place is rather neat. They also have two of the laziest animals I’ve ever seen in my life: Boxers whose entire existence seems to consist of finding the shade and laying down as quickly as possible, while letting their tongues stick out. Then, when they hear plates hit tables, they saunter over, angling for a little bit of whatever you’re having. But — and this is the good part — there are also two cats that live at the Oloffson. A grey and white striped one, and a white with brown spots one. The upshot of all this is that I’m taking the gray striped one home. (Not really. Unless I could manage to do so, then I totally would.)

Lazy Dog from the Hotel Oloffson

Kitty from the Hotel Oloffson

There was a bird building a nest in my bathroom window. I was debating whether I should get rid of it due to sanitary concerns, or let him/her continue due to seeing baby bird concerns. In the end, the prospect of baby birds won out. But now the nest seems to be in disarray and I haven’t seen the homeowner in a day. Oh well.

Moving in toward another weekend. And I’m rather looking forward to a couple days off. Even though there really are no days off, per se.

Talk soon. And feel free to email or text.

A Haitian Sunset

I think I’m settled in. Not much going on.

April 20th, 2011

Today we have state electricity (EDH). So I am indulging in one of the rarest of luxuries during my visit: A fan. We usually don’t run them, and we never run them when we’re running on battery power. It’s nice to sit quietly, in the computer room, screwing around on the internet and being gently breezed by the fan.

My standards have adapted to my temporary new life, I think.

Last night, we went to the home of a friend of the program, a journalist named Jacob who writes for a site called Two Nations News. He made pizza for us and I ate more last night in a single sitting than I have since leaving the states. I also finally had my first mango since arriving. If you don’t know, mango is like a national treasure here. It’s excellent and between the different varieties, it’s available something like ten months out of the year.

We were all going to go to Jacmel this weekend, but prepping for the first class graduating on Tuesday, combined with the fact that we were unable to pre-confirm rooms in reasonably priced hotel, multiplied by my cheapness equals only Ton and Annika (I think that’s how it’s spelled) heading out. Sib and I are staying home and relaxing.

I really don’t have very much to say other than that! Hopefully I’ll try and cobble something together for this weekend that’s a bit more of a production piece. But yep, I’m settled in and working. Still alive. Still hate taking chloroquine.

On my first bit of teaching and living in Haiti.

April 16th, 2011

It’s a lovely group of students. Eager, smart and most of them can speak at least a little English.JulesWhich is good because my French is rubbish. The new class has started by being taught how to build a camera and tripod, how to configure the settings, how to set a white balance, etc.

But really a majority of my time has been spent helping the stragglers from the previous term finish the editing on their projects, which are well past due (about a month now, I think). Their skill levels range from low to surprisingly apt, especially given both the general circumstances of the average Haitian and the fact that they’ve only had a four month course to learn how to shoot and edit their pieces.

The house is nice. We’ve got state electricity (provided by Electricité d’Haïti, aka EDH)… kind of. Everyone that has EDH has electricity… kind of. I’ve heard that the average house gets about 10 hours of electricity from EDH per day. I’ve also heard that the efficiency of the distribution system is on the order of 50% — which means that half-ish of the electricity disappears before it gets to the customers. And that something like 35% of the power delivered is stolen. Anyway, we’ve got a system of batteries and an inverter to provide us power when EDH is down. We can comfortably run for about a day and a half during classes, with the computers and batteries charging and all that. Which is good, because EDH was down for nearly two days, Thursday and Friday. We finally got power back last night, so our batteries are now topped up and we’re still running on EDH power.

Power in HaitiThe running water is also provided by the state, as is the sewer. We depend on electricity for the water, which may seem odd. We have a tank below the driveway that gets filled with a tap from the city — when there’s water from the city (once or twice a week at the most). We then pump water from the cistern into the tanks on the roof, which provide water to the taps in the house. So if the roof tanks are empty and we’ve got no EDH, we have no running water with which to shower, wash hands, or flush toilets. Good times. Luckily, that hasn’t happened more than once so far.

The pump sucks up too much electricity to use it with the inverter and batteries, so a generator is being looked into. Hopefully we’ll be able to plug it into the inverter and charge the batteries that way.

What do you want? It’s Haiti, man.

Mister Clucky Pants

Mister Clucky Pants here keeps me up at night, sometimes.

Coke

Mister Cokey Pants here keeps me somewhat sane sometimes. Prestige takes care of me the rest of the time.

On arriving back in Haiti

April 10th, 2011

Arriving in Haiti yesterday was strange for me. Very intense and it evoked very intense memories of the first time I was here. In all reality, when I left the first time, I figured that I would likely never set foot in Haiti again. If the opportunity presented itself, I certainly would, but I never truly believed that would happen. But it did.

In 2008, I arrived with my group and we were ushered off the plane and into the terminal at Toussaint Louverture International Airport. Just inside the doors was a band, playing a cheery, upbeat song, all dressed in bright red Digicel t-shirts. It was an interesting way to enter a country that is filled with a lot of pain. I swear to you, the same band was playing the same song right as we got off the plane (to the best of my recollection, anyhow — I don’t have photos of the band from 2008).

This time, it was up to me to clear customs (which is trivial, it seems, for the vast majority of people) and get outside to the waiting area where I expected to meet my contact. They no longer allow the general public to get too close to the exit door of the international terminal. So as soon as you leave, you’re running through a gauntlet of over-friendly skycaps and taxi drivers, all of whom are stopping you to ask if you need a taxi, if you are meeting someone, if you are with a specific NGO (this one mainly gets asked to the white people, I noticed) grabbing for your bags in an attempt to get you to just shrug and follow them. I waved off all the taxi drivers, but ended up getting taken in by a gentleman who said he’d show me where my contact would be waiting. He took me out, I tipped him overly generously, and he found my contact for me. All was well.

Driving through town again was amazing. Yes, the earthquake was devastating and there are reminders of that absolutely everywhere. From the giant tent camps, to the collapsed buildings that are in various states of rebuilding, demolition, or just plain untouched for over a year. But the reality is that Port-au-Prince didn’t change that much. It’s still a huge crushing throng of people, cars, motorcycles and tap taps. Driving is done with a combination of faith, honking, flashing of lights, and going very slowly over the unavoidable potholes, some of which are ten feet across and a few feet deep.

It’s good to be back. I like it here.

Our house is huge. It must be around four thousand square feet. Three stories tall, with five bedrooms and four (I think) baths, one huge roof terrace, a large and small second floor terrace. It’s nice.

There’s a bar fifty yards from the front gate. It’s a small outdoor counter with plates of food, freezing cold Prestige, Coca-Cola, and the-hugely-popular-all-over-the-developing-world Fanta in several flavors. It’s nice (and cheap).

I haven’t cried yet. I’m dead certain that I will — but I haven’t yet. That’s nice, too.

_MG_0009We spent the day at the house of a woman named Evelyn (and I’m not sure I’m spelling that correctly). She lives outside of Pétion-Ville, which is a wealthier suburb of Port-au-Prince proper. She fed us a wonderful meal of corn, with a smoked-salted herring sauce, and a cucumber and tomato salad. I know I’m likely in the minority on this particular issue — at least among the people likely to read this, but I’m a fairly large fan of smoked meats in general and smoked herring in particular. So I quite liked the dish.

Tomorrow is the first day of classes for me, so I’m a bit nervous about that. But I’m sure it will be fine.

Also, it would be nice if the fucking mosquitoes would quit biting my damned feet. I mean, there’s a net, but it just lays on my feet and they bite through it. Someone get on that for me.

Well, I’m here!

April 9th, 2011

Flights were fine and I arrived safely. My first afternoon has been mainly spent getting cleaned up from the airplane and starting to unpack. Everyone is super nice, so far. I did manage to sneak in a few photographs of the place I’m staying. Check out how blurry the ones are of my bedroom! It’s a good thing I’m not teaching photography here, or anything.

Anyhow, I’ll give you guys some more info later.

My Desk.

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My wardrobe.

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Some of the still-destructed destruction that happened during the earthquake. This is across the street from our house.

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This is mostly uninteresting, except for…

_MG_0004

…this kitty. I like kitties.

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