Wednesday, January 2nd 2008- Entry into Haiti

What a morning I experienced today. Since in the American Airport I experienced the unreliable, confusing, unprofessional service rampant in Miami, and common in Haiti by a charter plane airline called Lynx Airline. This ticket terminal must have been strategically placed in the most inconvenient and isolated spot in the entire airport just for the strategic effect of introducing its passengers to the everyday unexpected and unpredictable nature of business and personal operations of Haitian life. When you want to hear a Haitian laugh, tell him your plans because the majority of the time plans never go as predicted.

The airport signs signaled that Lynx Airlines was to be found at Terminal E. Once there I was told that it was in terminal J. From terminal J there was no indication that Lynx airlines was in the vicinity. Mind you, my flight was scheduled to leave at 6am and the time was now approximately 5:15 and I still hadn’t checked in or gone through security. Panic soon sunk in after asking several airport employees for where this ticket terminal was and many referred me to the map that showed its location as terminal E, while other workers responded to mu inquiries with scrunched up faces of confusion that they have never heard of this airline. The dread of registering for another class and suffering its agonizing and tedious assignments throughout the semester swelled tears in my naïve eyes. All my plans if I were to miss that plane.

I wanted to obtain an emic perspective from within a sustainable development project in Haiti, as I to wish to pursue a career in helping Haitians help themselves. I fell that a transition is necessary from dependency to self determinism of livelihood instead of this dreadful dependency on foreign aid from all to familiar white faces set on bringing them “modernity,” “civilization,” and “teaching” them how to govern themselves because by popular belief the small black nation has noy been able to get it right since their independence in 1804. In reality it seems that foreigners rather than the Haitian Government have been the only ones making visible efforts to propone change, which has yet to come after dozens of decades of developmental initiatives. I am very ignorant of what goes on here in this arena. Specifically, who are the actors? Who are the constituents of each organization? The activities of marketing, outreach, etc? Of course each non governmental organization/ nonprofit organization whether in the start up, growth, or mature stage, has its own culture and differing activities. Hopefully I can gain a sense of what those activities entail and it repercussions and consequences, so that I may ploblematize the situation as an academically interested student about any type of theory into practice. This trip serves some selfish interest as well. I am writing my Master’s thesis which in a nut shell wished to address and evaluate issues of accountability of international NGOs in Haiti. I am returning during Spring Break to conduct some actual fieldwork (once that fieldwork has been clearly defined by myself), so this trip is to basically scope out the territory.

Returning to my airport experience, I want to make it clear the frustration and the utter feeling of helplessness I felt about how I was not in control of the situation. I literally walked up and down the airport terminals between E and the very end of the strip, running at times with tears in my eyes. I was directed to the first floor, which was baggage claim where in a final desperate attempt to make my flight I asked a Haitian baggage handler where Lynx was located. It was all the way at the end around the corner, and the very last ticket terminal. It was basically located in no man’s land. The checks in tellers were in a conversation and totally ignored the two women that were in line ahead of me. After a couple of minutes of waiting for them to finish their o so important conversation I interjected and told them I felt it un courteous to have us wait while they told jokes and conversed amongst themselves. We waited another 5 minutes before checking in.

The plane was a small vehicle that fit approximately 16 people snugly. Upon arriving at the airport in Cap Haitien I remembered the last trip that I took to Haiti previously in May. The smells, the sights, were all familiar to me. Nevertheless I still felt the anxiousness that I attribute to the very over exaggerated rumors and half truths about the dangerousness of Haiti for visitors and foreigners. I cannot help but be a product of this paranoia and fear of kidnappings and being held for ransom. For a second I was split apart for the group and thoughts of being lost forever in Cap Haitien with my very “heavy” American accented Creole seemed like a very frightful, daunting, and uneventful real incidence. Cap Haitien in comparison to Port-au-Prince the capital has much less trash and litter in the streets and the streets are better managed here, although far from being classified as acceptable according to good infrastructural standards. I’m back in Haiti. Good times.