A few blocks away from our house, there is a small restaurant called “Pizza Amour” (“Pizza Love” in Haitian Creole/ French). It’s located on a dusty side street filled with pot-holes and rocks, but for many of its patrons its one of their favorite places in Port-au-Prince. Its only open a few days a week, and even then only for dinner, so for many of its visitors going there is a special treat they look forward to all week. Its an oasis in the midst of the sprawling city, a place where they can catch up with friends and decompress from the non-stop stress and difficulties they face working in Haiti.
The road to Pizza Amour
As the sun sets in Port-au-Prince, the streets grow dark and the hustle and bustle of city life starts to wind down. There are almost no streetlamps in the city, largely due to the lack of consistent electricity, so by 9 pm the streets are practically deserted. The drive to Pizza Amour in the evenings feels slightly surreal as you pass small burning piles of trash on the sidewalks, illuminating the faces of stragglers walking home from selling their wares at the local intersection.
The smoldering remains of a trash fire
In the dim light of the flame, you can just make out the remaining piles of trash which will likely take their turn lighting up the night in the next several days. As oncoming trucks and motorcycles jockey for position on the unpainted roads, their bright lights blind you as they honk their horns and veer into oncoming traffic to fly past their slower compatriots.
“The drive to Pizza Amour feels slightly surreal as you pass small burning piles of trash on the sidewalks”
As you turn onto Pizza Amour’s street, the only thing penetrating the darkness is the steady glow of your headlights, alerting you to the impending bumps and dips in the road you are unable to avoid. You park outside the 10 foot high security wall and all goes dark as you switch the headlights off and walk towards the solid steel gate entrance. Crossing the threshold into the restaurant, you pass an armed security guard and, after being given a once-over, you enter into a completely different world. Underneath the lush trees of the courtyard, a well-lit open air restaurant is alive and buzzing with activity. Kids are running around and jumping on the trampoline on the side of the house, dogs run up to you with their tails wagging, and as you sit down with your friends and your order arrives, its easy to forget about the stressors that are an ever-present part of working and living in Haiti.
Pizza Amour
In many ways, the journey to Pizza Amour is a microcosm of Haiti’s journey to Peace and Prosperity. There are many challenges facing the country and its people on this journey, and it would be easy to lose your way in the darkness. When taken all at once, these problems (lack of infrastructure, rampant unemployment, slums/ poor living conditions, disease, a growing wealth gap) can seem overwhelming and debilitating. Many people become depressed or pessimistic, unsure about how to change a system that seems so fundamentally broken.
Crossing the threshold into the restaurant, you pass an armed security guard and are admitted into a completely different world.”
However, there are a lot of good people (like Rebuild Globally’s founder Julie Columbino, and Opus Prize Winner Fr. Rick Frechette) working to light the way by improving people’s lives long term. Its these people, these specks of light in the darkness, that make you believe that maybe, just maybe, there is a bright future in store for all Haitians.
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Haiti is a country of stark contrasts, and in order to get a better sense of the country’s challenges you need to recognize that contrast in two main areas. The first key area is food. At noon everyday, I walk outside to the main road to buy lunch. I pay 75 Gourdes (about $1.50) for a plate of rice, beans and chicken from a lady who cooks the food on the side of the road underneath a beat up USAID tarp (click on the link below to see a video of that walk). The first time I did this, I couldn’t believe I was actually buying food from a street vendor, something that went against all of my ingrained beliefs about food preparation. But then I realized something. Was my aversion to the food itself, or to the environment in which I was buying it?
The lean-to where I buy my lunch everyday.
Just because I had never eaten food prepared in a lean-to, didn’t automatically make it bad to eat. I trusted my supervisors at Rebuild who said it was ok to eat and I haven’t looked back. Now when its time for lunch, I’m almost excited to walk up to the lean-to and give the woman support for her enterprising spirit, especially considering that her food is delicious! There are dozens of people just like her all over the city serving food under umbrellas and lean-tos at intersections and on many of the main roads, and I think getting over the initial stigma I associated with the term “Street food” has been a very valuable lesson. Definitely still need to exercise caution, but don’t automatically write someone off because of where they’re serving their food!
My delicious daily lunch of rice, beans, chicken and some vegetable garnishes!
In contrast to the street food, sometimes my supervisors and I will walk less than a block away the other direction up the street and eat lunch at a sit-down restaurant called “LunchBreak”. After a particularly crazy or hectic morning, its nice to sit in the IKEA-esque chairs, enjoy the air-conditioning, and eat American food (i.e. a Chicken Caesar Sandwich) while listening to Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran and Imagine Dragons in the background. Somehow I never really pictured places like LunchBreak or even Pizza Amour when I thought of Haiti, but the fact that there are (relatively) upscale, Americanized restaurants and street vendors less than a block away from each other quite accurately describes the contrasts that can be found here in Haiti.
Lunch Break is Haitian owned and provides an upscale, Americanized meal experience.
In addition to the upscale restaurants, there are also modern supermarkets where we do most of our grocery shopping like “Stop and Go”. The first time I walked into the store, I could hardly believe that I was still in Haiti! This is not the image that comes to mind when you think of “the poorest country in the western hemisphere”, but there is a strong group of businesses that provide food products and services to upper-class Haitians and expats. The problem is, how can these types of services be brought to the vast majority of Haitians, rather than the lucky select few? According to Haiti Partners, 78% of Haiti’s population lives on less than $2 a day, and over 50% of Haitians live on less than $1 per day. These numbers are even bigger in rural areas, and other reports show that over 66% of the Haitian labor force does not have a formal job. These are the things Rebuild Globally is trying to address through their model, but if the contrast in food services between the poor and the rich is to diminish, more formal jobs are necessary to lift Haitians out of poverty.
Am I in Port-au-Prince, Haiti or Beaverton, Oregon? Judging strictly by the cereal options, I would have guessed the latter!
Pringles, Oreos and Cheez Its are worldwide treats, it seems!
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In addition to food, the other major area where contrast is on display is in transportation here in Port-au-Prince. No matter where you go around the city, if you stop and watch the roads for a few seconds you will see brightly colored trucks and busses called “Tap-Taps” that serve as the city’s informal taxi service. There are literally hundreds of these privately owned vehicles that make rounds in different areas of the city and which people use to get from place to place. Many people here do not have their own transportation, due primarily to the systemic poverty and joblessness described earlier, but these multicolored taxis provide access to the city to all who have a few Gourdes to spare. Click on the link below to watch what driving in Port-au-Prince looks like on a daily basis:
Many “Tap-Taps” have Christian phrases, verses or even portraits of Jesus painted on them!
Additional seating is tacked onto the end of most flat-bed Tap Taps… Not sure I’d want to sit there though!
Although the Tap Taps are numerous, another common sight on the roads around here are the black and white SUVs of the United Nations. The United Nation’s mission in Haiti has been ongoing since the country’s last coup d’état in 2004, and the organization’s presence is still widely felt throughout the country. the Logistical base for the UN’s operations is located in Port-au-Prince, so interspersed with the motorcycles, Tap Taps and regular cars you’ll see the black initials “UN”. Several times while we’ve been driving, I’ve seen several UN cars escorting the vehicle of some VIP to the airport, and its moments like these that the contrast between these vehicles and the Tap Taps of the common Haitian is absolute.
At MINUSTAH, the UN Logistical Base in Port-au-Prince, where some of the UN cars are parked for the night.
Can’t miss that bus…!!!!
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Overall, life here in Port-au-Prince is very different, and there are massive social problems that must be addressed, but I feel blessed to be working in an environment that is looking to improve the situation. I’m settling in here and working hard to maximize Rebuild Globally’s ability to change lives through their tire sandals, and I’m also working to meet with many of the other dedicated men and women creating sustainable, long lasting change here in Haiti. I’m continuing to grow and learn more about this place day by day, and I’m looking forward to updating all of you in my next post next week! Stay tuned, and I’ll talk to you soon!
– Aaron D.
Chilling up in the mountains just outside Port-au-Prince last weekend, there were even some evergreens up there!
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Aaron Danowski 
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