Living Like the Haitians

One of the best parts of my trip to Haiti was that I got to live with an average rural Haitian family for a few days. After arriving in the village, we had a little get-to-know you time at the school, and then three different hosting families took 2-3 of my traveling partners to their homes. After wandering down a dirt road and then up and down a pleasant dirt trail, we came to our family’s compound. It was composed of a couple of crudely constructed buildings, a cistern for collecting rain water, and a canopy made out of branches and dried banana leaves. It was on a small hill, with a terrific view of surrounding mountains covered with green trees and bushes. Chickens clucked nearby, and a welcome wagon of curious neighborhood children came over to line up and stare at us.

My host mother showed me how to take a bucket “shower” behind the house. After scooping up water and washing the day’s travel grime off of my body, I was ready to explore. The main house was a little bigger than my living room, had no windows, and was divided into four sections by walls, with doors of hanging fabric. Three of the four rooms had a bed in them. The whole family gave up their beds and slept together in a storage shed so that we 3 visitors could sleep comfortably. The 4th room had a small kitchen table and 4 chairs alongside a shelf storing all of their eating utensils.
After serving us a dinner of rice, beans, fish and fresh lime juice, we sat with the family under the canopy. I asked them what the family does on a typical evening. “We sit here and talk until the sun goes down. Then we get sleepy and go to bed because there is nothing else to do” replied Madam Aldor through our translator. The sun went down at 6:30pm so bed time was early. (Every morning of my time in Haiti, everyone was awake with the sun at 5am, and the place was totally hopping by 6am)

Lying in bed the first night, some relief from the sweltering heat eventually came with the arrival of some gentle pitter-pattering rain. I thought it soothing to hear the rain drops on the tin roof of the house, until a real downpour arrived causing a racket beyond anything you could imagine. The wind whipped around the house, the rain poured on the roof and rushed down the gutters directly into the cistern. We later found out that we had survived our first tropical depression, or a light cyclone. All I know is that you could be in the house screaming at the top of your lungs and no one would be able to hear you over the rain pounding on the tin roof. It’s been a long time since I’ve appreciated the fulfillment of a basic need like shelter.

The next morning it was still lightly raining, which the family decided was good reason to have one of the boys escort me up the hill to the outhouse with an umbrella. I’ve never been big on processional ceremonies to the toilet, but I let this one go. Furthermore, call me shallow and spoiled, but the outhouses and toilets were the one thing in Haiti that I couldn’t wait to be done with, and I truly missed Western plumbing. Here are outside/inside photos of the outhouse. It ain’t for the faint of heart.