Max's log book

The driving in Port-au-Prince is quite the adventure. I had a driver (Raymond) who was an experienced driver and that was a relief. The traffic downtown is usually really bad, there’s a lot of congestion. And the way they drive isn’t helping. There are next to no red lights or stop signs, people just go and force their way through. Luckily as it’s real slow, there’s not a big danger per se, but you still need to be really mindful of your surroundings. People will cross the street anywhere, there’s heaps of motorbikes (acting as taxi) going between cars, and of courses small busses. They’re more like utes with a roof and 2 benches and these will just stop about anywhere. If you want to pass, you just honk. Honking is an informal way of signalling you’re there and you want to go, it’s not aggressive at all. If I compare with the Bahamas, it’s a lot worse in terms of traffic and laws of the road as no one really follows them. I have seen 2 intersection lights, both have been working 2 days (over 3 weeks). If there’s no one, you go, if there’s someone, well you go too, if there’s someone and you’re in some kind of hurry or have been waiting for more than 1 minute, you honk and you force yourself in. It would seem safer as people don’t driver nowhere as fast as Bahamians (mainly because of traffic, hills and crap cars). So, to sum up, in the France, you drive on the right, in NZ, you drive on the left, in Haïti, you drive period.

The Hotel (Karibe) was really nice, I had a big room with a really comfortable bed, AC and all. The hotel had 2 restaurants, the downstairs one, which wasn’t that great, and the rooftop one, which was a lot better. It’s worth mentioning that at the end of the 3 weeks, I had more than enough of both options. I was always going to the rooftop one (except on Sundays and Mondays when it was closed), after 2 weeks, I didn’t need to order drinks anymore, they definitely knew what I was going to take. To the point where, in the last week, I went up and the conversation went as follows: “Good evening! – Good evening sir, I apologize, we don’t have mojito tonight” … I felt I was way too famous up there!

Work, ah yes, I was working there!

It was quite different from my previous experiences with DT (Bahamas and Swaziland) for many different reasons. The first obvious one, the language. Haïti speaks French, of course, I’m native, but I really struggled to explain myself and explain to people what I needed to. I’m no expert in Tax-technical French. Like this one time when a user came to ask me how to “assujetir” a taxpayer. I thought, I’ve heard that word, it’s definitely tax related, but I have no idea what it actually means. I got him to explain more about it, hoping I’d eventually understand. Which luckily I did (When you are registered for a tax type and have filing/paying obligations, you are “assujeti” to this tax type, it only applies to the tax world. By the end of the second week, I had learned their vocabulary, there’s a few things they call differently to what I would, but when you’re working with a client, it’s important to “speak their language”, it shows to them that you know what you are talking about, you want to work the way they work in order to understand better their needs and ways of doing. They also taught me a few Haitian Créole words. The people at the office are all super nice (except one or two weird ones), they really are glad that we are helping. I need to say that our software (RMS) was gifted by Canada as part of their Haiti-Canada cooperation, it’s part of a much larger project to reform and help Haïti, one of the poorest country on the planet, develop. Now of course, it meant they all assumed I was Canadian, well, that I was living in Canada, my accent is definitely French. I had to explain that no, I was not Canadian, I was living (usually) in New Zealand. I took some time to sit back behind some of the users and observe them working, which was, I think, very useful. When they had a spare minute after that, I could give them a few hints on how to optimize their use of the system but also ask some more general questions “what do you think of RMS? What do you think is efficient and not efficient in your daily work, stuff that could be worked on” The goal was to raise some thinking on how the system is actually used, how it could be improved and all. This is the part of the job I love the most, working with clients, understand how they work so I can adapt my dialogue to them and be more precise in my thinking, testing. I aim to understand what an issue is with as little context as possible, and that’s only possible if I know and understand how they work. As it’s a new system, users were generally scared to use the system, this is perfectly normal with every new system, users, even though they have been trained, don’t want to mess up and it takes a while to reassure them and show them that it’s safe to work, they won’t mess up and nothing can ever be undone (to a certain degree of course).

An interesting fact is that taxpayers usually come and lodge their taxes returns, they have forms they filled in, then the officer lodges the return (just the total), prints a receipt and the taxpayer goes to the cashier to pay. That’s 75% of the taxpayers. They often talk to the officer while he works, sometimes explaining stuff to him, or asking questions. As the door is usually open, they even come right next to the officer, which is a practice they try to stop, as it means the taxpayer could try to mislead the officer, or give him some cash (which I have not seen happening). The cashiers on the other hand are behind a huge grid, which isn’t welcoming at all. There’s also a security guard carrying a shotgun all the time, and another one behind the cashiers. Like I said, quite different from the other clients I ever worked with. It’s worth mentioning that the DPME (Direction des Petites et Moyennes Entreprises, the office I worked in. The Small and Medium size companies) is located near the National Palace and Champ de Mars, it’s one of the red zone of Port au Prince (in terms of security).

The infrastructure was generally not great, the computers were not powerful, the screens were really small (which means heaps of scrolling) and the network is slow. It was already good that the network was working at all, a couple of days before the launch, the cable between DGI (Direction Générale des Impôts, the main office) and DPME (the first office using RMS) had been burned, hard to say whether it’s criminal or not, we got it back up (though slow) the night before the launch.

The week end I was flying off (to Martinique) was the first tour of presidential elections, which is synonym for protest, riot and violence. A couple of days before I left, 3 people got shot in the street where Eric, a Canadian I worked with, lives. So I talked to some people in the office and my driver. We all agreed caution was necessary, so we decided I’d leave the office mid-afternoon (3pm) to avoid rush hour and the hour where most violence usually happen. On my last day, there was so much traffic on the streets, it was a complete grid lock, which wasn’t reassuring as there was no escape. And also, there was so much to do at work that I didn’t leave the office before 6:30pm. To make things worse, the car had a little break down going uphill, twice. We made it safely! Going to the airport, I had to cross another red zone so it was a bit a mission as well. At some point, there was some sort of protest/market. The turned around and went to another street to avoid being stuck in the middle of it.

I could go on and on for pages as I have heaps of stories to tell, but I want to leave things for imagination and other things, you can come and ask me (provided I’m in your part of the world).

 

After Haïti, I took a few days off and I went to visit my cousin whom I had not seen for 3 years. He lives in Martinique, and island in the south of the Caribbean that belongs to France. Last time I saw him, he was single (at least I think he was), now he’s a dad. His mum and dad (my uncle and aunt effectively) were visiting as well so it was great to catch up with everyone. And Martinique is a beautiful little island. They’ve got heaps of good rum too… So did my luggage on the way home…

So, Haïti was definitely an eye opener. It was very different from everything I’ve experienced before. I’ll try to go through a few things that I noted.

Before I go on, I need to say that all I say, like in the previous articles about life in the street in NZ/France/Finland or life at work in France vs NZ are all based on my own experience, with my point of view and at the time I write these articles, my point of view may change or not reflect everyone’s experience...

Before going there was already quite something, here a bit of context. In the past year, their current president (Jocerlerme Privet) is a temporary one who got nominated in January when Haïti failed to elect a new president, his term couldn’t be longer than 120 days. Unfortunately, Haïtians never managed to elect a president in that time and Privert got extended. The new elections (1st round) were supposed to happen back in October. However, hurricane Matthew came in and did some pretty bad damage to the south regions. On top of that, after the big earthquake back in 2010, a cholera epidemy ravaged the poorest population which made everything worse as they were also suffering from malaria, Zika, dengue fever, all the hepatitis from the alphabet and obviously, malnourishment. All of this lead to the poorest being desperate for help, food, materials. There had been a few incidents where a ship would come with help. These kinds of operations are usually slow, and people being desperate would lead to some guns shot to, hopefully get some kind of order back. Which wouldn’t always work. A couple of people got shot. Then I went to our company’s travel assessment and got the results below for Haïti. Finally, I talked to some colleagues who had been there before and who reported some level of risk in terms of security and hygiene. So I wasn’t necessarily 100% confident. I had enough trust in the people around me who, I know, wouldn’t send me somewhere if the risk was too high. And if things did go down, they’d get me out of there the same way they got my colleagues out of the Bahamas when hurricane Matthew hit Nassau.

Something that didn’t help (and I’m not going to put the following in the French version of this article) was that my parents are people who don’t necessarily worry much, they trust me and my brothers and sister, and if they do worry, they’d never tell us. My sister and I are quite close and she usually tells me when my mum is worried about stuff that I’m doing or places I’m going to. This time around my sister told me "Mum is terrified of you going there". Terrified is a word I had never ever heard in my family. That’s when I stopped and wondered, do I have to right to do that to them, am I being unreasonable? It’s worth noting that my parents left France once, to go to Switzerland, they live in the far north east of France, at the end of a small valley. Besides through me who is doing a fair bit of travelling, they have never been confronted to a situation that was very different to what they’re used to. They only see stuff we see in TV or on the Internet, which is rarely reassuring. I knew I had to distillate and filter the information I’d give them. I would never lie to them, I could only embellish a bit or not say everything. Which I did (I kind of feel bad for it but I thought it was the right thing).

I was going to go to Port au Prince for 3 weeks, with my workmate Mark, who’d been to Haïti 3 times before. Mark doesn’t speak English so that’s where I come in handy!

 

Security ratings for Haïti

 

Flying to Port-au-Prince (from Miami), the American Airlines safety video was played twice, once in English, once in Haïtian creole (a version of pidgin French). I found it hilarious that they call the overhead lockers ’boîte en l’air’ which literally translates to ’the box in the air’. At the airport, I paid the US$10 tourism fee and then went into immigration. They didn’t question anything, just looked at my passport, and stamped it. After the usual US immigration questions, it felt like an open door.

Then we grabbed our bags and went outside. We bought a SIM card on the way out with data for 1 month (it’s more about the duration than the amount). It costed only US$21. That included 7GB data + 60 minutes and texts. Which was really cheap. On the other hand, I received 26 texts from Digicel (the provider - all in Creole) telling me about whatever offer they had the moment or how to check my balance and such.

The instructions we had before leaving was: there will be a driver, don’t leave the terminal if he isn’t there. Well, of course we couldn’t see someone with a sign with our names so we ventured outside in the middle of the hundreds of people asking whether you need a taxi or carry your bags. We finally saw a guy with a sign Data Torque. We followed him to the car and, as we were putting our luggage in the boot, some guy came and sort of forced his way to help, obviously, he wanted a bit of cash. We would both have given him something, unfortunately we were both in the situation where we had just withdrawn a fair amount of money so we didn’t want to make it obvious, also, we didn’t have small change... It felt even harder when, further on a bunch of kids ran towards the car as we were stopped and knocked on the door to ask for cash. Again, we felt like assholes for not helping. You don’t want to do it the wrong way, you don’t want to show you have money and you don’t want them to snatch your wallet either. Driving through Port-au-Prince was another world to me. The streets were packed with cars that weren’t in a good shape, people walking around with massive bags or bowls over their heads. People selling bottles of water and a bit of food on the side of the street. And then the garbage pilling up on the side. Often with pigs or goats searching for food in them.  That was quite confronting to me, I’d seen poverty, but never in that way. Swaziland was quite different. There were kids in Swaziland who didn’t have food every day and couldn’t go to school but it was hidden from the general public and you wouldn’t know it unless you’re curious or interested. In Port-au-Prince, it’s completely obvious, you can’t miss it.

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To be continued later on, I’ve got more to tell...

This week end, I went to Taupo and I tried skydiving… Simply amazing!

 

Tahiti... I guess that’s a good way to sum it up! Departing from Tokyo, I had a direct flight to Papeete (French Polynesia’s capital on the island of Tahiti) with Air Tahiti Nui. I name the airline because when we boarded, there was a guy standing by the door of the aircraft giving out flowers to everyone, to be place on your ear of course. You know where you going right away!

Arriving in Tahiti, I took a ferry to go to the island of Moorea (40 minutes by ferry). I had booked a hotel but the tricky bit was to find out how to get there from the ferry terminal. I could have taken a taxi but that would have been expensive. So I chose to take one of the two buses, one going on either direction around the island and they meet on the other side, simple enough. When I say 2 buses, I do mean TWO buses, as in, that’s the only buses on the island so if you miss it, you need to wait for it to circle back there (and that’s around 2 hours). There was one bus waiting so I just took it, hoping it would get the right way, which it did. In the end, my hotel was next to a mini shopping area called “le petit village” which is where the 2 buses meet so I could’ve taken any bus. Tu summarize the time I spent in Moorea, I did nothing. Well, I read a lot, I did go often swimming in the warm ocean (around 30° it would be a shame to miss it). I came to realize that when people say life is expensive in Tahiti, they mean it. It’s about 4€ a can of coke (33cl, NZ$ 6) or 25€ for a pizza (NZ$ 41). I got to taste a few local dishes which were really good. I as a bit surprised as I don’t usually like savoury/sweet things but that was ok.

I thought they were using Euros (as French Polynesia is French) but they don’t, they use Pacific Francs (XPF). It’s a fixed conversion rate to Euro (1 000XPF=8,38€), not sure why they don’t use the euro directly then. Locals are French or Polynesians (which is French in the end), it was a bit weird to speak French again with people with an accent from Provence (south-east of France) as lot of ‘expats’ are from there. It was great to go to the supermarket and see brands that I recognize from France. You don’t know how happy I was to buy some “Prince”.

One day, I was swimming around and there was a Tahitian guy also swimming around and we started chatting (in French). He was a retired fisherman. Like everyone else, he had assumed “home” was in what we call Metropolitan France. He thought New Zealand was between Tahiti and Easter Island, which I thought was surprising as there aren’t that many countries around Tahiti. Then we had probably one of the weirdest conversation we had (we were talking about New Zealand):

- So, do they have hookers?
- I’m sorry what?
- Hookers, do they have them?
- Well … yes
- Ah ok. Do they have houses as well?
- Houses?
- Yeah, houses … you know … houses
- Ah er… well, there are some (he meant brothel type)
- Are they big?
- Who?
- The houses
- Well … yeah I suppose, I don’t know, I’m no expert
- Alright… Have you ever been to America?
- Oh … yes I have, several times
- Where did you go?
- Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, San Franci…
- Did you go to California?
- Er … yes I have
- They must have heaps of shops there
- Sure, they have streets full of shops (I thought whatever type of shop he meant, there must be some in California)
- Ah that’s cool

 

I didn’t follow that conversation either … He also asked me the time at least 3 times in 10 minutes.

Anyway, I went back to Papeete. I did a lot of walking around, it does remind me of France, the way the streets are organised and all. Hard to describe, but I quite enjoyed it.

As my flight back home was at 2am and I was checking out of my hotel at 10:30 am, I decided to go for a day excursion inland. It was great, I was with 2 French couples (from Haute-Marne and Savoie), a Danish couple and a German girl. We had a lot of fun. We swam in a river twice (was colder than the sea). There were sort of waterslides and all. It was really interesting day, I learned a lot about Tahiti’s history and the fauna and flora of the archipelago. I have never seen mountains that were so vertical, it was very impressive. Anyway, I went on the harbour to have a nice Tahitian dinner (with raw fish of course) and then went to the airport. I was a bit sad to leave and not to board a flight that going to Paris. I even saw Johnny Halliday, a very famous (in France) rock star, at the airport. Good side, I managed to get 4 more packs of Schokobons (which I cannot find in NZ sadly).

The airplane arrived 20 minutes late (we were already aware of that of course). After we boarded, the captain made an announcement telling us they had found a problem with a rotor so they needed to fix it. I looked around the airport, the second biggest aircraft was a 50 seats one, so they HAD to fix it. Papeete is a small airport… After 3 hours they finally fixed it and we were on our way. In Auckland, I went to the koru lounge to take a shower and enjoy the free breakfast (benefits of being a frequent flyer) before going on my rebooked flight to Wellington.

Anyway, I really enjoyed Tahiti and will probably go there again at some point. Not too many pictures because, for once, I decided to take a break and rest instead of exploring. Next time …
 

The pictures are as usual, in the Photos tab