Patching a tire in Haiti.
D said once, after having experienced the joys of bathing in a river: “Everything just takes so much longer to do here.”
But close to this, she said: “It seems as if time passes slowly in Haiti.”
The fact is, the entire country falls into this unusual vortex of time and space. Almost nothing is just “easy”…
Think about patching a tire in the USA. You go to the tire store. They throw the car up on a hydraulic jack that lifts the entire 2-ton car with a press of a button. They use an air gun wrench to pull all the lug nuts off like the wheel of a Formula 1 car. Then they rip the tire off the rim with that magical machine. They patch it with space-age polymers and iron the patch sealed. Then they use the magic machine to put the tire back on the wheel, zip the lug nuts back on, and lower the 2-ton car.
This process might take 10-15 minutes on a busy day in the States.
In Haiti, this was an entire morning at a motorbike shop. First, find the hole with soapy water and stand over it watching the bubbles. (See photo above.) Then… just think about taking a tire off a rim with no real tools. Strips of metal, a broken axle for leverage, a sledge hammer, and flat pieces of iron. Then, patch the inner tube with a piece of old inner tube off a motorbike, light a fire in an overturned cylinder head, and clamp it down with two screwdrivers nailed to a piece of wood with piece of metal to hold the cylinder head down… this hopefully melts the patch onto the inner tube without melting the bottom to the top. Shall I even go into how they got the tire back on the rim?
The entire process took over an hour and a half. But who’s counting anyway. Maybe it was two hours?
Planning out the day just doesn’t seem all that urgent.
Oddly enough, there is 3G almost everywhere.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the roads are rough. After bottoming out the truck a few times, I walked a little ways in front of the truck to check and see the best way to go.
It isn’t hard to out-pace a truck in low-range 4WD.
The roads can barely be called “roads”…
The entire aim is to survey 20-something acres of land…
…and mark GPS locations.
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Someday the coffee will grow here, too.
To consider the span of time and travel between this photo above and this photo…
The place that photojournalism fails… spans of time. Maybe 4-5 hours between… The only difference is the quality of the light that might give away that one is high-noon and the other is just before sunset.
(I hope you feel something else coming up…)
Everything is context.
The place I feel photojournalism does not fail (if done right) is the “feeling” of a place. Just a few photos at this manyoke factory… along with the actual things going on, I hope these photos transmit the feel of a single place.
Manyoke is a type of bread-y food made from grounded roots. This particular factory shared with a carpentry workshop…
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“We don’t name horses. You can’t eat something with a name.”
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Every drop of night that drips
Is a cup of dark coffee in our hearts
In our eyes dew trickles
Wipe off the layer of dust
In bandannas before the dawnThe hawk lunges on the day’s throat
Pecks the sun in the grain of the eye
Light stumbles thrice
Before the great daylight diesAll our cards of liberty have been cheated from us
Our dreams fill up a small tin can
Our silence breaks us
Our patience scalds usBut you, you watch the nor’easter wind
Who’s measuring the length of your slip
From the moutaintop
Which puts the sea in your control
Thunder cracks thrice in your palmWhen the wind casts her off
Who will cut her calf?
When the sea swings her dress
Who will call her uncouth?
When thunder beats the kalinda
Who will rise to dance?~Emmanuel Ejen, “Wongol Poem, IV” (translated from Haitian Creole by W.Scott)
Haiti is slow. The world is fast. The people are poor and don’t wear shoes. The roads are bad. The coffee grows best here. Time passes slowly. We know what to do to help… or do we only think we do?
Who cares what’s going on if you don’t know where you are. Context is everything…
Stay tuned…
-Noah D.
