Buses line up at daybreak
I am staying at Le Perroquet, a B&B on Rue Lamare, in Petion Ville’s art district, just down from the Church of St Peter, whose bells accompany me on my early morning walks around the block, watching the streets come to life. That should be adjusted to ‘watch the streets come to more life’ as I do not think the streets around here ever empty.
At 530am the volume (quantity and sound) of hustle is equal to midday at the bus terminus in Saint George’s or the Granby Street market on a Saturday. This morning, I noticed that the buses lining one street were packed and moving within seconds of each other, doors slowly pulling closed as they went past me, as if the conductors were hoping to entice just one more passenger into the jam. Where our bus conductors use a vinyl covered cushion to ‘extend’ seating, their Haitian counterparts employ small wooden stools to make every available square foot pay.
Eric and Edris of Le Perroquet took good care of us
Eric Stranski, the owner of Le Perroquet (the little parrot) has been most gracious and hospitable, regaling me with stories about the area. Rates include a simple breakfast of omelette, baguette, butter, jam. Today my plate included in season zaboca (avocado). Yum! My mornings start with two or three cups of robust coffee served at the bar, surrounded by the art of Junior Bernier’s canvas paintings filled with broken mirror and crushed glass, accented by bright acrylic figures, before I get down to the business of the day.
Today’s business is to go look at some art. There are several art galleries around, and the ones I need to get to are Galerie Monnin, Galerie D’art Nader and Galerie Marassa. By lunchtime, we determine that something is not quite on. We’ve gone to each gallery and found them closed. Finally, at the back of the market, we stumble upon Jerusalem Gallery and Haberdashery, housed in a grubby building that we have to step around a pile of grapefruit on the sidewalk to get to.
On the ground floor, bolts of fabric stacked to the ceiling appear grey in the gloomy interior devoid of a single lightbulb. To our right, a double row of equally dingy paintings of various styles and techniques, look down on us. The paintings line the wall of the haberdashery, and run up the length of the wide stone staircase to the main gallery above. In the gloom, I am reminded of the paintings on the Grand Staircase in the Harry Potter movies. I surmise that at night, or when no one is paying attention, these paintings chatter in Kreyole. I point out to Andrea some of the ‘schools’ of painting – the mountains of the Jacmel School, daily life of the Cap-Haïtien School and the abstracted human forms indicative of the Saint-Soleil School. We are prevented from going up to the main gallery, because, as we understand it on the third try, today is a holiday, and the gallery is closed.
No one told us that today, 18 November, is widely celebrated as a day of victory of Haiti over France. The Battle of Vertières occurred less than two months before Jean Jacques Dessalines proclaimed an independent Republic of Haiti on 1 January 1804. Judging by the bustle in the market, in the streets and on the jampacked sidewalks, on what is supposed to be a holiday, that date in history means little to the hundreds of people we saw this morning going about their daily business, engaged in their personal battle to survive.
TapTap downtown bound
On this day, 211 years ago the Battle of Vertières was momentarily halted, so that French General Rochambeau could send his compliments to François Capois, black Achilles, Haitian rebel slave, and the officer who repulsed the French assault. Today being what it is in Haitian history, plus what we have seen of their creative productivity and persistent stick-to-it-iveness these four days in Petion Ville, have solidified in our minds that Haitians are a Teflon people. I am honoured to be able to witness and learn from this.
Promart art camp begins tomorrow.