Haiti - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 150

CHAPTER TEN
Haiti
WE had travelled through the last two islands with scarcely less speed than that of thought. But the moment
we arrived in Haiti this breakneck tempo slowed down to one of almost prehistoric sloth. Avoiding the
taxis outside the aerodrome, we chose the solitary carriage and creaked off in the direction of Port-au-
Prince. These black and obsolete vehicles are drawn by horses on the point of death and driven by very old
men. They are to be found in all the islands. Recently, stunned by the haste of our movement, by aeroplane
and motor-car through air and streets, and then up and down the skyscrapers of Puerto Rico in lifts, I had
gazed at them hungrily. Sitting under the hood of these thinking-machines, the works of one's mind must
surely unglue themselves after an hour or so and begin to function again in sympathy with the revolution
of the wheels.
The cane-field and savannah turned into the outskirts of the capital. Thatched cabins straggled into the
country under the palm trees, and multiplied into a suburb, through which the road ran in a straight, inter-
minable line. For the first mile or so, the town consisted entirely of rum-shops and barbers' saloons and
harness-makers. Hundreds of saddles were piled up in the sunlight. Bits and bridles and spurs and saddle-
bags hung in festoons. There were horses everywhere. Our equipage churned its way upstream through
a current of horses and mules ridden by Negroes who straddled among bulky packages, all heading for
their villages with their purchases for Christmas. One or two were singing Haitian meringues , and several
were carrying game-cocks under their arms, lovingly stroking their feathers as they trotted past. Old wo-
men, puffing at their pipes, jogged along side-saddle. They had scarlet and blue kerchiefs tied round their
heads in a fortuitous, rather piratical fashion, half-covered by broad-brimmed straw hats against the sun.
The sides of the road pullulated with country people chattering, drinking rum, playing cards and throwing
dice under the trees. The air was thick with dust, and ringing with incomprehensible and deafening Créole.
I felt I might like Haiti.
We reached the centre of the town at last, where arcades of ochreous and flaking plaster intersected and
vanished in vistas. Here and there this fabric of romantic dilapidation festered into an American drugstore
or a milk-bar, and everywhere, in tin and plastic and cardboard, were symptoms of the Coca-Cola plague.
Gutters four feet deep separated the pavements from the roads, and in the pavements occasional open man-
holes gaped that must, on dark nights, be a serious drain on Haitian man power.
Smart life in Haiti—the dazzling white tropical suits, the dark heads and hands—resembles a photographic
negative. Only white chauffeurs at the wheel of the grand limousines are absent to complete the illusion.
Cabane Choucoune , the fashionable night club of Port-au-Prince, is perched on the mountain-side above
the capital in the cool suburbs of Pétionville. It is a replica of an African kraal, a great cylinder of bamboo
with a steep conical roof which simultaneously achieves, by a skilful twist of sophistication, the amenities,
the low lights and the luxury of an expensive night club with the atmosphere of the dwelling of an equat-
orial monarch.
But there was nothing remotely primitive about the Christmas Eve gathering. Men in beautifully made
white suits and dinner jackets danced with women dressed in the height of fashion. They were superb, far