About 40 of us remained now and eventually a small 737 landed and we headed on board. It was dark when I reached Port Au Prince, but a new driver had been hired and he was efficient at whisking me away from the hawkers and taxi drivers outside the terminal building. And because it was already quite late, we headed straight up the main road with barely a stop – less than forty minutes to get up to Petionville instead of the usual hour and a half.
Jean Luc and Christophe were having an after dinner drink when I arrived; we greeted and they could see I was shattered so they gave me the barest of arrangement details and sent me to bed.
The Kinam Hotel is a remarkable piece of Caribbean culture in amongst the mayhem of the Port Au Prince region. Beautifully ornate gingerbread details on the roof, the balustrades, even the window shutters. It was barely touched by the earthquake, probably because it was built on firm rock and its base too was local stone. It covered a small plot but apart from a wall on the south face, the other three sides were all enclosed by one large building. There were a couple of restaurants on the front side; one next to the pool, one raised up on a terrace. Jean Luc had booked us in to one of the meeting rooms for the next two weeks, to do the analysis of the results, write the reports, make the maps and prepare a final presentation. We were not going to work in the Fisheries Department for two reasons. One it saved nearly four hours of commuting, but two, there had been some issues with various individuals in the ministry and we wanted to avoid them escalating into difficult problems. That is diplomatic talk and I’m contractually not allowed to say more!
The gingerbread style of the Kinam Hotel
It meant the rather peaceful surrounds of the Hotel Kinam became my home and prison for most of the next two weeks. In theory we could have gone out and about a lot more, visited all the Haitian restaurants around Petionville, but to be brutally honest there was not time. We had a huge amount of work to do in time for the presentation before I left. For those who read these blogs and think what a fantastic jolly time I always have; well you only really hear about the highlights. On many a trip I have been on I spend 90% of it in an office or hotel. I may get one day trip out to see a bit of the country, and of course take lots of photographs and have many stories about that. What is never visible are the hours and hours of work that you do not take photographs of or talk about much because…. well it is tedious. Tedium was the routine at the Kinam; up and breakfast where a nice grapefruit juice, a plate of fruit or maybe some scrambled egg and toast and lots of coffee, then back to the room to grab the laptop. Off to the office or the (ok yes) poolside to tap away. We had a nice table next to the pool for a while but the sun came direct on to it by 10am and made us both sweat and not be able to see our laptop screens that we gave up on that idea. The small meeting room above the main entrance was far more suitable, although the construction work outside and noise of street traffic could be distracting if the windows were open, and the inside either too hot, or if we used the AC , too noisy again. My favourite spot was in the lower restaurant, shaded from the sun next to the cool stone walls of the hotel but still with a nice enough view and a modicum of activity to keep you interested when making maps became too much of a chore. The three of us would take turns in going to different places as we felt comfortable. We might all be around the restaurant table and interacting – either joking or discussing finer points of the project. We might split for several hours. Jean Luc had a few activities out of the hotel to concern himself with, mainly about arranging the workshop. Chris and I often as not were in the hotel. Chris had all his field data, which he had shared with me, and was doing his analysis work with stats packages. I had all the data I needed and spent hours putting it together, running some process that would take an hour or two and spend the interim time stopping my computer processor from overheating or typing up my notes for the report.
So this was the rhythm of life. Lunch would be something light – a salad or a quick sandwich. We might have a glass of lemonade in the afternoon, and our meal would be taken with a beer beforehand and a beer with and then back to the rooms for an hour of home emailing, watching whatever I could glean from the francophone and non-CNN channels on the TV and so to bed.
When I Went To 