On the weekend it’s hard to separate work from personal time. Cleaning my room involves starting on my accounting, as I try to get stray receipts out of my hand luggage and tidy up the space. I staple my receipts and convert my expenses from Haitian Gouds to US dollars for the accountant. But I do things I wouldn’t do in the US, like squeeze a little fresh orange juice from the inexpensive oranges I picked up in the market, which did not look attractive (mottled green, yellow with dark spots) but were incredibly sweet. The market is so off-putting, with its dirty looking vegetables and fruits and the genuine risk of cholera for anything uncooked. But the Haitian fruit, untended by strict breeding that we get in the US, has some of the most intense flavor. The white grapefruit was one of the sweetest I’d ever had.
I want to buy some limes and grapefruit, so I ask Wilfrid if I can go when he takes the car to be washed on Saturday. Most of the time when I shop for fruit, it is from my car, and Haitian fruit really looks the same when you are in a moving vehicle. Limes, oranges and grapefruits are all a yellow-green color and mainly distinguished by their size. Even passion fruit and mangos can look like citrus because their colors are the same. So I spend most time squinting at piles of fruit placed on the ground next to the road, straining to identify them.
I hop out of the car next to thirty live chickens in a pile. It’s hard to shop in the market comfortably. Even though it is not a hot day, the market is fully exposed to the sun. I quickly start sweating. It’s a dirt road with puddles of muddy water. It feels impossibly dirty, and motorbikes race through, very close to you. I can't believe that I eat food that sits in piles on this street. And then everyone is trying to convince you to buy their vegetables, and it’s a series of women with very similar selections of produce, piled. Some of the women are selling piles of chicken bouillion cubes. Haitians buy things in large fixed quantities. So it is difficult for me to purchase one grapefruit: they are piled in predetermined sets of 5.
I realize that I accidentally left my long hair down, which is something I try to avoid in the street. I don’t want to draw attention, and while I’m still obviously a blan (white), pinning my hair up definitely cuts down the staring. It’s almost impossible to put my hair in a ponytail while walking through the crowd without being knocked down, but I try. Also I’m sweating too much.
The market takes a lot of work, and I have to stare down at piles and piles of fruit and vegetables trying to determine which ones look the best, all while keeping an eye on the ground for mud puddles and trying not to be hit by a moto. Today I nearly collide with one. While I was evaluating some carrots, someone said, “Michelle!” I looked up. Right in front of me was Miss Delisca, the main pediatric nurse at Hopital Saint Antoine. “Oh!” She laughs at me and does an impression of me walking with my head down, shading her eyes. I laugh with her and ask her how she is. She replies that she is fine, but where have I been this week? It’s true, I was traveling for two weeks I tell her. I promise I will be at the public hospital on Monday.
“Good, we have a lot of kids who have been tested,” She says and I am deeply happy, both that she’s invested enough to stop me in the street and because Saint Antoine is my favorite of my sites, and I want them to perform better. I shamelessly play favorites at this point, I love their staff. “Have a good day!” I tell Miss Delisca.
I continue through the market with more confidence, feeling at home. Running into a familiar face while shopping solidifies that I am a member of the community. I refuse to be treated like an outsider here.
I select bunches of grapefruit, oranges, cherries, onions, and carrots. My purchases total $3 US. One of my plastic bags tears open, spilling everything but the cherries into the dirt, but a vendor gets up and helps collect all my purchases, placing them in my canvas bag for me. I thank her and buy a dozen of her limes, then make my way back out of the market into the safety of my bright blue SUV, still parked with the chickens.
