12/02/2004
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Port au Prince. The road is steep and full of huge potholes which strike fear to the heart of
even the most imposing jeeps. It is flanked with trash and rubble, with prayers
written in Creole on the walls, and with year's old election posters. Houses piled
one on top
In Petionville everything is neat clean and orderly. Suddenly you find yourself in a bewildering dreamlike scenario.
Comparison. The comparison between that wealth and the reality just a few yards away is unavoidable Who lives in that paradise?
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A jewel near Port au Prince. Petionville, a rich white enclave.
from our correspondent
Alessandro Grandi
Port au Prince. The road is steep and full of huge potholes which strike fear to the heart of
even the most imposing jeeps. It is flanked with trash and rubble, with prayers
written in Creole on the walls, and with year's old election posters. Houses piled
one on top of the other and facing the road give the clear sensation of being part of the
total instability of the nation.
Each and every road in Haiti is like this: without maintenance or concern for
itsbeing dangerous.Except one.The road that leads from Port au Prince to Petionville,
an extremely rich suburb on a hill top at the edge of the Haitian capital. Here
time seems to stand still in the 1950s of the century just gone by.
Having become sadly famous when Guy Philippe (one of the leaders of the rebellion that overturned former president Jean Bertrand Aristide in February of this year) conquered it. Petionville is the only paradise on the island.
Open air Cinema. Welcoming you to Petionville there is an open air cinema. It lies between the very high wall of a country house and a small square
with a little garden. It's one of those cinemas that that haven’t been seen in
the west for at least sixty years and occurs in old folk tale. A composed crowd
perched on the benches is being treated to selections of dreams by American stars dubbed into Creole, the official language that
everybody understands. Further on a real British pub, prohibitive for the majority, offers the young the chance to surf the Internet.
In Petionville everything is neat clean and orderly. Suddenly you find yourself in a bewildering dreamlike scenario.Snazzy mansions almost Hollywood fashion, equipped with every comfort and protected by armed guards, high-powered cars that could not drive anywhere else but here given the complete lack of suitable roads.
Here the majority of elegant restaurants, the few nightclubs, gyms and art galleries are to be found; everything
for the use of the1% of the population that hold the 85% of the Country wealth: in short, the rich. And in Petionville it richness has to be seen.
Things are very different in the capital. Misery, hunger, poverty, violence and above all social instability. Restaurants and infrastructures are non existent. The super-luxury villas protected by armed guards are nowhere to be found. Shantytowns and people dying of hunger at Citè Militaire
and Citè Soleil, the capital's two most at risk areas, are there as a counterbalance. Armed groups are unscrupulous and kill for a few dollars, unleashing wars among the poor that have nothing to do with the political
difficulties of the Nation.
Enter the fantastic restaurants of Petionville. You find yourself in an eccentric context, it's like being back in Batista's Cuban years, with places frequented by the underworld and the then rich people: white customers, black waiters. The master's wealth well in sight with cigars mouths and ivory colored wide-brimmed hats. Impeccable service to say the least, with liveried footmen, fresh water in floods, wine, liquors and
lobsters. But then you realize that in the city and the rest of the nation people live from hand to mouth and you feel uneasy about it.
Comparison. The comparison between that wealth and the reality just a few yards away is unavoidable Who lives in that paradise? Curiosity forces you to check out those gates. They belong to various NGOs, then
there is the Red Cross banner, the various diplomatic groups present in Haiti,
the shady businessmen who have emerged from the scum of the city and Minustah
(the Mission of Stabilization of the United Nations in Haiti).
And flying over Port au Prince, a big fatuous and useless rock appears in the middle of the sea with a small but precious ruby
mounted in it.
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