out-of-compound experience

            My Haiti summer 2012 is coming to a close, and that means its adventure time. Why wasn’t the entirety of Haiti summer 2012 adventure time? That is the question I have asked myself every day. Maybe it’s the people I am with, maybe it’s the people I am working for. Maybe it’s our location or maybe it’s the financial cost of adventure. Maybe I need to accept that I’m way more boring than I like to think. Most likely it is because I have been spending so much of my time at the beckon call of my intestines. Whatever the reason, it has not been the constant adrenaline rush I remember from my last time in Haiti.

            Recently that has improved; we have had out-of-compound experiences. I would not trade leaving the compound for anything! (except maybe a salad or a plate of veggies right now…its been too long) However, that does not mean that my out-of-compound experiences were all good. I had fun each time, but they often left me feeling confused or upset or generally irritated. Unpleasant things happen. I see things that make me uncomfortable and sad.

            Last weekend we went to a club in Petionville. It was one of the greatest nights of the summer. We ate pizza and french fries and drank rum sours and danced until 4 am. But this club was frequented by ex pats, pimps and prostitutes. Trafficked teenage Dominican girls approached “humanitarian” ex pats. “150 if you see something you like” said the pimp to one intern. 150 what? American dollars? Doubtful. And I wonder how much of that 150 the women get to keep. Based on some research, it seems that the pimps use most of that money to buy fake breasts and lips and weaves for these women. Somehow that is the same as actually paying the women for their work. As the night wore on the women seemed more desperate for attention. It made me wonder what lay in store for the women who were unable to make a sell that night. It depends what kind of pimp this man is. Is he the kind that keeps them all in line through violence or though brainwashing “kindness”?

No one can fake that exuberant flirtatious happiness without some help; prostitutes using uppers is not a new concept. And no one wants to pay for sex with a sad prostitute; with a prostitute who actually seems upset that she has been sex trafficked. That tends to ruin the illusion.

            And why were the most sought after prostitutes from the DR? Is it because they have lighter skin eyes and hair than the Haitian prostitutes? Their pimps knew how to pick teenage girls who would attract that target rich white audience. The global politics of beauty are such that these women struck the perfect balance between western ideals of beauty and exotic eroticism. Good marketing.

           

Another out-of-compound experience: arguing with the guard at the lake about charging white people more to get in. Our van was divided. Was this reverse racism? Was it wrong? Was he stupid to assume we would be dumb enough to pay more? Was he a smart businessman who had successfully “exploited” NGO workers in the past? Personally I do not feel comfortable using the word exploited in this manner, especially in a place where exploitive economic policies have been so devastating. Can you blame this guard for trying to get a little extra from rich white people? How do you think rich white people got rich?

True, most of us do come from really hard working families. Maybe no one in our family histories intentionally exploited the developing world, but everyone born in the U.S. benefits from these economic policies in some way. That is a privilege we have, and a result of that is people will try to take some of our money. I doubt anyone in our van would rather be on the other side of things.

And there was one in-compound experience worth mentioning. The party with the gun. No one is sure of the specifics but there were shots fired, scared interns, a policeman and lots of stress eating. I don’t know why this didn’t have greater impact on me. I was much more upset about the two other events. I just wanted to keep eating birthday cake and dancing, so that is what I did. I figured the same thing is not going to happen twice in the same night; after the angry man left I felt like it was safer than usual.

            Sex trafficking and neoliberal economic policies scare me more than a rando with a gun. That probably seems naive to some people, but it’s the way I feel. Guns are scary, no doubt. But for me, the oppression that stems from sex slavery and exploitive economics is worse, and it hurts exponentially more people.