Haiti: Roads and Transportation

I have traveled all over Haiti in my 26 years of coming here. What looks like on a map an easy half hour trip could be 2 to 4 hours depending on the condition of the road. I've gotten stuck in the mud, crossed through rivers where I thought we'd never make it (and sometimes didn't!), gotten our truck pushed out of the mud, gotten carried (me personally) across the river, traveled to a location by standing on the back of a truck for hours, or taken a motorcycle taxi with 3 people on the motorcycle, traveled on fantastic paved roads...you name it I've done it!

Here are a few photos(not in any particular order) for you to get an idea of what the conditions are. 

Doesn't look like  much of a road but this is the beginning of preparing for a concrete highway to be built. Because of lack of ownership or accountability in the government, it is difficult to find out why the road hasn't been built even though the money has been allocated!

Crossing the river on a modern bridge. Before the bridge was built you would drive down into the ravine, drive across the river and back up.

This is the hill that goes down to the bridge in the previous photo. This is where the paved national highway 3 (Yes only 3 "highways" in Haiti and #3 is only ⅓ finished) will be built.

Paved part of National Highway #3. Cars speed along as people walk along the road.

Up until this year Pignon (the location of Haiti Outreach headquarters in Haiti and where we stay) there was no gas station. This is a small business is selling gas by the gallon. Probably put out of business this year with the new gas station.

At these small stands, they use a funnel to pour gas into the tank.

It is common for the roads to be shared with all kinds of animals.

One of the things I noticed when I first came here in the early 90's was the huge number of people walking along the roads-day and night.     

              

Rural road. You can see the widened  part of the road and  then the narrow.  Widening the road was a project taken on by one of our participants from the leadership course we sponsored. He enrolled his neighbors to help. This road connects two small towns.

Another view of the national highway. Notice how close the houses are to the road. To build the road they knocked down and sometimes chopped off the houses in the path of the road. They do get paid by the government for their land.

To get to one very rural town, the only way to get there was to drive up this dried riverbed. In the rainy season it becomes impassible.

Here we are trying to pass over a ditch in the road. The driver and some of the Haiti Outreach staff had some boards in the truck.  They put over the ditch and we were able pass.

Somehow we ended up off the road. Usually our drivers are very experienced and this doesn't happen.  I think we were trying to avoid the pothole you can see on the right of the photo.  I don't remember how we got out of this one but we gather quite a crowd and we probably paid a few Goudes(Haitian money) to have people help us.

                                                       

I stayed at a Guest House associated with a clinic and farm about a half hour southwest of Port au Prince. Nearby they were hand cutting sugar cane and this is how they were getting it to the mill to extract the sugar cane juice from the cane. The juice is used mostly to make rum.

A front view of this same cart. The road here is very common throughout Haiti

We knew this would be a problem so our staff gets out to take a look to see how we will make it through this one. You can count on roads to have these mud holes during the rainy season. We knew going out there would be problems with the road so three staff went along this day.

Normally we don't have shovels with us. We all pile out of the truck and watch and sometime push to free us up.

Typical road surface on roads that have been worked on(not the real rural roads). The larger stones keep the surface from washing out in the heavy rains. During the hurricane which didn't damage the majority of Haiti, it did cause torrential rain which destroys the roads as they get washed out.

It's not just little streams we need to cross. This and the next photo show a river we drive through every time we drive from Port au Prince, the capital, to Pignon, where our headquarters building is. There must have been rain in the mountains as the water is very muddy from erosion upstream. Everyone is waiting for the next person to cross to see if they can make it too.

People make a living carrying motorcycles, cargo and people across the river.  Some of our employees have to cross this "stream" coming to and from work every day. I know our driver waited quite a while, watching others with higher vehicles driving across, evaluating how to drive across before he made a plan. We made it without a problem this day.

Fixing a flat tire. Often times we carry two extra tires for fixing flats. There's no one to call like AAA or a tow truck!

An option we often take in getting from Port au Prince to Pignon is by these small planes. There are two missionary groups operating charter air service throughout the country. Notice the grass landing strip. The pilot will circle the airstrip at least once to make sure there are no obstructions on the field--like goats, cows or even vehicles-- before we land. These old planes are carefully maintained and piloted.