Market Day

One of my favorite spots in Port Au Prince used to be a small area on the way to Petionville where all the machants sat on the side of the road selling their fruit and vegetables. No matter how many times I came around that corner it still was beautiful to me. Their big baskets full of assorted fruits and vegetables some how reminded me of my grandmother's fruit cellar growning up in Minnesota. This place is now gone or should I say the machants are now gone. I don't really know why they had to move. The street was always very crowded and it was causing traffic problems, I guess. But there are traffic problems every where you go here and I liked watching the people.
My second favorite group of ladies are the ones that sell charcoal. Maybe it is because I love pen & ink drawings and black & white photographs. Maybe, but there is something beautiful about these ladies. Not beautiful like the fruit or the children, beautiful in a way I can't describe. They always dress in black. What skin is showing, always ends up a deep, pure, black making their skin darker than it already is. But, somehow it is like you don't see them. They don't sit with the other ladies, they have an area of their own off to the side, alone.

Today we went out with Ted and Lisa to see the new market that the machants have been moved to. It is a two story market filled with everything you could ever want. I went looking for fabric for embroidery and Lisa was getting fruit and veggies. As we walked down to the market, two, huge and out of control dump trucks helped clear the way for us to get down the road to the market. When I say out of control, I mean out of control. The back tires just bounced over the rocks sliding closer and closer to the crowds causing every one to drop their things and run. I screamed because I thought for sure it was going to hit them. Maybe it should have been a sign, but it wasn't. We made our way to the second floor of the market and noticed no one was really shopping, every one was hanging over the edge looking down below. On Saturday, I almost always have my camera with me, so I just had to look and make sure I wasn't missing something good. By this time we had all stopped shopping and stood for a long time watching. It seems that today just happened to be moving day! It is necessary that you pay to have a space at the new market. Not everyone agreed with the new rule. Many, even hundreds set up shop any way. We now understood what the dump trucks would be doing, cleaning up what they grader plowed down. It was chaos below as the machants moved out of the way. It was very clear not everyone wanted to move, it was also very clear that the driver of the grader didn't care if they wanted to move or not, he had a job to do and would do it no matter what.
I didn't like what I was seeing, but I was glued to it and I could have stayed for hours. I was warned not to take pictures, some one even thought about throwing a rock at Dan and Maddie.
It was distrubing to me on many levels, some I am not even sure what they are. Haiti is kind of like that, distrubing on many levels and you don't always know why. It takes awhile to sink in. In the end it came down to the charcoal lady looking at the grader face to face and finally moving. Was she strong? Was she crazy?
I feel like her at times. Sometimes the Lord says, stay! Sometimes he says, wait! Sometimes he says, move!
But what ever basket you carry, fruit or charcoal, you better make sure you can use what's in it and it is not things of the past holding you in the wrong place at the wrong time.