grandeur and decay

To see the weathered grandeur of the crumbling buildings is somehow a fascinating picture.  Stage and film sets recreate this kind of worn and used authenticity.  It has much more character than the new.  The old and ramshackled seem more established, somehow; loved and treasured.

The building that housed the 32 orphan children was grand and epic in its day.  The view from the first floor reception room had striking views of the bay of Jérémie.  In front was a huge lawn that had suffered in recent years from an obvious lack of care.  There were high walls and occasional iron wrought gates that must have provided access in days past, and now this function replaced by the huge characteristic gates to the side of the property.

Staying here was an interesting experience and though the building is in serious decline, it still has a grand feel to it that could be one day restored to its former glory.  The decorative iron screens protected the residents from unwanted visitors whilst giving them a cool breeze at night.  The views are stunning, and the sea, with its electric blue hue, was strangely majestic and beautiful to watch.  Only slight movements of the distant ocean and the occasional clouds breaking the sprawling sky.  At night there is no light pollution and so the night sky we had already grown accustomed to was now an explosive array of light.  Pin pricks of intense shards of diamond lights enveloping the whole sky from one side to the other.

The journey back to Port-au-Prince started at 5am on Friday.  We stopped in Les Cayes for lunch and then this would get us comfortably back to the convent in the capitol early afternoon.  Highway construction - performed on a military scale, by the Dominican construction company Estrella - regular closes the narrow, inadequate track which is the only way to Jérémie from the east.  Vast pathways are being chiselled through the gorgeous hilltops, providing necessary and safe access to this coastal haven.  As the road peters out towards Les Cayes there are numerous villages along the way - market towns with roadside markets that bring the passing traffic to almost standstill as they crawl through the sellers and buyers.  The colour and din are magnificent; with exotic fruits and wild animals purchased for a few Gourds, the babel of trading and greeting in sounds as weird, as puzzling and unfamiliar, as the cackling live poultry, terrified goats and lines of fruits too kaleidoscopic and alien to name.  A clutch of yellow and green peppers - twelve or so - for fifty cents.  The smells are like soup and wood and hot coals . . intoxicating and mind numbing . . then the smiles and the calling out to us in the car.  Sellers flock to the open window like seagulls.  Women and children carrying colours from the earth and trees.  The sun bearing down on the car and our departure from this land in three days tugging at me.  The clouds are complicit in all this too.  The sky open and constant and will be here waiting when I come again.