The Night Passage

It’s bothered me for about a year now that there aren’t more direct ways for me to travel back and forth between the DR and Haiti. More often than not, I am heading for the southern coastal town of Jakmel in Haiti. If you look at a map of the island, the distance between Santo Domingo and Jakmel doesn’t appear terribly vast. However, throw in some tall mountains and a general lack of roads and infrastructure, and the distance grows larger and larger.
My normal and most secure route to Haiti has been on a coach bus from Santo Domingo, direct to Port au Prince. Once in Port au Prince, I ride a motorcycle to the regional airport and board a 12 seater plane to Jakmel. While it generally works out fine, it’s costly and time consuming and, well, just doesn’t seem very direct. On my last trip to Haiti, I decided to consider other options. With Jakmel located on the coast, the most obvious option was, of course, to take a boat.
The boarder between the Dominican Republic and Haiti serves as a hub of commerce and exchange of goods. Most border towns have a large outdoor market once or twice a week that draws crowds from far and wide – including those who have to travel and transport goods by boat. It seemed a logical way to get to the border, the only catch – the boat travels through the night.
By 10pm, I had been loaded onto the boat, yes, literally loaded – carried out to the boat off shore on top someone’s shoulders (no docks). We were all ordered to lay down on top the woven straw mat that itself had been laid down on top the sacs and sacs of subsidized US rice, imported to Haiti, and now being brought to the border to be resold to the DR. The night was chilly on the water and everyone else seemed to be prepared – wrapping themselves in their sheets and blankets, settling in for the night. Laughing on the inside, I snuggled myself into my light weight sweat shirt and prepared myself for the unknown.
Well, the unknown turned out to be a lot of waiting. For two and a half hours we “slept” in the boats (captain included) waiting for the wind to change so we could make a more efficient voyage. Finally, at 12:30am, the anchor was pulled and we were off. Just as I was looking up at the stars and thinking, “this isn’t so bad…,” the captain started ordering us all to the center of the boat – apparently we weren’t laying low enough in the water for the motor. The subsequent half hour reflects the low point of the trip - cramming my body in between about 30 others, lying down on top of feet and various other body parts, knowing that sitting up meant guaranteed sea sickness. After several encounters with feet in my hair and thighs in my face, we were finally able to spread out a bit and I once again “settled” in for the night.
For the next several hours (we arrived to our destination at 6:30am) I did actually drift in and out of sleep. The night was clear and the stars above were incredible as the captain sang the night away with some droning, wordless melodies. As I lay there, again laughing at some of my life experiences, I also caught myself reflecting more deeply on the many other experiences that these very same waters have seen. “Explorers”, slave ships, boat people. These waters contain within them stories that certainly are not laughable, but instead fierce, filled with great sadness and struggle. In some way I felt a connection to all that history and suddenly knew that this was not only about a more direct (or uncomfortable!) route, but a broader “Haitian” experience. It was for me, yet another glimpse into the challenges, historical and modern, faced and lived out by this amazingly strong country and people.