Would Elisabeth ever have enough time to achieve all she had to do?

In her beautiful country of Haiti, she had a job, a home, and a healthy family. One would think that this leads to a happy, peaceful existence. However, that was far from reality.

For many reasons, life in a third world country is slower and longer.

One of them being that what’s considered to be normal in Haiti is not elsewhere.  To be half an hour to a whole hour late for an appointment or meeting is totally acceptable there. Elisabeth though, found punctuality to be an admirable quality, which differentiated her from the people she was meeting and brought her unimaginable frustrations. She worked hard on estimating as precisely as she could the time she needed to commute to her meetings. She also took into account inevitable traffic jams, possible police controls, and crowds of pedestrians that might be blocking the streets. Overall, her personal statistics indicated that in Port-au-Prince or Pétion-Ville, the speed of a vehicle during the day was not more than six kilometers an hour. This being established, for an encounter of one hour, she needed to take out three hours of her day: one hour for the meeting and two for the commute, which would generally be short distances. Walking would have been faster, but the prevailing insecurity in the country made it imprudent.

Unfortunately, Elisabeth’s intricate planning did not take into account the unproductive time she would often have to spend waiting for her tardy interlocutor, who never apologize for being late. Elisabeth knew her friends and acquaintances to generally be polite so she could only explain and pardon their rude behavior by the modern world. Nowadays people are short of excuses for being late, as they can no longer pretend their watches suddenly stopped working.  Time is now available everywhere: it shows on cell phones that nearly everyone owns, it is broadcasted at regular intervals on radio stations that everyone listens to in the car, and they can also see it on the dashboard of their vehicles. Elisabeth thought it was a shame that no one longer needed to gently address a passerby to ask  for “an hour as a gift” (1).

All in all, the hellish traffic on the streets of Port-au-Prince and Pétion-Ville was what made Elisabeth feel a little better about the many latecomers. Anyone would need strong nerves to survive the horns, pedestrians, and unruly tap-tap drivers (2) who would stop and go without any signal just to pick up one passenger or to drop off another. Not to mention, the motorcyclists passing right and left without warning, or that casually swerve on the sidewalks when the streets are overcrowded. All this can quickly make any driver clench their teeth, removing any hint of good humor and banishing the possibility of showing up on time.

At the end of a soccer game, extra time is given to make up for time lost during the match. It seemed to function the same way for Elisabeth at her office. She often had to work late to catch up on her paperwork which she could not address while losing time in traffic or waiting for a tardy interlocutor. Thus, it was common for her to be exhausted when she returned home in the evening. Thank God, she had the precious help of Marie! Marie cleaned the house in her absence, prepared and served dinner for the family, and did the dishes. Marie was the reason Elisabeth could sit down at the dining room table to work on her personal small business of cosmetics which she was managing from home. Yet, Elisabeth couldn’t help to pay attention to the sound of the water flowing from the sink faucet which would prompt her to shout a few times, “Marie, lower the water pressure please! Water trucks are expensive.”

It was time-consuming for a working person to pay attention to the many necessary details that government services should normally provide. If you lived in Haiti, you had to think about adding distilled water in the inverter batteries, checking the level of fuel in the generator, leaving the checks at home to pay for garbage collection or delivery of water, taking empty gallons of drinking water to have them filled and  making sure the propane gas tank was full, all to avoid the unpleasant surprise of not being able to brew coffee upon waking up in the morning.  And that’s just the short list. It was important to not forget to pay the electricity subscription on time—even though the invoices were not delivered and the city only supplied electricity a few hours a day. EDH (3) was quick to disconnect its subscribers for a few days of late payment and slow to reconnect after the account had been updated.

Although Elisabeth’s small cosmetic business was often time-consuming, she welcomed the additional income it provided. The money she earned from it was used to finance the annual vacation with her family. Elisabeth and her husband always visited developed countries in order to let their children discover little pleasures as simple as walking in a park or going to the movie theater—things they could not do at home. Caribbean resorts were of no interest to them; they had seen enough coconut trees, had had enough sun, and had suffered too much from the heat! They wanted to see conifers, feel a little cool and have to cover themselves. A real change in horizon was what they wanted for their annual vacation.

She and her family had visited New York, Montreal, Paris, Rome, and other big cities. She always came back enchanted by her travels and, as soon as she returned home, she started dreaming about her next vacation that she started to plan right away. She often thought that life was too short and would not allow her to carry out all her projects and follow all her dreams.

But then she thought that only the blessed and  privileged could  think that life is too short. It was Black Alex(4) who made her understand this sad reality with his hit song delivered with his powerful and piercing voice sang from the guts:

Lavi a long, li long, li long

Pa gen tankou’l

Ou pralé wap kité’l la

Sa fè’m mal oh (5)

Black Alex was only 26 years old when he uttered this cry of pain in 2002, despite the great talent he had received from God. His voice made him famous, but did not bring him happiness: “Lavi a long, li long, li long”(5). Black Alex died in 2015 at the age of 39. His life was short, but he sang it long.

Elisabeth was now older than 39 and decided she would never complain that life is too short. She would rather say that she was happy to be among the blessed who found their lives short because they had dreams, plans, a decent life, and no time to kill. And during her busy days, this prayer often came to her mind: “God, please grant to all my compatriots the happiness of a long life which they end up finding too short.”

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(1) In Haiti, before time was available everywhere we frequently used the Creole formula “fè’m kado on ti lè” to ask a passerby for the time. Translation: “As a gift, let me know what time it is.”

(2) Tap-taps: very colorful public transport vehicles. They have no stopping points, and their name come from the fact that the passenger taps on the vehicle body to indicate to the driver that he has arrived at his destination.

(3) Ed’H: Electricité d’Haiti, Electricity of Haiti, state power and light company.

(4) Black Alex (1976-2015) : Haitian Rap and Ragga artist from group King Posse

(5) English translation:

Life is long, long, long

There is nothing like it

You will die and leave it there

That hurts, oh!