Hashing in Haiti

I think my last post was Wednesday, right before I went to Chicken Fiesta? In between those wings and now, I've had a good couple of days... Chicken Fiesta was delicious, as expected, but I found myself in an unexpected place afterwards. I had met a girl named Sarah through work last Tuesday that told me about "Wednesdays at the Petionville Club", which she kindly invited me to, so I headed over after Chicken Fiesta. 

The Petionville Club is a country club that's been operating in Haiti for years. When I was here three years ago, it had tennis courts, a pool and a golf course! Two years ago the golf course was claimed by a displaced persons camp (Sean Penn's, actually!) and the tennis courts by their staff. Fast forward to now, and it has reclaimed its salt-water pool and tennis courts, though the camp is expected to stay another year.... The Petionville Club is very much a country club, membership required, but on Wednesdays they open their doors up to the public and generally have Haitian music as entertainment. In and of itself, that was great, but Sarah happens to be very good friends at the owner, so I had a place at their "VIP" table with lots of wine being poured. Thankfully Thursday was a holiday, thus a day off of work! I wound up spending an hour talking with the owner, having an interesting conversation about what it's like to run a country club in an impoverished country, among other things. It definitely wasn't what I expected going in, but a good night nonetheless. I think it may become a regular Wednesday spot for me.... 

I laid low on our holiday Thursday, doing a bit of work and working on my tan. Friday night I went for burgers with my colleagues to a place called Hang - it was blasting dance party music but was a burger joint, certainly different from my waitressing stint at the Works! I kind of enjoyed shaking my shoulders to the tunes while chomping down on my burger though..... Saturday I spent some time by the pool and met up with a friend from Kabul at night, and I even managed to take in the hockey game! Hopefully I can catch game 6 when I go out later tonight... 

Hashers trying to make it down a very steep hill

Sunday was another interesting day - I participated the hash! For those of you who don't know the hash, they describe themselves as a drinking club with a running problem... They have either a walking or running group that goes out on a trail, and then there is a whole bunch of drinking afterwards. I did one hash in Kabul but, as you can imagine, this was quite different. Aside from the fact that I could wear shorts and a t-shirt (yay!), the trail was quite different. Since Port-au-Prince is full of hills, we went up a hill, down the hill and across a ravine, up the informal settlement, through a bit of a forest (going up and down hills all the time), back across a ravine and then back to the starting place. It was interesting seeing houses being built (since that's my new gig), but also just seeing life happening in the settlements. It's nice to see things as they happen instead of through the window of a car... And nice to relax this way after seeing it all! 

Cheers!