I’m getting used to this, you know. It is actually rather rewarding, all this driving in the streets of Port-au-Prince. A little shot of adrenaline in the veins – and we’re off! Turn here, avoid a pothole there, slam on the brakes, avoid a pedestrian, start off again, pin ass a motorcycle, slow down ...

The streets are narrow: women drenched in sweat—selling everything and nothing— watch the car pass, breathing in the hot diesel fumes of the Toyotas and Fords, the Land Rovers, and the Mitsu-whatever-they-are-called. Red light: a police officer tells us to go ahead; we start to move and a motorcycle cuts us off on the left – but we’re trying to turn left! So, the tires screech, I honk the horn, and – nothing. No sound from the stupid horn. So we start up again, bypass a pothole, watching out for the displays of grooming and beauty products that sit next to car parts and salvaged oil.

We buy a little packet of water, purified by reverse osmosis, from a vendor who carries his stock on top of his head. Saluting the smiling old man crossing the street, we head off again, then brake quickly to let a bigger vehicle pass – a bus and its 2,000 passengers! Here, the biggest go first - period.

Daily traffic – it’s called “blocus” here – is a furnace of heat and dust. It’s oppressive, exhausting, and draining - in short, the “blocus” is one of Haiti’s most beautiful inventions. This is nothing like rush hour in Montreal! Oh, no! Here, life won’t go away – and you can’t think about anything else but the road ahead: the jolts, the detours, the broken-down vehicles, the street vendors, the clamouring children, handicapped people begging, sugared pistachios, sweetened juices; places that are filthy and others that seem too clean ... the “tap-tap” (small pick-up trucks or minivans that serve as communal taxis), so-called because people tap on the truck when they want to get out, the water trucks and their loudspeakers that spit out the theme from Titanic, the bikes that snake around cars, cars that swerve around bikes, pedestrians who move more slowly than snails in the sun.

The route, and what its citizens have made of it, is a work of art composed of impossible labyrinths.

However, despite all the pleasure that it provides to its few drivers in need of adrenaline and new sensations, I would like to see it transformed for all of the people who live here, sitting and baking in the sun, without shade, the whole day long—the same folks who hope to make a few “gourdes” (the basic unit of Haitian currency) selling bananas, figs, and avocadoes; country folk-become-city-dwellers in a city that doesn’t want them, that has had it, where no one seems to be able to be able. (The city of Port-au-Prince was built for and intended to accommodate a population of about 300,000—today, it is home to more than 2.5 million inhabitants. )

But waiting for this change, this “power to be able to” – I start off again, because the light has turned green ...

- Na’p toune a goch
-O.k. I'm turning left
- Non non non! A goch!
- But this is what I'm doing!
- A goch la.
- Ah! To the right.
- Wi, la.
- O.k… but this is your left, not mine…