My day in Haiti

In 1976 my grandmother took me on a cruise aboard M/S Starward of the Norwegian Caribbean Lines. The vessel seems a dinghy compared to the monster ships of today. Our stops were Port Antonio and Montego Bay in Jamaica, Nassau in the Bahamas, and, improbably, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

My grandmother didn’t care to leave the boat in Haiti so I, at 14, set out on my own. There were hordes of locals on the dock offering their services as guides, and I’d read of a place that served excellent coconut ice cream, so I hired one of the guides to take me there. He professed to know just the place so off we went through streets and alleys amid some of the worst poverty in the Western Hemisphere.

“This is the place with the ice cream,” he said happily upon arrival at a nondescript little establishment. It brought to mind the barber shop in the Andy Griffith Show, but dingier. My guide directed me not to one of the rickety, dingy tables but to the dingy bar, where I took a seat on one of the dingy stools. Aside from the bartender, my guide and me, the place was empty.

“Do you have coconut ice cream?” I asked eagerly.

“We have vanilla,” the bartender said.

So I sat in a dingy Haitian bar, eating vanilla ice cream, while my guide sat next to me, watching me eat. I asked if he wanted ice cream as well.

“No, but…” —he turned to the bartender— “…give me a beer.”

I finished my single scoop of vanilla ice cream, paid for it and the beer, and returned with my guide to the ship. I gave him two dollars for his services, for which he appeared very grateful.

If I were the parent or grandparent of 14-year-olds today, I doubt that I would allow them to roam the streets and alleys of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on their own. I further doubt that I will ever enjoy coconut ice cream there.