The damned roosters rouse Kevin and Kat from their bamboo mat on the roof. They found a mosquito net at some point, and arranged it in a tent/lean-to against the water barrel. They don’t hear any gunfire and the smoke has cleared. They make their way downstairs where Jocelyn has set up breakfast and is reading by one of the windows. Dirk and Ti Mon are lounging in the courtyard playing dominoes. They all say good morning as Kevin and Kat come into the kitchen. “Good news!”, Dirk calls out to them, “The Macoutes all went back into their holes. No coup after all. Nothing like some burning police stations to remind the cops that don’t have enough bullets for everyone!” Before long, music is playing on Dirk’s boom box. It seems that there’s a Haitian band being nominated for a Grammy back in the States, so all the local stations are playing it over and over. It’s an interesting style of music that reminds Kevin of the ra-ra bands. He’s sure it’s the first time American listeners have heard anything like it.
Kevin says goodbye to the gang and they agree it’s not farewell. Luckily, Port-au-Prince tap-tap service is up and running after the previous day’s scare. Kevin gets in one at the very last minute as its driver is getting behind the wheel. The ride east toward Carrefour is surreal. With a full view of the scenery this time, Kevin watches the quiet rural villages around Miragoane turn into empty, sun-baked fields, scarred from one last attempt to burn the sugar cane into something like fertilizer. Then the rapid train-like effect of the tap-tap suddenly entering a dark cavern with tin shacks, cement walls, and rubble rising as high as the eye can see.
Carrefour started off as a afterthought suburb outside downtown Port-au-Prince. But its location makes it the gateway between Haiti north and south, turning it into a thriving maelstrom of un-zoned industrial, commercial, and residential chaos. Hastily arranged cables are thrown atop giant power towers above the buildings far below. But industrious entrepreneurs have tapped so many extension wires into the towers, that the whole arrangement seems to be some sort of organism trying to escape its cocoon.
As everywhere and especially Haiti, this kind of strategic positioning creates power and its vacuum. No one has ever bothered to pave the streets and there is no public sewer/water anywhere outside of Port-au-Prince and its affluent gated communities in Petionville. Kevin is aware of all this, because the station’s main studio was built in Carrefour when it was basically just countryside. The Carrefour slums (there’s really no other way to describe them now) just grew up around the station. A few of the station’s American engineers live in the Carrefour community, but Tim is trying to stop this because engineers “keep going native out there”.
The tap-tap comes to an abrupt halt. Looking around, Kevin guesses he’s about a 30-minute walk to the radio station. He needs to gather all the gear needed for the Mount Beef trip, and then get gone. Carrefour is the fault line between rival gangs, so a 30-minute walk is a stroll through the lion’s den. Kevin senses that he’s pushed his luck enough the past few days, so he leans out to see what’s stopped traffic.
The main police station in Carrefour is just a half kilometer ahead. It is completely bombed out and smoldering. The awful standard yellow paint on the front of the station is covered in black bullet holes with a huge hole blown out of the center of the front wall. The iron bars have all been pulled out of the windows. Lavalas graffiti is sprayed all over it and the station is abandoned. One of the passengers in the tap-tap says that crowds swarmed police stations all over the country, when reports suggested the police were behind the alleged coup attempt over the weekend.
A curfew was declared at noon yesterday and has only lifted this morning. All traffic from Miragoane and points south need to pass through Carrefour. No one is sure which gang controls Highway 1 right now, so the tap-tap drivers are all trying to convince each other to run the gauntlet to find out. Also, whatever accelerant was used to ignite the bunker police station, spilled out onto Highway 1 and melted what little asphalt remained, creating a smoldering moat across the highway.
At this point, Kevin is very glad he traveled light. He grabs his backpack, steps down from the tap-tap, glances at the surprised Haitian faces inside, and says “M’ ale”. As he makes his way toward one of the alleys, he remembers that he still has that bottle of clairin in his bag after leaving some books at Kat’s place. That will be more than enough to get him past any neighborhood watch checkpoints. He lights another cigarette, coughs into the smoke and dust around him. Then he uses the feet God gave him to head toward the station.
The bottle of clairin proves useful, as expected. At the first checkpoint, he has the bottle ready. Before the shouting begins, Kevin opens the bottle, takes a swallow, and then passes it to the young man who seems to be in charge. “Sak pase?”, Kevin asks. The young man wipes the mouth of the bottle and takes a drink, before passing it to his friend, who does the same until the bottle arrives back at the first man, who hands it back to Kevin and grins slyly, “Just hand this to the guys a couple blocks away and tell them it’s from Yves. They’ll keep it, but will send you through.”
One bottle lighter but still on his two feet, Kevin arrives at the station. Just in time for the Head Engineer to hurry him inside, explaining that he can stay in the extra bedroom. Then Jè (his technician friend from the station) stops by Kevin’s workbench and tells him that he’s found a perfect two-bedroom house just a few blocks away. Maybe they can be roommates. Kevin has the cash. Jè has access to the station’s vehicles. Many problems solved. As Kevin sinks into the old leather chair at his work bench, he wonders if he COULD use a solar powered repeater to give base communities their own comms network. “What is the line between education and information warfare?” he wonders, as the ceiling fan whirs and the mosquitos buzz. The Haitian on-air staff have just managed to slip that new song by Boukman Experyans on air. The one about never forgetting their African roots. Perhaps the truth cannot be hidden after all.