HAITI/DOMINICAN REPUBLIC BORDER CROSSING — Sometimes, getting out is half the story.
This is the wild frontier divide between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Other than the rolling convoys of aid heading toward Port-au-Prince, I doubt much has changed around the swinging iron gates in a century.
Thick dust kicks up like smoke from the constant movement of street vendors and mostly Haitians wanting to be allowed to leave their wounded country.
I am headed to Santo Domingo, after covering the earthquake for QMI Agency.
In the aging, bald-tired Nissan — where the air conditioner doesn’t work and the CD player repeats one Creole song for 12 straight hours — I wait with driver Jean-Claude and my interpreter, Cal. Both are Haitian, with Cal a university student before the disaster and Jean-Claude some sort of unemployed government worker. His former job seems to change, depending on what he sees out the window as we drive.
Entering Haiti was, other than traffic, a simple thing.
But getting back out is a shifty business.
After soldiers let us through the gate, we’ve been pulled aside by five thugs who have some loose association with Dominican Republic customs.
The only papers they are interested from me are the American dollars I carry. But even before looking at the passports held by the two Haitians onboard, the bad-five have decided their documents must not be in order.
We’re told to pull around a back building, where bored workers play cards and try to ignore anything else going on. The men circle and quiz Jean-Claude and Cal, who both assure me their passports and papers are fine for entering this country.
One thug with a handgun stuffed into the front pocket of his baggy jeans asks me where I’m going.
Cal tries to intervene, but the man taps the thick butt of the gun.
I show him a slip of paper — an address of a hotel in Santo Domingo.
In Spanish, he tells me my friends can’t go further, but that he’s also, by chance, a taxi driver and will take me the rest of the long way. Among themselves, the five men begin to bicker over who will drive me — or perhaps who gets to pull the trigger once we get a mile down the road.
“I’m not going anywhere without my associates,” I tell them.
More arguing. More tapping of the gun. Our car is moved to an even more remote position.
Then comes a demand for $150 US to clear up any problems with the paperwork.
The chubby one of the five grabs the cash in a thick paw, and begins to sneak off. But Cal is on him, demanding to see his credentials. For the people on both sides of this border, your credentials are like pants — once you have them, you won’t ever leave the house without them.
The fat man returns to his four co-conspirators. Other than to suggest I go in a car with them, they largely avoid me.
There are outbursts of Creole and French and Spanish, as harsh words are exchanged among their five and my loyal two.
The Haitians must go back and the Canadian can stay, the verdict is decided.
The three brand new fifty-dollar bills have bought us nothing.
And by this point, threats are being made toward my Haitian fixers.
I take out my press credentials — which hold as much real authority as my Tim Horton’s card — and demand to speak to the man in charge.
And like that, I’m standing before the desk of a beleaguered Dominican Republic officer.
I’m in a bad movie here. But at least there are now witnesses around, I reason.
The hall outside is deafening with chatter from Haitians trying to coax their way in. I just want to get the Hell out.
“Who can I trust?” I ask the man in charge.
He shrugs, but gives no real answer, other than the three of us can’t go further together.
So I call the Prime Minister. Or at least that’s what I seem to be doing on my Blackberry, which I haven’t gotten a call out on since I arrived in Haiti.
I chatter dramatically, while saying words like “United Nations” and “Canadian Soldiers”.
I even somehow include “President Barack Obama” into my tirade.
As I do this, Cal and Jean-Claude are nearby exploring hidden angles with other officials, who all work the outer hall of immigrants like stock market floor traders.
Money keeps exchanging hands. Papers are stamped. Some go. Many stay.
Whether it was my call to the Prime Minister he never got, or my companions knowing the game after two lifetimes of playing it, we are suddenly told to go. Now.
For the rest of the afternoon, as we head toward Santo Domingo, checkpoints greet my companions and I every half hour. Only the magical power of my waving press credentials gets us through.
Dropping me off after 12 hours, Jean-Claude and Cal take the money they are owed, as well as a little more to get a good meal, before turning back around.
But not before digging into a bag to change shirts. So just maybe the five wouldn’t recognize them when they turn up to be let through the iron gates again.
Next to them, I have it easy.
I don’t know how they’ll make out getting that far, or how they will fare navigating their own lost city.
But I do know, getting out is often half the story.
