Sunday, January 31, 2010

Haysha

I can't avoid eye contact with people in the road waving their arms at me, so here I am again picking up some slightly unusual looking man carrying quite a few boxes. To put him off I say quite firmly I am just going to the bottom of the mountain. No problem he replies, smiling a lot, so I grudgignly let him in. Then I can't understand a word he says so I ask him where he's from. 'Asia' he replies. 'Oh' I say, pleasantly surprised, I will chat about my back packing days. 'Have you been to Thailand or Hong Kong?'. He looks at me blankly and nods. 'Can you not speak much English?' (I say in the loud slow annoying foreigner to foreigner voice). 'No, I speak Creole & French' That's strange I thought, there must be some French & Creole speaking country in Asia that I don't know about. Not to be deterred, I plough on and ask him if he's on holiday. 'No, I working at Evergreen Hotel'. Oh, ok I thought. Then, as always, I get to where I want to be but then feel all remorseful and ask him exactly where he wants to go. Ten minutes out of my way, I eventually drop him off. He is very grateful and nods a lot and says he is sending all the boxes to his relatives in 'Haysha'. Jolly nice guy I thought but the post will be jolly expensive - he looks at me and asks 'You sent to earthquake too?'. Another OMG moment, he's not Asian, he's Haitian. There I have been wittering on about backpacking the beaches of Asia and all he's concerned about is sending off supplies to his relatives in Haiti. I must learn the local lingo pdq that's for sure.

No comments: