Mischa Berlinski - Peacekeeping

There was a story Terry had told me: “So one time these two police in Dame Marie call the commissariat in Jérémie. They need a lift ASAP to Chambellan to execute a warrant. So we drive to Dame Marie, get Tweedledum and his brother Numbnuts, drive them up to this village, where they tell us to wait in the car. Situation is under control. The blan might get people riled, and so me and this guy Beyala from Cameroon, we sit there by the car. This is normal. This is every day on Mission. In goes one guy and gets laid, comes out, doesn’t even bother to tuck his shirt in. Then in goes the other guy to bust his nut. Two and a half hours on the road to get there, two and a half to get back. Twenty minutes while these guys do their thing. I don’t think that’s a good use of anyone’s resources. They’re paying me one hundred K plus to be a taxi driver.”

“One hundred K plus?” I said.

“Salary, per diem, hazard pay, et cetera.”

“And that’s the job?”

“Mentoring, monitoring, and support. That’s support. You gotta believe, brother, I know something more about law enforcement than how to drive a four-by-four pimpmobile, but that’s what the job was.”

“That must have been frustrating for you,” I said.

“I was going out of my skull.”

“What did you expect you would be doing?”

“Making things better.”

But what bothered Terry more than anything was the offense to his pride: almost two decades in law enforcement, and he was the moron who sat in the car. The PNH had a unit doing nothing but investigations and interrogations, the Police Judiciaire, and Gilles, the French guy assigned to monitor, mentor, and support them was a motorcycle cop back in the old country. Terry had known motorcycle patrolmen back home, and French motorcycle cops — let’s just say about the same level of mental acuity as their American counterparts. On those long drives up into the mountains Terry had time to brood.

* * *

Every morning when the UNPOLs saw one another they shook hands. The office would start filling up at about half past seven, and each newcomer would seek out and shake the hands of those already arrived. Then the Africans felt it impolite to begin the day without asking after one another’s families and affairs at home — even though they had seen one another just the evening before. All the UNPOLs quickly adopted this custom, even when shaking non-African hands. They would look deeply into one another’s eyes, like women.

“I hope you slept well, monsieur. ”

“Not badly at all. But the heat!”

“I trust your wife is well?”

“Very well, grâce à Dieu ! I spoke with her just last night. And yours?”

“Ça va! Ça va!”

“And the affairs of your country? ”

“There is talk of a coup. And yours?”

“Tranquille!”

All this produced considerable bonhomie and also demanded quite a bit of time: the first half hour of every workday was consumed with handshaking and salutations, and in the evening, equally elaborate farewells.

The only one who couldn’t stand that crapola was Terry. The others would be shaking hands and bouncing their heads and smiling and being as friendly as a guy trying to unload a used Buick, and Terry would be waiting out in the patrol car, keys in hand. Once, to this guy Beyala from Cameroon, he said, “Doesn’t anyone around here want to get something fucking done?”

“Du calme, Monsieur,” said Beyala. “Dans le chaleur, toujours du calme.”

First stop was always the commissariat, where a dozen PNH were lounging in the morning sun. The PNH were playing dominoes and getting their shoes shined. Every now and again the PNH would impound a stolen goat or a pig, and these animals were tethered out front, munching on the dying crabgrass. When the animals got big enough, the PNH would barbecue the evidence. There was a fire truck parked out front too, a gift from the people of Taiwan: whenever Taiwan needs to clinch a close vote in the General Assembly, the Taiwanese buy Haiti a shiny fire truck or a bulldozer. This really ticks off the other Chinese, who make a fuss and threaten to veto the Mission’s mandate in the Security Council. In the end, the diplomats squawk and gibber, and every year the mandate gets extended. In any case, the fire truck hadn’t much changed the quality of life in Jérémie: a few years back, one of the local political parties burned down the house of a member of a rival political party. The Taiwanese fire truck drove over to the scene of the crime, but the pump didn’t work — no water — and the local population turned on the firemen and beat them. The fire spread and destroyed most of the old wooden houses on the waterfront. Since then, the fire truck just stayed at the commissariat when there was a problem — not that it could have gone anywhere anyway, as the PNH had no gas.

Terry and Beyala wait half an hour, until one of the PNH gets himself ready to head up to the mountains. Then they’re off.

The roads in the Grand’Anse are terrible. There were a few that were paved, but all in all, probably no more than two or three kilometers, max. Otherwise, every road was half big rock, half dirt. You couldn’t even hope to go on these roads if you didn’t have a healthy four-by-four. There were huge divots, holes big enough to swallow a rhinoceros, and places where the road was simply washed away and you just had to make your way along the side of a mountain as best you could. Terry and the other UNPOLs had a good car — a solid Nissan Patrol, painted white, letters U N on the side — but Terry’s back after about a week began to hurt something fierce. He felt every divot and pothole like an electric shock somewhere around his sacrum, a rivulet of pain running over his ass and down the back of his leg. He was starting and ending his days with 800 mg of ibuprofen. He’d get on the phone with Kay back home, and she’d know just from the way he was breathing that his sciatica was killing him.

All along the road, every couple hundred meters, there were big hand-painted signs explaining in French that this was the site of some international development project. A project outside Gommier to help farmers affected by hurricanes, paid for by the government of Japan and executed by the World Food Program. A pilot project to protect the banks of the Roseaux River, paid for by the European Union. The construction of a national school in Chardonette, paid for by the European Union. UNESCO was rebuilding the Adventist college Toussaint Louverture. In a large open field, the Inter-American Development Bank was proposing to build sixty latrines. The project had been scheduled to begin a few years back and would last four months, but the field was still barren and rocky when Terry drove by. USAID began a hillside agricultural program: nowadays the hill was nothing but rocks and stones. The IADB was rehabilitating the water supply of Carrefour Charles. There was a program to encourage the production of yams, paid for by the United Nations Development Program. A faded sign, almost falling down: CARE was putting in place a program designed to guarantee food security.

Two hours of bad road later, Terry White, Beyala, and a PNH were in Beaumont. Beaumont was like the set of some spaghetti western set in a tropical country populated only by dirt-broke black people. A single street, wooden houses, some drinking establishments, folks splay-legged in front of their houses, chewing idly on toothpicks, the ladies in kerchiefs, the gentlemen in big straw hats, tethered donkeys raw to the withers standing there under the burden of an overstuffed saddlebag or a few bags of charcoal, nobody moving, the day hot. Flies buzzing, and every eye is on you.