When Germs Travel by Howard Markel

Author:Howard Markel [Markel, Howard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-49307-1
Published: 2004-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

FIVE

No One's Idea of a Tropical Paradise:

Haitian Immigrants and AIDS

Often it would start in Port-au-Prince, with drinks at the Palace Hotel or Chez Denis where locals mixed easily with tourists and the rum was deep. An early evening drive would take you past the national palace and the shuttered pastel shops, toward the dilapidated wharf area, along the gutted coastal roads into the poor bidons, or slums, with names such as Cité Simone and Carrefour, the red-light district…. Or if one pleased, there was … Petionville, where the wealthy white and mulatto minority lived in a fairy-tale existence of restaurants, gambling casinos, and European nightclubs. Behind the wrought-iron gates of private villas, huge parties would take place, the crowds, wild and international. Men from Paris and Africa danced with the local set, old with young, rich with poor, black with white, with mulatto and every shade in between. Anyone might show up: transvestites, bisexuals, voyeurs, prostitutes, boudon (voodoo) priests and even the Tonton Macoutes, the brutal goons of “Papa Doc” Duvalier, out for a good time.

—ANNE-CHRISTINE D'ADESKY1

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