This Week's Adventures - The Anchor of the Santa Maria!?

by Jimmy

This week's adventures were not nearly so long and exhausting as last week's, though you may not know that from my wife who is sleeping at 7:00 PM. Today she graciously let me choose which direction to drive, and I chose to explore across town to the Musee National. (National Museum)

Now this is no ordinary museum... OK, yes it is. Every museum is an ordinary museum according to my wife, but THIS museum is said to house the very anchor of Christopher Columbus' flagship, the Santa Maria! And what have we been studying in school, but that very same Christopher Columbus. Just a little historical background - Columbus sailed for the New World (or the ocean blue) in 1492, landing first in the Bahamas, then to the larger island of Cuba, and finally having been told of gold in Haiti, set his sights there. On Christmas day of that year, the ship struck a shoal and sunk off the coast of Haiti. They did discover the king of Haiti possessed gold, and trading him trinkets for his gold, started back to Spain, to spread the word, and thus began the first gold rush. Unfortunately for the then owners of the gold, they neither possessed the weapons, or immunity to disease to resist the relentless European Explorers.

And now that I have thoroughly bored half our readers... my quest for iron not gold. At least that is what I am assuming the anchor is made of. We departed the property just after lunch, and quickly met a not uncommon long line of slow traffic down our main road. After a quick stop at the Haitian Home Depot, MSC, (yes, literally the Haitian Home Depot, same colors and everything, though they do sell Vodka at the checkout lanes, and huge industrial size electrical transformers) we ventured to the opposite side of Port-Au-Prince.

We started out strong, traffic after MSC was not all that bad, and driving past the airport we saw the JoyHouse bus in the parking lot. JoyHouse is the place we visited last weekend, and where Becky and I first worked in Haiti just after the earthquake. We pulled into the parking lot, and got to visit with Norma the founder of JoyHouse for a little bit as she was waiting for an incoming team. After trading contact information we proceeded to the pin marked location of the Musee National.

We arrived, I in excited anticipation and pulled into the Quisqeya University parking lot. Higher education and museums go hand in hand don't they? And it was right at the pin mark. We exited the vehicle, and scoured the newly constructed and in construction premises. Students milling about, and a couple of classes in session. I was excited just to see a functioning school. But alas, no museum. It must be up the street.

So up the street we drove. A security guard at the only promising gate kind of laughed at the object of our quest, and sent us back down the street. We traversed down, back up, and back down, stopping back at the University to ask there. Much to my chagrin, and quite honestly I had been keeping my hopes and expectations down all morning, we found not the anchor of the famed Santa Maria, nor for that matter the entire Musee National.

(And just as a side note, I am sure that we just had a trembler, the first I have felt since we have been here.) At first I thought it was thunder, and big trucks crashing big trash cans, but that makes no sense, and big trucks cannot shake our concrete apartment.

Well, I guess we will just have to try another day. I might have to strike out on my own though. Becky can only take so much exciting history at a time.
Sorry for the lack of pictures, we were explorers this week, not tourists like last.