Haiti - a very different Caribbean

Haiti  has taken a battering down the years; dictators, the catastrophic earthquake, a cholera epidemic and  Hurricane Matthew.

Yet cruise liners still stop on day trips to stunning beaches and the Oloffson Hotel - (Petit Trianon in 'The Comedians') has rooms  named for all the stars that stayed in better times. The house Band RAM fronted by the hotels owner as lead singer, are not to be missed.

Voodoo remains a powerful force in this culture.

I was based at Port Salut in the south west for a while. It may have been improved in the last few years , but the road from Port au Prince to Port Salut stopped me complaining about African roads ever again - ever.

Port Salut is a reminder of what much of the rest of the county may have looked like before deforestation and overgrazing.

Despite all its setbacks, Haiti remains a unique culture.

Liberia

For a country adjacent to Sierra Leone the difference is striking. From Graham Greene’s ‘Journey Without Maps’ and Barbara Greene's ' Too Late to Turn Back' , little appears to have changed outside of Monrovia. There are remote settlements frequently cut off in the rainy season and in the dense forests a real sense of  a more ancient Africa, a place where the spirit world is close and deep rooted secret societies hold sway.

The Poro and Sande societies exist across Sierra Leone and parts of Guinea as well, but here in remote forest clearings they feel all pervading, particularly when you see a fully enrobed 'devil' moving through a village as dusk falls.

Liberia has taken a battering from the civil war and the Elbola outbreak, but then with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to lead the country, the basis of relative political stability was established up to today.

Liberia is noted for dangerous rip tides. Once in the water the shore was suddenly very far away.  Rip tides are narrow currents so swimming parallel to the shore is the quickest way to get out of  the flow.  

Security has improved greatly, but the  infrastructure is still limited in Monrovia and minimal elsewhere.  The hinterland of Liberia is a journey into an Africa that much of the continent lost a long time ago.