Bassin Diamant

To get to my office, you make a left turn off the road. When you make that turn, you cross a little stream of water, no more than what you would see if someone was washing his car in his driveway up the road from your house in the US. But this water is always there, always running, every day. There is definitely no one up the road washing a car 24/7.

            Turns out that water is running down the mountain from the Bassin Diamant—the Diamond Basin. It’s a clear pond in the middle of the woods where a voodoo spirit is supposed to live. The water is said to have special properties, and it’s a popular place for ceremonies.

            When the vets were still here we hiked up there one day. They invited me and the other recently arrived foundation interns to come, while conveniently failing to mention exactly how long and vertical this hike was going to be. One of the other interns asked me where we were going exactly, and I said I wasn’t sure, but “we’re probably not climbing a mountain or anything.”

            We then proceeded to climb a mountain. I guess the spirits tend not to live in just any old pond on flat land.

            It was steep and hot and sweaty, but it was one of the few things resembling exercise that I’ve done since I’ve been here. On the way up, we passed a friendly group of farmers chopping down a tree to make charcoal. I’m sure the caravan of panting blans made their day—they certainly found something about us hilarious. We also passed a big cow chowing down on a felled plantain tree. I have no idea how a cow could possibly have made it up there. I could barely do it, and there’s a lot less of me than there is of a big lumbering livestock animal.

The work to get up there was worth it though. From a clearing on the mountain you could see a great view of the whole plain of farms below.

Not a great picture, but past the trees is the plain, and past the plain is the coastal mountain ridge.

            The bassin itself was pretty too. We reached it around 5:30, when the sun is beginning to set, and beautiful golden light was streaming through the trees. The water was clear and still—like a diamond—and the way the trees grew around it made it feel secret. You can tell why people think it’s enchanted. The trees of red and blue patches painted on them (important voodoo colors, and probably-not-entirely-coincidentally the colors of the Haitian flag), and there are drips of wax on the rocks where people have lit candles. Here is a picture, but it does not do it justice:

            On the path to get back down, you can hear a stream babbling down from the bassin. The people have built a channel to guide the water down to their homes so they can use the enchanted water, mostly, it seems, for mundane purposes. The channel passes some houses that no doubt use it for cooking and washing, then bends off towards the fields to be used for irrigation. One kid figured out how to do this surfing-sliding thing in the channel, which has slimy algae or something growing on the inside. He had his own little water park going on there.