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Kenscoff, about 1 3 miles away. The terraced farms clinging to steep mountainsides, the brilliant foliage and even the boys along the road who toss flowers into passing cars (in the hope that motorists will stop and buy more) all contribute to a scene of rare beauty. At Kenscoff, the bright colors of the wares in the huge, open, hillside market, as well as an occasional cockfight, provide other sights rarely seen by Americans. The marketplace is sometimes enlivened by a "ra-ra," a spontaneous celebration that frequently occurs in the spring when people don colorful costumes and engage in impromptu jam sessions with "vaccins"-flutelike instruments made from bamboo. One other side trip-to Cap Haitien on the northern coast-is almost worth traversing the particularly bad roads or risking the frequently canceled air trip. Once there, tourists can take a two-hour horseback ride up La Ferriere mountain to visit the ruins of the Citadelle, a huge stone fortress built by one of Haiti's liberators, Henri Christophe, to ward off an invasion that never came.
Baseballs. Actually, there are enough attractions within Port-au-Prince to occupy tourists for the good part of a week. In the well-to-do Lyles district, there are the remarkable Victorian gingerbread houses, with intricately carved balustrades and spires, that are now commanding Stateside real estate prices. At the Iron Market, beneath a twin-spired iron roof, hundreds of Haitian entrepreneurs haggle with tourists over the price of wood carvings, sisal mats, dolls and hundreds of other products displayed in crowded stalls. There is the formal city hall, outlined at night with strings of glowing light bulbs, and the National Palace, which is guarded during holidays by light antiaircraft guns. Everywhere the streets in the overcrowded city teem with people, many of them politely but persistently hawking goods or guide services to any tourist in sight. Port-au-Prince also has more than its share of slums, which bear elegant names like Bel Air, Poste Marchand and Leclerc but often have open sewage ditches running through them.
The slums are swelling as peasants flock to the cities in search of the $1-a-day wage required by Haitian law. Many of the jobs they find are in small assembly plants, which contract with foreign firms for the cheap labor of Haitian workers. In one plant, 3.7 million Rawlings baseballs are stitched together every year for export to the U.S. Explains Owner Jules Tomar: "Baseball sewing is a nonexistent art in the U.S." But even these jobs are few and far between; at least one-third of the Haitian population is unemployed.
A little of that slack is being taken up by the popularity of Haitian art. One form is uniquely Haitian. Unlike other islanders in the Caribbean, Haitians do not use oil drums as instruments for steel bands. Instead they flatten the drums and cut them into graceful, imaginative steel sculpture. Pieces by Murat Brierre usually sell for about $300. But it is the primitive Haitian painting (much of it now mass produced and second rate) that has largely captured the imagination-and the dollars-of tourists. The bold, brilliant-hued Haitian art is displayed and sold everywhere: in a proliferating number of galleries throughout Port-au-Prince and its suburbs, in restaurants and hotel lobbies, and in the homes of prominent Haitians.