Sustainability in Carrefour: Thrift Stores, Burning Trash, and the Art of Haitian Hustle
i rolled into carrefour with a duffel bag full of dreams and a stomach full of questionable street mango. the sun here doesn’t just shine-it’s got a vendetta. you ever seen a chicken spontaneously start panting? yeah. that kind of heat. but listen, i’m here for the vintage scene, and somehow ended up elbow-deep in Haiti’s sustainability circus. spoiler: it’s not all compost bins and solar panels.
the *Marché en Fer (iron market) is where magic happens-think piles of 80s band tees next to literal goat gangs. a local told me rent for a stall here is like $15 a month, but good luck getting electricity. ‘we don’t recycle plastic, we burn it,’ shrugged a vendor rearranging flip-flops made from old tires. sustainable? debatable. resourceful? hell yes.
> "they say the mayor planted 100 trees last year," muttered a guy selling *kleren* (moonshine) out of a repurposed antifreeze jug. "but have you seen a single tree? exactly."
carrefour’s job market is basically the Haitian hustle™: everyone’s doing six things at once. my Airbnb host sews backpacks from rice sacks by day and DJs by night. unemployment’s sitting at 60% (World Bank says so), but nobody’s waiting for green jobs to fall out of the sky. they’re too busy turning trash into treasure-like the dude selling *klarinet* lamps made from broken bottles.
overheard at a barbecue shack: "> yo, you wanna see eco-friendly? my cousin built his house from crushed soda cans and cement. LEED certification who?" meanwhile, Port-au-Prince is a 30-minute tap-tap ride away, and Jacmel’s artsy recycled carnival masks are worth the sweaty road trip (TripAdvisor agrees).
drunk advice from a bartender named Yves: "> don’t drink the tap water unless you wanna meet god early." cool. check out the EPA Haiti’s water stats if you want nightmares. but hey, the Fondation Kole Zepòl* is trying to fix stuff-their instagram has pics of rainwater harvesting systems that look like spaceships.
so is carrefour green? nah. but it’s surviving. and sometimes, survival’s the rawest form of sustainability.
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