My butt was already aching again as we jerked to a halt directly in front of Guy's (pronounced: Giēs) Guest House. Downtown Jacmel was the epicenter of recent siesmic activity. Scott told me that after the initial quake and subsequent tremors, Guy's Guest House was the only establishment in the whole city without significant structural damage. Though everything around it was toppled, they were open for business the very next day.

The café downstairs was open and facing the street. A heavy iron gate discouraged loitering. Guy himself sat at a table in the corner under a ceiling fan. He was almost eighty, and palsied from Parkinson's, but he still remembered my brother.

"Scott." Guy tipped his straw hat, and motioned for us to sit. "Welcome back."

They shook hands, Hatian-style, which is hard to put into words.

"This is my brother." Scott took a seat.

"Same muddah?" Guy inquired.

"Same father, too." Scott assured him.

The old man arched his eyebrows and looked at me in mock disbelief. "He is much biggah."

I was still standing, so we all laughed at his joke. "And better looking.." I added.

Guy crossed himself and signaled to the waitress. "Have a seat, Scott's bruddah." He nodded at the other chair, without ever asking my first name. Then he and Scott began speaking in Spanish, for no apparent reason.

The Creole language is a jigsaw puzzle. French and English and Spanish are dumped out of the box, onto the table and scrambled brusquely. Bonus pieces of local idiom are added to the mix and re-shuffled to create a vernacular which can never reach completion. It is a strange dynamic. Luckily, you do not need to put the whole puzzle together, unless you really want to learn Creole. Guy spoke French and Spanish, but not English. Scott understood English and Spanish, yet no French. Therefore, they logically settled on Spanish to avoid the use of hand gestures.

My brother told me later, that Guy was raised in the Dominican, and that was his native tongue. Scott also told me that he had seen Guy's health deterioriate drastically over the course of his last seven visits since the earthquake.

Though I also speak Spanish, out of respect for our patron, I pretended to be preoccupied. The walls were painted orange. The tablecloths were green. Primitive Nubian paintings hung slightly askew and totally at random around the small lobby. It was hotter than blazes.

The waitress handed me a menu, and I squinted to read the foreign print. The only word I recognized on the whole page was: Omlette. That's because Omlette is just French for omlette. So I ordered an Omlette and a Coca-Cola, then excused myself to further investigate the hotel.

"¿Con su permiso?" I nodded at the owner. He seemed amply impressed with my espaňol.

"Estás bienvenido." The proprietor croaked hoarsely. "Es tu casa."

"Sure, take a look around," Scott added, "there's a balcony upstairs – got a great view."

There was one main hallway with communal bathrooms on either end. I stopped in the closest one to pee. It had a sink, a comode and a shower, but still no hot water.. The maids were changing linens at that hour, so the doors to several rooms were wide open. The furnishing were basic: twin cots with crude nightstands between them, no air-conditioning, no phone, no TV.

I climbed the stairs at the far end to find the exact same layout on the second floor, except that the exterior wall and half of the roof were missing. I could see right into the building next door. Doubling back toward the front of the inn, I eventually found the balcony that Scott had mentioned.

I was expecting a view of the ocean, or at least something tropical. Instead, a tilted veranda with no railings hung directly over the downtown district of Jacmel. I pulled out my camera and snapped several photos facing both directions. Most of the buildings were badly damaged, some were visably leaning. It was nine o'clock in the morning, and every curb was lined with vendors peddling their peculiar wares – fresh exotic fruits and grilled mystery meats, cheap used cellphones and pre-paid calling cards, purified drinking water and pure cane liquor, baskets of ripe breadfruit and bins of grimy charcoal. A businessman in a dark suit and tie, carrying a briefcase, dodged to avoid several barefoot children splashing in a puddle and begging for alms.

When I returned downstairs, two other men had joined Scott and Guy at our table. They were introduced as Danyan and Titi – our official tour guides for the duration of our stay in Haiti. Danyan was about twenty-five years old, and Titi was probably twice that age. Danyan was a loan shark, and Titi carved clipper-ship replicas out of pieces of driftwood.

"Dis is Scott's bruddah." Guy motioned with his good arm.

Both Danyan and Titi stood to shake my hand. "Hallo, Scott's bruddah." Said the shorter older one. "How are you liking the Haiti so much?" Asked the taller younger one, referring to a pocket-sized 'French-to-English' dictionary. "You come back soon, like Scott then?"

"I just got here." I tried to explain.

Titi was looking over Danyan's shoulder at the miniture lexicon. A bold bluff, because Scott told me later that Titi was illiterate in any lingo. Danyan however, understood some English and French. Plus he could perform basic arithmetic.

I heartily endorse the omelette at Guy's Guest House. But for the record, fried plantains do not taste anything like bananas, and they come as a side dish on every plate. Luckily, there is nothing better than an iced-cold Coca-Cola, in a foreign country, first thing in the morning.

"We rent the scooters today?" Danyan asked Scott, licking his fingers. Titi, though perturbed that he had not thought of it first, nodded his head vigorously in agreement.