Hinche - Culture

The bigger part of the population is black, and the official languages are Haitian Creole and French.

The school system retains French as the main language .

The official religion is Roman Catholicism, but the constitution allows the free choice of religion. Some of the people practices also voodoo.

The cuisine is Créole or French, or a mixture of both. Créole cuisine is like other Caribbean cousins, but more peppery. Specialities include griot (deep-fried pieces of pork), lambi (conch, considered an aphrodisiac), tassot (jerked beef) and rice with djon-djon (tiny, dark mushrooms). As elsewhere in the Caribbean, lobster is well known here. A wide range of microclimates produces a large assortment of fruits and vegetables. Vegetarians will have it extremely difficult, because here they cook nearly everything in pig fat, so even beans are to be avoided.

The people enjoy here a drunk strong & sweet coffee, Rebo is the best brand, and the excellent Barbancourt rum.

In Hinche you’ll find a market, as well as in the rest of Haiti. The “Foyer d’Accueil” is an unmarked guesthouse above a school that is behind the blue and white church on the east side of the main square.

East of Hinche, Bassin Zim is a 20 m waterfall in a lush setting 30 minutes drive from town (head east on the Thomassique Road, then fork north at Papaye). The cascade fans out over a rounded, sloping, and limestone rockface. At its foot is a 60 m wide natural pool with deep, milky-blue water that is perfect for swimming.  

Pandiassou is a tiny village along the main road going west out of Hinche toward Maissade.

Bishop Laroche of the Diocese of Hinche called Kobonal the "darkest corner of the Diocese of Hinche." The villagers lived in isolation in an environment where fear and superstition dominated their lives. 

In the city you’ll also find the Sacred Heart Church.

Grandly called the Route National 3, the 128-km dirt road northeast from Port-au-Prince to Hinche requires a four-wheel drive and takes at least five hours (much longer by public transport). It starts by crossing the Cul de Sac plain via Croix-des-Bouquets. Here, a newly improved road branches off southeast through a parched, barren region, skirting Lake Saumâtre before reaching the Dominican border at Malpasse. There are regular flights from Port-au-Prince to Hinche.

The RN3 heads north out of Mirebalais on to the Central Plateau, where the military crackdown was especially harsh after the 1991 coup because peasant movements had been pressing for change here for years. After skirting the Peligre hydroelectric dam, now silted up and almost useless, the road passes Thomonde and reaches the region’s capital, Hinche.