Anticipation

Ding, dong. It's the stroke of midnight, Christmas Eve. I'm sitting at gate C14 in Dulles National Airport, where I'll soon be lying down to sleep. Early tomorrow morning, I'll be on my way to San Francisco, and then on home to Medford.




It's not how I planned on spending this Christmas, especially since it's the first time I've been able to travel home in three years. My plane from Miami was late because of weather in Chicago, and through the domino effect of delayed flights, that translated into me spending the night in Washington D.C.

But really, all told, I've got it pretty good. I've seen plenty of people who are much more exhausted, and have been put through much more than I. And I feel the most sorry for the United Airlines customer service people, dealing with countless travelers who are missing their loved ones, stuck on the wrong side of the country, and on the verge of tears.

And the best part of the day by far, was commiserating with a woman on my same flight from Miami to D.C. I was worried about missing my connection to San Francisco, she was trying to figure out what to do since she wouldn't make her flight to Montreal. It wasn't until we were getting ready to deplane that I saw her Haitian passport. So then I got to wish her a merry Christmas in Creole and talk Haiti for a little bit. Most people I know who have lived in Haiti and then visited Miami, New York, or Boston have some story about hearing people speaking Creole on the subway or at a store or something like that, and getting a chance to say hi as an honorary member of the Haitian diaspora. If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend it.

Just being a foreigner in Haiti and speaking Creole is always a lot of fun. I can't count how many times people have been amazed to hear me speaking their language, and tell me stories about other blan they know who lived in Haiti for years and never learned anything other than hello and goodbye. It's always immensely appreciated. If you try speaking French, you're likely to get corrected on a number of things, but say it in Creole and you're golden. But speaking to a Haitian expatriate who might not get the chance to speak their native language often is like showing up at a stranger's house with a rare gift for them, and being warmly received for making the effort.

Tomorrow I'll be enjoying my first white Christmas since I was maybe 10 or 11, if memory serves. To everyone out there who is celebrating Christmas, either alone or with loved ones, blessings be upon you. I hope the season finds you well.

No excuses

Now that I've been so lazy in posting things here that there's only one person even checking it anymore (yes, mom, that would be you), I'm determined to get back on the ball. At the very least, I should point you to the blogs of two new couples who are on the team, who are still relatively new to Haiti and taking it all in. The first is of the Thompsonowaks, Sharon and Bryan, who are from Philadelphia, and now live in Dezam where they work on the reforestation and environmental education programs. The second is Ben and Alexis Depp, who live here in Port-au-Prince. She works at a Haitian human rights organization like me, and he is a photographer for a microfinance organization called Fonkoze.

I know it's normal for people in my situation to spend a lot of time thinking, and communicating with people back home, about the new, exotic place where they find themselves living. But as the months wear on, the mind is less boggled and the senses are less saturated. Crossing the street no longer makes the heart race.

But Haiti is an unending feast of observations. There's no shortage of things to write about. And really, I'm often just as amazed and baffled by this place as I was when I first arrived. In addition, I've just moved into a new place. It's a fresh, new experience. I'll post photos or a video soon. It's an apartment on the fifth and top floor of a large, concrete building. From down the street, the building looks just so slightly off. The up-down lines don't quite run parallel. The floor plan of my apartment would resemble a slice of pizza, with the shower tucked into the tip, followed by the kitchen, living/dining room, bedroom, and finally the terrace as crust. It's got access to a walled-off section of the roof, also shaped like a wedge, where I dry my clothes. And there's a nearly steady breeze which keeps it nice and cool.

The most interesting part, for me, has been living without an inverter and batteries. The state power grid generally gives about six hours of electricity every 24 hour period. People of means usually have an inverter system, which charges 4-8 car-size batteries during those six hours, and then provides energy, hopefully, for the rest of the time. When you're using a system like this, florescent lights and energy-conscious habits are not a proud badge of environmental stewardship as much as they are a very practical strategy for keeping the lights on. Living like that was interesting for those 18 months in my first apartment. But now, I'm trying something new. I'm seeing how the other half lives, even if only in a limited capacity. After all, most people in this city can't keep typing on their laptops that have their own built-in battery, connected to someone else's wireless internet that is itself connected to an inverter, as I am doing right now. But it is an interesting exercise in appreciating randomness, because you never really know when the power is going to come on. Or if it's going to come on at all. Sometimes a good 48 hours will pass with no power at all. And when it does come on, you can hear a collective shout of joy from the surrounding houses. Now I'm one of those happy shouters. The state power company is called EDH, for Electricité d'Haiti, and their logo is a big lightning bolt over a gear. Fitting, I think, because the role EDH plays is much like that of Zeus - lounging on his cloud, lightning in hand, arbitrarily deciding when to strike. The difference, I guess, being that people look forward to the lightning that EDH sends. Today, it was already on at 6:30 when I got home, which is much earlier than usual. I think it was because there was a big soccer game on. And I have noticed that customarily in the week before Christmas there will be very little electricity each day, but then it comes nonstop for a solid 24 hours at least. The gods of EDH are apparently not without sentimentality.

Summer round-up

There's been no shortage of drama for me in Haiti, nor for Haiti in general, for the last three months. The MCC team has gone through some big changes, including the resignation of our country director, the arrival of four new service workers, and the celebration of 50 years of MCC in Haiti.

I moved out of my apartment, fell in love, busted my tail working on a huge grant proposal from the European Union, and got malaria. These items are listed chronologically, not in order of significance.

And Haiti? Well, let me tell you. Haiti, which generally has a conservative attitude towards homosexuality (as I've noted here before) managed to end up with a prime minister who is a lesbian. What's more, this is after several other candidates for the position, nominated by President Preval, were rejected by Parliament on technicalities. Prime ministers here go through much of the same process as nominees for the supreme court in the United States.

Not that the prime minister's private life is anyone else's business, but it's kind of an open secret. While Prime Minister Pierre-Louis has publicly denied these rumors - to not do so would be political suicide - every media outlet in the country held an open debate all summer about whether or not Haiti would be ruined if its government was being run by a homosexual.

The turning point came about halfway through the summer, shortly before the Senate was set to debate whether or not to confirm the nomination. One day I showed up at the office and went to say hello to the director, Pierre. In his office was a woman standing up and screaming into a telephone while Pierre held his hand over his mouth and gave me a look that said, "don't ask." I came to find out that the woman was the mother of a sixteen-year-old girl who had been raped by a sitting senator. It just so happens that this senator had said on the radio, just a couple days prior, that his Christian faith would prevent him from voting to confirm a known lesbian to run the government. Apparently the United States does not have the market cornered on shocking levels of hypocrisy among it's elected leaders. I can't say for sure that this turned the tide, but I think it took the wind out of the sails of those who were trying to make a moral case against the nominee.

And then, right around the time that the new prime minister was assembling her cabinet, a series of devastating hurricanes and tropical storms hit. Many of you have written to check in on me and express your grief at the images you've seen or the stories you've heard. Thank you. I've been fine. Port-au-Prince was not hit very hard other than Hanna, which caused a few trees to fall over. One day on the way to work I actually had to ride my motorcycle over a fallen telephone poll. But Gonaives is in especially dire straits. Just yesterday MCC sent a delegation out to survey the damage and determine how aid money could be spent. They had to switch vehicles about seven times because of damaged bridges, flooded roads and the like. The photos they brought back are heartbreaking. People are living on their roofs. The streets are filled with water. Some actually had a flowing current.

In the midst of the onslaught from Hanna, the UN actually abandoned its post in Gonaives. But for the people without tanks and amphibious vehicles, it's been a day-to-day struggle living on their rooftops and occasionally foraging through the mud in what used to be their living rooms and bedrooms for salvageable belongings. According to the official count, there have been 700 bodies recovered. The receding waters may reveal many more. It's unlikely it will approach the 2,000 killed by Tropical Storm Jeanne in 2004, though by all reports the flooding this time has been worse.

Please continue to keep Haiti in your prayers. Some of you have written asking how you can help. It's been frustrating being right here, and yet having few options for ways that I myself can help the victims. As relief efforts get more organized, I'll post information here for those of you who would like to contribute.

At long last, photos from the motorcycle trip with my dad and John Mills way back in April. If it's going too fast, hit pause and go through at your own pace. You can click on pictures to see them full size.

The whole world is watching

I had to post this article Lindsay sent me. It's a piece by Al Jazeera on rice imports to Haiti.

The missionaries

Catching up a little bit...I'll fill in some of the highlights of the last three months. One of them was during the motorcycle trip with my dad and John Mills. I'll get photos up here soon. But let me tell you what happened on our first stop. Halfway between MCC's reforestation office and the city of Mirebalais is a beautiful waterfall called Saut d'eau, or Sodo in Creole. It's also a sacred Vodou site. Here's a post about the first time I went there. So my dad and John and I are riding up this very steep, rough road to get to the falls and we passed a bunch of pasty white folks. As we got off the motorcycles and walked down to the falls we were talking about this group and wondering who they might be.

"Missionaries," my dad said.

"Really? Are you sure?"

"Oh yeah. You can just tell."

So, we got down to our skivvies and climbed up the rocks to get behind the falls. It was gorgeous, as always. I pointed out the half-full bottles of rum and candles and other little effects that had been left there as offerings. Nobody really knows what to expect from a Vodou holy site, and my dad and John were just taking it all in.

I looked down below and the white people started filing in and staking out an area near one of the lower falls. I noticed that one of them had a good number of tattoos, which is when I started to doubt my dad's theory. Then they circled up and held hands and appeared to be singing. I thought, maybe dad's right. But the sound of the falls was so loud I couldn't tell if it was kumbayah or what.

When we decided to hit the road, we went back down to where our clothes were. There I found a woman I know who is a travel agent for groups coming to Haiti. I asked her who these mysterious white people were. She informed me that it was a group of Vodouisants from Philadelphia who were here to be initiated as priests (houngan) and priestesses (mambo). That's right, white Vodou people. I've known for a while that there is a lot of academic interest in Vodou, and even the rare white person who will participate in ceremonies and undergo possession. I was not, however, aware that there were enough non-Haitians practicing Vodou in the whole United States, let alone Philly, to justify a group initiation of about 10 new houngans and mambos. I suppose they could be going back to Philly to minister to Haitians living there, but I reeeeeeeeeally doubt it.

I love telling Haitians that story. Some aren't surprised at all, but most of them give a kind of laugh like "what are those crazy white people going to do next?"

Back and fat

I'm back in Haiti all safe and sound after three and a half weeks in the states. I guess I never got around to all that blogging I was going to do, but someday...

I definitely need to write about the political thing. Over the course of my trip back home, Obama won the nomination and Haiti is now has a good case of Obamamania, or whatever you call it. I can't count how many times I heard people here tell me that the United States is too racist to ever elect a black president. That might rub a lot of my fellow U.S. citizens the wrong way, but you hear it a lot around here, and as far as anyone knows, they could be right. We won't know until November. But, something really changed after he won the primary. While people in the states were getting frustrated with Clinton's refusal to concede, Haitians were just coolly waiting to hear the catch. Many were sure that Clinton would eventually win, despite Obama's lead. And so many were genuinely surprised at the outcome.

As for me, it's good to be back. Most every Haitian friend I've seen since coming back has been lavishing me with praise for putting on weight while I was back in the states. It's a Haitian thing. When you haven't seen someone in a while, and you want to tell them that they're looking good, you tell them that they're getting big. They mean it literally, but it's complimentary because it's seen as a sign of health and happiness. As far as I can tell, it works the same way as "have you lost weight?!" in the U.S. They use the word "gwo" which means to get bigger, and is sometimes used interchangeably with "anfòm" which means "in shape." (I'm definitely not in better shape.) Even if there is no real change, people will say that you've filled out. The fact that I did pack on a few pounds only adds to the excitement. Here's some of the comments:

"You're so fat!"
"Wow, you're huge!"
"Even your face is getting nice and fat!"
"Did you join the U.S. Olympic team while you were over there?"

One man, a senator who visits my office from time to time, came through today. I haven't seen him in a couple months, but he took one look at me and said "you must have just come back from the states."

All of these exchanges were in Creole. But my favorite one was with one of my colleagues who always practices his English on me. "Welcome back. You are fat. No no no no! I'm only joking. (20 seconds of laughter and knee-slapping) You're not fat. You are heavy. Yes, that's right. You are overweight."

I think that in my colleague's English course his teacher probably told the students that it's impolite to use the word "fat," and that the words "overweight" or "heavy" should be substituted. I hope the teacher at some point lets the class know that North Americans don't take kindly to being told they've put on weight, no matter what euphemism is used.

Waiting for Bubba

Last night I was on my way to use the bathroom and the secret service told me to hold on and wait while President Clinton finished up in there. A little context: I am back at home in Medford, Oregon right now for vacation. My sister got married on Saturday in a beautiful service at a winery. Here she is on her way to the altar with dad (who also performed the wedding):



Here's the new husband and wife:



And here's the three Hildebrand kids all together:



What can I say? The wedding was perfect. Everybody cried a lot. And then everybody danced a lot. The bride and groom arrived at the reception with my sister driving a creamsicle colored 1960s Vespa, and her new husband in the sidecar. Yes, a Vespa with a sidecar.

It was of course a big day for my sister. Kind of a big day for me too, just in the fact that it was my first time back in the states since I left for Haiti in November 2006. And it was my first time back to my hometown since August 2006. The wedding was a flood of faces that I haven't seen in two, four, even ten years. Naturally everyone was asking me what it felt like to be back and whether I was freaking out or not. I generally told people that if I had gone straight from Haiti to some random place in the states for, say, a conference, and had to stay in a hotel and be surrounded by strangers, I probably would have gone nuts. But, being surrounded by family and friends made it possible for me not to miss Haiti too much. My digestive system couldn't be fooled though. It's still in open rebellion against non-Haitian food.

I'm hoping to spend some of my time back home on this blog and fill in some of the big gaps since I haven't been very good about blogging for the last few months. For now I'll just finish the story about the former president.

If you're following the US democratic primaries, you'll know that tomorrow, May 20th, is Oregon's day to vote. It sounds like Barack Obama may clinch the majority of pledged delegates. Over the weekend he held a rally in Portland that was the biggest in US political history. Bill and Chelsea Clinton were campaigning in Southern Oregon over the weekend, giving a talk at the state university in Ashland (just south of Medford) on Sunday. A neighbor and friend of ours owns a restaurant in Medford - and we got word that the Clintons would be eating there Sunday night afterwards. So after all the friends and family and the bride and groom left town on Sunday, mom and dad and I decided to go down and try to get a look at the former president.

Once we heard he had arrived, I left the outdoor patio to walk through the restaurant to the bathroom and get a glimpse on the way. I squeezed by Chelsea, and then I saw the big, pink-faced man himself. He was dressed just like he is in the picture below, which came from the Medford newspaper:



I was going to walk by and pretend I didn't recognize him, but before I got there, he turned around and went to go take a leak. So I ended up waiting outside the bathroom. A burly secret service guy told me to step back away from the door. And so I stood and waited. When the door opened up, and the security detail turned around to lead him to the dining room, I waited for just the right moment and grabbed his collar and slammed him up against the bathroom door and shouted in his face, "Because of your craven political posturing Haiti has become dependent on subsidized rice exports from the United States! Thanks Bill! Now the country is starving and protesting and rioting and the prime minister lost his job because of forces far beyond his control! Forces that you helped set in motion! Haiti's food problems are more your fault than his! Shame on you! SHAME ON YOU!!!" That's when I got the tasered.

Kidding, of course. I just let him walk by and then took my turn in the bathroom. But I do wish I could have told him that. If you want to read more about the factors that created Haiti's current crisis with food prices, here is an article that gives a good analysis of the situation, though it doesn't specifically name Clinton's role in forcing Aristide to drop tariffs in 1994.

I'll write more this week about the motorcycle trip in Haiti with my dad and his friend John, and also about how Haitians are viewing the US presidential race.

Follow up on "Lavi chè"

My teammate Lindsay made a comment on that post that is worth copying here. Specifically, what she says about Preval's comment to "pase cheche m."

Lindsay said...
Here are my 2 cents worth (which you, Kurt, already know but others might not)...

The Le Matin photographer was shot with a rubber bullet. Still shot, but at least it wasn't lethal.

Digicel is also well known amongst the population for its foundation's work, which may have added to it being protected. Saul also sighted the 50gd phone cards Digicel sells, which are more accessible for the general public.

I heard that Preval's inital statement was "pase cheche m," meaning he wanted to join in if people were going to protest. hmm...I wonder which he actually said...

Shortly before Preval's speach was broadcast on TV, there was a series of shooting by the palace. We figured it was evoked by the crowd getting impatient. During Preval's broadcast, you could hear that very same round of shooting in the background. So he did record it in advance, but not by much.

I really misunderstood what Preval was saying, but Lindsay gets it right. He wasn't making a "bring it on" type of provocation. He was saying that if the crowd was protesting the high cost of living, they should come by the palace and get him so he could join in the protest. A funny note is that when they took him up on his offer, he reportedly sent word that he couldn't come out and join them because he didn't bring his tennis shoes to work that day. So protesters showed up with tennis shoes for him to wear. No more excuses after that.

First the disclaimer. I am a guest blogger. My name is Don Hildebrand and I am proudly known as Kurt's dad.

John Mills and I arrived this morning. John is a close friend from college and and we have shared many adventures over the last 35 years. Riding bikes across Haiti is the current goal.

Because of the situation in Haiti the past 2 weeks, we considered postponing our trip to a later date. And in fact there have been some truly terrifing moments since we have been here---but they all were a result of the car ride out to Desarme this afternoon. Somehow we arrived safely and no pedestrians were hurt either.



It is a beautiful country in so many ways with so many beautiful people. We rested a bit after we arrived and then took a walk to see some of the reforestration projects that are happeining here. Jean Remy, a resident of Desarme began planting trees on a wood lot about 20 years ago and you can see the result. As we were walking through the woods we came upon several large baskets with clothing, ghord shells and some money inside of them. Apparently voodoo practices take place in the woods from time to time. Brian, our guide and host of the Mennonite project here in Desarme said that when people try to drive out an evil spirit they will come here and cleanse themselves. They remove all their clothing and change into new clothes and leave other objects like the money and ghords that have some special significance. We left it all undisturbed.



The Artibonite Valley is beautiful and one of the most fertile places in Haiti. You can see rice and sorghum plants in the valley behind Kurt and John.



Tomorrow we leave for the motorcycle part of the trip. We will wind our way up to Papaye for tomorrow and then on to Cape Haitian on Sunday.

But it is dinner time in Haiti for us and we are about to head off to the town square--a single street light at a crossroad. I am told they have great egg sandwiches there.

Some wonderful girls met us on the hike and offered us some mangoes. They tasted so good. Here the guys are taking care of the natural result of eating those mangoes. Doesn't anybody carry floss anymore?

Lavi chè!

Okay, so, where to begin? The initial outburst of street demonstrations has subsided. The movement began in the southwest corner of Haiti, in a relatively peaceful beach town called Les Cayes. There have long been murmurings of unrest over the skyrocketing cost of living ("lavi chè" in Creole). For at least four months there has been a vague expectation that something like this might happen. But a lot of factors came together to light the fuse. The UN force stationed in Les Cayes got drawn into a violent confrontation which incited a major demonstration. The protests were driven in part by students.

The Haitian government responded by saying that the unrest was being provoked by drug traffickers. I have no idea what truth there is to this statement, but it certainly is true that drug traffickers have benefited from the chaos. The protests spread to Jeremie and other places before finally arriving in Carrefour, just west of Port-au-Prince, within a few days.

I went to work on Tuesday morning unaware of what was going on in the city. By 10:00 a.m., there were large crowds in the streets all around our office, chanting, banging things around, making plenty of noise. I found out that a photographer from a newspaper where a friend of mine works was shot while taking pictures in Champs de Mars, the public area surrounding the national palace. The protesters nearly succeeded in destroying the barricade surrounding the palace, chanting all along that the president must leave the country.

This is an intriguing part of the story. When President Preval was elected for his current term, in 2006, there were some questions as to whether some sort of runoff vote would be needed. There were reports of ballots being burned in parts of the country (my organization has photos) and crowds began forming. The masses of people that turned out in the streets were by and large the supporters of President Aristide who had been aggrieved ever since he left the country under murky circumstances on February 29, 2004. Their aim was clear: the obvious winner of the election – Rene Garcia Preval, former prime minister to Aristide, president from 1995-2000, champion of the poor – must be declared the winner immediately. The crowds stormed the Montana Hotel, where the election headquarters were located, and eventually everybody in charge decided not to test the wrath of a desperate population. Preval was declared the winner.

If you’ve seen the movie “V for Vendetta” you probably remember a line where the hero says something like, “People shouldn’t be afraid of the government. The government should be afraid of the people.” So when I think about those crowds of people demanding that their sheer mass be respected, I think, sure, whatever, patience is a virtue, but if the point of a democracy is to represent the will of the people, then a big enough crowd is effectively a vote, and one that cannot be vetoed without destroying that democracy. The people protesting for Preval to be declared the winner were largely being driven by a distrust of the election authorities, thinking that the elites would pull their strings and use some obscure legal maneuvering to undermine Preval. This is not a paranoid delusion. Both rich and poor countries offer plenty of examples of the popular will being subverted even under the banner of democracy.

However, this time around things were much more complicated. The enormous crowds of people protesting last week were the largest seen here since the 2006 election. Only this time, two years later, the crowds were demanding that President Preval leave office. The primary demand of all of the protests has been to lower the price of basic foods and gas. (Gas is over $6 a gallon here, the minimum wage is $2 a day, and most people are unemployed.) Secondary to these demands has been the demand for the UN mission to leave Haiti, and the demand for President Preval and Prime Minister Alexis to step down.

So this begs the question, were these anti-Preval crowds made up of the same people that made up those pro-Preval crowds just two years before? Did “the masses” really turn so decisively against the man they used to support? In just two years? I won’t try to answer, but I’m sure it’s not just a yes or no kind of thing. People often think of Haiti as an overwhelming majority of very poor people with a tiny middle class and a tiny elite. There is some truth to this, but it’s a mistake to then assume that any one of these three groups thinks or votes all the same. The tension between Evangelicals and Catholics and, of course, Vodouisants, is another frame that doesn’t really adequately explain the situation. And, as in any protest, the property damage and looting was being carried out by a small minority of the people in the streets. Always good to keep in mind when you’re looking at pictures of mayhem and destruction.

I was in the office listening to the radio reports of crowds of people forming all over the city, barricades of flaming tires going up on the main roads, windows being broken, etc. I started a googlechat (surreal? yes) with another MCCer, who was at a house outside of the city. His wife was stuck at her house right on the main road of Delmas which had massive crowds marching past it constantly. She watched the convenience store for the gas station across the street as it was looted until completely empty. It was only then I realized that this thing was going to last a while.

A friend of mine called from Champs de Mars where she went to see the aftermath. The building for Air France was gutted entirely. One of the strangest things she observed was that Digicel was left alone. There are two major cell phone companies in Haiti: Digicel and Voila. They each have their signature colors, they each have endorsements from Haitian celebrities, and they each give away lots and lots of t-shirts and backpacks and the like. And yet the protesters drew a clear line between them. They destroyed a Voila office just a few doors down from a Digicel office. My friend saw one protester get beaten up by other protesters after he threw a rock at Digicel. She saw a guy raise his fist in the air and say, “Digicel. Respect.” She saw another man come out of the Voila office with a laptop. He declared that he could take it and sell it for a lot of money, but since Voila is run by thieves, he preferred to make a point with it. Which he did, by cracking it in two over his knee.

I have to say that I’m baffled by this. It’s true, Digicel has superior customer service. It’s also true that Digicel has invested a lot into making Haiti’s soccer team competitive. But how in the world could that make such a crucial difference to an angry crowd? I don’t know. I guess it just attests to the fact that an angry crowd is not a mindless crowd. It is made up of people who are making very specific choices for very specific reasons.

Around 4pm, people started leaving the office in groups, planning only to take routes that were verified as clear. There was one road I could take to get to my house up the hill in Petionville. My friend called from Champs de Mars to tell me that a big crowd had just left there to march up that same road. I thought I was going to be stuck at the office for another couple hours, but my boss told me to get on my motorcycle and high-tail it home while I could.

Driving up Rue John Brown I passed a couple of burned out cars, one upside down. There were burning tires here and there, and several big trash containers had been upset into the street. In Petionville the mood was tense. Every other intersection had something burning in it. There were few cars on the road. I talked to all the other MCCers on the phone. I entertained the thought of getting up early and getting out of town to wait things out with friends away from the action. Ultimately we decided to hunker down where we were.

On Wednesday I woke up and turned on the radio. There was lots of talk about protests in Petionville. I heard shots from time to time. I called my boss to check in and he made me promise to stay in my house all day. I was glued to the radio, while at the same time listening to the sporadic fire and the occasional roar of a crowd not more than a few blocks away.

Radio reporters were talking about how the president had promised to make an address to the Haitian people at 8:00am, and everyone was hanging on to see what he would say. While he may in many ways be a captive to this horrible situation, his handling of the protests so far left much to be desired. His reaction to the Les Cayes protests, as I mentioned, blamed drug traffickers for the unrest. While this could be true, it also seemed to dismiss the validity of the protest, at a time when all Haitians are hurting, and some starving, because of rising food costs. When protesters announced to the press that they were going to come to the national palace and demand Preval’s resignation, Preval responded saying, “Pase cheche l.” This is Creole for “go and find it,” but a more appropriate translation would be Bruce Campbell’s “come get some.” Probably the best comparison is with George W. Bush, who responded to the insurgency in Iraq with “bring it on.” Note to all world leaders: don’t bluff with big crowds of thousands of people that already don’t like you. It wasn’t much longer after “pase cheche l” that the protesters decided to take the president up on his challenge. So here we were, a day after the protesters trashed his front yard. Millions of us with our ears cocked to the radio speaker, waiting to see what the hapless president would say. Eight o’clock came and went, and nothing.

Mid-morning I watched a very large crowd come up my street, moving along at a jogging speed. In stark contrast to what I had expected, I saw a lot of smiles. The people in the front were carrying leafy branches. I didn’t see any guns or rocks. Eventually the crowd thinned out and then I saw people running a lot faster to catch up, as the sound of shooting got closer. Several of the people in the street ran into the narrow, clogged entrance to the huge slum of Jalousie, which is about 100 feet from my window. A white UN S.U.V. and two big armored UN vehicles pursued the crowd past the entrance to Jalousie, firing tear gas canisters into the slum. I saw lots of troops with guns, though I don’t specifically remember seeing any of them aim and shoot. It all happened pretty fast.

Perhaps 15 minutes later I heard my landlady’s housekeeper running and saying “gas! gas!” Soon the guard, the housekeeper and my landlady and myself were all doubled over coughing with tears streaming down our cheeks. Being Haitian, they knew immediately what to do in the situation – we picked a few limes from a tree in the yard and bit into them, and then flushed our faces with water. Not long after that there was several minutes of intense gunfire coming from Petionville’s main park, a block away. I still don’t know exactly what was happening there, but I believe it was mostly the UN firing, since they have rubber bullets. The Haitian National Police were also in the mix, and they don’t have rubber bullets. But if live rounds were used, they must have been fired in the air, because otherwise what I heard would have been a massacre. There is still no clear picture of the casualties. I’ve heard six most often as the number killed, with 60 injured. That’s for all of Port-au-Prince, for the duration of the unrest. I’ve also heard stories about the UN bagging up corpses and chucking them into dump trucks, but these are probably not so reliable. Still, six?

Sometime around 11:00am the radio started playing the president’s address on a loop. I’m not sure if the speech was ever broadcast live. I got the impression that he recorded it and sent it out to the media outlets. Reaction to the speech was swift and unanimous: BOO! People started calling into the radio stations to complain that the president didn’t really say anything. He talked about some long term solutions, but not enough short term ones. He talked about how the whole world is dealing with high food prices, not just Haiti. True, perhaps, but not what a starving person wants to hear. Everyone agreed that the president blew it. Some announced that they were still waiting for the president to address them, because what they had just heard must have been a joke. And yet, there haven’t been any major protests since the speech aired. The country finally had something to react to and debate about. It was like everyone took a big breath of air, stretched their arms, and took a look around. The situation we found wasn’t pretty. Lots of businesses damaged, which would surely mean more people unemployed. Everyone I talked to had the same attitude: the president hasn’t done enough to avoid the situation we have now, his speech definitely sucked, but those people who took advantage of a tense situation to break and steal things are making the situation worse for everyone.

Shortly, the news on the radio shifted to a group of senators who was demanding Prime Minister Alexis to step down. This is where the politics get really murky, and I must confess I know very little about all the ins and outs of how this works. But as background, there was an effort just a few weeks ago in the senate to force Alexis out with a vote of no confidence. It appears that these senators are simply taking advantage of the situation to achieve a political victory against President Preval. Over the weekend, everyone went through the motions and Alexis found himself and his whole upper level of government employees without jobs. It’s too bad, really. True that there’s a whole lot of dead wood in the Haitian government. But Alexis has a good reputation as an honest, serious, uncorrupt prime minister. It’s hard to judge someone on job performance whose main task is to save Haiti.

Well, that’s about it for now. Things are calm. Still a lot of broken glass everywhere. Lot of trashed gas stations. Other than that, situation normal. Port-au-Prince is already in permanent bunker mode with big walls and gates absolutely everywhere. There have been scattered reports of protests in other parts of the country – but never all at once.

It’s frustrating to be right here in the country and still not have a clear idea of what exactly happened, why it happened, and what’s happening now. Oh, I should say, it’s kind of embarrassing that a story was on cnn.com quoting me as “Felix Kurt Hildebrand.” That’s just how my name got passed along to him. I’m not running around down here introducing myself to CNN as Felix.

Also, I’m sorry I didn’t take any photos of anything I saw. It honestly didn’t occur to me until days later that I should have had my camera ready. Another MCCer on the team got some footage of the Haitian National Police beating a crowd of totally nonviolent protesters without provocation.

Sorry this is so long, and congratulations if you made it all the way through! I’m sure a lot of it is vague, and you might have a lot of questions about what’s going on. If so, send them along. I’ll do my best.

I’m not just saying this because I need a silver lining to every cloud, but there have been some positive aftereffects rippling out from the chaos. Communities pull together. It’s Haiti, so there’s always going to be a lot of sidewalk debate. But the sidewalk debates these days seem to be more about big picture stuff. How are we, as Haitians, going to free ourselves from the abusive international relationships that ensnare us? What can we expect from the government? Are we a free country, or an occupied country? None of these questions are simple.

I also don’t want to gloss over the fact that the situation is, in every way, dire. Just looking at the numbers of people in Haiti who live on less than a dollar a day, I cannot possibly imagine how people aren’t starving by the thousands. The very survival of the Haitian poor is a miracle. But that’s how it was before the prices started doubling.

Thank you, cousin Jay, for praying. Everyone else, whether you pray or not, please pray for the Haitian people, especially those who are most vulnerable, and all people suffering acutely from the convulsions of our global economy.

Safe and sound

I know that it's been a really long time since I've written anything here, so I doubt many people will see this. But in case you heard the news about what's going on in Haiti and wanted to check in, I'm fine. Everything is calm now, Friday morning, April 11th. It's been chaos for two days. Lots of property destroyed. I heard five deaths and about 60 people wounded, but that seems really low.

I will write a lot more about this later, but rest assured that I am okay and the situation seems to be more or less normal on the streets of Port-au-Prince.

At long last...

...the photos from the Caribbean vacation! Thanks Shane. Slacker.

Enjoy:



You should be able to click on the photos to see them full-size and you can click the pause button to look through at your own pace.

Che - Bob 2007

November 23: Port-au-Prince - - - > Miami, FL

I knew for sure that I was becoming at least partially Haitian when I caught myself staring, slack-jawed, at the endless lines of white people shuffling past me in the Miami airport. The last snippets of Creole faded away throughout the customs process. The stores were overwhelming too – I get the impression that the Miami airport contains more cash value in goods than whole swaths of Port-au-Prince.

Miami, FL - - - > Montego Bay, Jamaica

The last three flights of the evening arrive in Montego Bay airport at the same time, meaning that the beleaguered staff of four occupy a fraction of the agent booths, and are forced to process an instant crowd. Not that they could be hurried in any way. They took their time. When I finally made it out to the taxis, the first person I saw was a cheerful 40-something guy holding a sign that said “Esquerto” – my bogus Nicaraguan travel nickname from 2006’s adventure with Shane and Kamala.

The cabbie’s name was Trevor. He became our man in Jamaica. I found Shane and Carly at our hotel - a place called Toby’s Resort - around 10:00 pm. We had a lot of catching up to do, and we did it over Red Stripes and barbecued chicken in a second-story, open air restaurant located right on the “hip strip” that runs parallel to the Montego Bay waterfront. The waitress was wonderful and she gave us all kinds of Jamaican slang. And there was a little Rastafarian guy named Troy there too. I asked him all kinds of questions about the religion. I can’t do it justice here, of course, but here are a couple interesting things about Rastafarianism: (apologies if this is not new information)

- Rastafarians have churches.

- The churches always have a table to one side that holds the “chillum pipe.”

- The true Rasta man never consumes alcohol or tobacco.

- They worship the 20^th century Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie as a black messiah. Ethiopia is their holy land.

- Their cosmology is shaped by biblical terms, and they represent oppression and suffering with the name Babylon in their music and literature.

We were out pretty late and didn’t get up until 10 the next day. Our man Trevor was there waiting for us and we drove to Negril, a miles-long strip of perfect white beach. It’s almost completely developed with enormous all-inclusive resorts – the mothership of which, is Sandals. We didn’t go in or near any of these places, and chose instead to stick to the public beach with its endless restaurants and shops and beautiful sand. We drove back after sunset.

November 25: Montego Bay, Jamaica - - - > Havana, Cuba

Leaving Jamaica, Shane and Carly and I were all careful to watch the officials and make sure that they didn’t stamp our passports as leaving the country. This, of course, because U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba can be fined $250,000 and thrown in the clink for 10 years. Despite this, I read that some 100,000 Americans visit Cuba each year. Plenty of those are legally authorized trips, but most aren’t. Jamaica is a big entry point for this kind of illegal tourism, along with Toronto and Mexico City. So we knew that when the officials saw our U.S. passports and tickets to Cuba, they’d let it slide. They did. But, in the months after September 11^th, when the Bush administration absurdly launched a crackdown on travel to Cuba, some Jamaican officials began stamping American passports again. It’s long since stopped, though.

In preparation for the Cuba trip, I consulted with a friend of mine here in Port-au-Prince. She’s Cuban, and she runs a video rental near where I live. She renounced her Cuban residency by coming to live in Haiti for more than nine months. Since then, she cannot return for more than a few weeks at a time. She can never live in Cuba again. She has a friend who has an amicable ex-husband in Havana. My friend told me that he would drive us around Havana for $25 a day – a pretty good deal. She said he would come to the airport to pick us up, and that he would be dressed all in black and carrying a single red rose, for Carly.

And true to his word, Manolito was there in black. As soon as we were introduced, he said in his very limited English that if asked, we were to say that we knew his ex-wife, which wasn’t true. We made it out to his car with our luggage, and then realized that we needed to check on something at the Air Jamaica counter, back in the airport. On our way back, we were approached by a young cop. He separated Manolito from us and spoke for what seemed like a very long time. Then we were escorted to a trailer set up as a makeshift office in front of the airport. I couldn’t quite call it an interrogation, but there were a lot of questions, mostly in Spanish, and they took our passports. There were a few cops there, and they were all pretty young and unintimidating. They didn’t give the impression that they knew or cared much about what they were doing. Eventually, they brought Manolito back to us. And then after that was an even longer wait, answering the same questions, sharing a half cup of coffee between us three Americans, Manolito, and the Cuban keystone cops.

Finally, we were allowed to go with our passports on the condition that we hired another cab to follow Manolito’s car, which would carry our luggage. Another $25 down the tube. We drove through the outskirts of Havana, then towards the Miramar district where we were to stay at an apartment with a nice retired woman named Dora. This was another arrangement made by my friend in Haiti. Manolito helped us carry our luggage up to the fourth floor of this modest apartment building in what is considered the “posh” part of Havana, where most ambassadors and embassy staff live. When we landed, Manolito broke it down for us about the ins and outs of Cuba. He explained that we could hire him for the whole day, and he could take us anywhere except the old city (the best part) and anywhere outside of Havana. So in the end we didn’t need help from Manolito. We opted to take taxis, which occasionally included beautiful fifty-year-old Chevys and what not. There are some 60,000 classic automobiles on the roads in Cuba. Most of them have Russian parts under the hood to help them along. Some are flawless like new, some of them are more like warriors of the Revolucion.

According to my video store friend, everyone in Cuba has some way of making a little cash on the side. The government rations will keep you alive and not without luxuries like cigars and rum, but in reality people will want more than that, and there are a lot of ways to find it. One man lured Shane into a bar to buy some cigars. He had a big plastic gasoline container with a false bottom. He lifted it to reveal a box full of contraband. Cuban citizens buy these cigars for a pittance, but are forbidden to resell them. The government does what it can to funnel tourists into its state-owned stores where the cigars sell for many times what the Cubans pay. There’s a kind of ever-present moral dilemma. On the one hand, it’s nice to get a good deal, and it’s nice to help out a guy just trying to get a birthday present for his kid or something like that, but it’s not the same as in other countries. The Cuban government is of course repressive and far from perfect, but I don’t feel good about denying money to a cash-strapped state that is struggling to provide food, education and health care to every single one of its citizens, and doing an admirable job.

The dilemma was the worst with the taxis. Unmetered taxi trips are a huge source of untaxed revenue in Cuba. Most cabbies wouldn’t negotiate much, they would just quote a price that would work out to be more or less what the meter would end up reading. But instead of that $5 going to further the revolucion, it would go into the guy’s pocket. Of course you could insist on using the meter, but we never really did.

We went to Old Havana. Block after block of dense history, with the brightly colored, yet crumbling buildings morphing from one era into another. I could have paid $2 to see the hotel room where Hemmingway wrote some of his best stuff, but I opted out.

There was music everywhere, and there was more laundry than I’ve ever seen in my life hanging out to dry between fire escape ladders. It’s one of those places that has such a look and feel to it, it makes you stop and soak it in. And of course, pictures don’t do it justice.

I don’t have much to say about the food in Cuba. We had some lovely meals, but overall it was unimpressive. The sandwiches sold on the street were nice and cheap and greasy and salty, but you can only do that so much. I do remember one restaurant we searched out after reading the Lonely Planet guide. It was a hole-in-the-wall that would have been more suited for Seattle, with it’s kitschy plastic decorations and shrine featuring a few Buddhas, a Jesus and a three-foot tall Native American. The beans and rice were delicious, and I got a giant chunk of ham that I could barely finish.

We crossed under the canal in a big screaming black Buick from the 1940s, on our way to the traditional firing of the cannon. Every evening at 9:00, a troop or garrison or whatever of people dressed as colonial troops gets itself into formation and marches to the 16^th century fortress walls to fire a cannon to the oohs and aahs of tourists both foreign and Cuban.

We spent some quality time in the posh neighborhood where we were staying. We checked out a couple of the very un-communist-looking high-rise hotels on the water. Their pools were beautiful, the lobbies were like those of any other luxury hotel. Except, every single one had a wall with a series of photos from the revolution, including a couple good close-ups of Fidel and Che, chomping cigars. The words “A Moment in History…” were painted on the wall above the photos in English and Spanish.

As far as I know, Cubans are not allowed as guests into hotels like this. The world of tourists and the world of Cubans coexist, though they are carefully segregated. The two populations pay different prices. They use different money. Each has their own restaurants, hotels, and forms of transportation that the other is forbidden to use. You heard that right. Havana has scores of hotels and restaurants that will kick out any Cuban citizen who tries to enter. I guess this is to discourage underground markets by cutting the supply of places to spend your illegally earned cash. A Cuban citizen could never afford to eat at these restaurants which only accept the tourist currency, which has ten times the value, but about the same spending power as the money that Cuban nationals use, if that makes any sense at all.

But of course the two spheres do intersect in plenty of places. There are indeed hotels, restaurants, and of course cabs which serve both tourists and Cubans. By and large the Cubans we encountered were lovely people. Salty, for sure. Many of them are working on their English and eager to try it out. The woman we were staying with, Dora, was not herself Cuban. She used to work for a South American embassy in Havana. She was sweet and attentive and between her 60 year-old high school English courses and pathetic travel Spanish from me and Shane, we were able to communicate. Her favorite food to make for us was toasted rolls with scrambled eggs and diced hot dogs. Deeee-licious!

After a few days of Havana we headed to Varedero, a long, very thin peninsula with white sandy beaches on both sides. It is dotted with resorts and hotels of all shapes and sizes – thousands of rooms. Fifty flights a week arrive directly to the Varedero international airport from Toronto alone. It is surely the most un-Cuban place in Cuba. And yet, ironically, the all-inclusive resort is probably the closest we could get to the experience of a Cuban citizen. I’m being trite, but the cafeteria-style food, the little cups, the avoidance of circulating too much cash was, in the end, equal parts liberating and limiting. We spent two nights in an a lower-middle range all-inclusive. First time ever, I swear. Probably the last. Not that it was all that bad. There was certainly a variety of food, but nothing very special. The bureaucracy was stifling. It took something like six trips by foot across the sprawling compound to get beach towels, which involved deposits and receipts and multiple desks and unmotivated personnel. Getting reservations to the sit-down-and-order-like-a-real-restaurant restaurant was just too complicated for us.

The best part was when we took the pedalboat. They had a few of those side-by-side bicycle-pedal style boats, but these ones were fitted with seats in the back, so Shane and I powered out past the waves and down the coast while Carly snapped photos from the back. We all took turns pedaling and steering. We checked out the other resorts. When we got back to our own beach, two hours later, we got chastised by resort staff. We had violated the rules on taking the boats out for 30 minutes at a time only. Never mind the fact that there were other pedalboats lying there unused.

Ican’t complain at all really. It was two days on a perfect beach in the Caribbean. But once we decided to quit the resort and find a hotel in town, we sort of wished we had done that in the first place. There, we found a restaurant that was in an old house – every wall of which was covered with graffiti, signatures, mottos, proverbs, drawings and whatever else. I can’t even remember what I got, but it was good. Italian I think. I know I bagged on the food earlier, but I do have to say that I was impressed by the variety of cuisines, styles, and atmospheres of the different state-owned restaurants we visited. I have no idea how much the management of these is controlled by the government. On the one hand, there was about as much ethnic variety in food as you would find in a mid-sized American city. Chinese, Indian, Italian, Spanish, Mexican. On the other hand, I noticed that for a lot of the bars and restaurants in Havana that were supposed to be “hip” had a similar look, and their signage was all in the same funky font. I imagined some poor guy at the Ministry of Restaurants or something trying to come up with cool names and slogans for these places.

I didn’t expect to see products advertised in a communist country. But there were plenty of billboards displaying not only pro-government messages, but rum, cigars, and all kinds of other stuff. Not far from where we were staying was a restaurant with a giant inflatable can of Bucanero beer, Cuba’s own. The grocery store we checked out looked in many ways like something from the states. Except for that entire aisle devoted to mayonnaise. A lot of times they would put a couple hundred bottles of a single product on the shelf, right next to a hundred bottles of another single product. So it looked full, but it could have taken up only a fourth of the space.

Anyhow, back in Varedero – for our last night in bizarro Cuban resort-land, we decided to go see a cabaret. Don’t judge me! There’s a lot of different kinds of cabaret, and this was a very innocent, very Latin-American version of what goes on in Las Vegas and Paris and wherever else. In fact, I would have to say that Cuba is the country least polluted by sexual exploitation that I have ever visited. I’ll bet there’s more pornography in Salt Lake City than all of Cuba. It’s totally illegal.

Back to the cabaret - it was in a cave. With blacklights. The female dancers looked like peacocks and the vocalists blasted out song after song while people danced and spun around in perfect symmetry. It was called the Pirate’s Cave Cabaret, and had a seedy feel despite the ostensibly family-friendly show. I’m not sure how to account for the contradiction. It seems like most of the watering holes we saw in Cuba were somewhat seedy. Maybe this is because almost everyone engages in illegal buying or selling, so everyone’s got a little something to hide. Everyone’s a little on edge. Any time a Cuban gets stopped by a cop, they must be thinking of all the different ways they could get into big trouble at that moment.

We went back to Havana for a couple of days, and then headed back to Jamaica. There’s so much more to write about Cuba, I just have no idea where to start. There were police officers everywhere. It’s Cuba’s answer to unemployment. In the neighborhood where we stayed, every intersection on the main road had a little booth with a cop inside. There’s pictures of Hugo Chavez all over that say something like, “welcome to your homeland, brother.” And how could I not mention Che?! He is more beloved than Fidel, and he is absolutely everywhere. Books, postcards, photos, posters, keychains, wood carvings, underwear, hats, and of course, t-shirts.

Cuba was lovely. Seven days was not nearly enough. There are some challenges there for the illegal tourist, for sure. We had to travel with all of our money in cash, since ATMs and credit cards that are issued by American banks are not accepted – and if they were used by accident, Uncle Sam and his Patriot Act could be all up in our business. Internet was expensive and slow, and at times seemed to be shut off, island-wide. There’s so much we didn’t see. Trinidad, Santiago de Cuba, the Isle of Youth, the tobacco fields of the west, the mountains, the cooperative farms, the caves, the Bay of Pigs. Next time.

December 2: Havana, Cuba - - - > Montego Bay, Jamaica

Coming back to Jamaica was our last big hurdle in terms of keeping our tracks covered. All of us had entry stamps to Jamaica, but no exit stamps yet. As long as we didn’t get stamped again until leaving Jamaica, our passports would only have a record of us being in Jamaica the entire time. But my immigration official didn’t get the memo. She had the stamp up in the air about to bring it down on my passport until I screamed, “STOP!” She looked up at me like I was crazy. I explained I was in Cuba illegally and that my passport must not reflect this. She said that she had to stamp it. I made her ask the official next to her, who backed me up and said it was okay not to stamp it. Which is why I’m not writing to you from sunny Guantanamo Bay right now.

As cool as Cuba was, Jamaica was in many ways a relief. People spoke English. ATMs and visa cards worked. The food was fantastic. And best of all, Trevor was there. He met up with us at the airport food court before we took off for Ocho Rios, two hours away. Ocho Rios is a very special place in Jamaica, laying claim to both Bob Marley and civil rights activist Marcus Garvey. Trevor set us up in a perfect, classy old hotel right on the water. We had a room looking out on the catamarans, fishing boats and jet-skis that crossed from time to time. A short paddle out from our back yard was a long stretch of coral, just full of colorful fish, perfect for snorkeling. We spent the next five days there, managing to get in one good activity each day, but with plenty of time left over for cards, books, backgammon, iPod, and alternating between the pool and the calm, salty Caribbean.

One day we went somewhere called the Dunn’s River Falls. Since we had arrived, everyone was asking us if we’d seen the falls, so we went. We didn’t know what to expect. What we found was a series of waterfalls, and chains of white folks from the all-inclusives, laughing and slowly walking up the rocky steps of the cascades wearing little rubber shoes. We had to pay admission and then rent the shoes. Once we had worked our way up the exciting part of the river, we changed back into street clothes and tried to leave. But to do that, we were forced through a little village of tourist trap shops with, hands down, the most aggressive sales guys I have ever seen. One guy grabbed my wrist, shoved a wooden carving in my hand, closed my hand, and continued to hold it there while he pitched me about how this was his gift to me, I just had to take a look at the other stuff he had to sell. Once we got out of there we all breathed a sigh of relief. It made me long for the more lackadaisical service workers of Cuba.

The two countries seemed about as different as could be. And they aren’t in a hurry to understand each other, either. Everyone in Cuba asked us why we would want to spend any time in Jamaica. People in Jamaica asked us the same thing about Cuba. Jamaica is very unrepressed, convenient, expensive, and dangerous. Cuba is very safe, difficult, and bound by lots of rules. Jamaica has a lot more wealth and a lot more misery. There are three murders a day in the Capitol of Kingston. Cuba is very integrated, with lots of intermarriage between people of African and Spanish descent. Jamaica felt more monocultural. Superficially, it’s more like Haiti: almost totally black, and on average, poor, with a wealthy light-skinned and white elite as well as some smaller ethnic groups from Asia. The difference is that instead of white missionaries and development and relief workers and UN soldiers, like we have in Haiti, Jamaica just has a bunch of white tourists. And the streets are all paved and they have 24-hour electricity and fast food – that part’s pretty different from Haiti too. Drugs are everywhere. Walking down any street, really at any hour, you will be offered every kind of drug. We got used to ignoring it, even though a couple times we were accused of being racist for doing so. Needless to say, this doesn’t happen in Cuba.

One of the great ironies of Cuba-American relations is that the hardliners on both sides have very similar ideas of social policy. Both abhor pornography, liberal drug laws and homosexuality, and have a soft spot for baseball and classic American cars. Fidel used to publicly denounce homosexuality as a decadent outgrowth of the cancer that is capitalism.

Jamaica on the other hand has a thriving sex trade and drug laws are just another opportunity for police corruption. They do share the aversion to homosexuality, though. Gay people are killed from time to time in Jamaica. It’s deeply offensive to the conservative Christians and Rastafarians alike. Whereas among the younger generation of Cubans, homosexuality is becoming more accepted. At one point while Shane and Carly and I were in a taxi driving along the malecon, the cabbie pointed out a big crowd sitting on the seawall. He snickered and said that they were all gay, and as we looked closer we saw that there were a lot of same-sex couples. Cuba’s a-changin’.

December 8: Montego Bay, Jamaica - - - > Miami, FL

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Miami, FL - - - > Port-au-Prince

It’s been said that Haiti begins in the Miami airport. In addition to the janitors, who are almost all Haitians, there are the planeloads that pass through, always hauling giant bags full of stuff for friends and family back in the city, town or village. As I start to recognize those Creole words, those vivid expressions, a part of my brain that is like a dried sponge begins to absorb each drop, getting more supple every minute. My favorite Haitian musician, Belo, was seated three rows behind me in coach. He was just as cool and humble in person as his songs would suggest.

It felt so good to touch down in Haiti. I was picked up at the airport by Joseph, MCC’s chauffeur and one of my top ten favorite people of all time. He gave me all the news of friends, coworkers, the security situation and what not. He told me about the new class of police officers that just graduated from the academy. We passed a couple of them, wearing their strange new camouflage uniforms which look nothing like any other police uniform in Haiti. And on we rolled, catching up, running side errands, until we arrived at the big, locked gate to my house.

Cuba and Jamaica...

Yes! Still working on it! In the meantime here's pictures of a pre-Christmas trip to Jacmel...



...a New Year's trip to Jérémie...



...and a close-up of my foot injuries from falling off a waterfall during that last trip. Believe me, it used to be a lot worse. I just took this photo after five days of antibiotics and not walking anywhere.