Haiti ..
I'd started a couple of posts along the 'Woe to the poor, desperate Haitians' line, and stopped.
Much of what I was writing had already been covered in nauseating detail by the various commercial news outlets who now, after years of ignoring the country, have suddenly found it again on the map. If it bleeds - and there is a massive amount of bleeding in Haiti at the moment - it most certainly leads.
But I am compelled to write something. Haiti has a personal, albeit fleeting connection. Ten years ago, I was quite seriously involved with a woman from Haiti. We were engaged for a while, and during our tumultuous three years together, I went to visit her mom, who lived at the time, in Port-Au-Prince.
I was there for a week in November of 2001. The year had been quite turbulent - I'd been laid off only a few weeks before, my dad had been in the hospital with a potentially life-threatening condition, and only a few weeks previously, both the Sept 11 attacks and the crash of American Airlines 487 in New York had occurred. And yet, on Nov 18, 2001, I found myself on an Air Canada 767, descending in the late afternoon sun, towards the city of Port-Au-Prince.
Countless cliches have been written to describe the experience of being there. Overwhelming, teeming, oppressive, broken. And yet, despite the massive poverty and the decimated infrastructure, life carried on. Y's mom, and her friends were gracious people, and while Port-Au-Prince is every bit as chaotic and desperately poor as news reports have made it to be, it was, at the time, relatively peaceful, and even somewhat joyous. We awoke to blue skies and warm sunshine, and had a fascinating week there.
One day, we drove downtown, past the presidential palace. That building, now in ruins, stood proud and gleaming white in the sunshine. The park across the street, while spartan, was attractive, and well cared for, and showed the pride of Haiti in its sculpture and fluttering flags.
Another day, we visited Petionville, a somewhat more affluent suburb of Port-Au-Prince. Petionville sits on a hillside and overlooks the city. As it's elevated, the nights tend to be cooler, and the air somewhat cleaner. Petionville is home - or was, anyway - to some of the more exclusive resorts in Haiti. We spent one night in the El Rancho hotel, an attractive, if somewhat strange place, equipped with bungalows, two casinos, swimming pools and room service. In a country where 80% of the population lives on less than 600 dollars a year, this extravagance seemed very out of place. I didn't particularly enjoy our stay there - Y and I both agreed afterward that it was artificial, and exclusive. But Petionville, despite its outward glamour, was not spared the ravages of the quake. News reports have suggested that it had been devastated along with the rest of the city.
While the destruction of Port-Au-Prince boggles my mind, the damage in another city - Jacmel - truly saddens me. Jacmel is a smaller, resort town on the south coast of Haiti, and to me, suggests just what Haiti could be, if ever given half a break. Jacmel is nestled at the foot of a rugged, rocky range of ancient volcanic mountains - and, as it turns out - an active seismic fault line. The city dates back to the 1600s, when it was established as a sugar cane trading port, and has - or had - some of the loveliest old architecture I'd seen. Jacmel had become home to some of Haiti's most prominent artists - painters and ironworkers in particular, and enjoyed a relatiely peaceful existence, not seen in much of the rest of the country.
We stayed in the Hotel de la Place in Jacmel, an older three-storey hotel located across from the town square. We walked to the market, we explored the local beach, and rode out to Les Cayes, a sandy beach of impossibly warm water, where we met the people in a community who'd squatted in the abandoned park buildings constructed there years before.
I have many fond memories of Jacmel - of fresh red snapper caught only an hour before and cooked over an open charcoal grill, of the musicians who'd gather on the steps of the Hotel de la Ville each night and play Haitian folk songs, of the staff at the hotel, of Y's mother's friend who welcomed us - literally with open arms - to her home and to Jacmel, and even of Y and her mom. While Y's and my relationship was difficult much of the time, while we were in Haiti, we enjoyed a good week together.
And now, faced with some struggles in my own life, it's hard not to think back to that week. How many of the people I met there are now dead? How many of the buildings and scenes I looked at and admired are destroyed? How desperate is the world for those who are there?
God, help them. If ever there were people who deserved a break, it's the people of Haiti.
Help them.
Much of what I was writing had already been covered in nauseating detail by the various commercial news outlets who now, after years of ignoring the country, have suddenly found it again on the map. If it bleeds - and there is a massive amount of bleeding in Haiti at the moment - it most certainly leads.
But I am compelled to write something. Haiti has a personal, albeit fleeting connection. Ten years ago, I was quite seriously involved with a woman from Haiti. We were engaged for a while, and during our tumultuous three years together, I went to visit her mom, who lived at the time, in Port-Au-Prince.
I was there for a week in November of 2001. The year had been quite turbulent - I'd been laid off only a few weeks before, my dad had been in the hospital with a potentially life-threatening condition, and only a few weeks previously, both the Sept 11 attacks and the crash of American Airlines 487 in New York had occurred. And yet, on Nov 18, 2001, I found myself on an Air Canada 767, descending in the late afternoon sun, towards the city of Port-Au-Prince.
Countless cliches have been written to describe the experience of being there. Overwhelming, teeming, oppressive, broken. And yet, despite the massive poverty and the decimated infrastructure, life carried on. Y's mom, and her friends were gracious people, and while Port-Au-Prince is every bit as chaotic and desperately poor as news reports have made it to be, it was, at the time, relatively peaceful, and even somewhat joyous. We awoke to blue skies and warm sunshine, and had a fascinating week there.
One day, we drove downtown, past the presidential palace. That building, now in ruins, stood proud and gleaming white in the sunshine. The park across the street, while spartan, was attractive, and well cared for, and showed the pride of Haiti in its sculpture and fluttering flags.
Another day, we visited Petionville, a somewhat more affluent suburb of Port-Au-Prince. Petionville sits on a hillside and overlooks the city. As it's elevated, the nights tend to be cooler, and the air somewhat cleaner. Petionville is home - or was, anyway - to some of the more exclusive resorts in Haiti. We spent one night in the El Rancho hotel, an attractive, if somewhat strange place, equipped with bungalows, two casinos, swimming pools and room service. In a country where 80% of the population lives on less than 600 dollars a year, this extravagance seemed very out of place. I didn't particularly enjoy our stay there - Y and I both agreed afterward that it was artificial, and exclusive. But Petionville, despite its outward glamour, was not spared the ravages of the quake. News reports have suggested that it had been devastated along with the rest of the city.
While the destruction of Port-Au-Prince boggles my mind, the damage in another city - Jacmel - truly saddens me. Jacmel is a smaller, resort town on the south coast of Haiti, and to me, suggests just what Haiti could be, if ever given half a break. Jacmel is nestled at the foot of a rugged, rocky range of ancient volcanic mountains - and, as it turns out - an active seismic fault line. The city dates back to the 1600s, when it was established as a sugar cane trading port, and has - or had - some of the loveliest old architecture I'd seen. Jacmel had become home to some of Haiti's most prominent artists - painters and ironworkers in particular, and enjoyed a relatiely peaceful existence, not seen in much of the rest of the country.
We stayed in the Hotel de la Place in Jacmel, an older three-storey hotel located across from the town square. We walked to the market, we explored the local beach, and rode out to Les Cayes, a sandy beach of impossibly warm water, where we met the people in a community who'd squatted in the abandoned park buildings constructed there years before.
I have many fond memories of Jacmel - of fresh red snapper caught only an hour before and cooked over an open charcoal grill, of the musicians who'd gather on the steps of the Hotel de la Ville each night and play Haitian folk songs, of the staff at the hotel, of Y's mother's friend who welcomed us - literally with open arms - to her home and to Jacmel, and even of Y and her mom. While Y's and my relationship was difficult much of the time, while we were in Haiti, we enjoyed a good week together.
And now, faced with some struggles in my own life, it's hard not to think back to that week. How many of the people I met there are now dead? How many of the buildings and scenes I looked at and admired are destroyed? How desperate is the world for those who are there?
God, help them. If ever there were people who deserved a break, it's the people of Haiti.
Help them.