Haiti: Road Trip!

Haiti: The U.N.

Port-au-Prince is a city sprinkled with white U.N. and NGO 4x4s. The U.N. is everywhere. On the streets. In restaurants. We even passed a white tank with U.N. peacekeepers, guns at the ready, at a busy intersection. Right now, there are peacekeepers across the street and down the block for night. Just this weekend, 3 people were kidnapped in Peiton-Ville where I’m staying.

At a seafood restaurant tonight, I speculated that the tables around us were full of aid workers. My Haitian friend knows everyone and was able to deduce from who they were with who they were. One table was from the American embassy. Another was an airline pilot with friends. And yet another table was a government ministry with an Asian delegation. I guess I was the "aid" worker, as it were.

Haiti: Immigration

No address in Haiti. A problem. I’m stopped in immigration. My friend is picking me up, I say. I don’t know where I’m staying. Some hotel. No go. They want to know where to start looking if there’s a kidnapping. It would make them look bad if they did not know. They take me to a side room. Various people look at my papers. They send me winding through the airport out the front door with a woman official. She tells me to point out my friend. She’s not there yet. We stand in the sun. Squinting at the crowd. And I am not yet through immigration. We go back to the room. My papers and passport pass from hand-to-hand. They stamp my papers anyway and send me on my way. By the time I get my bag and change a little cash, she’s outside, waving wildly and picking me up.

Travel

Relinquishing control. It's a lot of what travel is about. Planes leave when they will. Van drivers come when they choose. Taxi drivers talk if they want to. The result for me? An informative ride about Haitian history. Late flights. A meager 4 hours in a hotel. And back at the Fort Lauderdale airport waiting for my flight to Port-au-Prince.

Haiti

Port-au-Prince
Partly cloudy
82 feels like 90

Add that to visits to drum art metal artisans, painters, and stone carvers, and I'm set!

The Lamest of Posts

Rattling 'round in my head these days...

- an upcoming first-time trip to Haiti
- finding time to work on assemblages and mosaics
- today's election in Wisconsin
- not having time to read blogs
- endless shoveling
- visitors from India today and tomorrow
- whether I was daydreaming when I got dressed and my socks don't match
- a convergence with friends on Whidbey Island
- making breakfast on Friday morning for homeless families