Arrival In Haiti

Yes, I am in Haiti and why I'm here has nothing to do with paddling. It's for work and hopefully it will lead to something that will help these people, but that is a long way off. The first question people ask as they fly into Port Au Prince is "Where are all the trees?" The short answer is that the trees in Haiti have been deforested. Who knows why but the only ones I've seen in are in some of the neighborhoods and up in the estates at the top of one of the many hills that cup the city.

Friends warned me of the gauntlet I would face after getting my bags and walking down the long sidewalk to where the truck picked us up. Hundreds of men in matching plaid shirts nearly tear the luggage from our hands, but we keep walking as instructed. Young boys and teens with desperate faces stand behind the fence and yell at the women who pass. "I love you, bebe!" and other phrases I cannot decipher. Although no one but our driver touches our bags, there is near fist fight over who is to get paid for "helping" us. But we drive off and let them settle it amongst themselves.

The drive up to where we are staying (Baby Doc Duvalier left mere days before we got here) is nothing I have ever witnessed in even the poorest parts of the poorest countries I've been to.  Trash and rotting vegetables float down or clog the gutters, and numerous tent cities line the stone walls behind them. What appears to be wreckage can actually be a working business. And the people are everywhere: in the streets, on the sidewalks, hanging from colorful buses, trying to make eye contact with the white men in the new truck. I fight the guilt as we head up the hill and into the gates of the estate that we will call home for the next week. Guilt does nothing, but the contrast helps focus me on what I am here to do. Stay tuned.