On Visiting a Nevada Vineyard

The other night, we drove an hour outside of Las Vegas to the Pahrump Winery.  Guess everyone makes wines now-a-days.

Light on the hills

Pre-dinner tastings

Post-dinner Argus-ing

On Eau de Dog

Argus-the-Dog enjoying last year's rare Vegas snow

Yesterday was a fun-work day.  We hauled in the Christmas tree, got out the boxes decorations from the garage, and set about getting into the Christmas spirit.  My dad and I then decided to go take Argus-the-Dog to the park and get ingredients for lasagne while we were out.  I didn't bother showering beforehand since the dog park in the drizzle was likely to be messy.

Argus-the-Dog and I have been spending a lot of time together.  He's silky, and warm, and recently received a delux bath at the vet's, so he smells pretty good.  I can occasionally convince him to lie on my feet while I work.

As I was standing in the check out line at the supermarket, the woman in line in behind said to me, "Mmm...you smell good.  What is that?"  I racked my brain to think of what good thing I could possibly smell like, and then it hit me:

Argus-the-Dog's shampoo.

On Capturing Stories

I'm in Ahmerikah, the birthplace of Whole Foods and the land of reliable and fast internet.  One of the luxuries of being here is streaming NPR all day long.  Ahhhhh........

I just caught up on Story Corps, a project that allows people to interview each other for a minute or two and tell stories that then get archived in the Library of Congress.  The stories that emerge are amazing.  Some are hilarious, most are touching, and a surprising number have moved me to tears: all pretty remarkable for two minutes of air time.

http://storycorps.org/listen/

I'd guess that a lot of the stories that get recorded are stories that have been told around the dinner table, at family gatherings, at the pub countless times.  But there's something about going with someone into a little recording booth that seems to allow some people to dig deep and talk about things they've never talked about before.

I tried to get my father to write down some of his stories but for all the nagging and assignments and deadlines and threats, I only got a few submissions.  It's a trying to squeeze juice out of a really promising-looking orange and only getting three drops.

Well, the other night, apropos of nothing, out came a story I had never heard from my father's days of working in Ngongoro Crater.  He worked in the Crater over the summers, tracking wildebeast migrations and a lot of my favourite stories are from those days.  So here is the story (prompted, I think, by a discussion of cultural stereotypes of foreigners in East Africa) to the best of my recollection:

Well, you know, we rescued the French, tolerated the British, and got on rather well with the Germans.  There was one American guy - a real pain - we got him to ride a wildebeast!  On my last day in the Crater, he came over, wanting us to show him how to dart [animals].  So we said, fine, ok, we'll show you how to dart.  I showed him how to use the rifle and what to do and then he asked if we could go out and actually dart a few wildebeast.

So we said alright and darted a couple...and then he said he wanted a go.  Well none of us really liked this fellow so we decided to play a trick on him.  You see, when you dart a wildebeast and it goes down, you have to sit on its back and pull back its head or it will drown in its own saliva.  Because it loses muscle function.  You sit on its back and pull back on its horns like so [cradling in crook of arm] and throw a cloth over the animal's face.  And when the thing starts waking up, you feel the muscles under your legs relax, then twitch so you know it's time to get off and then take off the cloth.

When this fellow got on the back of the animal, the other guy [on our team] gave me a look...and we took the cloth off the animal's face before the American guy knew it was time to get off.  The animal got up and off he went!  [laughing] 

Mean.  Mean, but funny.

Wait until you hear my mother's story of making one of her preschool students cry just so she could comfort the little girl and watch the kohl stream down her face!  With parents like these, I look pretty nice in comparison, huh?

On Angry Haiti

I'm on my way back from Honduras to Haiti.  Was supposed to have a layover in Miami, but now I'm stuck here because the airport in Haiti is closed and flights are cancelled.  People are angry because the preliminary election results indicated a run-off between one of the two popular candidates and the current [unpopular] president's favourite.

Things are looking bad.

On Antigua

I spent the day wandering through the Guatemalan town of Antigua today where I met the cake/church that I fell in love with in Alex's photos.  

Also, there were many charming cafes and restaurants.  I had a chocolate shot in one.

Emmanuella and Sherley on their way to spending muchos quetzales.

On Guatemala City

I don't have a camera right now.  It's a shame, since this city has some phenomenal architecture, but it also means I can enjoy it without trying to capture it for posterity.  The city streets are well paved, the buildings are a mix of modern and historic, there are charming restaurants and shootings on the streets, nice hotels and very poor people.  Once again, I realize that Haiti is on a completely different developmental level than its neighbors. Here, there are malls and Christmas decorations on the streets.  In Port-au-Prince, we are still working on providing water and sanitation to residents.  My Haitian colleague confessed to me in the car yesterday that she longs to leave Haiti and live someplace with space (she spread her arms) where things are spread out and safe and clean.  I don't blame her.

We are here to visit our Guatemala and our regional offices, just like we did in Trinidad.  

On our first day, we visited a government health clinic where we provide family planning services in the form of intrauterine devices and hormonal implants.  Women who we see there often start having children as young as 15 and have several by the time they are 24.  I was impressed with the quality of the education sessions our colleagues delivered to the women at the clinic: they were able to explain how IUDs and implants work and show the women how they are implanted.  Both methods are for five years of contraception and are provided at no cost to the women.

December 1 was World AIDS Day.  We went to a square where events were taking place.  Two young volunteer radio hosts MCed the event, but even they couldn't hold my attention amidst the cold and the endless school band performances.    

At one point, a circle of witches materialized on one side of the square with brooms and a cauldron.  They were HIV positive witches demanding free anti-retro viral treatment, protection from violence, and other rights. I appreciated their non-conventional presentation, but it was hard to know who they were addressing.  

I was happy to see several gay and transgender youth at the event.  Guatemala is a very conservative, very Catholic country where it's very difficult to talk openly about sexual health.  I'm told the outgoing Catholic leader equated a condom to a bullet.  Hmm.  We later visited a couple of partner organizations who provide services for gay and transgender people.  

One of the centers where transgender people meet is also a clinic with a full laboratory that provides comprehensive sexual health services.  They had a small hospital that served 760 HIV+ patients that has been unable to stay open because government funds have dried up.  Their operating budget was $500,000 per year.  That's about $650 per patient.  Peanuts.

On Politics over People

Let's recap:

Right now in Haiti, every NGO worker I know has a curfew and tight security restrictions.  There are riots across the country against UN troops.  There is a cholera epidemic that has killed over 1,200 people.  There are earthquake survivors living in 1,300 camps across Port-au-Prince.  The infrastructure is a shambles.  There are reports of arms being smuggled into the country in anticipation of the presidential elections this weekend.  My boss left the country on Friday with her daughter because of the deteriorating security situation.

And today at a meeting with USAID, they off-handedly mentioned that danger pay has been discontinued for Haiti.  What does this mean?  It means that in the midst of all that is currently going on, I just took a 20% pay cut.

Shame on you, USAID.

On Addition to the Bucket List

I saw the Goodyear blimp last Saturday!!  So cool!  Retro cool!!

On Cholera + Elections

Everybody thought that after the January 12 earthquake, an outbreak of diarrheal disease was inevitable and would be tragic for Haiti.

Instead, we were hit with cholera 10 months after the quake and the timing is just as bad or worse than it would have been if cholera hit us in February.

Between the voodoo and a history of traumatic political leadership, Haitians are a suspicious people.  Remember World Handwashing Day on October 15th?  Some may call it fortuitous that World Handwashing Day messages on good hygiene and diarrhea prevention and treatment were still being disseminated when the first case of cholera was confirmed a week later.  Some people though it was no coincidence: that the government (or whomever) knew cholera was going to hit.  Keep in mind that presidential elections are on November 28 - everyone is expecting some sort of funny business.

Last Saturday, I had organized an event for the PSI all-staff meeting for everyone to practice doing marketplace promotions of our products.  This was done on the PSI compound but afterwards the group went into the camp next door to talk one-on-one with the residents on prevention of cholera (handwashing, water treatment, ORS). I was in Jupiter that day, but when I asked my colleagues about it later, ALL of them said they faced resistance to the cholera prevention messages because some people blew cholera off as "politics."

I'm not really sure what that means.  It could mean that the cholera epidemic is a fabrication of the government  - a pre-election strategy of some kind.  Some people clearly think that UN troops from Nepal are responsible for the outbreak, as demonstrated by violent protests yesterday in Cap-Haitian (no where near me).  Political candidates in next week's elections are apparently fueling this fire and vowing to get to the bottom of "this" (the origin of the epidemic?) and hold the UN (or whomever) accountable.

Given that the US mission here is the only assurance of violence-free elections, leading the population to believe the peacekeeping troops are responsible for cholera is not in the interest of anyone interested in free and fair elections.

On the Kindle Apologia

Might as well get this out there once and for all:  I just bought a Kindle.  Yes, a Kindle!  And I'm not afraid to say that I love it!

Don't give me that hesitation, the slight recoil of disappointment, the minute sniff of disdain!  I don't hate books!  Books and I go way back.  We were friends before I knew what I friend was.  Getting a Kindle is not a betrayal of our friendship!

I love the way books smell - especially the musty, familiar smell of all library books.
I love the feel of the paper.
I appreciate a good font choice.
I love it when a book falls open in my hand.
I like the texture of a book cover.
I plan to own a children's bookshop/coffee shop in my next life.

But I don't like the weight of three books in my carry-on luggage.  I read fast.  Even a week-long trip requires at least two books.  And since the chaos of Haiti's baggage terminal has made me allergic to checked luggage, books have become a bit of a pain to carry around.  Literally.

Enter the Kindle.  I weighs as much as an issue of The Economist and contains enough reading material for a year of travel.  And I can buy books instantly, even in Haiti!  Go ahead - recommend a book to me!  Not only can I find it, but I can read it as fast as I want to without the fear of running out of precious, precious reading material.

Capiche?

On Jupiter

I just returned to Haiti after four glorious days in Jupiter, Florida, with, well, quality people.  Mentally, it was as far from Haiti as the 7th planet from the sun.  There was story-telling, Staceysgiving cooking, beach walking, kayaking, and gold lame dress wearing (Wholesale. From China).

My favorite part was creeping out onto the balcony with the first light of day with a cup of coffee...watching the intercoastal waterway warm into the morning... knowing the girls would join me as they awoke, one by one.

On Bad Luck Island

I left for Cuba in the midst of a cholera frenzy and return to a hurricane watch.  People in camps are being told to go find someplace else to be for a couple of days (heh).  This is surreal.  I've checked the forecast on several sites and still haven't found one that doesn't have Tomas as a category 1hurricane tracking through Haiti.  When do Haitians get to wake up to happy surprises?  How about a lifetime supply of clean water?  Hot air balloon rides for everyone?

I'm having a party on Saturday.  Don't you dare crash it, Tomas.  Don't you dare.

On Cuba: Stirrups and Cigars

After days of meandering around Havana, sipping chocolate drinks at the Museo de Chocolate and eating coconut pastries, Alex and I took a bus (such a nice bus!) to the tiny village of Vinales, 3.5 hours from Havana.  Vinales rests in a valley surrounded by limestone formations and covered with tiny plots of farmland, mostly tobacco.  The road there was smooth and straight (we saw few other vehicles), the bus was air conditioned, on time, and looked newish.  So nice!  We passed fields of rice and sugarcane and stopped at a small reservoir with a floating trampoline that blew my mind.  Why didn't I think of that?

Luis, the owner of our Havana casa, made arrangements for us to stay at the casa of a friend.  Margarita was a warm, motherly woman, famous, she tells us, for her beer chicken (it was splendid).  She gave us guava juice and called in someone's nephew, Able-the-guide, to take us horseback riding through the valley.

While Alex and I are in possession of many talents, we're not exactly experienced horsewomen.  Which is to say, our horses knew their way (and knew we didn't) so they ignored us (rightly so) and our bums were smarting within minutes.  My stirrups were way too long for me, which meant that I spent as much time airborne as I did in the saddle.  The sound of my bum hitting the saddle no doubt warmed the hearts of chiropractors everywhere.

We followed trails that skirted fields of newly planted tobacco, sweet potato, black beans, and rice.  The few men we saw working the fields all wore the same kinds of clothes: leather hats, shirts unbuttoned in the heat, baggy belted trousers, gum boots, and a cigar dangling from their lips.

Alex and I discovered how challenging it is to dangle one's cigar when we stopped at the shack of a leathery old man for a break.  He made us rum drinks from coconut water, honey, grapefruit juice, and rum, served in a coconut.  He also showed us how he roll cigars.  All the farmers around there were granted land by the government on condition that they grow tobacco.  Ninety-percent of what they grow is for the government.  Our old man ferments his 10% in fruit juices, cinnamon, and honey.  He seals them with honey, too.  The cigar he gave us to smoke was even dipped in honey (Alex, always willing to think the best of me, thought it was my slobber).

So we drank rum and smoked cigars and watched the vultures and the approaching rain and double rainbow and I think it was one of the best afternoons ever.

On Cuba: Mojitos

Well, I'm disappointed.  My first Cuban mojito on a breezy afternoon overlooking the sea was made with lime juice concentrate.

Wha??

It was overly sugary, the mint was decorative, and it lacked any indication that it was somehow more authentic than what you or I could make.  I had two.  After all, a warm breeze and sea view count for a lot.

I did notice, in my survey of Havana mojitos, that many were finished with a dash of Angostura bitters.  My survey did not include the Hotel Ambos Mundos where Hemingway famously sipped on mojitos with champagne - I feared disappointment there, too.

Here's what I think tastes good:

squeezed fresh lime juice
brown sugar syrup (1:1 sugar to water) with mint/ginger thrown in if you like
muddled mint (properly bruised to release flavour)
soda water
white rum

I don't think the proportions need to be spelled out - to each her own.  A dash of Pimms or Angostura is a nice finish.  Should you find yourself with any left over mojitos (I dunno), pour the liquid part into a baking dish and put it in the freezer.  Rake a fork through it every hour or so, and in about 4-6 hours, you get a nice mojito granitas!

Salut!

On Cuba: R&R is Fun!

This is my first rest and recuperation (R&R) trip from Haiti and I've never looked forward to it more!  As it turned out, both my friend, Alex, and I were thinking about going to Cuba, so we coordinated efforts and planned to meet there.  Alex travels a lot but despite having known each other for 13 years, I realized we'd never travelled to a new place together.

I was surprised to find a stupid grin on my face when I stood in line for Cuba immigration.  I was in Cuba!  The cholera epidemic in Haiti was a bit of a concern for me - would the public health-minded Cubans turn me away?  There were many immigration officers milling about maybe even two for every passenger.  Several of them politely asked for my documents.  The women's uniforms made me smile: they consisted of a buttoned shirt, a minuscule skirt, and fishnet stockings of all patterns.

I arrived a day before Alex.  The taxi driver was very friendly (being Brazilian makes me nearly as popular as the Brazilian soaps watched in Cuba) and offered me his nephew (a very serious man) as a companion and then asked me to go to a comedy show with him.  I decided to hold out for better offers.

Many families in Cuba rent out rooms to tourists to make a little extra income.  The casa we stayed at was on a narrow, shabby street, but inside, it was a wonder.  Art nouveau stained glass everywhere.  Chandeliers in every room and even in doorways.  Over breakfast the next morning, I met the other two guests, Beverly and Graham, a charming British couple who instantly took me under their wing.  We wandered down the Malecon (the 8km seawall) towards Habana Vieja (old Havana) and down a tree-lined boulevard with old, old buildings on either side.

Havana was not what I expected.  It must be an art historian's paradise.  I could spend a year studying the different patterns of wrought iron railings on balconies there.  But for every ornate building that looks like it came straight from Paris, there are ten that look like they had been through the Blitz.  It was more than peeling paint and dilapidated shutters.  Whole sections of mortar or entire walls were crumbling into piles on second floor balconies.  It reminded me so much of Port-au-Prince that my eyes kept searching for the stencils on the walls used in Haiti to access earthquake damage.

My new friends and I stopped for a coffee at a veranda of a hotel where a band was playing then wandered further down the old part of town with cobbled streets and majestic squares.  At one point, we sat on park benches and Graham dozed off while Beverly and I people-watched.

I left them in the afternoon and wandered back towards the Malecon to watch the guys fishing away their Sunday afternoons.  I got drowsy from all the non-exertion I had done and lay down on the seawall to take a nap.  I've decided that to nap alone in a public place is one my favourite luxuries.

On Cholera

I was in a meeting today in which several people around the table were recounting their January 12 stories (the earthquake).  They were terrifying.  I found myself clutching the sides of my chair as I listened to accounts of desperate dashes across town in search of children, of a diabetic friend trapped in the rubble for two days, of the  end of the world.

This came up because we were discussing the cholera outbreak that hit Haiti this week. It's the first anyone can remember and is spreading fast.  USAID and CDC are in a frenzy.  Text messages with URGENT!! requests for emergency response are crowding the airwaves.  Amidst the frenzy is a bit of silliness.  One donor sent us radio spots for cholera that were recorded in the US (uhm, why?) with such useful messages (in bad Kreyol) as "wash your food with water treated with five drops of bleach".  Five drops of water....per cup?  Per jug?  Per tank?  I suppose this kind of sloppy communication is why I am employed.  I was very proud that the ministry of health rejected the spots. Hee.

Today, I heard of two cases of cholera at the outskirts of Port-au-Prince and one death.  I hope they let me get on the plane to Cuba tomorrow...

On Markets

Below are photos I took in traffic on my way our of Port-au-Prince on the way to World Handwshing Day.  I also saw two men up to their shoulders in muddy sewage drains.  Handwashing, eh?

Charcoal market

On World Handwashing Day

As I’m sure everyone is aware, October 15 is World Handwashing Day.  I’m a devout handwasher and so I decided to travel with our team to Jacmel where we are conducting several events to commemorate good hygiene.

The trip from Port-au-Prince to Jacmel consisted of waiting around at the office for two hours, waiting for our driver to show up and then to refuel and then an hour drive.  The actual driving part consisted of gridlock traffic across Port-au-Prince, a flat bit along the coast, and then hairpin turns going up and then down the mountains.  Driving is a nice way to see the country, but so many of the most interesting things I see are in flashes through the dirty windows of our vehicles.

Once in Jacmel, we set up for a screening of our handwashing film (it’s really good!) in a camp run by Save the Children.  The tents are semi-permanent with cinderblock bases and the latrines are plywood, rather than pot-a-potties.  There’s a station for potable water from a giant bladder with an excellent diagram on handwashing.  No soap to be seen, but I was assured that not only is soap distributed to families, but there is a working group to discuss how to get families to buy their own soap instead of relying upon free distribution.  I’m skeptical. 

I’m glad we don’t usually work in camps – it’s best to leave that work to people who know what they’re doing.  Each camp has it’s own leadership structure according to which NGO (or other) is managing it.  The politics can be complicated, as we found out this evening.  We got permission from the president of the camp to do our film screening, but not from the advisor.  Lots of words were expressed about this oversight.  Camps also have all sorts of NGOs coming in to do activities, give things away, and tell people what to do.  This can create a dependency on outsiders and a sense of entitlement, as exemplified by a 10 year old boy who followed me around and asked me to give him my camera.  Emmanuella gave him an earful instead.

Before our film screening, we had a sound truck come through the camp and blare our catchy jingle.  The truck doubled as our AV equipment and as we were setting up for the film, the sound guy played snatches of dancehall type music.  The place erupted into a mass of vibrating children of all sizes.  With the flashes of lightning, the scene looked uncannily like a rave.  Little girls that come up to my waist were gyrating in ways that would make Shakira blush.  I even thought I saw some guys on stilts.  Wait.  I did see some guys on stilts.  In the camp.  What did they put in my water?

On Beeeeeeeeeeeeeer!!

I found it!  I went on a wild goose chase last evening to find a new-to-me restaurant and guess what was on the menu?

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!  I found Belgian beer in Haiti!!!!!!!

On Armored Vehicles

I’m reading The Junior Officers’ Reading Club, a light account of a scholarly guy's path to becoming a soldier in the British army and working in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It’s good to have a reality check and realize that for all that lives of Haitians are difficult, for all that UN mission here is a ubiquitous part of the scenery, things are a far cry from the madness of war. 

As I was contemplating this on the drive home from the Port-au-Prince airport, I passed this on the road:

On Having but also Having Not

I mentioned before that my colleagues here in Haiti are of the elite.  So much so that the recommendation from the Trinidad country rep to dine at the fancy-pants restaurant was accepted by both my Haitian colleagues, Emmanuella and Sherley, without question.  The prices on the menu made me gulp.  They didn't even look.  I've rarely been in a position to socialize freely with local colleagues because of the difference in our incomes (even in Botswana and most certainly in PNG).  


But wealth in Haiti is sometimes qualified, I think.  When we returned to Haiti from Trinidad, my driver and I gave Sherley a lift home.  She lives in one of the neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince that was worst hit by the earthquake.  She's a medical doctor and so is better off than most.  Nevertheless, the roads to get to her house are narrow piles of rutted rubble.  Most houses are flattened.  After the quake, the government surveyed every building and categorized the buildings with stenciled markers in green ("fit for habitation"), yellow ("enter only to retrieve essential items"), and red ("do not enter").  Sherley's neighborhood had yellows and even reds that were clearly occupied.  For example, the top floor was collapsed but the bottom floor had signs of habitation.  I wonder what the neighborhood was like before and what it's like for Sherley to live there now.  I don't ask because I'm afraid of how my question might be interpreted.

On Outreach in English

One of the most astonishing things about the office in Trinidad is that English is not only the language of operation – it’s everyone’s mother tongue.  When one of the educators who conducts our outreach activities dropped by the office, it took effort to get my brain wrapped around the fact that she talks to our beneficiaries in English (which, according to my Haitian colleagues, is debatable).  A lot of what I’m interested in with regards to communication is nuance – not just what we say, but how we say it. The last time I observed an outreach or I spoke to an outreach worker in her/his first language was when I was the one doing the outreach activities a a volunteer on 17^th St in DC. 

We got to see two educators, Fabi and Kimberly, in action yesterday.  They set up a table at a busy square (no camps!) and caught the after-work crowd.  They usually set up a proper stall and do this for hours at a time but this was a mere taste of the action done for us especially, so they were using a little folding table.  As a result, they were mobbed, which gave my Haitian colleagues and I an excuse to be useful.  The laminated cards with flamboyant photos of STIs were very popular, as were requests for female condom demos with the alien-looking model vagina.  It felt really good to be out of the office and doing this kind of work with people. 

I tried to express to my team what a rare treat this was for me and I got the instant predictable: “You should learn Kreyol!”  “Kreyol is easy – easier than French!”  

(sigh) If I had a penny….

On New Adventures in Trinidad

I barely remember Port of Spain from when I was last here 20 years ago, but man, I'm impressed!  This country is solidly middle income.  The streets are nice, there is an amazing mix of tasteful modern buildings and gently crumbing lacy houses/castles that make me yearn for a band saw.

I'm here visiting our Caribbean office.  It's one-room office and they cover 12 countries!  Our Trini colleagues have an enthusiasm for food that is admirable.  The "what-should-we-get-for-lunch" discussions start early and are rather animated.  It makes my two Haitian colleagues and me very happy.

Last night we went to a fancy pants restaurant (entrees start at $50 US) and had a fantastic experience.  For lunch today we went to a Trini food-by-weight place that gave fancy-pants restaurant a run for its money:  fried plaintain, BBQ pork, jerk chicken, macaroni pie, pumpkin, cassava...

As part of our week's "firsts", we took Emmanuella and Sherley to a sushi bar.  I taught them to use chopsticks (the charming sous chef took it upon himself to later give them additional lessons).  We discovered that margaritas are a lot like Haitian lime juice + salt cold remedy.  I teased the girls about their aversion to raw sushi (charming sous chef decided to make them a special roll which they gamely tried and curled their noses at).  

We later went to a bar (sous chef was hoping to see them there later) where the girls saw a dart board for the first time.  Even in the middle of nowhere in PNG, people played darts.  Actually, dart boards where one of the biggest attractions at the market where people bet big on it.  It never occurred to me that someone may never have seen a dart board before.

Today, our trip to see a mobile clinic for sex workers was cancelled because the sex workers were kept busy from 3 to 9 am by a bunch of police officers.  They expect free services.  So instead, we drove around looking for outlets that commit to selling condoms to young people.  In some cases, this turned out to be in name only as the effort it took to get a condom at the pharmacy/bar/shop we visited would have dissuaded even the most determined shopper.

Also, I was reunited with a old friend: chicken roti!!

On Overheard Conversations

Sometimes I sympathize with people who are content to stay home and have no desire to expose themselves to the eccentricities of the outside world.  During my trip this weekend from Haiti to Trinidad, I overheard:

In the airplane:
Flight attendant: Good morning, sir.  How are you?
Missionary passenger: I'm blessed!  I'm blessed!


In airport security:
Security person 1 (Staring at her screen): Can he bring in candles?
Security person 2: Candles are allowed as long as they are not lit.


On the radio from the Trinidad airport:
A spokesperson for the Xxxx Islamic community says he supports the return of public hangings because the death penalty is in the Koran and is the will of Allah.  He says that there can be no argument against the death penalty and those against it need to understand that it is holy and the will of Allah.


On the other hand, travelling can sometimes be quite good for the ego.  The world is clearly full of people who are at least stupider than I am.

On a Field Trip to Gonaive

We have a big team in the field right now, travelling from town to town, walking into little shops and pharmacies, trying to understand where our health products are and are not.  I joined them yesterday in Gonaive, three hours up the coast from Port-au-Prince.  The road was sealed and in good condition but the farms and towns along the way were…messy.  Disorganized-looking, brown, crumbling.  There was one long market along the road with a huge number of charcoal sellers on one end…the reason why there are no trees anywhere to be seen on this island.

I only realized we were passing rice fields when I started seeing grains drying in the sun haphazardly along the side of the road.  There was a shocking absence of right angles in the paddies or in the amoeba-shaped smears of drying rice.  The area looked nothing like the rice paddies of southeast Asia.  I’m sure looking at those fields and the roadside coops makes World Bank agro-economists and development workers itchy all over.  The Haitian rice market got hit very hard by the earthquake: specifically by the bags and bags of free American rice that flooded the market and undercut all the local sellers. 

Gonaive is the dusty capital of Artibonite.  The hills behind it look exactly like the Nevada desert.  The town itself is drab cinderblock and dirt roads.  There is absolutely nothing charming about the place.  We split up into teams and walked from shop front to barbershop to pharmacy, looking for our point-of-sale materials, checking on the visibility of our products, asking barbers if they would be willing to sell our products.  One tiny little shop (covered in dust) was about 6ft x 6ft and in addition to condensed milk, tomato sauce, batteries, and vegetable shortening was a lone bottle of Manischewitz.  You know – only the staples.

The hotel we’re in is good but…basic.  The room I’m in is big, oddly proportioned, with one bare bulb and exposed wiring. The furniture all looks like it was made in a rush by a guy in his garage down the street.  I deliberately don’t look too closely into the dark corners.  The toilet paper resembles the paper marché I made in third grade.  The soap is…Origins!  Origins brand soap!!  Whaaaa?

What else?

•  The 12inch TV in the room has three channels…I turned it on to see Flight of the Conchords singing the Boom!  Boom! song.  Heh. (if you don't know what I'm talking about - YouTube it)
• The restaurant we went to last night has one of those fridges with drinks by the door, but instead of drinks, it was filled with red apples.  Red apples!
• I had my first Guinness in Haiti last night.  I can only find it in, uhm, not-nice places because it’s not considered a beer, remember?  It’s an energy drink.  I can report that while the bottle is a legitimate Guinness, the contents elicited none of the warm, fuzzy feelings (or creamy head) I associate with a pint of Guinness.
• We stopped selling our birth control for a while because people were reselling it in the DR where it is used as fertilizer for marijuana and applied to ladies’ hair to encourage growth.  

Seriously.  I can’t make this stuff up. 

On Mouthfeel

Mouthfeel!  It gets so little attention in our food talk, but it's so lovely when you get it right and kind of a downer when you don't.  It's the onomotopoea of food!  Good mouthfeel is what makes eating memorable for me:

Foamy yeastiness of an unfiltered heffewiezen = good
Pasty, stiff risotto = bad
The soft chewiness of the inside of a croissant = good
Mealy apples = bad
really good, mineraly water = good

I just made a grilled ham and cheese sandwich on wheat bread.  The mouthfeel was overwhelmingly lovely!  I would have taken a picture, but I couldn't stop eating it.  The texture of the toasted bread and the consistency of the ham complimented each other so well that couldn't tell where one began and the other ended.  I interspaced the cheese so that the filling was more or less homogenous.  One advantage of sliced bread toasted sandwiches over real bread is that you don't get sharp or hard crust edges attacking the top of your mouth, don't you think?  There's also something to be said for a minimalist toasted sandwich: tomatoes, onions, or avocado add flavour but make the sandwich messy and hard to eat without bits and pieces squirting out.

So that's what I have to say about that.

On Tornadoes

On Friday, just as people were getting ready to leave work, the sky darkened and a strange wind started to blow.  We got calls from colleagues who had already left work that a tornado had hit one of the camps.  A friend who was in the camp his NGO manages was thrown 15ft in the air by the wind and the tents where uprooted.

On a Long Day

The day after the 4.4 earthquake that woke me up was so full that I'm only now registering all that occurred:

• A three and a half hour donor meeting (in French, of course) in which i tried to look engaged while a fever made me hot and cold in alternating waves.
• A presentation on our work by Emmanuella in which she did a very nice job in front of both the donor and our visiting Big Boss.
• News that Haitian citizens hoping to visit Trinidad and Tobago (even for business) must have the personal endorsement of Kofi Anana, the Pope, and Queen Elizabeth.  Or the equivalent.  Setback on our trip there.  
• Meetings that kept me from my computer during the entirety of the working day
• News that a friend of a friend with whom I had dinner just last week was hit by a car while on R&R in the DR with her boyfriend.  She was killed and her boyfriend is in a coma.
• Dinner with Boss and Big Boss that went really well.  I'm fortunate to have bosses that are motivated without being micromanagers.  I like them both and the conversation was both diverting and productive.  Also: the food was nice.

Can't wait for the weekend.

On a Restlessness Night

I have a big day today: the new regional director in in town and we have a donor meeting where we'll be pitching several ideas that will no doubt make the reps of the US government a little uncomfortable.  I have a hard time turning my brain off the night before big meetings and so tend to sleep lightly and dream vividly.  Last night this was compounded by stomach cramps and....my shaking bed?

It shook and kept on shaking ever so subtly.

You know that scene from Jurassic Park where they hear this deeeeep BOOM.  BOOM.  BOOM. of the T-Rex and stare all at the ripples in the glass of water?  I felt like I was in the middle of that glass of water. I've lived in a couple of earthquake-prone zones (why? why??) and always felt a thrill of connecting to something elemental any time I felt a shudder from the earth.  This time, it felt different.  I felt bad for the kids in the camp next door for whom there is probably no thrill in this experience.

There was another shudder later in the night but it's hard to say whether that one was real or a product of my restless mind.

On Getting it Done

It's been a busy week which is good in many ways.  We had some radio spots to air that fell through the cracks with the Procurement Department (a.k.a. Them).  This meant that the Communications team (a.k.a Us) had to run around trying to negotiate contracts with 23 radio stations, Procurement was up until midnight drawing up contracts, and Logistics had to figure out how to get the contracts to the little dinky stations in the middle nowhere.  In the end we Got It Done.  So on Monday we'll all pat ourselves on the back and give generous compliments to other departments, all in time for our big meeting with The Donor to whom we promised the radio spots would be up by September 1.  I think the players in the Middle East peace process have a lot to learn from us.

On Two Exciting Arrivals

Last seen in Papua New Guinea on May 26, my air freight arrived at my apartment yesterday!  That's right: my AIR freight!  The one that they put on a plane so that it gets to you very fast!  With it comes my trusty red

can opener, so my days of coaxing out black beans from a can one at a time through a tiny slit are over.

Yesterday I also received another lovely surprise: a letter from my friend Miranda containing.....

On Mr Consultant

Mr Consultant has been working with us in Haiti for several months.  He's an American expat raised in many places and has an infuriating way of talking.  He likes to tell me about funky places he's discovered around town but never commits to showing me, despite my requests.  He makes reference almost daily to going out with colleagues for drinks after work, but doesn't invite me.  Instead, I get text messages from him when he's out, telling me how much fun he's having.  When I needed a new computer, he gave me the option of going to the shop to pick one out, which I told him was unnecessary.  He said he wanted me to be able to pick out exactly what I needed.  The next day, he followed that up with something like"from my experience international staff are very picky about these things."  Huh?  I give up.

At one point, Mr Counsultant had to look for housing and it was looking kind of grim in terms of cost and security.  The option of him staying in my spare room was there, but it was one I think we both wanted to avoid.  He would bring up his hunt for housing every day, suggesting this was a worry for him, and each time I would feel obliged to say "feel free to stay with me if you don't find anything."  He would then respond by saying something like "Nah - I don't want to put you out.  I don't mind sleeping on the office floor if I have to," or "Oh, I've slept in dumps in Indonesia - don't worry about me."  And so it would go.  Every day.

He found housing eventually, but his confusing style of talking still baffles me:  I was in the meeting room today with him where there are a couple of nice office chairs.  I asked him what he thought of them.  His response: "Yeah, I've seen these in many places...but you know, I've sat on stumps in Sudan."  I had no choice but to laugh out loud at him.

On Bombing My First Writing Assignment

My friend, Pete, asked me to write a blog post on what it's like to repeatedly make a new life someplace and then leave it.  I was excited to be given a creative writing assignment - my first since college - but after mulling it over for a couple of days, I am stuck.  I've moved around a lot from a young age but I'm not sure I have anything remotely insightful or fresh to say on it.  We all have had to make friends from scratch, to find our way around a new place, to say goodbye to important people in our lives.  I suspect Pete and I have had similar experiences, even if the circumstances have differed. 

Other people's life experiences can often be easier to appreciate than our own, no? During last weekend's hot tub party, one of the members of our group asked about coping mechanisms for with living in difficult places.  I was surprised to find he was talking not only to our friend, Alex, but also to me.  Just to be clear: Alex has lived in Iraq. He had earlier told a story about a suicide bomb attack on the mosque next door to his house.  He and others in the hot tub covered Pakistan, Sudan, Jordan, Sri Lanka,  India, the Balkans.  I was confused about why my opinion was being sought out.  Did I misrepresent myself and give the impression that I lead a much more dramatic life than I do?  

I guess one person's mundane is another person's exotic.  As a child living in Grenada, I had a family a friends who were born and raised in the same town in Michigan.  Their grandparents lived there, their cousins lived there, and they were returning to that town, that house, after Grenada.  I was in awe of that kind of life: of being so grounded to a place and so connected to people who have known you all your life.  My friends never really understood what I found so fascinating about that.  

I talked about that again with one of those kids a couple of years ago.  Joe went to university in Michigan and then taught there before moving to DC to work on the Hill where we reconnected.  His parents still have the farm in Michigan and Joe and his siblings are still very much Michigan farm kids.  Joe has gotten married and bought a house in DC but unlike 10-year-old-Joe, he is truly appreciative of his strong connections to the place he grew up.  He gets why I marvel at his life and find it exotic!

This is a long and rambling post to say, Pete, I don't have an answer to your post request (I suspect a moderate amount of alcohol plays a role) but I would be interested to hear what your experience has been.  How about doing a guest post?

On Going to the Beach

For NGO workers here, Haiti is a land of contradictions.  On Saturday evening, I found myself in a palatial house, sipping wine in a hot tub while discussing the cost of renting latrines for a number of camps ($20,000 USD per day for one organization).  

On Sunday, my friend Maite and I were determined to go to the beach.  While the coast is only about 5km away from my house, access to a safe beach takes about two and a half hours.  I drove and Maite navigated.  We got out of the city and took a long road along the coast at the foothills of a range that used to be covered by trees.  The hunt for wood for charcoal is such that even bushes are scarce.

We found the beach club we were looking for without incident.  Once we drove through the gates, we passed manicured lawns and flamboyant trees.  We paid $20 to get in.  The place had the feel of a mediocre family apart-hotel in Florida: unglamorous but well-organized.  Everywhere around me, I heard Brazilian peacekeepers speaking Portuguese.  Off to the side, a capoeira workshop was being conducted.  It was bizarre.

Maite and I passed the pool area and made a bee-line for the beach.  It was narrow, sandy, and dotted with coconut frond shelters.  The entire place was crawling with roving packs of UN soldiers on break.  It was bizarre.  Did I say that already?  I've never see so many dogtags in my life.  The only thing that differentiated them was cut of their swim wear.

The water was turquoise, calm, and pleasant.  I was about to comment that it reminded me of the waters of the Caribbean until I realized I was in the Caribbean.  Heh.  I enjoyed the much-needed break from the bustle of Port-au-Prince.  At the same time, it was also weird to be completely surrounded by reminders that while I might be in the Caribbean, it's a doppleganger Caribbean where the beaches are crawling with soldiers.

Bizarre.

On Sushi and Foosball

Last Friday, our deputy country rep surprised me by inviting me to go out for a drink with her husband and her.  She is a smart, friendly person but she comes from the Haitian aristocracy, has two kids, and seems very proper: what on earth were we going to talk about?  I knew she invited me out because of my limited social life and, grateful, I resolved to be charming and entertaining.  Or, if nothing else, not utterly embarrass myself.

They picked me up at around 7:30 and we drove to an old hotel at the top of the hill that survived the earthquake unscathed.  It had an air of [modest] former glory.  You might not even know it was a hotel when you pull up.  The lobby was a small alcove with an unattended desk.  Black and white photos of movie stars and politicians I didn't recognize haphazardly adorned the walls.  No staff were visible.  We made our way through the building and came out onto a huge terrace overlooking all of Port-au-Prince.  The view was amazing.  This was undoubtedly where the movie stars and politicians sipped their gimlets and chatted with aspiring dictators!

The hotel was a maze of tiled stairways leading to various levels of the terrace.  I followed my hosts down a few stairs, wondering what glamorous site awaited me next, to find myself.....in an open air sports bar.  A sports bar!  Complete with flat screen TVs showing American football, pool tables, loud music, and raucous groups of friends letting loose on a Friday night.  I was stunned.

I recovered enough to scrap my plans to behave like a lady, ordered a beer, and proceeded to gape.

At one point, after we had met up with a friend of theirs, my deputy country rep's husband, a mild-mannered be-speckled man, turned to me with ill-suppressed eagerness and asked if I played foosball.  We ended up playing several heated rounds with all the trimmings: bravado, dramatic wins, miraculous recoveries, and high fives.  Then our food arrived: sushi!  Sushi, I was told with a wink and, I'm sure, to the surprise of most Haitians, was invented by Haitians!  A few of the rolls we ordered came wrapped not in seaweed, but in fried banana.  The resulting sweetness was a lovely compliment to spicy tuna and salty prawn.

I had such effortless fun that I forgot where I was entirely.  It was only when my hosts wistfully spoke of the days when it was possible to [safely] go dancing at a club that the illusion of normalcy wavered for a minute.

On Baby Showers

I attended my first baby shower today for a colleague on my team.  Emmanuella, another colleague, and I arrived an hour late and were the first people there.  There were about eight of us for about an hour while people tried to figure out how to get the guest of honor to show up at her own party.  The conversation (in French and Creole with a little English thrown in when people were feeling fancy) was about English classes for children, the benefits of swimming classes for asthmatic children, which drugs to give asthmatic children, and always, the crazy things that children say.  I was the only person there without a kid.  I thought of my friend, Anita, in the US who is pregnant.  I thought about how I should call her to have a normal conversation before the baby pops into her life and changes her vocabulary to one I don’t understand. 

People were still arriving long after the end time on the invitation.  The few men who accompanied their wives got to go outside into the garden where there was beer and wine.  I was indoors, seated in a circle with a bunch of women where I understood (or was interested in) none of the conversation.  It’s not shocking that I’m not in my element at a baby shower.  There are awkward pauses because people don’t necessarily know each other well and the cutesy games demand more laughter than they deserve. 

But Nathalya, the mother-to-be, seemed happy and in good spirits after her mother finally convinced her to come to her surprise party on a day when she was tired and just wanted to eat ice cream at home.  Bodes well for her adventure into motherhood, I guess.

On Salt

My air shipment of "essential" items that I packed on May 26 in PNG arrived last week.  It's at the port, where even without an administrative mistake regarding who it belongs to (me!), it could stay for a good long time.  Everything under the sun, from emergency housing to exotic nailpolish, is pushing and shoving it's way into the destroyed port.

So I wait.  Funny that the two items I am longing the most for are my lovely red can opener and my spice bottle of crushed red pepper.  Need sushi rice or avocado oil?  No problem!  But I have yet to find my favorite spice anywhere.  These days my kitchen buddy is salt.  

I've had a lot of respect for salt since reading Mark Kurlansky's book, Salt: A World History, several years ago but I've always had too many other spices at my disposal to really only concentrate on the magic of salt.  Tonight, I bought a Chateaubriand at the supermarket in n honor of my glorious French summer.  I made a salad of tomatoes and avocado sprinkled with salt.  I rubbed my Chateaubriand with salt, olive oil, and garlic, seared it, and then finished it in the oven on a bed of salted thyme.  I made wild rice with rehydrated shitake mushrooms and salt.  The result was a meal so lovely, that I had my first helping without even noticing my forlorn glass of wine.

Salt!

On Everyday Haiti

Everyday in Haiti I drive the 1 mile to work and between the people, the cars, and the roads, rarely make it out of second gear.

Everyday in Haiti I find myself in a meeting in which everybody has their cells phones arranged in front of them (one PSI phone, one Digicel, one Voila, maybe a Blackberry for fun).  The phones go off loudly all the time, to my keen irritation, and the owners answer de sotto, holding the mouthpiece directly in front of their lips.

Everyday in Haiti, we hear lively demonstrations on the streets.

Everyday in Haiti I look down upon women balancing baskets atop of baskets heaped with bright produce as they walk on the street below my apartment to the market.

Everyday in Haiti I pass people who have been living under tarps for six months.  Sometimes I notice them, sometimes I don't.

Everyday in Haiti, I relish having internet access at home.

Everyday in Haiti the power goes off for a few minutes at night before the generator kicks in, reminding me that I have electricity and water comes out of my taps when I turn them on.

Everyday in Haiti I pass people walking on the street and look at them through the glass of my car window and find it weird that I am here to serve them, but they know nothing about me except that I am rich and they are not.

Everyday in Haiti, I am glad to be here.

On a Clear Day

I just got home and am standing on my terrace overlooking a large valley and mountains on my left and a huge lake and the mountain border with the Dominican Republic in front of me.  I live in the narrowest part of this country that still surprises me with its smallness.  It's a wonder to be able to see the ocean from my bathroom window and the DR from the other side of my house. This is a special evening because this scenery is usually covered in haze (which is why I have no photographs for you yet).  Today there are even big cumulus nimbus clouds catching the setting sun - I didn't realize until now that the haze usually makes them indistinct, too.  The gaudy sunsets from my balcony in Papua New Guinea have been replaced by something more expansive and less dramatic.

On Cultural Obliviousness

It just now occurred to me, after having hired a maid three weeks ago, that she must think I'm mad or self-destructive for leaving my hair and nail clippings in the rubbish bin in the bathroom.

This is, after all, the land of voodoo.

Ekk.

On Security Unknowns

One of the most challenging things about being an expat in PNG was trying to make heads or tails of the security situation.  I stopped reading the newspapers because I couldn't handle the daily barrage of gang rapes, murders, tribal wars, and hackings that they contained.  But violence experienced by Papua New Guineans is different from violence experienced by expats.  The only crime reports I had access to were the occasional e-mails sent out by G4S, as security firm.  Those reports were vague and only included incidents reported by their customers.  Of course, there were weekly stories of break-ins, car-jackings, and other crimes that never made it into the G4S report, so it's clear those reports are limited in scope.  So the answer to the question: "How at risk am I?" ended up being "How much at risk to I feel today?"  Some days were better than others.

And now Haiti.

As I mentioned, there are plenty of UN peacekeeping forces around the place: trucks full of uniformed men with big guns.  I always get a chill when I think about who they are using those guns against.  People in camps?  I don't really know.

Today we drove across town to visit the PSI warehouse.  We tend to take a maze of back streets to avoid traffic. We passed some UN vehicles and I wondered out loud what the guns are for.  My counterpart, Emmanuella, said something like "sometimes they get shot."  It was unclear whether she meant people on the street around there or the blue helmets.  I asked for clarification.  "Sometimes there is an incident and they get killed!"  Again, it was unclear to me who was killing whom.  The soldiers who try to break up an "incident" or people in the incident that the soldiers try to break up?

At this point, the wise-cracking expat consultant in the back seat said to me "Do you know where you are? Didn't you read anything about Haiti before you came here?  Check any of the websites??"

(sigh)

Of course I did.  But how to separate what is true, what is inflated, and what relates to me?  For example, the biggest slum in Haiti, Cite Soleil, is a red zone.  But when would I have reason to go there unless it was against my will?

On the way back to the warehouse, I was asking about the area we were driving through - after all, I have to learn my way around eventually.  That led to a discussion about women driving by themselves in which the same person said the following:

"It's safe.  Everything is safe."
"There is no Green Zone in Port-au-Prince.  There is Dark Red Zone, Bright Red Zone, Red Zone, and maybe an Orange Zone."

Because I was still feeling peevish after being accused of being oblivious to Haiti's security situation, I pounced on upon these contradictory statements with childish delight and made a show of demanding an explanation:  which is is?  Everything is safe for a new arrival like me or there are no green zones?

Not sure I got resolution on that.  The A/C was broken and everybody was too busy giving the driver a hard time for not being sufficiently aggressive for midday traffic.

On Lunchtime Peculiarities

Everyday, my elegant counterpart, Emmanuella, pulls out her elaborate insulated lunch caddy and removes aromatic containers of stew and rice.  She happily slurps up her goat stew, a delicious-smelling concoction full of goat parts that I struggle to identify but always contain thick tubes and something that looks like a soft palate.  At the end of the meal, Emma daintily digs for marrow in the long bones with a fork, then puts everything neatly back in her lunch caddy.

Yesterday, with great curiosity, she asked me something about my lunchtime habits that had perplexed her for a while: how could I not eat rice with my lunch?

On Laundry Day

Driving past Camp Raymond, my neighbors, after work today, I noticed it was laundry day!  Every piece of concertina wire and tent support rope was bedecked with laundry.  Kids in their underwear soaped themselves and poured water on their heads in the semi-private (what is semi-private?) stalls for bathing.  The giant water tank must have been replenished today.

What a relief it must be to feel clean!

On Queens and Queens

When you hear Carnival + queens + condom gown fashion shows, what do you think of?

A drag show, right?  Lots of lovely lads dressed in over-the-top gowns in bedazzled platform heels.

We have many condoms that have expired in our warehouse that we need to do something with.  So during a meeting yesterday, we discussed using them for promotional art, namely fashion shows in which the dresses are made from condoms.  For Carnival!  So I'm thinking drag queens in condom dresses paraded through the streets on the platforms of trucks...nice!

Today I sat down with my colleagues, Emmanuela and Nathalya, out how we're going to do this.  We talked about putting out a bid to designers, seeing if the design school is open, what the creative brief would look like...then we talked about finding queens in February (Carnival) to fit the dresses we commission.  How do we know what sizes to commission?  Some of the queens, Emmanuela said, are like me!  Emmanuela has the proportions of a supermodel.  Like you?  I say, picturing delicate, fey queens of the SE Asian fame.

I ask more questions about size until it finally came to light that in our discussions of "queens", I was thinking drag queens and they were referring to elegant, queenly women.  I was trying to hard to stifle my laughter that I started crying.  Emmanuela and Nathalya looked concerned.  What's so funny?

I didn't bother pointing out that half of the condom dresses we were looking at online were probably being modeled by drag queens or transsexuals.