"Everyone, Sit Down!"

It's amazing how, by just sitting in meetings all day, you can become exhausted. My first official meeting (i.e., not our DAI staff) of the day was conducted entirely in French... Quebecois-ish French, no less. About mechanisms to strengthen the relationship between the legislative and executive branches of the Haitian government. I think I really need to take a class full of political vocabulary and colloquial construction, but after that meeting, I realized that I was starting to think pieces in French. Going over my notes tonight, I had mixed up pieces of French into the English when I couldn't switch out fast enough to think of the right word. I wasn't expecting to act as translator today, but it worked out alright - better than I expected.

Meanwhile, today's description of Haiti. I woke up early - 7am - and looked out the window, where the sky was fading to a deep blue, and little clouds scudded across the tops of the mountains. If I held my breath, ignored the gashes on the hillside, and the walls surrounding our hotel, I could imagine this place as paradise.

That's the catch, though. We're here, in a hotel that's nothing short of luxurious (although you still can't drink the water), but flying in over Cite Soleil, you see the "real" Haiti. The corrugated tin shacks, barely four walls and a roof, clustered in a surprisingly ordered maze of dirt tracks around the edge of the land, as if the city, the country, is trying to use geography to advantage and eventually just let it slip over the edge and into the shallows. As you fly lower, you can see the gullies that, this time of year, are dry and filled with garbage, the streets that have no cars (their inhabitants can't afford them, can't get out), the roofs filled with holes, the streets devoid of electric and telephone poles. As a foreigner, you don't just fly over Cite Soleil, you fly right past it, and keep on going.

Around the rest of the city (at which we drive at breakneck speed, dodging potholes, sink holes, and the fleet of crazy drivers), there is infrastructure. Broken down, worn out, hastily repaired, but visible. I sat at dinner last night, ensconced in a little restaurant with a roof made of vines, with an ex-senator and his chief of staff (our guide). Our conversation, although it started with Haiti, moved on to the entire world. As I chewed my cabri (yes, goat - kind of chewy, but good - like lamb mixed with venison), we ranged from the Kyoto protocols to the shrimping industry, piracy, Iran's nuclear capacity, and West African folk music.

I didn't want to break the mood, the little corner of magic, and turn us back to reality, but through dinner the words of the man next to me on the plane were haunting me. I had told him that we were coming to learn about the government, and to do a project to strengthen the parliament. He said, "Haiti is like an airplane with no seats. Everyone is on board, waiting to take off, but then the pilot says, 'Everyone, sit down! We cannot take off until you sit down!' and they all try, but where will they go? That's what we need - we need the government to build us some seats so we can take off."