(To read Part 1 of this post click here, to read Part 2 click here.)
It’s been six days since I interviewed Baby Doc and I am still reeling—whirl-winded by the sheer size of the experience, the weight, the scope of opportunity that came so unexpectedly.
And, frankly, I’ve not digested the experience yet— it seems to have exhausted me; I feel depleted–confused by having almost “liked” the version of Duvalier I met that night. What does one do with that realization?
Quite frankly I wish I were back in Haiti now.
Certainly, I love our home in Lexington and enjoy seeing Sara’s happiness at being here, but I would do anything to be in Port-au-Prince when Aristide arrives. The plane to return him from exile has already left South Africa; he’s expected to arrive in Haiti within hours.
But if I had to identify one overwhelming response to meeting Jean-Claude Duvalier, it would be this—a bit of dismay at how intrigued I still am by him—not Baby Doc the dictator, but Baby Doc the man, the details of ordinary around him.
The fact that his house, though perhaps the grandest on his street, was not as spectacular as I had suspected it would be. The couches in the living room seemed old and worn. There were no fancy fixtures. The wrought iron chairs on the patio needed paint.
But then again, that’s what we all amount to in the end—the peeling paint, the nicks, the scars. The couches need recovering.
The bottom line is this: the story of Haiti is largely one of exile and variations on that theme—coerced comings and goings, arriving unwillingly on a tiny island, you then don’t want to leave.
So it was for the slaves the Europeans brought from Africa, and so it was for Jean-Claude Duvalier, made president for life at age 19 when his father died, a job he didn’t want, a role he didn’t want to play. He ruled for 15 years, was exiled for 25, and has finally come home to Haiti again.
And in some ways, so it is for Sara and me. Though we came willingly to Haiti, we were not at all ready to leave, and having left feels like a loss, an amputation. Haiti is the phantom limb, the one I dream about, the one that calls to me at night.
Eventually we all get kicked off one island or another. A tribal council is convened. The votes are cast.
Having lived a year in post-earthquake Haiti and shipped 66 boxes worth of passion for Port-au-Prince ahead of our departure, my partner Sara and I, late last night, arrived home in Kentucky with 6 suitcases, 4 carry-ons, and two tired dogs in tow.
And today I am still too whip-lashed by re-entry (too shocked by easy access to electricity) to write much of substance, especially about my Saturday evening talk with Baby Doc, which in itself has left me dizzied with disbelief–clearly, the conversation of a life-time shaded by the half-light of infamy.
However, now that I’m back in the land of easy broadband, I can offer a few photographic highlights of our last days in Haiti:
Movers wrap everything, tables included, in cardboard
Lucy supervises shipping
Ralph visits Haitian vet to avoid US quarantine
Good bye party hosted by Sara's staff at Kalico Beach (near Cabaret)
Lucy oversees our departure for the airport
From atop Ralph's crate
Arrival at the Port-au-Prince airport
Lucy and Kathy wait at the gate
My talk with Baby Doc
Though I’m too tired to say much, I will add that, my 45 minute conversation with Baby Doc, would have been the coup of a life-time, were I a journalist in the traditional sense. However, I was granted this access as a “friend of friend” and talked with Jean-Claude Duvalier, not about his recent arrest or allegations of wrong-doing, but about who he is as a man, as a president returned from exile, who sees his country suffering and is saddened by it.
I sat across the table and was stunned by the seeming humanity of an ex-dictator, some say committed crimes against humanity. How could someone supposedly evil actually appear so warm, charming, and, above all else, humble? I expected arrogance and experienced not one drop of it.
Is this man maybe not what the world has judged him to be? Are people capable of change, worthy of redemption?
Whoever Jean-Claude Duvalier is, he’s not what you’d expect.
It’s been a wild and crazy weekend at our house here in Haiti, a weekend in the US when clocks have surreally sprung ahead an hour, dizzying me even at a time-bending distance in Port-au-Prince.
We’ve gotten 66 boxes of everything from fans to folding screens, pots and pans to patio furniture, shipped on a slow boat from Port-au-Prince to Baltimore, a boat so slow we’re hoping to have our lawn furniture in Lexington before the first snow falls next November and clocks again fall back an hour.
Saturday we spent at the beach, and Saturday evening I literally had a long talk with Baby Doc. Even I find it hard to believe, but I have what may indeed be the worst photo taken this side of the 19th century to prove it. For now the story will have to wait until we’re settled safely in Kentucky.
Kate, Jean Claude Duvalier, Fito, and me
Early in the morning we indeed leave on a day long trip from Haiti to home-sweet-home, one that will take us from Port-au-Prince to Miami, Miami to Dallas, and Dallas to Lexington, where we are scheduled to arrive an hour this side of midnight.
But in the meantime, I promise–
Sitting across the table talking to “Baby Doc” Duvalier, felt like an hour on the far side of midnight, an event horizon at my back.
(If you’d like to read a post about my past “adventures” at the Port-au-Prince airport, circumstances we are likely to encounter again on our way home from Haiti, click here.)
Since Sara and I are continuing to box up our lives here in Haiti (all in an effort to move back to the US next week), I couldn’t help but share a post I wrote some months back about the pack-rat affliction I suffer from, as well as two quick photos of our dog Lucy’s participation in the packing process:
I tend to over-pack.
I admit it. It’s a sickness.
It might even be a curse—who knows?
However, when you travel as much as I do, it becomes a problem—
A big problem.
This issue arises every time I go almost anywhere—the grocery store, the gym, even a restaurant or my mother’s house. Heck, I even carry too much to the bathroom, if I think my stay there may be extended—a book, a notebook, a pen, a drink, a phone, sometimes 2 phones—maybe a magazine. It all adds up.
Sara insists this calls for an intervention. She thinks she’ll fix me. That she can help me “edit”—her word. And admittedly, she has a reasonable investment in my reform, as often she ends up carrying my stuff, lugging it all over the planet—quite literally.
This is why she bought me a Kindle—afraid when last year we moved to Vietnam, where there’s not an abundance of reading material in English—that I would bring the inventory of a small university library along for the ride—that she would have to carry it.
Wise woman!
However, this week’s trip from Port-au-Prince home to Kentucky, has challenged even my advanced luggaging skills. Even more so, since I was bringing Lucy back with me—a dog as carry-on baggage—a canine complication on top of my already dogged determination to carry too much stuff.
When will I ever learn?
This complicating of already complicated carrying manifested itself most clearly yesterday morning in Miami.
I was running late—unusual for the chronically early like me. I had to take Lucy outside the airport to use her version of public toilet. She took too long.
She wouldn’t pee!
Never did!
I was pissed!
So I loaded Lucy back into her black back-pack carrier, hurried back into the hotel to collect my 3 remaining bags—a yellow and brown messenger bag, a standard carry-on-sized suitcase, and another 55 pound monster—at least 100 kilos, if I’m doing the math right. (I’m not good at math.)
The woman at the hotel’s front desk mistakenly directed me to the American Airlines check-in in Concourse E, where the hotel is, rather than Concourse D—where I needed to be. I stood in line for a good 15 minutes before an airport official indicated what no signage did, that this counter only handled check-in for passengers headed to Haiti—which two weeks from now will indeed be my destination.
For now—I was headed in the opposite direction—which meant trying to transport my abundant belongings outside for a 15 minute lumber to what could only be considered an outpost of the same airport.
It was far.
I was carrying a lot.
When I finally arrived at Concourse D, I tried to check in by swiping my passport.
Didn’t work.
When I did succeed by typing in my name and destination city, the machine recognized but rejected me because of the pet, at which point an actual human being intervened, only to send me to yet another, though in the same terminal, distant location.
Again I “luggaged.”
The clock was ticking.
Unbelievably, the third counter didn’t like me either, returned me, cursing the entire way, to location number 3.
There the slowest pet-check-in-specialist in aviation history had nearly completed the process, when I was reduced to begging, “Please hurry. I’m going to miss my flight.”
“OOOOOOOOOOOh, you have plentyyyyyyyyyyy of tiiiiiiiiiime.”
“Not if you have anything to do with it.” I think.
However, her sloooooooowly articulated, cloooooooooosing words, were less than comforting, “Gate number 50. Youuuuuuuuu have a longgggggg way to gooooooooo!”
No kidding!
Only after being rejected yet once more during the security check for, you guessed it, tooooooooooo many carry-on bags, did I finally persuade the less-than-friendly luggage Nazi, that I had paid 100 extra US dollars for the privilege of bringing my dog along. I had to show the receipt.
You get the picture.
There’s ALWAYS a complication because of the bags, especially when Sara isn’t along to help carry!
Maybe she’s right.
Maybe there should be an intervention.
In the meantime, I’ll have to further sharpen my Sherpa skills—
It’s Monday. And we’re launching another week’s worth of less-than-brilliant (but often, above-average) blogging here at Reinventing the Event Horizon.
And, in honor of the week’s beginning, I bring you an “inspiring” (at least I’m trying) laundry list of updates:
1. First, thanks to all of you for your kind and supportive comments in response to last week’s news that I wanted to begin moving my blog in the direction of memoir, not that I would discontinue writing about the event horizon that is Haiti, but that I would also address event horizons from my personal past: namely my father’s organized crime connections and the black hole that is my battle with bipolar disorder. (To read these posts click here and here.)
I believe the best writing is inevitably the most honest writing and my not addressing these issues was becoming a form of compositional dishonesty—a way of avoiding the shame associated with my father and the sigma connected to my illness.
One way to lessen stigma is to stop hiding, or, in my case, to boldly address my demons in the blogosphere’s bright light, to share my struggle, to tell my story, both the pain of the past and the hope that is recovery.
2. Secondly, I’d like to announce an upcoming series of posts from my friend and fellow writer Mindy Shannon Phelps. (I introduced Mindy last week. To read her first post click here.) As she finds time, Mindy will write pieces that address our sometimes serious, sometimes silly misadventures in being human.
3. Finally, an update on my dog Lucy’s adventures in Vietnam—her Maltese march, North to South, South to North.
In last Monday’s post (click here to read) I forgot to include a few of the funniest photos—namely Lucy in Halong Bay .
(Some of you may have heard of a recent accident in Halong Bay. A tour boat sank. 12 were killed. To read about this February 17th incident click here.)
In case you’re not up on the geography of Vietnam, Halong Bay is an UNESCO World Heritage site and hugely popular tourist attraction in northern Vietnam. According to legend, the Vietnamese were being invaded by the Chinese when the gods sent a family of dragons to protect the bay. The dragons were said to spit jewels into the water, to build a wall against the invaders, what is, in fact, a series of nearly 2,000 limestone islands that decorate the bay:
Lucy is a dog with wanderlust. She loves to go just about anywhere. And though she looks the part of precious pup–
My seven pound “princess,” in fact, behaves badly anywhere other than her black, backpack carrier—
Very badly!
Lucy does not possess anything remotely resembling a sweet disposition. Her bark–loud, high-decibeled, and persistent–is her best weapon in an arsenal of ways to get what she wants.
But John Grogan, author of Marley & Me, insists that all dogs are great, and bad dogs–“the greatest of them all.”
And Lucy is indeed a great traveler—
Lucy is such a perfect companion on the road, that Sara and I have trotted the globe with her in tow—if for no other reason than she’s at her best, her most charming and well-behaved in planes, trains, and automobiles.
And on our world-wide odyssey to find canine obedience and tail-wagging good manners, our first stop with Lucy was Vietnam—a country Lucy traveled top to bottom, bottom to top.
Lucy behaved beautifully during our grueling 24 hour trans-global trip to Saigon. Honestly, I couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome.
However, day-to-day living with Lucy in Vietnam proved more challenging, since, for the first several days, I couldn’t locate a blade of grass within a 10 block radius of our apartment. There was a park a 15 minute walk away, but it was so far that even getting there involved rehydration stops along the way:
And once we finally arrived, it turned out dogs were not allowed on the lawn. I kid you not!
One morning, a security a guard reprimanded me, “Not dog on grass! Not dog on grass!” When I showed him the pink poop bag with which I intended to pick up any excrement, pink poop bag I had brought purposefully all the way from the US—biodegradable and environmentally friendly—he seemed not the least impressed and repeated his demand with all the more irritation, “Not dog on grass! Not dog on grass!” But Lucy refused to pee or poop on pavement. What was an environmentally conscious, dog-toting-to-the-Far-East American to do?
What I did was find this lonely square of grass in front of the Indonesian Consulate:
But once she adjusted to only a tiny turf, Lucy was off to places like the Reunification Palace:
She visited famous fountains:
She even participated in a student survey:
She insisted on praying at Notre-Dame Basilica:
Lucy traveled the 1,100 miles from Saigon to Hanoi by train—a nearly 30 hour trip:
She loved lounging in our compartment and mooching meals from Sara:
In Hanoi she visited the Temple of Literature by back pack:
She enjoyed Sunday brunch at the world-famous Metropole Hotel:
Lucy took us shopping in the Old Quarter:
There she bought the smallest conical hat in all of Southeast Asia:
Lucy continues to turn heads even now that we live in Haiti, but she still insists no well-mannered Maltese would do Vietnam without a millinery consultation.
My partner Sara and I are beginning to lose touch—
Lose touch with what it means to be an even remotely “normal” American couple. Some might say that’s not such a bad thing, but I promise you, we have gotten so far from the center of the bell curve, we can’t find the bell any more. We can’t even hear it ringing in the distance.
So–in light of this loss, today, I bring you the top 10 ways you too can be the most un-American of American couples:
#10. Station armed guards outside your house.
This is sure to eliminate any and all illusions of privacy.
(If you are new to the blog, my partner Sara and I live in Haiti where threats to security are common. Click here to read a post about this.)
#9. Argue frequently about how you will generate electricity.
Sara and I have been known to have some of our hottest arguments around just how long we can safely run our generator, especially on days when we have no or very little electricity from the city. I don’t like to be hot. Heat makes me irritable, bitchy, and stressed. So during the hottest nights here in Haiti, I’ve wanted to keep the air conditioning on, or at the very least, a fan running—neither of which are possible without electricity or our generator running.
(To read an entire post dedicated to Haiti’s infrastructure issues click here.)
#8. Do without television.
Instead watch DVDs of “30-Something” for evening entertainment. I knew things were getting bad when over the weekend Sara and I watched back to back episodes of the show’s first season and felt like we were enjoying a special treat, hovering around Sara’s laptop like kids in front of Saturday morning cartoons.
“Oh, boy!” we exclaimed elbowing one another. “Isn’t this great!” We would have broken out the popcorn, if we had a microwave to pop it in.
#7. Go to bed before dinner.
Not out of passion, but because you’ve become dreadfully boring and tire easily.
#6. Have no hot water in your kitchen sink.
Not to mention no dish-washer.
#5. Develop an active fear of kidnapping.
On average—there’s a kidnapping a day in Port-au-Prince—usually of foreigners, often of ex-pats working for NGOs on earthquake reconstruction. And in fact, a number of these kidnappings actually happen in Petion-ville, where we live, since most NGOs have set up their operations from this location.
Many ex-pats are kidnapped from their cars. To alleviate that risk we drive with seatbelts on, windows up, doors locked. It’s harder to be pulled from a vehicle that way.
#4. Stage incidents of international canine trafficking.
I know most folks don’t traipse the planet, canine companions in tow, but Sara and I, for whatever reason, see fit to move our mutts to whichever corner of the globe is hosting the latest in earth-shaking disasters.
For example, it was challenging to take a 40 pound, blonde terrier to Vietnam, where the meat of medium sized, light skinned canines is still considered a delicacy. And though it ended well, concluded with Ralph arriving uneaten in Hanoi, it proved so crazy-making along the way, we “sanely” decided to bring him here to Haiti this past summer.
However, that trip proved less eventful—except for his traveling companions on the flight from Miami to Port-au-Prince—the 10,000 chicks he still hasn’t stopped chirping about.
(For an entire post on pet-transport mishaps click here.)
#3. Appreciate the difference between “trash” and “stash.”
Sara has “placement issues”—a problem she blames on her training as an architect and which she insists I knew about prior to our partnering and simply can not change. Bottom line—Sara likes to arrange things: drawers, cupboards, closets, the contents of the refrigerator, mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup arranged in tidy rows—like items lined up together—like soldiers—an army of condiments ready for edible action. If an object doesn’t fall neatly into rank, the solution for Sara is simple—throw it in the trash.
I, on the other hand, tend to collect things—and not the kinds of things most would consider collectables, but which I gather in the name of “potential art”—items I prefer to call “collagables”—buttons, beads, ribbons, rocks, shells, business cards, bottle caps, maps, matchboxes, newspaper clippings, play bills, and, among other things, sales receipts—in my mind the most under-rated and readily available of all the collagables—a free gift with each purchase, so to speak.
Sara insists my stash is trash!
#2. Agree on only one thing.
That there are too many white people in America.
On one of our recent trips back to the US what stood out to both of us most, even though our home is in an ethically-mixed neighborhood, was the overwhelming huge number of Caucasian in the city where we live. At one point Sara turned to me in the grocery store produce isle and asked: “What do you notice about being home?” My response was immediate, “There are so many white people in America! I had forgotten.” It surprised us how quickly we both had become conditioned to what seems an appropriate ethnic mix. We had made a shift that we noticed only when coming “home.” If this can happen for us, it can happen for others. Come join us. Make the switch.
#1. Be denied the right to marry.
This one I think speaks for itself, but if not please watch this video:
Sara reminds me, that though we don’t have the right to marry in Kentucky, we at least now have an openly gay mayor in Lexington, so that’s a step in the right direction. (To read about Jim Gray click here.)
However, Sara also insists that, by far, the weirdest thing about us as couple is that I asked her to brainstorm with me about “what makes us weird as a couple.” I’m not exactly sure what’s so weird about that, but Sara says my not recognizing the strangeness of that request makes it even weirder. I don’t know. You be the judge.
At any rate, remember that “normal” is a difficult to define category. I appreciate that. But if you recall the 1960s television sitcom, “The Odd Couple,” you’ll see that I’m not talking so much about individual issues that separate us from the crowd. I’m looking at the entire constellation of individual quirks that combine to make a couple what most others would consider strange. I’m looking at the “Odd Couple” factor, if you will.
Felix Unger and Oscar Madison epitomized for a generation of Americans just what it meant to be uniquely coupled in the 1960s.
But If Felix and Oscar were the not-so-average pair of heterosexual bachelors in the 60s, I would argue that Sara and I are the same for this decade’s no-where-near-single lesbian couple—a uniqueness not related in the least to the reality of sexual preference.
In fact, Sara and I give whole new meaning to the notion of “odd couple”—sexual orientation not withstanding.
We may be weird–
But we do want to wed!
What sets you and your partner apart from the crowd? What makes a couple “weird” in the country you call home? Do gay and lesbian couple have the right to wed where you live?
This story is about the heartless and dishonest action taken by a company that claims to not only be “America’s largest and most reliable wireless network,” but also the one “more people trust.”
Clearly, America’s trust is ill-founded. And I am about to show you why.
My partner Sara and I live in Haiti, where Sara directs the recovery operation for one of the world’s largest and most well-known international aid organizations. I live in Port-au-Prince with her and blog about Haiti’s need for more relief, more aid, more care, more prayer. Sara does the work. I spread the word.
On the weekend of February 4th, Sara and I were in Miami for a long weekend away from the stress and strife, the grit and grime that is Port-au-Prince. But before hitting the beach and soaking up the sun, we wanted to upgrade our phones and renew our Verizon Wireless contract.
Up until that Friday I had an unlimited international data plan for my mobile phone—something that was essential to my functioning in Haiti, where access to both electricity and wireless is limited. I needed to upgrade my phone because I blog and the WordPress software I need was not available on the model of Blackberry I owned. Sara also needed an equipment upgrade, since her BlackBerry had stopped working several months before.
Frustrated that our access to electricity in Haiti had not improved even a year after the earthquake, we stopped at a North Miami Verizon Wireless store on our way in from the airport. We were eager; we were enthusiastic as we burst through the door and were greeted by a Verizon employee with, “Would you like to buy a Droid today?”
“No,” I sighed. “Really, I’d prefer another Blackberry, perhaps the Storm.”
The Verizon representative was willing to show me the Blackberry but eager to point out how difficult it was to type from the touch screen. He suggested I try. I did. Indeed, it was difficult.
“Really,” he offered. “The Droid 2 keyboard is more user-friendly and easier to operate.”
To make a long story short—
I tried the Droid. I love the Droid. Sara tried it. She loved it. We were sold.
We were in the store for close to two hours. We explained our circumstances to our now friend from Jamaica, who understood our frustration, as he too had grown up on a Caribbean island. We discussed my need to blog from my phone. He even loaded the WordPress software for me and moved the icon to my home page for easy access.
He empathized. He insisted the Droid was truly the answer to our data needs in Haiti. He referred to the unlimited access to email and internet we would enjoy. Things would be better.
Two hours later we left the North Miami Verizon Wireless store 2 Droids richer and $600 poorer—
Since, when we got back to Haiti the following Monday evening, we discovered we had no unlimited international data package. The phones were useless to us. We spent $600 and, in doing so, lost the very feature that made the phones useful to us, in fact, essential to us.
We had been duped.
So the first thing Tuesday morning, I called Verizon to have the problem resolved. I spoke with a “customer service” representative. I spoke with 2 managers.
Finally, manager Lenora empathized with our situation and agreed to submit a claim to the “Inactive Pricing Committee. “
Now, 7 expensive phone calls to US “Customer Service” later (Verizon refuses to remove the roaming charges associated with those calls), I learned this morning that Verizon has denied our claim, because we bought Droids and the unlimited data package had only been available on Blackberries.
If only we would return our phones to the nearest Verizon store and trade them for Blackberries then the committee MIGHT be able to reconsider our claim.
Maybe the “customer service” representative offered we could mail our phones back to the US.
Yeah, right—mail 2 VERY expensive phones from a country that doesn’t have a national mail service.
Yeah, right—mail them safely from a country where we can’t even trust our own gardener not to steal our tools—not because he’s a dishonest thief, but because he is that desperate to feed his family and might be able to trade the hammer on the street for a handful of rice, a cup of beans.
We won’t be using these phones for economic gain. Really, I‘d be a lot more comfortable blogging from the US, and Sara would be more relaxed if she weren’t trying to house the 1.3 million homeless Haitians living in Port-au-Prince.
We don’t make nearly enough money to pay the $70 per month for the 7 GB of data per phone that won’t come close to meeting our needs.
International aid work doesn’t pay well. Blogging about Haiti pays nothing.
Bottom line—
Verizon refuses to restore the unlimited international data plan we had until February 4th, when a Verizon representative dishonestly persuaded us to buy Droids rather than the Blackberries our unlimited access to data depended on.
Verizon has essentially crippled us in our ability to function in Haiti.
Verizon may be the wireless company most Americans trust, but God forbid, the Haitian people place a similar trust in corporate America’s willingness to meet their needs.
Verizon insists there’s really nothing more they can do.
Verizon Wireless is the devil!
(If you are willing, please pass along this story of corporate greed at the expense of the planet’s poor. Please help me hold Verizon accountable.)
Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. —Rainer Maria Rilke
The weekend here in Haiti has ended . . .
The time to catch up—do laundry, make beds, have some spaghetti with the ones we love—has lead us to Valentine’s Day—muddy, gone-amuck Monday Cinderella-ed into—
More laundry, more beds, more spaghetti with the ones we don’t always love.
Yes, the ones we love may be less than lovely at times. But on Valentine’s Day, I’m also thinking about my home here in Haiti and about my home in the blogosphere, readers who care, readers I’ve come to love.
So, it seems essential on this day that celebrates love, a day that celebrates caring and appreciation, that I invite readers I love into the heart of my life here in Haiti–into my home. For it’s as true as it is cliched: home is where the heart is.
A while back, on a truly muddy Monday, I promised photos of our house in Port-au-Prince, promised, that is, when so many of you ranted about our kitchen decor in a post called “Haiti needs to be HGTV’d.” (If you missed that post, click here.)
So, though “Writing Neurotic” still threatens (for an introduction to “Writing Neurotic” click here and here), our wireless is working well today—is almost, semi fast . . . (Notice the adverbs that qualify “fast.” All apply.)
Given this, I’m going to attempt a giant photo upload. (If you’re not familiar with the wireless challenges we face at our house here in Haiti, click here.)
If I succeed, a virtual tour of our home should follow. (Please pray the bandwidth gods, maybe even Saint Valentine himself, remain with us.)
Here’s the deal. Our house sits on a hillside, hovering above the up-scale Port-au-Prince suburb of Petion-ville, where the streets are poorly paved, if at all, and the twists and turns of “almost-roads” threaten even the most seasoned drivers—pot holes the size of swimming pools are not uncommon.
Though there’s little electricity, once you get here, things are lovely. Truly—our home is small but adequate, and we have dressed it up with paint—bold color, saturated color, the kind you want to drink in and absorb.
After honking to alert the guard (yes, he’s armed), he’ll open the gate and you’ll drive onto what is essentially the roof of our house—an outside deck that, for the most part, doubles our living space, (only sometimes exposing us to the stench of burning tire in the town below. Don’t worry there’s been no rioting today. We’re sinus-ly safe for now.)
Jean-Jean will open the gate, and our dog Ralph will greet you.
So come join us, pull up a chair, have cup of tea or a cocktail, if you like. The roof-top deck, where we’re sitting looks like this:
The view from your seat looks like this:
And, if you wonder about that roaring, rumbling sound—it’s our generator round the corner, keeping the lights on for us:
Sorry for that obnoxious noise!
You’ll enter the house itself from the roof, by descending a set of stairs:
From the opposite side of the room, the staircase looks like this:
You’ve entered our main living space—a kitchenlivingdiningroom—what in the US we might call a “great room,” though ours is not so grand.
The kitchen looks like this:
smallandcrampedbutweloveit
Our main seating area looks like this:
Have a seat. Soak in the color.
On opposite sides of this space, doors lead to two rooms, the master bedroom and bath on one side, the guest room and bath on the other.
The master bedroom looks like this:
And the master bathroom looks like this:
You’ll enter the guest room through this doorway:
This room doubles as Sara’s office, but if you spend the night, you’ll sleep here:
Your bathroom, a mirror image of the master, looks like this:
Another door off the guest room leads to a balcony that looks like this:
And a stairway that looks this:
At the bottom of the stairs, another door from the outside opens into my studio and study:
Wait!
Our guard Jean-Jean rushes down the stairs–interupts the tour. He insists the protests have started again. You need to go.
Gosh, darn, you just got here——
We hurry back up the stairs to your car.
Well, at least you’ve gotten a sneak peak at our home in Port-au-Prince, I concede, and as you close the car door, I shout above clatter of gate opening–
Let us know when you can come again, stay a little longer, spend the night.
I’ll send a driver and an armed-escort to meet your flight.
(For a post about madness at the Port-au-Prince airport, click here.)
Happy Valentine’s Day from the heart of our home!
Happy Valentine’s Day–from the (still unresolved) heart of Haiti—————-
I’m preparing a post for next week about why Sara and I are weird as a couple. (And the fact of the matter is, we are way, way weird.) However, that new piece won’t mean as much if you haven’t read the one I’m re-posting below.
I wrote what appears here only a few days into the life of this blog, so few of you will likely have seen it in its original incarnation. It was called “Top 10 Reasons I’m Pretty Much a Freak.” Hope it entertains you over the weekend.
Let’s face it. I’m not normal. My partner Sara has always said I was weird—actually her word was “eccentric”—but you get the picture.
At any rate, amid all the seriousness I face living in Haiti, I’ve decided to lighten things up here today by offering you the top ten reasons Sara still insists I’m what you could call—well—“quirky:”
#10. Left to my own devices, I eat mostly from what my friend Milana and I call the “white food group.” Edible items in this category include: baguettes, bagels, butter, cream cheese, sour cream, lots and lots of sugar—sugar cookies, cakes, unimaginable amounts of pie crust—and if I were a drinker, which I am not—wine!
#9. I’m a double fisted drinker. Not with wine, of course, but with hot and cold beverages, mostly hot tea, Lipton (though since we’ve come to Haiti, coffee has become an option), and Pepsi Max, when I can find it—(Coke Zero, otherwise). Now, for me, this only works in one direction. Namely, if I drink something hot, I have to have the cold cola to accompany it. However, chilled drinks can stand alone—not always needing the hot accompaniment.
#8. I tend to collect things—and not the kinds of things most would consider collectables, but which I gather in the name of “potential art”—items I prefer to call “collagables”—buttons, beads, ribbons, rocks, shells, business cards, bottle caps, maps, matchboxes, newspaper clippings, play bills, and, among other things, sales receipts—in my mind the most under-rated and readily available of all the collagables—a free gift with each purchase, so to speak.
#6. I never use a top sheet. Don’t believe in them. Never have.
#5. I pretty much live with a saint— We’ll call her Saint Sara the Orderly. (And I have saintly siblings, but I’ll leave that for a later post.) Sara has “placement issues”—a problem she blames on her training as an architect and which she insists I knew about prior to our partnering and simply can not change, as they are, in fact, evidence of her Saintly origins—rituals of the Order, so to speak. Bottom line—Sara likes to arrange things: drawers, cupboards, closets, the contents of the refrigerator, mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup arranged in tidy rows—like items lined up together—like soldiers—an army of condiments ready for edible action. Need I say more.
#4. My partner does disaster response. She’s a disaster response expert. Now there aren’t a lot of these people on the planet (though there are quite a few of them in Haiti these days). I believe (and you are free to disagree), that’s it’s the relative scarcity of this species that makes disasters so, well, “disastrous.” In all seriousness, I’m grateful that Sara does this kind of work. It helps make meaning in our lives. And though that “meaning” often means traveling a lot, we’re not exactly heading to what most would call “vacation destinations.”
#3. My mother wears clothes pins as fashion accessories. Actually, at age 72 she uses them as a mnemonic device, so let’s not get all uptight about this one. However, for further discussion of this semi-strange sartorial habit, I refer you to a post from several days ago called, “Airing Family Secrets Via Haute Couture.”
#2. I taught at Oral Roberts University. This may speak for itself—except that I might mention having arrived on campus in 1986, just after Oral sequestered himself in the Prayer Tower for a number of weeks, claiming God was going to “bring him home” if believers didn’t donate 6 million dollars. I know some of you may be too young to remember this, but it’s true. He did it. I was there. And the play the drama department performed that semester just happened to be—“Death of a Salesman”—I kid you not!
#1. My father was in the mafia–pretty much, that’s what it boils down to—Enough said.
Now, none of these items in and of themselves makes one weird—not even two or three. It’s the global picture I’m getting at.
And I haven’t even included here the biggest reason I’m a weirdo. But, let’s face it folks, we don’t know one another well enough yet for me to share all my secrets. It seems though the picture’s becoming clearer—
Kathryn M. McCullough 
