There is something about women who are within a certain age group.  The group seems to begin at about 75, and continue on upwards until roughly the age of the concept of the wheel and other such inventions.  One of the characteristics of this age group is the irrepressible desire to feed people.  I don't know if it is some sort of super-martiarchal instinct that kicks in, but the universal constants are the need to feed people and the ability to "cook like a grandmother."

I have just returned from a small bar down the street, called The Détante Bar, on Diquini Street in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  I went there with a few members of the ER and surgical staff after a day out at Jacmel, a local beach.  The Détante Bar, or The "Easing of Strained Relations" Bar is just a hop skip and a jump down the street from the Hospital.  We all went in the middle of a full fledged tropical storm, and despite the fact we went less than 100 yards, we all arrived SOAKED to the bone.  The bar itself is a tiny little place, maybe 8'x12', and could fit all of us in a pinch.  The hosts were delighted to see us, and in short order we had run clear through their supply of beer (the native Haitian beer, Prestige, plus a handful of Dominican beers)...much to their delight, as we were paying the "American Price" which seems to be a minimum of 20% higher. It was a wonderful way to end a long day.

The woman who is the cook at this little place reminded me of every incredibly old grandmother I have ever met.  Beautiful in only the way an ancient woman can be, her face sharing with the world the weight of her years of life.  She came out of the tiny kitchen, crooked and bent with age, wearing a massive chapeau.  She hobbled over to us on ruined feet and shook our hands, smiling through missing teeth.  I am going back with a friend of mine tomorrow for lunch so she can cook us spaghetti, her specialty.  It is hard for me to see an old woman like this without thinking of my own Grossa Oma, my great grandmother.  Her gnarled thick hands and thicker accent, her garden, her kinda frizzy hair she was always so particular about, her garden, and most of all...her cooking.  There is something about food that is cooked with love, something that makes it more than just food for the body.  There is no restaurant in the world that can compete with my great-grandmothers cooking.  

Today was a day filled with bitter observations and irritating realizations.  As the Hospital I am staying at is a Seventh Day Adventist hospital, there was a church service this morning.  I poked my head in momentarily, took a couple pictures, and went and sat on the steps in front of the hospital with the translators and the daily herd of children who live in the tent-city on hospital grounds.  One of the little girls, whose name was French and seemed as long as my arm, brought a book up to me.  It was one of the normal SDA bible story books you see in great abundance within any SDA church, but it had one subtle difference.  Inside the front cover someone had written, "I am hungry, please give me money, (5 dollars US)."  This is verbatim, with brackets and everything.  There are several conflicting reactions I feel upon reading this...and I am not comfortable with any of them;

1.  The girl IS hungry, and there isn't enough food to go around.  While people are sending millions of dollars to Haiti, most of it is being eaten up by corruption, and the people in the street are literally STARVING.  I would LOVE to help this little girl, but I cannot just give her money, or we will have a riot on our hands.  This makes me feel like a stingy bastard...but what else can I do?  I cannot directly give her anything without giving EVERYONE on the hospital grounds the same thing.

2.  The girl is maybe 8, tops...she didn't write this.  This tells me that someone, one of her family members most likely, wrote it for her and sent her out to hustle the Americans.  While this whole business of being hustled is kinda par for the course here (and often I go along without complaint because I know the people are desperate), I really don't like the fact they are using a little girl to do it.  Even if I did give her something, she would probably go give it to whoever her 'handler' is and probably get little or nothing for her efforts...not that I support them in the first place.

What does one do?  I don't speak Haitian Creole, so I couldn't articulate my internal conflict with the entire issue to her, nor could I express my displeasure in any form other than being mean...so I did what I think most people would do, patted her on the head, smiled, and pretended like I didn't see it.  She didn't seem to think ill of me for it.  It bothers men that the situation existed at all, and I don't know what to do about it.  

We took a trip to Jacmel today, a beach about three hours southwest of Port-au-Prince.  It was quite an experience to travel inland, out of the city and through the mountains to the other side of the peninsula.  As it is in the rest of Haiti, the drivers grasp of the concept of 'safe driving' was incredibly tenuous.  Outside of Tartarus-like pit that is Port-au-Prince the rest of the country is incredibly beautiful.  The hillsides are festooned with tropical trees and blooms.  Coconut and banana trees grow like weeds, overhanging the road in places with their fruits.  We were also able to see some direct UN presence in the form of SriLankan troops wielding massive earth movers.  

It was sad to see the cane and fruit plantations, each with their collapsed brick houses.  However sad that was, sadder still it is to note that while the people are rebuilding, they are building their new structures in the exact same fashion as their old ones had been.  They are even rebuilding them using the materials from their destroyed domiciles.  Its very sad to see that no matter how great the effort to assist the people materially is, they will not be any better off unless they change.

I think a friend of mine is correct in saying that the foundation of a successful society is a successful education for the members of that society.  Here, the people build like this because they don't know any better.  They don't see that their own shoddy construction directly lead to the deaths of thousands, they only see the fact that mother nature whomped on them.  Things won't really change until the nation as a whole can pull itself together and educate itself to the nature of the world in which we live.