I KNEW I shouldn't eat the cole slaw...I just KNEW it.  However, there are moments in which your desire to not offend usurps your caution and better judgement.  So, I ate the cole slaw.  I had grand plans to post a blog entry about my last day in Haiti before I left, with thoughts and reflections, perhaps with a bit of prose.  The best laid plans are for naught against gastro-intestinal uprisings of such colossal proportions that I truly wished I was dead.  

Thats the weird thing about being violently ill, every second of your resistance is pure agony, every muscle in your body clenches and releases in an effort to rid your innards of whatever poison you have ingested and in the process turns you into a human water feature.  To put it bluntly, I was very happy that the trash cans in the bathrooms in Haiti were 3' tall bio-waste disposal containers.  This allowed me to avoid the unfortunate decision about what end to point at the toilet, a decision that rarely ends pleasantly.  However, no matter how great your misery, you cannot do anything about it.  You simply endure the agony until your body can bear no more and then you sleep...and then you wake up and do it all over again.  

The morning we left I still felt like hell, we all piled into one of the ubiquitous micro-vans that seem to exist in all third world countries for the trip to the airport.  The drive from the hospital to the airport is a half hour with absolutely no traffic, and could take all day if the traffic is terrible.  I was charitably placed up front near what was theoretically an air conditioner vent by the other members of my travel party who knew I was not feeling all that well.  It was of course hot and miserable, the diesel fumes were thick and choking, as was the stench of trash and rotting debris.  The roads, as I have mentioned before, are not really roads... they are more a swerving string of meandering pot holes.  Anyways...long story short...just before we got to the airport my stomach decided that it had suffered through enough of this indignity and attempted to exit my body through my mouth.  Fortunately, I managed to get the window down in time, and climb halfway out of the window while we were in traffic before letting fly.  The driver pulled over, and I continued to heave out the window with everything I had during the day...which was only water fortunately, but still.  I hung there, out the window, with not a care in the world...there is nothing anyone could have told me at that point that would have registered in the slightest on me... body sapped, brain blank.  As I began to return to my body, I became aware that I had managed to puke about 3 feet in front of a pair of very shiny black shoes... my curiosity got the better of me, and I began to track slowly upwards...following the neatly pleated black pants with the stripe, over the tan shirt ablaze with badges and patches, to the disapproving face wearing sunglasses and a high military hat.  I just puked on an officer of the Haitian State Police.  Awesome...I win the crummy American contest for the day.  At least it was something totally uncontrollable and not something like elbowing people out of the way to take flash photos of the Mona Lisa.

It is easy to make light of an incident like this, one of those purely miserable moments that is quite hilarious in hindsight.  It is another thing entirely to look at Haiti, and try to find some levity.  Here I sit, in my air-conditioned office in the states, trying to make sense of the things I have seen over the past weeks.  I don't know what else to say about it right now...we as a race (Human) can do better than this.  The Haitian people are a people who have been ridden into the ground by the top 1% of their society, and are unable to lift themselves up.  Haiti has only risen to the level of international attention recently due to the earthquake, but every Haitian you speak to says that other than killing many, the earthquake did little.  Their streets were destroyed before the earthquake, their people starved before the earthquake, their children died before the earthquake.  It certainly didn't help, but it is incorrect to think that the earthquake is what has crippled the nation.  The earthquake was only the tumultuous headstone placed atop a diseased and rotting corpse.  

Where has the disconnect been?  How did this happen?  How do we fix it?  I don't know the answer right now...if you have one, please, let me know.

 

P.S.  I would like to thank all of you with whom I was privileged to work these past two weeks.  It was truly wonderful to meet all of you, and I hope to see you all again. 

 

 

CLICK HERE TO SEE ALL OF THE PHOTOS I SHOT IN HAITI - PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO USE ONE OF THEM FOR SOMETHING.  THANKS!