Not that "leaky house" proverb AGAIN...

I hope this makes up for my last lame dispatch...

Everyone wants to know: What's happening in Haiti? Good question. I don't know how much of the current situation in Haiti is being covered by the American media these days. Sometimes my Haitian friends ask me if Americans know about the coup attempt, the riots, murdered and mutilated police, cities in flames and desperate shortages of food and medicine. Because if the Americans knew, they tell me, they would ask their president to send help, right? Then I have to explain that Americans have their plates pretty full right now, what with Janet Jackson exposing a breast at the Superbowl Halftime show and all. Of course in Haiti, women breast-feed their babies right outside where anyone could accidentally walk by and see them, so there's really no point trying to explain anything to them, the savages.

And some things just defy explanation anyway. I've never been a fan of George W. Bush, no secret there. But the report I heard on BBC radio last night made me truly ashamed to be from the same country as that evil fucking snake. Mr. Bush made an announcement that any Haitians trying to flee the violence in their country would be immediately picked up by the Coast Guard and returned home, no questions asked, no exceptions. And this came right after the self-righteous little prick condemned Aristide for "human rights violations" and encouraged him to just step down and let a violent mob take over his country. There's so much wrong with this I don't even know where to begin. I guess we just have to trust that our President, as he's so fond of reminding us, is a religious man and that Jesus would have wanted him to refuse to help thousands of refugees desperate enough to risk their children's lives to try to escape their own country. God Bless America.

So the fighting continues, and Peace Corps has evacuated all its Haiti volunteers to Washington as of Saturday, February 22nd. But I get to stay until April when my DR service closes. In fact, I tried to get the Corps to let me transfer to Haiti and stay another year, but the aforementioned evacuation means that probably isn't too likely to happen now. Meanwhile, things are still tranquilo out in Tilory and I'm still travelling across the border to work as usual, at least until someone in the office in Santo Domingo remembers I'm here and gives me the pau-pau (Dominican for "smackdown.")

I'm not really worried for myself though. Tilory is pretty remote from the fighting. In fact it's pretty remote from everything. And quiet. Even in the middle of a bloody coup attempt, parts of Haiti are quieter than your average Dominican pueblo on any given evening.

Last week I went to work in the clinic, and as I was walking up the road all the kids ran after me yelling "Danyel! Danyel!" (yeah, they call me that in Haiti too, but they spell it different). A guy named Lukas who bakes bread for the market invited me into his yard and gave me some hot french-style baguettes right from his big brick oven. When I got to the clinic the usual group of locals was hanging out on the porch and we ate hot bread and talked about nothing in particular. Clemencia, the nurse, came out and handed me an old beer bottle plugged with a piece of corn cob, and told me, winking, she'd been experimenting with brewing her own "cough syrup" at home. It was pure cherry-flavored alcohol and we passed it around for everyone to sample. Good times. I never thought I'd be disappointed to be told I couldn't live somewhere with no electricity or water, or stable government, but right at that moment it struck me that I really was. Of course, I have a steady paycheck, no hungry kids and the option to leave any time I want to.

A kid named Nelson who helps out sometimes at the clinic came by later in the day. I told him I'd be leaving in April. He said he'd go with me because I might still need his help in the States. He meant it, too. I tried to come up with good reasons, simple enough that I could explain them in my terrible French, not to take him back with me. I told him his father would miss him if he left Haiti. He seemed to think about that for a few minutes and then went home. He came back an hour later with his father, who told me that yes, he would miss Nelson very much, but he would be very happy if I would take his son home with me. And he meant it, too. He was willing to let his own son leave the country with a near stranger. He said Nelson was a good boy and a hard worker, and he would have a better life in America. He didn't want to raise his son in Haiti. What do you say in a situation like that? Really, what? I couldn't stop thinking about Nelson for the rest of the afternoon, even when a baby puked on my shoes. Even when I was scouring out an infected abcess. Even when I was giving people penicillin shots in the ass. Even then.

I went home on a loaded rice truck, daydreaming and hanging on to the sacks and trying not to get thrown off on the curves. One of the sacks bounced off when we hit a bump so I pounded on the roof to get the driver's attention. He and his partner got out and counted the sacks. Apparently another sack had fallen out farther up the road, hadn't I seen that? They turned the truck around to retrace our route and stopped to ask pedestrians if they'd noticed a stray sack of rice laying around. Finally someone said yes, they'd seen Miguelito carrying a sack on his motorcycle up towards his finca, which was up a little dirt road the truck couldn't enter. I was ordered to guard the remaining sacks while the truck's owners went to find this Miguelito guy. I sat there for nearly an hour. Only one other truck passed in that time. I tried to flag it down for a ride. The driver looked shocked that I would even suggest such a thing. "And who's going to guard the rice sacks," he wanted to know. I was ashamed of myself for trying to shirk my duty and took my job a little more seriously after that. Even so, after a while I dug out my bottle of home-brewed cough syrup and started taking little swigs while I layed back and watched the clouds until my friends came back. Apparently Miguelito gave up his rice without a fight. He'd only done what anyone else would have done. When you see an unclaimed sack of rice in the road, you take it home, simple as that. There were no hard feelings on either side.

By then I had a pretty good buzz going from my self-medication. It had been such a peaceful day, it was hard to believe that people were fighting and dying less than 100 kilometers away. And that in less than two months, I'd be back home taking hot showers, sleeping in a warm bed and eating buckets of Popeye's chicken. I feel guilty about going back to my safe, comfortable life. There's a proverb in Haiti that says "Kay koule twompe soley men li pa twompe lapli," or "A leaky house can fool the sun but it doesn't fool the rain." If I leave now, just when things are turning really bad, doesn't that make me a leaky house? It's easy enough to say that the decision to stay or go has been taken out of my hands by the US government, but is that really good enough? Am I just as bad as Bush for not bringing Nelson home with me? Maybe so, but I'm coming home anyway. At least until I find out which country I'm going to next.

Dave