Thursday afternoon and I am... you choose! I didn't wash the veggies long enough in the h20/clorox mixture last night, so... We have dinner plans tonight, so suppression through Immodium is the law of the land and then we'll let the dams break through, if needed. Ah, the joy!
So, today is a non-day here in Pacot for me. I visited the US Embassy this morning, stopped by at "Twin Market" to buy things for breakfast, and then came home and waited for the satellite guys to install our new modem! (We've been holed up in the bedroom using some free wireless that's floating in the ether up there... Marvelous, but it means that I'm in the bedroom all day working on my current consultancy, which makes me feel somewhat claustrophobic. Now I'm downstairs in the living area next to the kitchen, facing the window and having the sun pour on me. Lovely.) Dinner later tonight at Coast Guard Jim's, then home for bed at an early hour as it's early to rise here in Haiti.
I found out there is an English lending library called the "Colony Club" (yikes!) that one can pay annual fees to use. There's a Friday book/happy hour, which sounds delightful. We shall see. I found something on the web that's like Netflix for books, but the search engine is difficult and the books seem rather like a bunch of best-sellers. There's something about books: you can buy music on-line easily, or movies, but one -- I -- needs to hold a book, flip through it to make sure the pages yield to your hand, skim a few pages to make sure the potential for escape is real. I am a huge escapist reader: I seldom read non-fiction, but enjoy it when I do. But I like fiction: I love stepping out of my world, even when my world is out of this world.
Perhaps I shall just give up for today and eat some pineapple and read some more MFK Fisher. Sounds good to me.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Je suis ici!
En Haiti!
We landed while Hurricane Dean was lashing other parts of the Caribbean yesterday, but the skies over Port-au-Prince (PaP) were simply heavy -- no rain, no wind, just still. The landing was uneventful, grace a dieu, and we walked down the stairs onto the tarmac and a new life in a new world.
New world indeed! As we entered the building there was a man holding a little sign that read "American Embassy". We followed him up the stairs to the VIP lounge (which is why I had to wear a skirt), handed over our passports and luggage tags, and waited for 30+ minutes while our luggage was located and our passports expedited through immigration. After years of standing in line in places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Vietnam -- where immigration was an uneventful, interminable nightmare, where I watched expediters pushing other people through the lines ahead of me-- here I am as one of the expedited. Thank God we were hidden from view so sincere NGOers and other folks wouldn't shoot daggers at us through their eyes. (And I'll certainly be standing in line again when I travel off the diplomatic passport!)
So, brave new world... After collecting our passports and luggage, we were loaded into the large, white, armored Suburban and headed off to our new home in Pacot, up the hills overlooking PaP. I have never, never, never been in an armored car before and it felt, well, heavy. Ponderous. Difficult to maneuver. Unyielding. Palpably dangerous. Hmm. But the journey was fascinating: lots of people in the streets, lots of vendors and other sorts of commercial activity, etc. It was a bit of a sensory overload, in fact, heightened by the fact that I was not jet-lagged and extremely aware of our movement. I uploaded some photos on Facebook, but have one here for show. It's the women in the corner that make it so fascinating, thanks to Laurence's fine eye.
Best tap tap I've seen thus far: big picture of Jesus and the lamb on the back, yet the rest of the bus was covered with little soccer balls. Sport is religion for some, no?
Friday, August 17, 2007
10:33 PM, Channel Inn, ready to go!
This has been the LONGEST departure ever -- we've known for months that we're going to Haiti, I quit my job in March to study French, we've been buying bits and pieces since January -- let's leave already! Finally, the date is here: Saturday, August 18. And, as luck would have it, Hurricane Dean is making a bit of a mess in the Caribbean right now. However, as a friend and I discussed at dinner tonight, if the hurricane was named "Delilah" we would be worried, but Dean? Dean's an old friend who comes over for dinner and drinks a few Budweisers and gets all sentimental about old girlfriends. Anyways, American Airlines has a policy of not remaining in situ in Haiti overnight, so if AA can't fly, they won't fly. 'nuff said.
Sleepy. It's been a long week of stowing things on the boat... Now for the next big adventure.
Sleepy. It's been a long week of stowing things on the boat... Now for the next big adventure.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Actually, Sting, stand close to me...
Fan, fan, fan, fan-freakin'-tastic!
I saw the Police last night in Hartford, CT: a feat that was carefully orchestrated by changing my final French exam date and prioritizing a 2-week New England family visit prior to my departure to Haiti! As I drove our little Miata convertible into the parking lot at Rentschler Field, this guy yelled out, "Did you really drive up here from DC?" "Damn straight!" (Okay, a little embellishment on my part, but I did start in DC on Friday...) "Hot damn! I knew this was gonna be a smokin' concert!" He and his family then spent the next hour sitting in their car with the air conditioning on reading books. A strange beginning to an odd night.
First, to begin, I am a fan. A big fan. Admittedly, I was introduced to The Police when I was a very young adolescent and developed IMMEDIATE and HUGE crushes on Andy Summers and Sting. Stewart, don't know what happened there, but I think it was the British accents. Americans are suckers for accents. As it was 1983/84, Every Breath You Take was on MTV all the time and MTV was what you watched, cool or not. (We didn't have MTV -- or cable -- so I would watch MTV while babysitting, sending the kids to bed at abnormally early hours so I could feast on videos. Ah, the American way!) I was obsessed, then became more obsessed with Sting until his career just became a little too soft-rock for my tastes, although I too have Tibetan monks chanting to a subtle pan-Asian beat on many CDs in my record collection.
Anyways, over the years I had a Police thing, a Sting thing, and then the epiphany: the Police songs are the songs I'm going to be humming for decades to come. I had to go to the concert, even though tickets had been sold out for Boston and New York for a couple of months. I checked the schedule and noted a stop in Hartford: who the hell lives in Hartford? Not as many people as in New York and Boston! I bought a relatively cheapish seat at the back of the floor seating and began to manipulate my schedule.
After a long weekend -- Shawn's wedding on Saturday, Grampie's 90th birthday on Sunday, NYC with Amanda Monday and Tuesday morning -- I drove up the Merritt Parkway in the bright late July sun, stopping at a cheap Greek diner off of I-91N for dinner. I drove up to the stadium with relative ease, parked, chatted with the aforementioned guy in the truck who was excited about the "smokin'" concert, went and bought my t-shirt, and then found out I had an hour to kill before they'd let us in the stadium. Hmm.
I walked back the mile -- for real -- to the car and tried to fix my hair, messed up from the convertible ride and the humidity. Meanwhile, a guy in a Ramones t-shirt came over and said, "I gotta ask, did you come up here from Maryland?" Folks, the license plate clearly said "Washington, DC: Taxation without Representation" but over the course of the next 45 minutes he kept getting excited about Maryland, not DC. Bewildering.
We had a couple of Budweisers (hee, hee!) and I chatted with the two Ramones guys, both workers at Yale Hospital, with the first Maryland-obsessed guy working with hazardous waste. They were both convinced that I was some groupie following the band, but I decided to let the real story come out since I sometimes think my reality is just as weird as something I could make up.
The concert. Entered with an hour to spare, sat in my tiny seat at the back of the field, and watched the crowd saunter in: baby boomers, Gen X-ers, children (this was a rich Mom, Dad and the kids kind of show) all wearing comfortable shoes, comfortable clothes, and baseball hats. Disorienting. Police fans, you're getting old! You are old! I was on the younger end of the spectrum at the tender age of 36... Sigh.
Fictionplane, headed by Sting's son Joe Sumner, opened the show to tepid applause. They were good, but it was hot and the sun was right in my face. I realized with some sadness that my idea of a floor seat was actually a very poor choice: Joe and band were very tiny, the equipment for the show was blocking part of the view, the people around me were a wee bit annoying in the sense that they seemed too comfortably middle-aged! (Agism reared its ugly head at this concert, I fear. Perhaps it was more my reaction against me being a part of this age bracket... Argh!)
Finally, people began to flood into the stadium. Minutes before the concert began, one of the burly security managers looked at me and said, "How many people in your party?" "Just me!" "Here, take this ticket and go up to Section 3. They don't want any empty seats." We exchanged tickets and I moved like the wind: up, up, up closer to the stage. I stopped at one guard and checked that I was moving in the right direction... Yes. A little more.
One minute before the concert began, I was in my new seat: dead center, front section, 22 rows away from the stage. Sting on my left, Andy Summers on my right, Stewart Copeland dead center. No squinting, no pushing to see better: I was right there. I screamed, I sang, I danced my sweaty ass off. I also realized that I am a bit of an insane fan: I sang every song so loudly I sounded like Marge Simpson the next day. And no one around me knew as much as I did! What a bunch of lame-Os! I was very proud of my freaky fan prowess, but then realized that everyone behind me must have thought I was totally insane. I've been on the other side before, particularly at a Peter Gabriel concert in the early 1990s. Peter inspires true fanaticism and there were certainly some fans in full flower in Osaka in 1994; I remember giggling wildly whilst observing one fan who looked like he was having a seizure. (It was a joy attack, friends, not a seizure.)
I became that man at the concert. Joy attack. Flailing limbs. Bellower of "The Bed's Too Big Without You" and other catchy tunes. Sweaty siren of Synchronicity. Snobbish enough not to sing "Every Breath You Take" because that was the only song everyone else sang. In fact, I think I drank some water during that one.
Anyways, it was fabulous. Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. Thank you o gods of stadium concerts for recognizing this mad wild fan astray in the back of the stadium... Next time I sacrifice a goat, I'll do it in your names.
Baaah!
I saw the Police last night in Hartford, CT: a feat that was carefully orchestrated by changing my final French exam date and prioritizing a 2-week New England family visit prior to my departure to Haiti! As I drove our little Miata convertible into the parking lot at Rentschler Field, this guy yelled out, "Did you really drive up here from DC?" "Damn straight!" (Okay, a little embellishment on my part, but I did start in DC on Friday...) "Hot damn! I knew this was gonna be a smokin' concert!" He and his family then spent the next hour sitting in their car with the air conditioning on reading books. A strange beginning to an odd night.
First, to begin, I am a fan. A big fan. Admittedly, I was introduced to The Police when I was a very young adolescent and developed IMMEDIATE and HUGE crushes on Andy Summers and Sting. Stewart, don't know what happened there, but I think it was the British accents. Americans are suckers for accents. As it was 1983/84, Every Breath You Take was on MTV all the time and MTV was what you watched, cool or not. (We didn't have MTV -- or cable -- so I would watch MTV while babysitting, sending the kids to bed at abnormally early hours so I could feast on videos. Ah, the American way!) I was obsessed, then became more obsessed with Sting until his career just became a little too soft-rock for my tastes, although I too have Tibetan monks chanting to a subtle pan-Asian beat on many CDs in my record collection.
Anyways, over the years I had a Police thing, a Sting thing, and then the epiphany: the Police songs are the songs I'm going to be humming for decades to come. I had to go to the concert, even though tickets had been sold out for Boston and New York for a couple of months. I checked the schedule and noted a stop in Hartford: who the hell lives in Hartford? Not as many people as in New York and Boston! I bought a relatively cheapish seat at the back of the floor seating and began to manipulate my schedule.
After a long weekend -- Shawn's wedding on Saturday, Grampie's 90th birthday on Sunday, NYC with Amanda Monday and Tuesday morning -- I drove up the Merritt Parkway in the bright late July sun, stopping at a cheap Greek diner off of I-91N for dinner. I drove up to the stadium with relative ease, parked, chatted with the aforementioned guy in the truck who was excited about the "smokin'" concert, went and bought my t-shirt, and then found out I had an hour to kill before they'd let us in the stadium. Hmm.
I walked back the mile -- for real -- to the car and tried to fix my hair, messed up from the convertible ride and the humidity. Meanwhile, a guy in a Ramones t-shirt came over and said, "I gotta ask, did you come up here from Maryland?" Folks, the license plate clearly said "Washington, DC: Taxation without Representation" but over the course of the next 45 minutes he kept getting excited about Maryland, not DC. Bewildering.
We had a couple of Budweisers (hee, hee!) and I chatted with the two Ramones guys, both workers at Yale Hospital, with the first Maryland-obsessed guy working with hazardous waste. They were both convinced that I was some groupie following the band, but I decided to let the real story come out since I sometimes think my reality is just as weird as something I could make up.
The concert. Entered with an hour to spare, sat in my tiny seat at the back of the field, and watched the crowd saunter in: baby boomers, Gen X-ers, children (this was a rich Mom, Dad and the kids kind of show) all wearing comfortable shoes, comfortable clothes, and baseball hats. Disorienting. Police fans, you're getting old! You are old! I was on the younger end of the spectrum at the tender age of 36... Sigh.
Fictionplane, headed by Sting's son Joe Sumner, opened the show to tepid applause. They were good, but it was hot and the sun was right in my face. I realized with some sadness that my idea of a floor seat was actually a very poor choice: Joe and band were very tiny, the equipment for the show was blocking part of the view, the people around me were a wee bit annoying in the sense that they seemed too comfortably middle-aged! (Agism reared its ugly head at this concert, I fear. Perhaps it was more my reaction against me being a part of this age bracket... Argh!)
Finally, people began to flood into the stadium. Minutes before the concert began, one of the burly security managers looked at me and said, "How many people in your party?" "Just me!" "Here, take this ticket and go up to Section 3. They don't want any empty seats." We exchanged tickets and I moved like the wind: up, up, up closer to the stage. I stopped at one guard and checked that I was moving in the right direction... Yes. A little more.
One minute before the concert began, I was in my new seat: dead center, front section, 22 rows away from the stage. Sting on my left, Andy Summers on my right, Stewart Copeland dead center. No squinting, no pushing to see better: I was right there. I screamed, I sang, I danced my sweaty ass off. I also realized that I am a bit of an insane fan: I sang every song so loudly I sounded like Marge Simpson the next day. And no one around me knew as much as I did! What a bunch of lame-Os! I was very proud of my freaky fan prowess, but then realized that everyone behind me must have thought I was totally insane. I've been on the other side before, particularly at a Peter Gabriel concert in the early 1990s. Peter inspires true fanaticism and there were certainly some fans in full flower in Osaka in 1994; I remember giggling wildly whilst observing one fan who looked like he was having a seizure. (It was a joy attack, friends, not a seizure.)
I became that man at the concert. Joy attack. Flailing limbs. Bellower of "The Bed's Too Big Without You" and other catchy tunes. Sweaty siren of Synchronicity. Snobbish enough not to sing "Every Breath You Take" because that was the only song everyone else sang. In fact, I think I drank some water during that one.
Anyways, it was fabulous. Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. Thank you o gods of stadium concerts for recognizing this mad wild fan astray in the back of the stadium... Next time I sacrifice a goat, I'll do it in your names.
Baaah!
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