I know, I know. I've been awful at keeping this blog up during the last year of travels, but it's been nice to have so many of you chiding me for it. So yes, I apologize that you've missed out on Niger, Mauritania and Guatemala - and some fun vacation travel around Mexico and Hawaii, too. I've been chipping away at a travel memoir so maybe eventually I'll put together something cohesive and share some of those experiences.
But for now, you get Haiti.
Traveling to Haiti feels like checking an important box. It's development work central - has been for years, but especially in the post-earthquake years, so along with Ethiopia, this feels like earning a humanitarian aid badge of sorts. (Now all I need are Afghanistan and Sudan, right Mom?)
I'm here doing assessment and design work for a nutrition and agriculture program, subjects which I've done a pretty good job of carving out as a technical niche. Many of you have heard me lament my lack of technical specialization over the years, but I'm still fully enjoying being a "food security person".
Haiti, stunning island that she is, is an entirely different cultural context from anywhere I've worked before. Parts of Africa and the Middle East feel like second nature at this point, but Guatemala and now here are interesting learning experiences for me given how different they are from where I've been before. Yet the big pieces are the same where things like nutrition, maternal and child health, and agriculture are concerned ... the trends are strikingly consistent wherever you go, although discovering the nuances and variations below the surface is sociologically and anthropologically fascinating, to say the least. Digging deep into the subtleties is really the most fun.
I'll be here for just ten days - a few days in the capital of Port-au-Prince on the front and back ends, with a few days up in the north in and around the city of Cap-Haitien in the middle. Ten days is just enough to begin feeling like you're starting to understand things, but I think the mix of recurrent disaster, decades of political instability and classic multidimensional poverty make for a complicated mix to grapple with as one tries to make sense of things.
In the immediate sense, however, it's just nice to be back in the field. I've been "stuck" in the US for almost five months, and that feels like ages without traveling. The crush of a small, dilapidated airport ... throngs of taxi drivers scrambling for your attention ... heat, sweat and diesel fumes ... all such familiar sensations that make me feel like I'm home again despite being in an entirely new and foreign place. I sat outside after dark, amidst potted plants near the hotel pool, and enjoyed dinner (simple slow-fried pork with onions, peppers and plantains) and a few local beers. The idle hum of a generator, punctuated by the chirps of geckos and nearby conversations in English, French, Spanish and Haitian Kreyol, provided a comforting soundtrack that greeted me like the voice of a dear old friend. The acrid smell of burning garbage and the sudden stinging itch of mosquito bites on the thin skin of the tops of my feet were even welcoming in their familiarity. French with hotel staff flowed like I'd never missed a day in speaking it, and the renewed feelings of independence and newness made me feel freer than I have in months. It is lovely to be adrift in the world again.
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