Friday, December 10, 2010

Haiti election status

It is so difficult here to get any kind of reliable info about the elections in Haiti. Some say that everything is going great (this is mostly the electoral committee saying this), and others say that the country is on the verge of civil war.

I don't really know what's going on, but I do know that I spoke with a friend of mine this morning, an American living in Haiti who has been working in sustainable agriculture for many years. He told me that he saw people burning tires in the town where he lives and found himself kind of upset because they were burning the kinds of tires which turn inside out more easily and can be used to make small tire gardens. He said he found himself thinking that it would be ok if they were burning the tires that don't turn inside, out, but they could have used the others to grow vegetables. In fact my friend regularly goes to Port au Prince to pick up a truck load of used tires for vegetable containers, and this past week they were stopped by police since it was suspicious that anyone would be leaving the city with a load of tires. These days, tires are mostly being brought into Port au Prince for the burning and protest purposes.