How is Haiti doing?

People ask me how Haiti is doing? And it is a good question. First, I'm always glad to hear the question itself, because I hope it means people are interested in Haiti. You know I think that Bill Clinton has said, not in so many words exactly, that Haiti is a chance for himself personally and maybe the international community to make up for past sins. In particular Rwanda. Of course the circumstances of Rwanda and Haiti are dramatically different, but whereas we as a world community turned a blind eye to Rwanda, we are so far, not doing this in the earthquake response in Haiti. So I'm glad for the question.

However, it is not an easy question to answer. In someways, I don't even think that any answer will do. Not for several years. It may be a bit like asking how a complicated surgery is going. One could say it is going well, but until the patient is out of the operating theatre, and off the anesthetics, and up and walking around, any answer one might give will not really answer the question. Still, the question is worth asking, even if only as an expression of concern.

So to answer the question for now, I think it is going pretty well. Really well in someways. It is just that the scale of the situation is so mind-boggling that going-pretty-well still means we have miles to go before we sleep.

I had the stereotypical foreigner moment recently. A few days ago, I had been talking with the neighbours about their mango tree. I learned that the variety is Rosalie and we talked about how it compared to the variety Fransique which is more or less considered the standard for export here. Anyhow, a couple days later one of the neighbour's sons, maybe 5 or 6 years old, called out to me saying,"Mon Blanc, here's a mango.", and then stood there in the middle of the street, tentatively holding a mango out to me. I wasn't exactly sure if he was just showing me the mango and then was going to eat it himself or if he was actually offering it to me. So I just said,"Thank you", at which point he ran over, handed the mango to me, and then quickly scurried away, almost like he was feeding an animal at the zoo. I could see some of the other kids peering out from the yard, looking to see, I suppose, what the white guy might do with a mango.

The neighbours' mango tree.