I've been on the move for a while now between work and personal travel for the last few months and every single experience has been so fast paced that I've missed sooooo many opportunities to actually get to writing what I thought to myself I should definitely write about.
I am currently in Port-au-Prince, Haiti for a second time in the space of a little over a month. Sitting in my room with a glass window for a wall, every single time I look out there I see such a breathtakingly beautiful place. Lush vegetation, blue waters and mountains as the foundation and backdrop of the urban sprawl all together in a single frame.
(view from my hotel window)
Every time I catch a glimpse from up here of everything out and down there I couldn't help feeling weirdly and pseudo sad that the reality is everything looks so bright and colorful from up here, but the reality on the ground is completely different. Dusty and disorganized making the heat that could otherwise be pleasant a frustration.
(driving through a nicer part of the city)
I must admit that I have so far loved coming here for the familiarity of heat, black people all around me and that sense and understanding that some things just don't work. Outside of myself though, the Haitian people I have met here whether diasporans or locally based, though happy and content to be living here, see the same things I was reluctant to express because I don't want to be that apparently privileged outsider pointing fingers and criticizing. I don't know what the answers are here and, although visible, the [cause of the] problem isn't obvious either.
I'm quite thoroughly enjoying my stay here and there'll be more on that in a seperate post. I didn't want to blend/blurr the two separate worlds.
Talk to you soon :)
(sorry my pictures are sideways, I don't know why iphone does that...gonna figure it out and correct)
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*@afropolitaine*
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