Live Oak Blues What happens.

This time around I only see Haiti through a car windshield, a (barred) 3rd-story office window, or from inside the gated mansion where I am staying. The only time I am at any “risk” is when I walk the two blocks to the Giant store around the corner. It is modified house arrest. Don’t get me wrong: it is luxurious, but for most people luxurious isn’t what one necessarily wants to experience in Haiti. It seems sinful and separate and distorted to me, and I have yet to see anything but Port Au Prince.

Most of the Haitians I talk to here are excited by president-elect Martelly in a way I haven’t seen since the crowd scenes from the Obama Inauguration. And, yes, Martelly has borrowed a few of Obama’s trademark vocal inflections. As we watched Martelly’s speech yesterday morning, a waiter nearby looked at me, pointed to the TV, and said “Prezidan dayiti” and smiled in such a way that I nearly choked up. Politics is quite real here.

I’ve seen few sights as beautiful as storms clouds coming over Montagne Noire at sunset. And the sound! Thunder, metallic and insistent, echoing down the walls of Route Montagne Noire. The rainy season is imminent and that brings all kinds of anxiety with it: flooding and landslides from the mountains that no longer have trees to hold the ground in place and, of course, cholera.