Hello reader,
We arrived in this city, Haiti’s second largest, at 2 am last night after a long drive of nine hours from a small town at Haiti’s northwest corner. Since leaving Port au Prince five days ago, we have visited three cities and towns, driving a total distance of some 450 km. It has been a grueling trip because the roads in Haiti are exceptionally bad. For all intents and purposes, routes north of Port au Prince are impassable to cars. The secondary routes that we have driven are barely navigable in the large 4 X 4 vehicule our delegation has rented. The state of the roads and the absence of any visible evidence of a crash program to repair them is a shocking commentary on the failure of three and a half years of foreign occupation in Haiti. I will have much more to say on this in the coming days.
During the past four days, we have learned a great deal about the social conditions throughout Haiti and the political views and expectations of the Haitian people. If I have not written to this blog site during this time, it’s because we have had little internet access. As well, any time spent writing would have taken away from the precious little time we have to meet and talk to Haiti’s people. So please bear with me and tune into this blog site over the next 24 to 48 hours. I return to Port au Prince tomorrow and will spend a lot of time writing up all I have learned during this first week in Haiti.
My best wishes to you all,
Roger