Stop 1: Lunch at Epidor with a Haitian Creole professor. We had delicious whole wheat subs and talked about Haiti’s future with a well known Creole instructor and author.
Stop 2: Manchester vs Barcelona soccer game with a bunch of European expat aid workers at a swanky hotel in Petionville, the hilltop haunt of Port-Au-Prince’s privileged.
Stop 3: Men Nou, the gorgeous art store that purveys Haiti’s best artists’ work. Check out the web site to see some incredible stuff. We met the owner through a mutual friend last week and wanted to see him again. He came to Haiti in the 70s as an anthropologist, spent four years in a rural community, and has never really left. He’s an incredible wealth of information on Haiti and contributed to the book I’m reading on Haiti, The Rainy Season, through his friendship with the author Amy Wilentz.
Stop 4: Dinner of griot (fried pieces of pork), banan presi (fried green plantains), and piklis (a spicy cabbage salad) at Break Time. We drank Presidente, as I’ve done once or twice before.
Stop 5: An expat party at one of the ridiculous compounds where aid workers live. This one had a huge communal living room, an enormous kitchen with two stoves, and a pool. Party was pretty lame but I met some cool people. Everyone in Haiti is so young! We planned to stop by and say hi and somehow ended up being among the last people to leave.
uh, Steph, the artist web link goes to a dating site. I don’t think that’s what you had in mind.
Here’s the link. It comes up under Men Nou Gallery.
http://mennouhaiti.com/
your life = surreal.
My dad emailed me this article from Junot Diaz about Haiti: http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.3/junot_diaz_apocalypse_haiti_earthquake.php
Also, I was thinking about you the other day because the book I’m reading “Deep Economy” by Bill McKibben (which Jasmine recommended to me). He talks about local economies and likens how no one eats locally grown food anymore to how there aren’t that many local radio stations. It’s really interesting.
Hope life and classes are awesome!