Port-au-Prince, I love you.

I unexpectedly returned to the US from Haiti almost 2 months ago. I'm honestly still mourning from saying goodbye to this amazing country but I thought I should write. On one of my last nights, I and two dear friends climbed up an iron latticed door to the roof of their house in Delmas to watch the sun set over Port-au-Prince. We lugged up lawn chairs and deliciously ice-y sodas purchased from a street-side cracked foam cooler. The breeze was cool as we talked about the many names of Haiti. Potoprens, Port-au-Prince, PAP. Cap-Haitien, Kapayisyen, Okap.




We talked about how beautiful it would be to make a film that would tell the story of the people, the camera jumping to follow someone new as they passed each other in the streets, the theater of Haiti. Let's begin with a scene of a mother viciously brushing her daughter's hair as she prepares her for school. Close-up on the somber face of the girl as her hair is bedecked in ribbons that match her school uniform, then watch her navigate the traffic and rubble of the city as she walks to school, somewhere nowhere near as bright and clean as herself. The socks with the ruffles kept bright white by a one-girl ballet avoiding puddles, grease, straight-up sewage.

The camera would get a direct look into the eyes of a young male musician and then follow him. And so on with a laborer, a maid in a wealthy household, a Creole monopolist, a young boy being trained in metalwork by his older brothers and father. Catch the tap-tap back into the country with the ti machann, who travel for hours between their homes and Port-au-Prince to buy and sell their wares, stuffed tightly in with chickens and heads of cabbage.

Life in Haiti was both monotonous and dramatic, full of the contrast that makes for great art. No wonder there are so many vivid writers, painters, and musicians here.

I was hoping to have a smooth transition into other work to tell you about, but I'm still looking. I don't have much longer to wait until I do start the next exciting chapter of my life as a graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. I will be concentrating in Social and Urban Policy. I will continue posting on Haiti as I learn more, but I may have to start a new blog to share more about who I meet and learn from in the next 2 years. Thank you all for reading.