FINAL

I left Haiti this afternoon on the smallest plane I have ever seen. It had two seats- one for the pilot and one for the co-pilot. Needing to evacuate as many people as we could, 6 people crammed on the little Baron aircraft. The 4 of us in the back were crammed on top of our luggage, and certainly exceeded the 500 pound limit the plane is able to handle. On a commercial flight, the Haiti-Florida route takes around an hour and a half, yet on our midget plane it took four hours from Port au Prince to Fort Lauderdale. The flight was really scenic as this is a low flying plane and we could see all the little islands as we hovered over the water. We landed at a small private airport in Ft. Lauderdale with just enough time to make my connection to North Carolina at the commercial airport. Im now sitting on the plane to Charlotte.

Let me explain why we needed to evacuate the country. If this is too long to read, here is a link to what was happening all over the city for this past week:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1Pxddz9ATc&feature=player_embedded

The election results were announced this past Tuesday after about a 10 day counting period since the actual voting. Everyone was aware of the fraud, so the results were awaited anxiously as Haiti got more tense by the day. On this past Tuesday, the Electoral Board had until midnight to announce who had won, or if there would be a runoff between two candidates (a 50% majority is needed in order to avoid runoffs). The Electoral Board kept Haiti waiting until 9 pm that night to announce their highly incorrect results. It was a weird sensation waiting hour after hour for what could be devastating news and undoubtedly launch the country into violence. Without surprise, the handpicked candidate of the current government received a much higher percentage of votes than any of the exit polls indicated, and the front runner (Mirlande) did not win the election fully as she should have. Michelle Martelli, a very popular candidate and an absolute favourite to be in the electoral runoffs, was eliminated from the runoff with unexpectedly low results. It is safe to assume that the corrupt candidate (Jude Celestin) will win when the runoffs will take place January 16th. These announcements caused absolute chaos in Haiti and denouncement from the international community.

Following the election results on Tuesday night, riots formed a few blocks away from our compound before they marched on downtown. Our compound is quite close to the gathering spot for the start of these manifestations. The way people protest in Haiti is done by the destruction of everything in their path. They burn tires on every street, throw rocks and Molotov cocktails at passing cars, and ruin the businesses that have remained open. On that Tuesday night, 8 people died, including one cop, and many more seriously hurt.

On Wednesday the riots continued full force across the country. The cities of Les Cayes, Cap Haitien and naturally the capital (Port au Prince) saw the worst of it with violent clashes against the UN and police forces. Some of the manifestations went to the campaign offices of Jude Celestin (the crook) and burnt them down along with police stations- even the Canadian Embassy was damaged interestingly enough. On base at GRU, we were told not to go on the roof so that they could not see that there were white people in our compound, and advised to pack a small bag with our passports and money in case we had to make a run for it. At our daily morning meeting, we looked up to see the sky blackened by the smoke from the burning tires.

The airport is indefinitely closed, so we had no concrete way of getting out of the country. Later that evening, we were told a small plane would be coming in from the Bahamas which would be able to bring a few of us out to Fort Pierce, Florida. This pilot does medical drop-offs in remote parts of Haiti to bring in cholera supplies. Because these drop offs took too long and this tiny plane is unable to fly at night, we had to postpone our evacuation to this morning. After our departure, only the project managers and directors have stayed at GRU, and are meeting today in order to decide whether to continue operating in Haiti under these circumstances. This is a difficult thing to do when you are on full lockdown and all the businesses are closed.

I don’t think there has been anything more rewarding than having spent 3 months in Haiti this year. This is, without a doubt, a foundation for the type of work I aim to do throughout my life. Our group has put ourselves in some of the most volatile, poorest, endangered situations in the world, and all we can think about is returning to the Haiti we love. Doing this type of work is a testament that the traditional passageway to employment and success (high school, university, career) is not obsolete. Personally, I have never felt so productive, content, and at home as I have during those three months in what some only know as the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. This country, solely in 2010, has endured an earthquake killing a quarter million people, 2 devastating hurricanes, a cholera epidemic that has killed upwards of 2000 people and infected 120,000, and is now on the brink of civil war due to the corrupt political system.

I don’t want to drag this on, so here it is.
To all the people I have met on this trip: thank you, you are amazing, I wish you all the best and will undoubtedly be seeing you soon (Big Dave, Black Mountain, Bambi on Ice, Bryan, Gracie, GRU crew). Your positivity and optimism has rubbed off on me, and I look to the future with confidence. I think I already miss my tent.

Im changed, Im happy, and ill be back.