What will $70 buy in Haiti....

I'm back in Haiti now for 1 week. I'm about up to speed with the work as not much changed or happened in the 3 weeks I was gone. We had some volunteers and guests and Al was more than happy to have me return and take over my job again.

I arrived last Saturday mid day and by dinner time we had doozy of a thunder storm. Lightning struck the back patio and I have to say it was the loudest sound I have ever heard. It didn't appear to have hit anything except that one of the inverters that was the back up power for refrigeration no longer worked. We had to scrounge up extension cords to keep food cold until Monday when our good electrician made repairs.

Also my luggage did not arrive with me due to my having to change flight schedule. Instead of flying into San Francisco to Miami due to weather problems there, I flew to Atlanta. Thankfully, my bags were waiting for me the next day when I returned to airport to pick up to volunteers.

Last night we went out to La Reserve, a nice restaurant in Petionville with our volunteers. Casey and Chelsea were here just for 1 week and it was nice to be able to let them have a bit of respite from their work and see the difference after hours.

Today I went to the store and picked up a few items I thought I needed to have- so for $70 this is what I got: Uncle sam's snak Twists for Gracie (chews), T-bonz for Gracie, Oreo mini cookies, 16 pieces of Laughing Cow cheese, Alpo can food (obviously) , mini Babybel cheese, cotton balls, whole grain cereal, small garbage bags, Starbucks coffee frappucinno's in a bottle, grape jelly, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, nacho cheese chips snack size, bugles snack size. 18 articles $2735 HTG... its not hard to see that a person earning roughly $2/ day would have trouble keeping 1 meal on the table let alone 1 as I spent more money than most people make each month. Out of their $60 they have to pay rent, pay for school for their children, pay phone/ electricity, transportation and food. Something has to give way. Here is another problem now for the families living in tents. Most places now want at least 6 months rent in advance. There are few jobs available and even for the folks working in the cash programs and earn $5/ day are going to have a difficult time to save money to get their families out of a tent.

I can imagine the struggle, even a feeling of desperation that parents must feel to have survived an unimaginable assault of the earthquake to get to this point, nearly 7 months later and knowing there is still the threat of hurricanes looming over their head and shoulders.

But Wyclef Jean, a Haitian hip hop artist long living in the US but born in Haiti registered as a candidate for president on thursday. This will keep the elections and the disaster forefront in the news I think. Certainly the young folks will be rara-ing for him as they did on Thursday all over the city. There are at least 8 other candidates registered - one of which is another Haitian artist named Sweet Mickey. I think this is going to be an interesting few months- hurricanes and hip hop artists.