Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

How I wonder what you are

High above Haiti so bright

Like a Diamond in the Night 

Dispelling darkness with Your Light

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

Its funny how things go in a day.  Just when you’re ready to describe a wonderful day-trip through panoramic mountains to a beautiful historic city (Jacmel), a cool night ride through the dark in the back of a pickup loaded with mandarins, pomelos, sweet-tasting bananas, jack fruit, cochiman and the ever-smiling Papa Noel the narrative takes a detour.  

As we rode through the mountains returning back from Jacmel (I’ll get back to that later...) a sliver of moon and two bright lights above, which we figured had to be Jupiter and Venus lit the darkening sky.  The air was cool, and after several hours of cool I was actually getting a bit of a chill, a first for Haiti!  

Riding the first ~25km we gradually rose through the foothills to the crestal town of Decouze, now quiet after the bustling of the mountaintop mid-day market earlier, accompanied by blaring horns as each vehicle approached us or a corner and the occasional bleating of goats, like the 6 goats in bags/4 men coasting otherwise silently down to Jacmel.  Stopping at several roadside fruit stands with their mounds of neatly-arranged fruits, hoping to get a few more items with better prices now that the day was winding down, and moms would be anxious to get back to kids languishing roadside waiting on some dinner before falling into perhaps a bed.  Our last stop's final negotiations interrupted by an oncoming transport truck blaring its horn that wasn't waiting and needed the room, so Lisa grabbed the bag of pomelos, and sealed the deal by caving and throwing an extra handful of Haitian Goude out the window onto the tarmac as Marc spun out and tore off up the hill. 

After cresting the summit and starting down the other side we caught a last few glimmers of light in hillside silhouettes and a spectacular orange-red sunset far to the west.  Descending was slow and steady, a bit easier for us in the back because we couldn’t see the approaching vehicles with parking or no lights on till the last moment,  the abundant pedestrians-did I say dark skin, dark clothing-though we did catch a glimpse of two men standing on the roof of a descending 18-wheeler cab in the shadows as we passed the huge truck slowly disappearing into the darkness to our rear.  We finally made it down to a noisy and bright crusade meeting being set up at the intersection with the main highway.  

From there to home we were accompanied by just the quiet of the night and an abundance of bright stars shining down from above, the constellation Orion directly overhead.  The stars shine down equally on good and bad, good government systems and bad, and peoples of all sizes, shapes, colors and countries.  Just like the love of God...  This country-the small bit that I’ve seen-is very beautiful and the people resilient, working slowly to restore its hidden gems.  Perhaps tonight’s ride through the dark evened out some of today’s disparities, garbage, squandered potential and surrounding needs and cast a finer glow on this place, Haiti and its true potential.