The highest hill in Petionville fills the sky
and greets us each morning - it's been here forever and has seen so much.
Solid earth – with some patches of scree and full, full of houses
embedded in the earth, houses that might slide away at the slightest tremor if
it were not for the massive, stolid determination I can see now. The
highest hill - protective and overwhelming - stretches one way undulating from
the peak at roughly the same soaring altitude eastwards. And west, it plummets
down to earth in full view. Gollum might
have been here. And the Mines of Moria
beneath. There’s a clean descent westwards interrupted only by a few solitary
trees breaking an otherwise solid blue sky.
The colours tessellate like ceramic tiles, azure joins earth.
It’s more than a hill to the ten thousand
families here. And to anyone that can
see it: it’s God’s mountain – because these souls that live here so simply –
perched incorrigibly - have more than you can imagine.
Each home has grey breeze-block walls and
fifteen feet of real estate. In daylight
and from a distance the windows are black pin holes and at night pierce one’s
soul like a hundred Jerusalem stars. It
breathes at night. And accommodates the
camp fires providing supper and supports the sleep of tired workers on a few dollars a day.
In the daytime, the cool concrete is somehow camouflaged with subtle colours, faded, though still hewn out of the bed rock of Port-au-Prince.
On this trip I can see Haiti is happy again –
though I’ve only known her a short while – when I first saw her she was
sick. Now she is standing and singing
with full voice.
Don’t want for anything, Haiti! Then you won’t feel the world’s indifference.
