Everywhere there's signs...

Shameless editorial note: Please come back the 15th of October to help me win contest #6.

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Don't get the wrong idea from this post. Haiti is not getting back to normal.

It is not being reconstructed. Or deconstructed. Or inducted.
But people live here. And they are living. And to do that, things are constructed.
As this happens, the landscape changes. Shapes of slumped buildings adjust themselves, they become lighter, they become transparent.
Their pieces are laid in neat piles.
It is like wind is blowing around the rubble, the iron bar, the cement.
Shifting desert sands and dust, but a thousand times heavier.

* * *

I was in a certain meeting the other day. It lasted two days. It was many things... Many things were said and said again. And again. Somethings were said only once. Some things were brushed aside.

Discussing aspects of worst case scenarios, someone said "...if people build without control."

Life happens, my friend, and it is not controlled.

Walls and roofs and floors are no longer separated. They are being broken up. Piled up. Recycled. They are being built back from blocks that fell.

* * * 

I am not a bleeding heart aid worker. I am not naive (though my father may argue otherwise). I am not one who instantly identifies with a suffering population, believing I can solve their problems because I mistakenly think I understand them and feel their pain.

But I do think it is important to take off those damn yellow glasses and try to see something from another point of view than your own. Forget your own priorities for a second. Just one second, then go back. That's how we might start to get a realistic view of whatever it is we are looking at. It's not that we can ever be inside, really inside, something else; we are outside and will remain so (and there is value in that). But just a quick flip of perspective, upside down, once in a while is good. Question it. Then go back to where you were perched before, with a little clearer view.

Living. Eating. Bathing. Gambling. Carrying on after. Of course people are picking up old blocks and putting them back together. People aren't waiting for the engineers to come. They are not waiting for development projects with seismic retro fitting. They are not waiting for our project frameworks. They are living. And they will continue to do so.

Everyone has an agenda and a bias. I tried to loose my own, but maybe it is easier for me because I do not claim to be an expert on Haiti or reconstruction or normal.

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Messages are passed, as in other parts of the world, by taxis - or tap taps.

Many have heartfelt messages of faith (though most are french or creole, here is an english one).

Some are less deep and less meaningful. Most are spelled wrong.

This is my favorite. It is in creole. The driver translated for me (and did some awesome driving so I could catch a photo of it). I understood that it says roughly: "I would be ashamed if I were you."
With Rambo below.
Classic.
Excellent.

"God directs my affairs

fizzy drinks."