the president saw me in my bikini!

That's right... my first presidential encounter and I was wearing a bikini. Luckily I've pretty much been eating one meal a day for the last two months, so it wasn't a total tragedy. Also I'm hoping I had passed the point of being excessively sweaty and was on to looking like I just stepped out of the pool. Probably wishful thinking.


This weekend we got to go to Moulin Sur Mer, a gorgeous hotel about an hour and a half north of Port-au-Prince. On the way up we passed through Corail, a place they tried to relocate tent-city families, which ended up as a big mistake. A couple weeks ago I read an article in Rolling Stone about it, so it was really interesting to see what the article was describing. If you're interested, it's a very good article about why Haiti is still struggling and what has happened with the NGO's here. The author doesn't mention NPFS or St. Luke at all, which is strange because we are one of the biggest NGO's here and have definitely been around much longer than the others mentioned in the article. I'm guessing that the reason is that our organization is facing almost the opposite problem as what is described in the article. After the earthquake, we started program after program to meet people's needs and now that our "earthquake money" (popular term among NGO's down here) is running out, we're having to close programs. It's very frustrating that with all the criticism of organizations sitting on their money that we are unable to get the resources we need. Okay anyways, I intended for this to be a fun post, but if you're interested, read the article.


http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-world-failed-haiti-20110804


So, we got to the gorgeous hotel which is on an old plantation next to the beach. Basically we spent the weekend swimming in the Caribbean, laying on the beach and eating SO much food.

Beach at Moulin Sur Mer

View from the beach near sunset

Statues in the plantation gardens

Plantation- now museum- complete with drawbridge!

So on Sunday we were soaking up our final hours of peace and relaxation by laying out at the pool after a long morning swim in the ocean. I was listening to my i-pod, eyes closed, when I looked up and saw a ton of police around the pool. Being in Haiti, you get used to seeing groups of men with rifles walking/standing around odd places- the grocery store, the hospital- anywhere really. I've accepted that a certain percentage of the people I encounter during a day are going to have a gun. Although sometimes those people are kind of bizzaro and you hope that no one gave them bullets. Anyways, the point is that there are so many UN troops here, that instead of having a freak out about the huge guns they're carrying, new Dani looks at the arm badge because that has the country flag. So these guys are walking around with the outline of a building as their arm badge, instead of a flag. Eventually I figure out that it's the National Palace, right as a huge group of men in suits walk by. And there he is, Monsieur Tet Kale himself, walking not even 10 feet in front of me. Tet Kale translates literally to 'bald head' but in Haiti it also figuratively means 'nothing to hide' which was Martelly's campaign slogan and not-so-coincidentally he is a baldy. It was definitely the highlight of the weekend and hopefully he gets his act together and elects a Prime Minister and gets school started for the kids so that it continues to be a cool story. And for the good of the country of course.