What a difference, uh, three months makes...

Sorry about that. Things got extra busy there for a while. In fact, they still are extremely busy, as I started a new job two weeks ago (it's now been one month since I started, I didn't have time to finish this post when I started it -- *sigh*). At this moment, I write you from the darkened parking lot of my new office in Port-au-Prince. Why the darkened parking lot, you ask? Because there are no light fixtures out here! And why am I sitting in the parking lot? Because my agency has a bit of a transportation issue and I am waiting for Stephane to come pick me up, but sadly we are also having a bit of a transportation issue (namely that we have only one car b/c Stephane refuses to let me drive here and right now that one car is with someone else), so I am here at the office, chillin' with the night guards, waiting for my ride.

So anyhow. I'm back. In Haiti. It's interesting.

In fact, one week to the day after my return, we were all in the office -- a large, heavy-looking, multi-level concrete structure -- going about our business when there was suddenly a too-familiar shaking sensation. It was easy to tell who had been here during the quake and who had not, b/c those of us who knew what this was came fleeing out of the building like ants pouring out of a flooded hill, while the others sort of watched us scurry and decided to follow. At any case, it was a pretty large aftershock -- 4.4, the biggest recently -- and although I had known intellectually before I came back that this would happen, physiologically, it was like 454pm on January 12th for me -- checking body parts and people, searching out the safest possible place at the moment, shaking like an addict in withdrawal. I shook for about 20 minutes after this and spent the rest of the day freezing like a deer who's heard a twig snap every time a big truck rolled by the office, rumbling like an earthquake as it went along.

Welcome back, eh?

I do have more to share, but for the moment must wrap up, as I am still at work.

Thanks for the thoughts/emails, keep an eye out for my upcoming articles in the journal 'Policy Review' (in case you actually read *that* -- haha!) and/or the Charleston Post and Courier, for whom I am writing a semi-monthly column. Will try my darnedest to write again sooner!