#2022: Re: #2010: Dreaming for a better Haiti : Dreyfuss declines his post!

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: Joel Dreyfuss <jdreyfuss@attglobal.net>

Mario and I share what  must be a rare commonality for Haitians: we've both
lived in Tokyo. I spent almost three years there (86-88) as Fortune's bureau
chief.

His cabinet appointments remind me of a ritual from New York in the early
1960s; the exiles from the Duvalier regime would gather at one the benches
in the traffic islands on Broadway on the Upper West Side and "fomé
kabinè."Former ministers and senators would deliver white papers, draw
organization charts and vie for posts in each others' mythical governments.
They kept expecting the regime to fall at any moment so they could embark
triumphantly for Port-au-Prince to declare their candidacies. Most died of
old age without ever getting back.

Thanks but no thanks for my appointment to the 10eme departement. I have no
political aspirations. Maybe this lack of ambition reveals how American I've
become. I rather enjoy my role as a journalist, observer and occasional
social critic.

I'm also somewhat surprised that Mario views me as disgruntled. I'm quite
comfortable in my status as a Diaspo. I'm amused by the discomfort people
like me cause back "home," but hardly unhappy. Of course, I've never tried
to tell Haitians what to do. I leave that to the "blan" and the armchair
revolutionaries.


> JOEL DREYFUSS: I would appoint you as "MINISTRE du 10eme departement".You
> would know how to deal with the "Diaspos"and you would no longer be a
> disgruntled "Diaspo"yourself.
>