17015: Saint-Vil Re: 16990: Haiti seen from a special set of "American" eyes.. (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Jean Saint-Vil <jafrikayiti@hotmail.com>

This latest message about the demonization of Haitians and
Haitian&nbsp;society, which happens for reasons we are all surely understand
well enough, prompts me to share with the list this contrasting report found at
http://www.ayiti.4t.com

The couple's experience reminds me of what I lived in the company of my good
pan-African revolutionary Barbadian friend and my nephew from Australia who
were visiting Haiti for the first time in December 1999, January 2000.

Feeling completely at peace and privileged to be alive among our own, safe with
video camera dangling in our hands in Chanmas, we were dancing harmoniously and
in sync to the beat of Azor's beautiful Vodou music; fully immersed in the
genuine human warmth and positive vibration that our people is so famous for
among those who come to our home with due onè-respè (RESPECT!). Meanwhile, a
certain U.N.-employed self-appointed "friend of Haiti" was enjoying the sight
of her archive pictures showing dirty pigs bathing in mud to illustrate to
"her" little colour TV world how "Haiti was welcoming the new millenium".

Thus begun the forwarded message I just received yesterday afternoon from one
of my Haiti obsessed cousins...

"I was talking to someone in Creole. Then a junior med student asked me where I
was from. His name is Michael and he is a full-blooded America. His girkfriend
is West African, and they out of the blue, decided to go to Haiti this past
summer. They traveled by tap tap to Jacmel and many other places. They had such
a great time that they want to go back for Christmas. He said that he was
surprised at the # of people, even Haitians who tried to discourage him or
couldn't believe that he wanted to go to Haiti. He said it is sooo
beautiful.&nbsp; Anyway, he has his journal ith pics on a website :
http://www.ayiti.4t.com. Now he is trying to learn Creole..."

Lè yo bezwen touye yon chen yo di li gen laraj !  - adye ! se fout yo ki anraje
!

Jafrikayiti
http://www.i-port.net/sd-in-j/