27501: Craig (news) AP Blog on Haiti Elections (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From:  Dan Craig


February 6, 2006
AP Blog on Haiti Elections
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:30 p.m. ET

This is the second of periodic dispatches by Andrew Selsky, the AP's Chief of 
Caribbean News, who is in Haiti covering the first elections held since 
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in a Februauary 2004 rebellion.

------

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti

MONDAY, Feb. 6, 9:52 a.m. local

Haiti is a visual feast.

Driving around the capital, down narrow, pitted streets lined with sidewalk 
vendors, your eyes dart everywhere -- to the ''tap tap'' buses painted in a 
riot of bright colors, to baskets of tropical fruit for sale, to women carrying 
huge loads atop their heads, to children in school uniforms of clean white 
shirts and dark skirts making their way past vendors, heedless traffic, piles 
of trash and parked cars.

The buses are called tap taps because the passengers signal the driver they 
want to get off by tapping against the sides of the bus with their knuckles.

In a country as poor as Haiti, there are messages all over reminding people to 
cherish what they have, and telling them things are OK. The tap taps often bear 
positive messages painted onto their flowery sides.

''Everything is good,'' says one.

''God gives love,'' says another.

My AP colleagues Brennan Linsley, Evens Sanon and I drove into a poor 
neighborhood to find a church and see what the pastor had to say about the 
elections coming up on Tuesday, and whether Haitians should be hopeful a new 
government can help make their future brighter.

We found a church in Savanne Pistache neighborhood, next to one of 
Port-au-Prince's ubiquitous smouldering garbage dumps on a hillside overlooking 
the sea.

Pastor Yves-Innocent Louis welcomed us inside the unpainted cinderblock church. 
Next to it is an orphanage that Louis runs: the Life is Wealth Orphanage (yet 
another positive message, pointing out that you still have something, life, 
even if you do not have a mother and father).

Louis says the parents of the 60 orphans died of AIDS and other diseases and 
that some were killed by the ''chimeres,'' or ghosts, as gangs loyal to then 
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide were called.

Louis says the message of hope is a mainstay of his sermons.

''When I'm preaching, I usually ask the people to believe that one day things 
will change, and I preach to them that hope will make you go a long way,'' 
Louis says.

Hope -- or ''lespwa'' in Creole -- is also the name of the party of Rene 
Preval, a former president who is the front-runner among three dozen 
presidential candidates. A plane towing the one word, with Preval's name 
alongside, has been flying over Port-au-prince in recent days.

Hope springs eternal in Haiti.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Haiti-Blog.html