exhausted/excited, discouraged/encouraged

I've been terrible at updating this blog. I'm sorry. It was to be expected though, it tends to always happen to me a while into something new. You just get into this rythm of things and all of a sudden all this time passed and you don't know what happened.

This has been an exhausting yet exciting week. I've had the opportunity to come along and observe as a Swedish delegation have been here and had a series of meetings regarding the rights of women. We've met with some ministers and UN people, as well as international and local NGO's. It has both discouraged and encouraged me.

I'm discouraged because time and time again I see how the international community totally overrides the sovereignty of Haiti. In my eyes this is THEIR country, and I am but a humble visitor - regardless of how malfunctioning the state is. There are great people here, and above all there are amazing and capable NGO's that have a vision for their own country. But it is very common to hear from international NGO's, as well as the UN, things like "there are no competent local NGO's". So they simply choose not to cooperate with anything local for that reason. Which is a complete BS reason to be frank.

What does encourage me though are those local NGO's that we have met with this week, as well as the one I'm working for, of course. Organizations that are so strong and inventive. We mostly met with women's organizations, and I am so inspired!
They are so strong and intelligent. They do great work, and it was a real honor to be able to sit down and listen to them. Life here is hard, and for women it is even harder. But the work that these organizations carry out give me hope for change. If we could just support them! (I'm inviting you to contribute here...)

The week before that... Well, Friday the 15th I went on a camp visit, which was really interesting, because it is one of the relocation zones 12 miles outside Port-au-Prince - Corail (not to be confused with the town in the south-west). Relocation meaning dumping people out in the middle of nowhere in a desert basically. There is absolutely no shade, and getting into the city takes time and money. There are a bunch of things I could say about that too, but I feel like I'm too tired to not just start to rant, so I'm going to restrain myself... But google it and you'll find images that will give you an idea of the conditions there.

What happened though was that I manage to catch something that day that gave me the compulsory sick-days that I guess every person changing culture and climate must go through. Some sort of stomache bug, and I was flat out for the weekend. It took most of the rest of the week to get back to normal.
That week was hard, because the few friends I have here were busy or out of the country, and that in combination with low energy levels just made my mood dip completely.

So I've really enjoyed being TOO busy this week, it is in deed much nicer. Though I'm relly tired now, and I apologize for a not too elegant entry...
I can go on for hours these days about this country that has really captured my heart, but for now I'm going to stop.

Have a good weekend!
/L