First day.

Sooooo unhappy about having to pare everything down to 20 pounds. Food or notebook. Water purifier or batteries. iPod or socks. This is a game of what do I need, rather than want. This may be a lesson in "enough" rather than strength, fortitude or skill. Flying into Les Cayes, over barren brown hilltops, roads on the ridges mirror the rivers in the valleys. Dusty tracks wind without reason- Haitians create roads where they are needed, not according to any plan. Like everything else in their haphazard, chaotic existence. They cling wherever they can find a ledge or scrap, through political unrest, pseudooccupation, a thousand insults to stability, growth and country (I learned about how the charcoal industry stripped the entire country of it's trees...).
It's a stark contrast to the neatly ordered waterfront estates I flew over in Ft. Lauderdale less than 24 hours ago- each fenced in it's own pool of isolationist narcissism.
I am getting away from myself and am a little jaded.
Namaste, namaste. The God in mee recognizes and honors the God in you. "Hey give me food!". "Hey give me money!" the kids chant at the fence while we unload the plane. A smashed box of donuts swelters in it's embarrassment atop our pile of bags. Each if us brought more clothes (well, I am still a little miffed about my paltry three sets of scrubs...) than these kids will own in their lifetimes. "Hey give me food!" it's the same empty phrase called at fences and ditches and breadlines around the world, with white people on one side... "I need, you have." They cry, fingers bunched at their lips: the international sign for "please, I am hungry."
The language changes, but the words stay the same. Americans get fat on their own privilege.
Here I wax jaded again. Salvation or empowerment? Do we need to give these people food, or teach them...? Do we perpetuate their dependence because it gives us more glory, more gore, more to do, more to save... More to prove?