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WarDad. Where did you spend most of your time in Haiti? I have visited Port-au-Prince (including Cite Soliel) and Montrouis several times. I agree with you about Cedras. He seemed like a true patriot to me. I think Haiti would be in much better shape by now if the US hadn't intervened (under Bush-1, no less). When you've got Colin Powell and Sam Nunn(?) on your front porch, telling you to get out of Dodge or the missiles are gonna start flying, even Cedras couldn't stick it out. I believe this is just one of many examples of how the US has hurt Haiti, despite supposed good intentions.

I was all over Haiti from 1988 till 1990 or so. I maintained a residence at the Hotel Montana up in Petionville for 2 years.

I had a cargo ship carrying goods into Haiti during those years. At times I was under charter and other times I was also the owner of the cargo. Rice, Flour, Sugar, Cement, Lumber, Cars,....you name it almost. We docked in Miragoane, Gonaives, Jacmel, Jeremie, Cap Hatien, Le Cap, Petit Goave, San Marc, and some other backwaters I've forgotten. Some of those places we could not dock due to ship's size and draft so we had to anchor and lighter cargo.

I was there through several coups and saw lots of random and not so random violence between the various factions. Once on the veranda cafe at the Montana, I cold-cocked a local aristocratic Haitien arsewipe who owed me money on a cement load. He then ran to his daddy who had friends with the local Army barracks. I had to flee the country overland to a small Mennonite strip where I obliged a Cessna 172 to get me to Santo Domingo. I could go on and on with "Haiti Stories". It's about the most depraved place I've spent a lot of time in outside of Sierra Leone. It's in much worse shape than anywhere in this hemisphere and life is way cheap. But it can also be quite beautiful and the country folk are very friendly unless riled up in mob fashion. Excellent French food for cheap in Petionville and Kensecoff also. The corruption is endemic.

Aristedes is a pathological killer. No different than Papa Doc in priest's robes....a real nutcase. Papa Doc....nutty and mean as he was ....at least provided order.

One last incredible story. As you know....cocaine transhipment is big business in Haiti. Back while I was there, a dope plane out of Colombia got tailed by some US interdiction plane and dumped their load overland in Haiti hoping I suppose to get ground contacts to retrieve it. Well, some of the very very rural locals (I'm talking no roads just donkey trails) found some of the bales and cut them open and thought it was some kind of strange flour and cooked it and tried to eat it...some died. How bizarre. There are a lot of hungry folks there who subsist on mangoes. Their whole mouth area gets an orange stain to it which is semi-permanent. I have seen hungry folks scramble for broken rice bags and scoop up raw uncooked rice and eat it on the spot.

Haiti is a world unto itself.