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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.

Wow. Very interesting. You certainly know the place. I visited the Montana a few times but never stayed there. We stayed at a guest house in Petionville operated by Christian Service International.

We docked in Miragoane, Gonaives, Jacmel, Jeremie, Cap Hatien, Le Cap, Petit Goave, San Marc, and some other backwaters I've forgotten.

I spent two weeks in Montrouis about 20-30 miles south of San Marc. I've been to San Marc.

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.

A Haitian from the country side told me the only difference he could tell after Aristide took over was that they quit spraying for mosquitos. I think they current uprising is just an example of "Live by the sword, die by the sword." Those people rebelling against Aristide now are just doing what he taught them.

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.

I think Amy Wilentz wrote about something like this in her book, The Rainy Season. It was a good book but she was very sympathetic to Aristide at the time.

I was in an internet discussion group about Haiti at one time. It was strange mix of a lot of different types of people: professors, Haitians living in America, Mormons, voodooists, socialists, etc. Mostly they were a bunch of know-it-alls. Once I posted a question: "if someone gave you $100,000,000 to spend in Haiti to make a long term difference in the lives of the people, even in a limited area of the country, what would be the best way to spend it?" Nobody had an answer, except education and libraries. Obviously that's a good thing but it wasn't what I was looking for.