The Best Nightmare on Earth*: An Introduction

I’m off to Haiti. I’ve visited Haiti before, but only went as far as Port-au-Prince, way back in the final days of the Duvalier regime. When Baby Doc Duvalier was run out of his own country, driven to the airport and whisked off to Switzerland while his people rifled through whatever he and his wife Michelle had left behind (closets full of the latest from Paris, and bullet-proof limousines and masses of perfectly hideous furniture, and things covered in gold, or made of gold that shouldn’t have been, as well as a massive national debt, and political prisoners, and a population, the poorest in the western hemisphere, that had been terrorized by the Duvalier regime’s private street army, the Ton Ton Macoutes, and the Macoutes themselves, who were, some of them, torn apart [literally] in the streets once it was clear that the second President-for-Life was well and truly gone) I watched the news reports from New York- I could still remember the way the streets had smelled, and the view I had had of the presidential palace, now being sacked on the evening news, and I remembered Cite Soleil, the Port au Prince slum called Sun City, as I watched the burning and rejoicing ("Haiti Libere!"). And I imagined I'd return a lot sooner than June 22, 2007.

That trip was spent at the Hotel Olafsson, famous for its role in Graham Greene’s The Comedians (Greene lived there while writing the book, and drew from the hotel’s real-life cast of characters to create his own), and for the long list of quirky celebrities, from Truman Capote to Mick Jagger, who have stayed there over the years, and whose names designated the rooms, in lieu of numbers. I think I was in Tennesee Williams. Post-Baby Doc the hotel closed, then reopened with new owners...

And now? Anything could have happened in the interim- this is Haiti, where anything happens all the time. But I'm headed into the countryside, unlikely to see the Olafsson, or much of anything in Port-Au-Prince. Haiti ho!

*The Best Nightmare on Earth is the title of an account of Haiti written by Herbert Gold. It is a fantastic book, and the title has stuck with me as a depressingly accurate description of the country.