Going Home Again: Day Two in Haiti

I went into the heart of Port-au-Prince today. My mom had to go find out about my grandfather's life insurance policy, which by the way is a whole other mess. Nothing is ever simple or easy in Haiti. Nothing. Anyway, the further I got into Port-au-Prince, the sadder, more depressed, and angry I got. Port-au-Prince seemed dirty, overcrowded, and ugly and all the roads and I mean all of them, are badly, badly damaged. The beautiful, soulful, vibrant, historic city I remember is gone. Port-au-Prince was never the Paris of anything, but it had pizzazz, a certain je-ne-sais-quoi or life to it. Now, even that is gone. It saddens me what the country's own people did to it. I know the earthquake took its toll, but some damages were man-made. Certain things should have been preserved. Certain places, like Champs de Mars deserved to be protected but people were too busy being wrapped in their own personal tragedies to take pride in anything worth their pride.There are so many people in Port-au-Prince. Way more people than I remember seeing in the city. I have been told that while some of these people really did lose their homes to the earthquake, many of them left their homes in the countryside or even in the capital, with the promise of free housing. So now they live in tents all over the damn city; tents placed anywhere and everywhere! The whole damn city looks like a refugee camp. The ridiculous amount of people plus the fact that many of the designated market places were destroyed during the earthquake, has resulted in people selling all kinds of things all over the place. This, combined with all the damn UN trucks and SUVs running wild, makes the city feel like a freaking nightmare.