Grand Rue in Port-au-Prince, Haiti is one of the city’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods, but also home to a vibrant community of artists who create works of art out of the discarded materials they find in their environment. The area was host to the first Ghetto Biennale in December 2009.

This video highlights the impact of the January 12 earthquake on the artists’ surroundings and their way of life.

To offer direct support to the artists of Grand Rue, please donate to the Foundry Haiti Fund.

Food distribution line in Port-au-Prince

Whether pepper spray or tear gas-related, the scuffle has died down by the time we arrive in town. The line is long, but people are waiting patiently. We ask a bystander what’s being distributed. He says he thinks it’s rice. I ask Roosevelt, our driver, to circle the Champs de Mars for a bit, so we can see what’s going on in the vast tent city that now occupies most of the city’s central square.

Unsurprisingly, the regular rhythm of Haitian life seems to have established itself in the maze of makeshift shelters clustered among plinths bearing statues of Toussaint, Pétion and company, the country’s founding fathers. Women are cooking, bathing babies and doing laundry in basins along the perimeter wall, bathing themselves at the roadside. Children are playing football, vendors have set up stalls on the periphery. Near the National Palace, people have gathered to watch a safe being lowered from a government building. Less formal salvage and scavenging operations are taking place in other parts of the city as well. We pass groups of men shoveling rubble, people picking among the ruins of buildings for things they can reuse. Among the detritus, Port-au-Prince is slowly coming back to life.

Around the tent city on the Champs the Mars, life resumes its normal rhythm

Last night a friend who’s come here to work with a Canadian NGO wondered how many of the “displaced” were people whose homes were intact but who were simply afraid of sleeping indoors. Yesterday the Haitian government, such as it is, issued a bulletin summarising the impact of the earthquake. On her blog, Anne-Christine D’Adesky posts translations of some of the highlights:

“Around 112,000 dead, 195,000 wounded, 1 million homeless, half the houses destroyed in Port-au-Prince, Jacmel and Leogane; at least 23 private hospitals collapsed.

“The government yesterday announced the creation of 2 camps for displaced persons in Port-au-Prince: one on the road to Tabarre, the other at Croix des Bouquets. Another site has been identified in the zone of Leogane.

“Only qualified engineers can determine if a damaged building is sound enough to be recoccupied. The rule to follow until an engineer has evaluated a property is: if the building doesn't look sound, it isn't.

“Today, we estimate the capacity of food distribution varies between 200,000 and 300,000 rations a day. This means that, in Port-au-Prince and its surroundings alone, over 800,000 people will not be reached. This is the major challenge.

“The government is opposed to precipitous adoptions and uncontrolled departures from Haiti of vulnerable or orphaned children and is concerned about the risk of trafficking.

“NGOs engaged in humanitarian or food aid are encouraged to work with the UN system that has been established.”

It’s hard to know what’s really happening on the ground. Port-au-Prince is a vast city and unfamiliar city, and my primary goal in being here is not to report on the situation. We’re staying in Petionville, away from the fray. As the tear gas story above demonstrates, it’s difficult to verify information. You try to get around as much as you can, but in the end you’ll see only a tiny fraction of the whole, and perhaps understand or read accurately only a fraction of that. But the overriding story is about the distribution of aid: how badly it’s going, how supplies are failing to get to those who need it, and also how difficult the whole exercise is. I’m pretty sure that one is true.

On the edge of the tent city near the National Palace I talk to a pair of middle-aged women from Bel Air. They say they’d haven’t received any food supplies. I ask them if they plan on leaving the city for the countryside. The older one says no. I ask why. She says it’s because her father is dead—she has no family left “en province“.

Earthquake damage in Carrefour

We drive out west to the bedroom district of Carrefour, where 40-50% of the buildings are said to have sustained damaged. Along the main roads at least, the impact of the quake doesn’t seem as dramatic as in central Port-au-Prince, as the buildings are lower and not as densely clustered. Tent cities have sprung up on the median strips and there are mounds of burning garbage along the roadside. But Carrefour didn’t need an earthquake to render conditions appalling. Yet, the community is going about its business, obviously accustomed to the general squalor and the grey slurry of macerated garbage underfoot. We pass three money transfer agencies with long lines in front, a sign that remittances, which by some estimates account of over half of the country’s national income, are flowing back into Haiti once more.

Tent city on the median strip on the Carrefour main road

Crowd gathered at a money transfer agency in Carrefour, awaiting remittances from abroad

We head back into central Port-au-Prince to engage with a different side of Haiti at the storied Hotel Oloffson in Bois Verna, where it seems like half of the Corbett Haiti mailing list is lunching. We chat briefly with hotel proprietor Richard Morse, who now has 12,065 followers on Twitter and appears on 638 Twitter lists, all as a result of the earthquake. Also there: Anne-Christine D’Adesky, who’s been blogging and posting to the Corbett list consistently since the earthquake hit and says that Haiti is the litmus test for whether the lessons learned in other recent humanitarian situations have really been learned; New Yorker Tequila Minsky, just in been taking photos in a nearby neighbourhood; writer Amy Wilentz, who’s blogging for TIME magazine; Haitian photographer Daniel Morel, who corrects my camera-holding techniques; and Leah Gordon, who offers to take us to Portail Leogane visit the sculptors of the Grand Rue.

But that’s the subject of another post. Over and out.

—

We arrived in Port-au-Prince on Saturday afternoon, after a long but uneventful drive from Santo Domingo. As we approached Jimani, on the Dominican border, we began seeing probable evidence of the situation on the other third of the island: makeshift roadside stalls selling gallon bottles of gasoline, heavy trucks carrying cargo, a motorcycle passenger with his leg bandaged to the thigh. The area near the border gate was swarming with vehicles and people, and we fully expected border formalities to take some time. But after a mysterious confab between our driver and the two associates who’d come along on the trip and a man in a purple cap, we drove through the border gates just like that, with nary a nod from the guards or a request to see a passport, through the few yards of tierra de nadie between the two borders, and into Haiti. Later I noticed that the man in the purple cap had joined us and was sitting in the tray of the pickup among our luggage—turns out he was our Haitian navigator.

—

It was some time before we saw any earthquake damage—the epicentre was south-west of the city of Port-au-Prince, and we were approaching from the east. Then, here and there, the odd ill-starred building with a collapsed balcony, in parking lots and clearings, clusters of makeshift tents. Then both sights became became more frequent: residences with collapsed upper storeys, framed pictures still hanging off the walls, crushed sofas; the clusters turned into tent cities. But still not anything like the images from the news.

—

I think that part of me has come to Haiti wanting to believe that the images I’d been seeing in the media were somehow exaggerated. In largely middle-class Delmas, where our journey from Santo Domingo ends on Saturday, a number of commercial buildings and residences along the Route de Delmas have collapsed, either entirely or partially, and walls everywhere show cracks and fissures. From one building, a large pane of glass leans precariously out over the sidewalk, and a pale yellow three-story residence has caved in on itself like a fallen cake, the ground floor flattened beneath the weight the floors above. The arbitrariness of the damage was striking—why this building and not that one? But the Canadian Embassy is perfectly intact, and a reporter is recording a stand-up on one of the parapets above the road. Businesses, including gas stations, are operating. People carrying five-gallon water bottles are lined up in orderly fashion in front of a water distribution shop. Traffic is flowing, and in spite of the damage it appears that things have returned almost to normal in Delmas.

Queueing for water in Delmas

The offices of the National Democratic Institute, which the Internews team has commandeered for its use while in Haiti, are buzzing with activity. A young Haitian hanging out in front of the building helps us take our luggage up the stairs. “Ça va [How’s it going?]?” he says. “Ça va bien,” I reply. The stock response, but it displeases him. “Ca va *pas* bien [It's *not* going well]“, he says. “J’ai perdu ma maison, mon beau-frère. Je suis sans-abri [I’ve lost my house, my brother-in-law is dead. I’m homeless].”

We’ve arrived just at the moment when the Internews team is rushing to get their daily information programme on air, so nobody pays us much heed. The place is crammed with suitcases, air mattresses, cases of water, laptops, emergency radios. Towels are slung over chair backs, and one shelf of a stationery cupboard is loaded with canned food. It doesn’t look like there’ll be room for us. We issue tweets saying we’re looking for accommodation and Alice gets on the phone and starts working her family contacts. Within 45 minutes Alice’s friends L and B have arrived to collect us, and we head back out on to the Route de Delmas, now in darkness except for the headlights of cars and the fires and flambeaux on street vendors’ stalls.

On our way up to L and B’s house in Laboule we pass through well-heeled Pétionville, which is reported to have been largely unaffected by the quake. Two of its gracious squares, Place Boyer and Place St. Pierre, have nevertheless been transformed into teeming tent cities, filled with the newly homeless from other parts of this divided city . The luckier people are settling down for the night under the canopies of camionettes parked at the side of the road. In spite of the people milling around in the darkness, it is quiet. Parked across from the Hotel Kinam on Place St. Pierre is a MINUSTAH truck.

Tent city at Place St. Pierre, Pétionville

—-

It’s odd to wake up the next morning in Laboule and look out upon a stunning mountain view. None of the houses in the area appears to have sustained much damage, though L and B have lost a retaining wall. The absence of running water and electricity probably have less to do with the earthquake than the fact that we’re in Haiti. At L and B’s house there are a few hairline cracks in the mortar that L, an engineer, has marked with black crayon, so he’ll know if they widen. L takes what he calls a scientific approach to the quake. He explains the math behind the Richter Scale and has decided it’s not worth worrying about aftershocks. In fact, L sleeps through the aftershock that occurs on Sunday afternoon.

The radio reports on Sunday indicate that people continue to be evacuated from the city. Over lunch, L tells us that some “méchants” (troublemakers) are spreading rumours that people who opt for evacuation won’t be allowed to return to the capital for five years. We also talk about L’s sister, a physician who has come from the States to volunteer her services and is now working in a centre at Croix des Bouquets. L’s sister reports that Haitian doctors are being sidelined in the relief efforts, and it’s only after she gives an interview to CNN that she starts getting some grudging respect from the big international agencies.

—-

We finally leave Laboule late on Sunday afternoon and descend into Port-au-Prince. There are fallen buildings all along the Route de Bourdon and a slum that covers the hillside across the distance like a skin looks chipped and battered. It gets worse at we get nearer to the city centre, but it’s still not the total wreckage from the photos. We arrive at the Champs de Mars, the massive square, which has been partly overtaken by a multi-section tent city. The sinking feeling sets in officially as we stop in front of the National Palace with its caved-roof. That one certainly matches the news photos, except that up close it’s more massive and more desolate. We drive around the Champs de Mars and pass in front of the Plaza Hotel, where a news cameraman is filming what looks like a heap of black rags in the street. The black rags are in fact two dead bodies, perhaps recently pulled from the wreckage, their limbs intertwined.

The area just east of the Champs de Mars is straight out of the news photos. A long corridor of rubble, not a building left standing. You’ve all seen it by now, so I don’t need to describe it further, or the scent of decay that hangs in the air, now several times less intense than it was a few days ago.

I’m adding these last few lines just so I can say I didn’t end on a note of despair. I apologise for adding to the heavy burden of bad news already borne by this country. And now to make a plan for what we’ll be doing while we’re here.

The other learning tool is music. My collection of Haitian music is at home on my iPod, but we managed to find two of Beethova Obas‘ classic songs on iTunes. Last night the true beauty of “Si (Oh Oh)” and “Nou Pa Moun” was revealed to me as Alice walked me through the lyrics (which I already knew phonetically). I’m not sure I’ll ever need to say “under Lucifer’s flag” (anba drapo Lisifè) while I’m in Haiti, but hey—you never know.

I’m finally on my way. I won’t make it to the Dominican Republic tonight as planned, but American Airlines will put me up in Miami and I’ll catch a flight in the morning that should get me into Santo Domingo by early afternoon. After the frenzy of the last several days the setback feels almost welcome, though I am anxious to get to Haiti and begin work.

Prompted by this morning’s tweet about packing, a couple of people have expressed interest in what I’m taking with me to Haiti. The answer is everything. From the outside, my two rolling duffels resemble the luggage of any old traveler. The individual that opens both, however, would be hard pressed to decide whether they were dealing with a higgler or a low-rent James Bond.

Here’s what you’ll find in my luggage:

FOOD: One of my two bags is filled almost entirely with non-perishable foodstuff. At the end of the mission I’m probably not going to want to see nuts, dried fruit, protein bars, granola bars, bran crackers, peanut butter, soy milk, Chef Boyardee ravioli or those cheese wedges that don’t need refrigeration again for a very long time. But we need to be as self-sufficient as possible while we’re there, and I’m hoping I’ve packed enough to be able to leave some behind.

SHELTER ETC: Thank heaven for outdoorsy friends. Yesterday I raided Nikipedia’s stash of outdoor goods, and left with a sleeping bag, a lightweight hammock/mosquito net combination that folds up into a small drawstring bag, camping plate and cutlery set, travel French press, compass, emergency whistle, padlock, rain poncho, and compressible pillow. Other items in my kit include an LED flashlight, cigarette lighter, utility knives, masking tape, duct tape, cable ties, rubber bands, rubber gloves, fabric shopping bag, small daypack, candles, matches, ziploc bags, bedsheet, pillowcase, towel, water bottle, three-step filter bottle that claims to be able to render ditchwater potable, water purification drops.

FIRST AID AND MEDICATIONS: Various kinds of bandages, strapping tape, cotton wool, antiseptic spray, surgical gloves, surgical masks, throat lozenges, multivitamins, antidiarrheals, antibiotics, painkillers, etc.

TOILETRIES: The usual, plus extra hand sanitiser, baby wipes, hospital grade full-body wipes (read: “shower substitute”), toilet paper, paper towels.

CLOTHING: The only item worth mentioning are hiking boots, which normally wouldn’t make the cut for a Caribbean trip unless that trip included hiking. I figure they’ll come in handy on the rubble-strewn streets of Port-au-Prince.

MONEY: US cash. The teller at the bank raised her eyebrows when I asked for the quantity I needed in small bills.

GADGETS: I tend to travel with a fair number of gizmos anyway, but this time I’m carrying more than the usual complement, as I’ve brought along my audio recording equipment and deliberately over-catered in the cables department. Here’s the lineup:

Computers: MacBook, iPhone, bluetooth keyboard. Thanks to a third-party app called BTstack, I can now use the bluetooth keyboard as an external keyboard for my (jailbroken) iPhone, which turns the latter into the ultimate travel computer. I suspect I’ll be doing a good deal of my writing on this trip using the iPhone/keyboard combo, as the keyboard runs on AA batteries and I can juice up the iPhone with a solar charger (see the “And to keep these babies running in the event of a power outage” section below).

Photo, video, audio: DSLR camera, 18-250mm lens, 10-22mm lens, point-and-shoot camera, Flip camera, Aiptek HD video camera, minidisc recorder, microphone, headphones

Cables, adaptors etc: Mini USB, iPhone, Ethernet, chargers for all gadgets, power strip (special for this trip).

Also: Two Digicel mobile phones, USB sticks, Airport Express wireless router, and a voltage converter kit with plug adaptors for most countries. Haiti is 110v, but as the power we’ll be using may be generated by equipment brought into the country by international agencies I thought it best to be prepared.

And to keep these babies running in the event of a power outage: Camera batteries, AA and AAA batteries (rechargeable and disposable) and, thanks to Brian Kinzie, who dashed out to purchase it on the last day of a visit to wintry Montreal, a snazzy solar charger that will power all of the aforementioned gizmos with the exception of the still cameras and the MacBook.

Software: The only software acquired specially for this trip are FrontlineSMS (latest builds for Windows, Macintosh and Linux – thank you, Ken Banks and Josh Nesbit), Byki Haitian Creole iPhone app, First Aid iPhone app.

Analog: Small and medium Moleskine Cahiers, rolling ball pens, steel chalk.

Left behind: I normally travel with a selection of jewelry, but this time I’ve brought only the items I’m wearing: a wristwatch, earrings and a silver chain bracelet. I’ve misplaced a number of beloved rings on the road in recent times, in situations less uncertain than this, so decided to play it safe. I usually travel with an umbrella, but couldn’t fit one in. And I wanted to bring the USB headset I use for Skype calls, but they don’t exactly make those things compact, do they.

The best part of packing for this trip was remembering that I’ll be returning with only half the items I packed. I’m really, really hoping I’ve brought enough food to give some away.

11:04pm

During landing I struck up a conversation with two of the flight attendants sitting in the jump seats near to me. They said that American Airlines have been operating what sound like test flights into Haiti. So if all goes well, I may be returning to Trinidad from Port-au-Prince instead of via Santo Domingo.

And now to bed.

I’ve read about Haiti, I’ve flown over its brown mountains en route to other places, I’ve seen it from shores of Lake Enriquillo on its border with the Dominican Republic. But I’ve never set foot in Haiti itself. I wish I were making my début at a different time. Of course. Anything I can say about Haiti is going to sound like a platitude, so I’ll spare you those having to do with human misery and direct another one at myself instead: I have no idea what to expect and am not sure my imagination can prepare me.

What do we hope to achieve with this trip? Primarily, to encourage and support the continuance of the burgeoning citizen media activity the earthquake has occasioned. Haiti has always been one of the countries we at Global Voices have found it most difficult to cover. In November 2005, shortly after I joined GV, I interviewed Alice Backer, a Haitian lawyer and blogger based in New York. One of the things we discussed was the dearth of Haitians blogging from inside Haiti.

GP: Haitian Mofo is one of the few bloggers who is/was actually based in Haiti, right? Do you know why he stopped blogging?

AB: I e-mailed him and even posted on the site for him to come back, especially when I noticed that he was still posting on the Haitian Politics list. He e-mailed back to say he had experienced some kind of burnout but was reading my blog and thought that he might restart in a bit. My impression of him is that he is a very bright guy who is also very busy

GP: Which brings us to some of the challenges that could be faced by a blogger attempting to do his/her thing out of Haiti? What are the obstacles, besides burnout?<

AB: Well, Georgia, Haitians are all over the web — every day I discover a new Haitian website. I think that the idea of the Haitian web site (with forum, entertainment news, free music and radio) is now seen in the community as a viable business model and it's spreading like wildfire. [There are many Haitian-targeted message boards] and a ridiculous number of konpa-oriented [konpa is a Haitian musical genre; also see Alice's post about konpa] web sites. So Haitians, like most people, seem to go to the web primarily for entertainment.

AB: I’d say anything can happen depending on people’s needs and when they have something to say.

To say that citizen media in Haiti would come into its own when it was needed and when people had something to say is not prescience—it’s common sense, borne out by examples such as Madagascar after the 2009 coup. But I had forgotten the substance of that conversation with Alice, who, incidentally, has since become a good friend and will be coming to Haiti to work along with me.

In the hours just after the earthquake, we got a sense of what was going on in Port-au-Prince thanks to tweets and blog posts from the likes of Richard Morse, Carel Pedre, Troy Livesay, The Haitian Blogger, Fredo Dupoux, Real Hope for Haiti, Pwoje Espwa. Réseau Citadelle relayed the news that Cap Haitien in the north of the island had not been badly affected, unlike Jacmel in the south, from where 16 year-old Yael Talleyrand, melindayiti and others were reporting casualties and serious damage, including to the road that connected the city to the capital, long before Jacmel became a story in the mainstream media. That evening Pierre Côté from Montreal was on Ustream interviewing Haitian residents over Skype.

“They were the lives lived in that location, they understood fully the impact and the horror of having a neighbourhood torn apart,” wrote UK journalist Jamillah Knowles on her blog a few days after the earthquake.

"They had heard the peaceful ambience before and could compare the disastrous clamour afterwards, their knowledge exceeded that of the media many times and their choices of stories to tell were revealing what was important to those communities. . . . I’m not at all against reporters summarising and creating our news reports. These are practised professional story tellers, they know what is vital to an audience, but at this time, my news was broken from the inside and it was more moving and vital than I had heard before.”

In the eight days since, the flow of “alternative” news and information out of Haiti has increased, as the Haitians and Haitian residents who’ve been reporting out have been joined by journalists, aid workers, member of the Haitian diaspora, other locally-based bloggers. At Global Voices, we’ve we’ve been doing our best to summarise and contextualise the activity on a special page devoted to the coverage.

They story of ordinary people armed with new media tools stepping into the breach in crisis situations is not a new one. It was told by journalists after the 2004 tsunami, and versions of it have been told in relation to Kenya in 2008, Iran in 2009, etc. Each time it shifts slightly, according to location, according to the world’s opinion and expectations of the affected population, according to the tools and technologies applied. I suspect that given the magnitude of the damage—and the magnitude of US involvement in the relief and reconstruction efforts—the Haiti earthquake isn’t going to disappear from the pages of the major media in the way that other stories have. But it’s going to be a different kind of coverage, and one that won’t necessarily highlight local stories.

Another of our key goals, therefore, is to highlight the need for local voices in the mix and increase the opportunities for communities affected by the earthquake to be heard and understood by those working and reporting on the recovery—a group that includes Haitian institutions and media as well as international agencies. We don’t expect it will be easy: Haiti is a complex place and the damage to the country has been severe.

But I’ll be on a plane tomorrow. I’ll be trying to report on the trip here and at Global Voices, and at the very least, tweeting at http://twitter.com/georgiap. Wish me luck.

As seen on the streets of Accra from Georgia Popplewell on Vimeo.

Like most countries in the developing world, my own included, Ghana has a vast informal economy in which street vendors play an important role. According to a 2003 study done by the Natural Resources Institute in collaboration with the Food Research Institute and the Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of Ghana, street vending employs over 60,000 people and has an estimated annual turnover of over US$100 million with an annual profit of US$24million. Given the pace at which a city like Accra has been growing in the past decade, I’d imagine you’d have to multiply the ’03 figures by several to arrive at a current estimate.

The video above offers only a minute and relatively uninteresting sampling of the range of items I saw on sale on the streets of Accra. A more complete list would include:

hats, caps, neckties, fans, sponges, clocks, full-length mirrors, volumes of Kwame Nkrumah’s speeches, electric lamps, copies of The Complete Works of Shakespeare, kente-patterned boxes of tissues, briefcases, eyeglasses, world maps, culturally inappropriate colouring books, foodstuff, fruit, including apples neatly packaged in stacks of two and three in long, narrow plastic bags, chewing gum, candy, garden shears, footballs in Ghana colours, dog leashes and muzzles, cufflinks, SIM cards, mobile phone airtime, Livestrong-style wristbands, television antennas, razors, toilet paper, shoe polish, shoe brushes, pens, garments, framed paintings.

It’s hard not to take notice of South African telecoms giant MTN’s presence in Ghana, thanks at least in part to the colours in its logo. Vodafone, the country’s flagship telecoms operator, does a fair amount of this kind of branding as well, but Vodafone red can’t hold a candle to MTN yellow, especially under the West African sun.

There’s a branding/design lesson in there somewhere.

Filmed this down and dirty little video yesterday at the National Museum in Accra, Ghana. In it I ask three Africans–two Ghanaians and an Ethiopian–what they think about Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize win.

Episode #6 arrives a day late courtesy of the carnival week frenzy, which is not to say the show is without substance. Au contraire: in the final episode in the cut+clear carnival 2009 series, the members of 3canal and I visit with photographer, carnival connoisseur and Belmont native Jeffrey Chock at his home on Clifford Street for a chat about the carnival of yesteryear, the philosophical underpinnings of the changes taking place in today’s version of the festival, and—naturally—the experience of photographing one of the world’s most visually spectacular events.

This week’s 3canal track: “Paradise” remixed by Keshav Chandradath Singh

LINKS

Pictured above is the South African visa as it looked in 1998 (top), and as it looks today, ten years later (bottom). To acquire one back in ’98, I had to route my flight through New York and pay a visit to the South African consulate on E 38th Street. To get one for an upcoming trip in September, I was instructed to send my passport to the South African High Commission in Kingston, Jamaica, along with a prepaid Fedex form. The process took 11 days and cost me about US$140. I can travel freely in and out of South Africa until November 11, 2008. Spontaneous travel, the kind where you wake up one morning and say “Damn, I just need to see a giraffe” or even “My cholera-combatting skills would come in really handy in cyclone-ravaged _____” , hop on the internet, buy yourself a ticket, pack a bag and dash off to the airport, is clearly not for the likes of me.

By visa acquisition standards, however, the South African process is a breeze. To apply for a visa to travel to North American and most European countries people like me need to visit the embassy or consulate in person, armed with bank statement/s (preferably showing a positive balance); hotel reservations or other proof that you won’t end up sleeping in a subway or public park; health insurance; evidence of return travel to home country; names, addresses, telephone numbers and astrological signs of sponsors in receiving country; umbrella or sun hat (to protect yourself from the elements as you stand for hours in a line outside the building); reading matter (to entertain yourself as you stand for hours in a line outside the building–cell phones, radios, iPods etc are prohibited by many embassies); and picnic basket (to prevent yourself from starving as you stand for hours in a line outside the building). If you’re young, or poor, the embassy may ask you to demonstrate that you have sufficiently strong ties in your home country, like a spouse, so it may be advisable to bring along a wedding album, preferably your own.

The country I plan on founding one day (working title: “Gapland”; “Georgia”, sadly, being already taken) will issue visitors’ visas on arrival at the airport (as some countries already do). These will take the form of adhesive stickers so gorgeous as to be coveted by discerning travellers the world over. Just as well, as every visitor will require them, regardless of nationality (though you’ll have the option of affixing them either to a page in your passport or the lid of your laptop). For a few extra GPDs (Gapland dollars), visitors will be able to receive their visas in the form of a tattoo.

While standing in the (short) queue leading up to the visa distribution kiosk, arriving visitors will be plied with local delicacies, including organic fruit juices and wines from the national vineyards. Massages will be available on request. Visas will be issued to anyone of reasonably sound mind who is not a convicted felon or war criminal and who is revealed, via a Google search and detailed scan of personal blog and Facebook/MySpace accounts, to be free of intent to harm others or use Gapland as a base for nefarious activities. Along with their visas, visitors will receive a Gaplandese phrasebook, a copy of the most recent Gapland Book Prize-winning volume, and a Gapland-developed and manufactured wifi-enabled mini-computer/mobile phone filled with Gaplandish music, including the country’s ultra-cool national anthem (chorus sung by indigenous animals!) and GPD$100 in airtime.

At certain times of year (Gapland Carnival, the week of my birthday, mango season, the Zaboca Festival, Pothound Appreciation Week etc) Gapland will issue specially designed limited edition visas (designs to be solicited via competition from students of the Gapland Art Academy and other talented locals). Sophisticated travelers will make pilgrimages to the country just to have the pages of their passports graced by one of these beauties.

The Gapland visa will usher in the era of the visa as collectible. From a passport page-hogging stigma signifying “our country deems people from your country deeply suspect and liable to violate immigration laws”, the visa will evolve into a badge of well-travelledness and sophistication. Americans and Europeans will rush to get them. People (more than likely the same ones who choose wines according to the label) will choose the countries they travel to on the basis on the attractiveness of their visas. Visa geeks will travel just to amass visas, sheath them in plastic and show them off at conventions, wearing the national dress of their favourite visa-producing country. Entrepreneurs will travel in order to collect visas to sell on eBay. Visas from countries which receive few visitors will become rare and valuable commodities, perhaps prompting more powerful countries to resort to dastardly artificial methods of increasing the numbers of visitor arrivals in those countries in order to drive down the value of their visas.

I never said it would be all good.

I’ve been in Venice, Italy, since July 2, recovering from Global Voices Summit-planning and generally trying to have a real vacation. So this is probably about as much blogging as is going to happen for the next week or so.

We’ve had some really excellent coverage of the Summit in the press and elsewhere, however – read all about it at the Global Voices Media Archive.

During the two or three days I spent at Jake’s, Ratty followed me around like a shadow. I wondered if he behaved that way with every guest, thought jokingly that he should be listed among the hotel’s amenities: CD player, ceiling fan, mosquito nets, ocean view, 12 year-old Jamaican boy. As far as I remember, I was mostly patient with him. If he had a family, they were nowhere in evidence. He didn’t seem to be in school. The people at Jake’s appeared to have adopted him, in a manner of speaking, and during the time I was there he spent most of his day on the property.

Jake’s, Treasure Beach

I struggle now to recall what Ratty and I talked about, but all I remember is him asking me for things, which is probably highly unfair to him. In those days I used to draw almost as avidly as I take photos today (though with far less success), and seeing me one day with a pencil and sketch book, Ratty commissioned the two portraits below (drawing him sleeping was his idea). The fact that I still have them in my possession would suggest he wasn’t too impressed with his likeness or my drawing ability, which would in turn suggest that he was much more discerning than I gave him credit for.

Returning to Treasure Beach week before last, I wondered what had become of Ratty. It became a running joke among my idle villa-mates to point out Treasure Beach limers in their mid-twenties and say “Hey, look Ratty”. Or to conjure up wild stories in which Ratty was cast in absurdly negative or positive roles: Ratty as village don, Ratty as ultra-successful businessman and owner of several choice beachfront properties. And they teased me endlessly about Ratty’s “Rosebud“, the football that I, dasher of poor village boys’ dreams, had failed to send him. If Ratty had indeed gone off the straight and narrow, it was all my fault.

On our last evening in Treasure Beach I had the chance to ask Jake’s owner Sally Henzell what had happened to Ratty. Sally sighed. “We let him go only last week,” she said, in a way that suggested that it wasn’t the first time they’d had to do so. “Drugs.” I didn’t mention the football.

I was impressed, though not surprised, that Jake’s had remained committed to Ratty, even if only off and on, over the course of 12 years. Jake’s is that kind of place. When I first stayed there, in 1996, before there was a wall out front, they didn’t serve breakfast, insisting that guests walk down the road instead and patronise a local establishment called the Trans-Love Café (now called A&J Heart of Love).

Perhaps the 12 year-old Ratty had in fact been a part of the hotel’s amenities, a way of reminding guests that the chic, pricey establishment they were staying at was in fact part of a community, a community that sometimes produces boys like Ratty, in the hope that a few of them leave with a sense that their fate and Ratty’s are intertwined. So that they’d make the effort to mail a football–which, while impractical, isn’t impossible–or maybe do something even more meaningful.

Apologies to Chris Abani and Yusef Komunyakaa for omitting mention of their fine readings on Friday night. At the time of the recording we were still recovering from Derek Walcott‘s unforgettable premiere reading of “The Mongoose”, a “tribute” to V S Naipaul that begins with the choice lines, “I have been bitten/I must avoid infection/Or else I’ll be dead as Naipaul’s fiction,” and goes either downhill or uphill from there, depending on your point of view. Being good bacchanal-loving Caribbeans, we naturally devote a section of our review to discussion of that episode.

Thomas Glave at Calabash 2008

Following our review is a far more coherent interview with Jamaican writer Thomas Glave, who talks about his latest work, Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles. Thomas was also kind enough to send me a copy of the statement with which he prefaced his reading at Calabash on opening night:

"I want to say a special thanks to the Calabash organisers – Colin Channer, Kwame Dawes, and Justine Henzell – for inviting me back to Calabash, this being my second reading at the festival, and for their unceasing generosity to, and support of, writers from around the world. And so, mindful of that generosity and kindness, my conscience will not permit me to begin reading from this book in particular before I say that as a gay man of Jamaican background I am appalled and outraged by the Prime Minister’s having said only three days ago on BBC-TV that homosexuals will not have any place in his Cabinet and, implicitly, by extension, in Jamaica. I guess this means that there will never be any room in Mr Golding’s Cabinet for me and for the many, many other men and women in Jamaica who are homosexual. And so I now feel moved to say directly to Mr Golding that it is exactly this kind of bigotry and narrow-mindedness that Jamaica does not need any more of, and that you, Mr Golding, should be ashamed of yourself for providing such an example of how not to lead Jamaica into the future. And so, Mr Golding, think about how much you are not helping Jamaica the next time you decide to stand up and say that only some Jamaicans – heterosexuals, in this case – have the right to live in their country as full citizens with full human rights, while others – homosexuals – do not. That is not democracy. That is not humane leadership. That is simply the stupidity and cruelty of bigotry."

The ban on photography also deprives the festival of the kind of free publicity the likes of me gave them last year. I just hope the official festival photographer gives the festival dogs their due.

See last year’s photos here.

I’m in Austin, Texas for the next couple of days, attending the International Symposium on Online Journalism. For a live webcast of the event, visit http://livewebcast.theacesbuilding.com/.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention the symposium blog being maintained by Rosental Alves’s students. And photos.

The first sign was the failing wifi signal, accessible, after a while, only to people with the last name “Avila“. Then the power went completely. We eventually located the fuse box, and toggled every switch we could find. No go.

For relaxation, members of the Global Voices team helped Outreach Director David “Oso” Sasaki with his laundry

We’ve recently established, however, that the power outage was in fact south Florida-wide, and wasn’t the fault of the eight Global Voices editors and authors present in the city for WeMedia Miami 2008 and the eight laptops, the washing machine in the process of laundering 98% of Oso‘s wardrobe, the coffee maker and the two ceiling fans going full tilt at the team’s Miami headquarters in Coconut Grove.

Phew.

Renata, one of the Avilas who had internet access till the bitter end

More video from my 2006 India trip. This one’s really just a slice of life, and a slice of tourist life at that. Nikipedia and I had every intention of riding an elephant up to Amber Palace. But on actually arriving at Amber and seeing that the walk up the hill takes all of five minutes, plus learning that getting to the elephant terminus involved walking some distance away from the Palace, we decided to hoof it instead. Viewed up close, it also seemed just too much of a touristy thing to do.

Which didn’t stop me from filming tourists riding elephants. The faintly audible voice pointing out that most of the elephants are female is Nikipedia’s. View a larger version of the video here.

We did end up getting a chance to interact with elephants, however, as Tabu, our Jaipur driver, took us to visit an elephant compound in the middle of a village off the Amber Fort Road.

So brace yourself for a season of bad CFR videos as I teach myself to shoot (as opposed to telling somebody else to shoot) moving pictures, edit (as opposed to sitting with my hotshot editor brother and watching him push the buttons) and play with various methods of compression and presentation while savouring the limitations imposed on me by bandwidth and my reluctance to impose too much on the patience and goodwill of my viewers.

I recently invested in a small, cheap Aiptek GO-HD camcorder, but the video below was filmed on the Panasonic still camera I took with me to India last year. The footage sat there for a year, until, inspired by some of the things the Egypt group were doing with their little camcorders, I decided to sit down a few weeks ago and hack it into something. It’s a little over six minutes, which is a long time to be looking at footage shot from the side of an auto-rickshaw, but it’s got a nice soundtrack and a few interesting images here and there. So why not pop a Dramamine and take a look?

Technorati Tags: semanal08, semanal08week1, india, jaipur, autorickshaw

A word of advice: don’t try to buy a domain and web hosting from BlueHost from Egypt with a French credit card. That is, unless you enjoy being lectured about “country mismatches” and treated like a common criminal.

Since emerging from the Yotel two Saturdays ago, I spent three days in Barcelona (about which more later) before coming to Alexandria, Egypt, where I’ve been working with a group of women journalists from Europe and North Africa on a citizen media project. Apart from the mistreatment at the hands of BlueHost, it’s been extremely rewarding and enjoyable experience. The language of instruction is French, though a few of the participants are stronger in English, so I spend the day switching between the two languages, not to mention helping troubleshoot computers with operating systems in French, Italian and English, often with either European or Arabic keyboards. By the end of the day my head is spinning, and I’ve arrived at the point now where both my French and English are in a pretty sorry state.

Barbara and Djahida film each other

As usual, my Flickr page is probably the best vantage point from which to keep track of my activities, at least for now. Photos of Alexandria here, and of the workshop here.

(9:52pm Barcelona time) Pictured above, my cabin in the Yotel at Gatwick airport, and also the reason I still feel vaguely human after having spent most of last night on a plane and been shaken out of REM sleep at the equivalent of 2am Trinidad time to disembark.

I knew nothing of the Yotel’s existence until, having been told by EasyJet that I couldn’t check in for my flight to Barcelona six hours ahead of time, I was wandering around that odd zone in Gatwick that accommodates both arrivals and departures looking for somewhere to park myself and my bags and came upon a poster advertising short-term accommodation starting at £25 for four hours. This sounded way too reasonable by London standards (a pre-packaged Coronation Chicken sandwich in Boots runs you about £25 these days), but as I still had five hours and 55 minutes to kill I figured I’d at least take a look at this Yotel thing.

Within minutes of arriving in the Yotel’s vestibule, which, bathed in a soft purplish glow, reminded me of cross between a space ship and an ultra-modern medical dispensary, Julien, the pleasant young front desk clerk who turned out be from Martinique, had checked me in and dispatched a member of the cleaning staff to prepare my cabin. While I was waiting, Julien told me that Yotels are being planned for Heathrow and Amsterdam Schiphol.

The Yotel’s cabins are a study in the judicious use of space–if you’re carrying extra-large suitcases you’d be better of leaving them with the left luggage service. A narrow passage separates a padded cubicle containing an elevated bed from a glass-walled stall with shower, sink and toilet. Should you require a work desk, a pull-down table and folding stool are provided, as is both wired and wifi internet access. The bed linen was impeccable and the mattress struck the perfect balance between firmness and give. Once I’d changed into sleepwear, pulled down the blinds in the cabin door window and turned off the lights, it took me no time to fall into a coma-grade sleep.

A few hours later my PDA alarm told me it was time to get up and deal with EasyJet. My body didn’t want to co-operate, but I promised it that if it did, it would be rewarded with a warm Yotel shower.

I’m willing to bet that this will be the best £25 I spend this entire trip.

I’m in Louisville, Kentucky to attend the Idea Festival. Arrived here yesterday evening a bit dazed after the 11.5 hour journey (via Houston) from Trinidad, and so far have only ventured within a couple of blocks of the hotel to have dinner in Fourth Street, a pedestrianised entertainment hub lined with the likes of TGIF and the Hard Rock Café and where having a huge and blinding neon sign is evidently part of the zoning guidelines. My Global Voices colleague Amira Al Hussaini and I had a very good dinner, however, at an establishment specialising in bourbon, where I had my first ever mint julep. I suspect it won’t be my last either–they’re not as good as mojitos, but close.

On the way here I also had my second experience of being recognised as the person who does CFR, which was rather shocking, as I’ve begun to think that I barely qualify as a blogger any more, far less as a podcaster. The recogniser was Maurini Strub, a Trinidadian transplanted to Detroit who tells me she has a neglected blog on Vox (don’t we all) but didn’t offer the URL. Thanks, Maurini, for making me feel like I’m still part of the blogosphere.

I landed here around 8pm yesterday evening, so my impressions of the city are vague, but the feature of the landscape that made the strongest impression as we glided over the city were the bridges spanning the Ohio River. Hence the choice of the photo above, which was taken from my 17th-floor hotel room. I believe that’s the George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge. (More photos will be posted here, though no need to rush there just yet, as I’ve only posted two so far).

Off now to see what the Idea Festival is all about, and to find some eye drops, as I’ve been plagued with hay fever ever since I landed on US soil. Could I be allergic to America?

Still in Chicago (BlogHer ended yesterday – was excellent – photos here), and still proving that I’m an even worse blogger when I’m travelling than when I’m at home. In lieu of a conference report/trip update – at least for now – here are a couple of photos I took this afternoon in Millennium Park.

Now why is it that we outgrow activities like this again?

Returned from Toronto at 6am this morning and I’m feeling about as well as one should after having spent a sleepless night on an aircraft, so a more detailed report on the 2nd annual Caribbean Tales Film Festival will have to wait.

In the meantime, feel free to check out the photos.

Technorati Tags: caribbean tales film festival, film, toronto, canada, caribbean, trinidad

Those who check in on my Flickr page would have noticed (some of with great relief, I’m sure) that I’d sort of burned out on the bird photography. Thing is, there are just so many ways to shoot a Blue Gray Tanager.

Here in Tobago, however, I’ve become obsessed with the several varieties of hummingbird that frequent my uncle’s bird feeder. Capturing good photos of these hyperactive creatures poses an entirely new set of challenges, some of which — patience? — I’m pleasantly surprised at my willingness to embrace. I’ve also noticed that they have really short legs.

It occurs to me that this is my maiden voyage on the fast ferry to Tobago (I don’t get over to the sister island nearly enough). It’s quite spacious and comfortable, and the decor has a sort of mildly faded, early ’80s vibe. The the ride is fairly smooth (at least for now). Not bad for TT$215 (US$34) round trip (including car).

We’re already what seems like four or five miles out of port, and I still have internet connectivity from my EVDO modem — interested to see how long it will last.

Apologies for the break in transmission. I returned to Trinidad from Jamaica only on Monday, and today (Wednesday), I find myself on the port at Port of Spain, waiting to drive my car on to the ferry to Tobago (pictured above), where I’ll be headquartered for the next 17 days.

I still have grand plans, however, of blogging about the final day of Calabash, which Nicholas has of course already done over at Antilles, and the final Calabash photoset is here.

In honour of Indian Arrival Day, which we observe today in Trinidad & Tobago, my maternal grandfather’s West Indian Travel Permit.

According to research conducted by my cousin Stephen Trent, my great-grandfather, Ganga Singh Bissau, was born in the village of Ghagiphur, “which could be in Northern Rajasthan, Punjab or modern Pakistan (who knows if this village still exists).” He would have come to Trinidad at some point in the 19th century to work as an indentured labourer. My great-grandmother, Bhagwanti Changoor, was born in St. James, Trinidad, of India-born parents.

Bhagwanti (Rosanna) Changoor, my maternal great-grandmother

My grandfather was born in Philippine, in southern Trinidad, and at birth was given the name Poon Mahabir Ganga Bissau, becoming Morton Dean Gangar after he fell in with some Canadian missionaries and was persuaded to convert to Presbyterianism. Several of his siblings remained Hindus. He married my grandmother, Petronella Quarless, a woman of mixed African and European ancestry, in 1930. They had nine children. MD, as my grandmother always called him, occasionally spoke Hindi with his siblings but never with his children. I believe my grandmother’s mastery of Indian cuisine came via her mother-in-law, who also pierced the ears of the five eldest girls (by the time the sixth — my mother — arrived, Bhagwanti was too old, or was perhaps was even dead by then).

MD died in 1973, when I was far too young to contemplate such matters, but by 1967, the year this Travel Permit was issued, I’d like to believe that he was thinking of himself as a Trinidadian and a West Indian, though up until 1962 — the year Trinidad and Tobago gained independence — he was a British subject. Perhaps more importantly, MD was a metrosexual: I remember him as an assiduous hair-comber, and he always smelled of after-shave. Which might explain where C*POP gets the trait.

Technorati Tags: indian arrival day, india, trinidad, caribbean, diaspora