A Very Olie Christmas

One of the bummers about living in Haiti is that the classic Christmas jingle “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” is never really true here.  Sure they have a few buildings with decorations and there are French Christmas carols on the radio, but the weather stays pretty much exactly the same, there are [...]

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Meet Beatrice!!! (No joke…I swear)

About a month ago Jillian’s parents came down for a visit and were awoken by the scurrying of feet in our living room.  They looked into Olie’s crate and found him soundly asleep, so they returned to bed, thinking they must have just been imagining things.  But 10 minutes later they heard it again, and [...]

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Promoting Transparency in Haiti, or, How Our Neighbors Have Been Able to See Us Naked Every Night

I was speaking to our friend Alexis last week when the subject of our Ti Kay (or house) came up: “I love your house, it’s perfect…except it’s not very private,” she explained with a cringe.   I agreed, considering our house is surrounded by four other houses, and four apartments.  During the day the house [...]

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6 Month Later: Changes (or the Lack Thereof)

The 6-month anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti has come and gone, and after heavy media coverage and a slew of government events, the Haitian people have been reminded, yet again, that their situation sucks and nothing has really improved.  I’ve been trying to think about how to sum up the events of the past [...]

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The Many Sleeping Positions of Haiku

Sometimes things have a way of working themselves out.  After hearing the news that our puppy had died, we wrote off the idea of getting a dog, taking it as a sign that maybe this just wasn’t the right time.  Well, the reality is that we don’t really need to get a new dog when [...]

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Our Famous Ti Kay!

My Mom came to Haiti last week for her first visit, something that I was a little apprehensive about as Haiti is hard to swallow, but we ended up having a really great time.  We toured the countryside on our trusty stallion, Pinotage, went to the grocery store (which is something she likes to do [...]

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Falling Nuggets of Death

It was the middle of the night on the first day that Jillian and I had moved into our new house.  We were peacefully sleeping when all of a sudden, “THWACK!”, it sounded like someone had swung a baseball bat as hard as they could at our corrugated-steel roof, and hit a grand slam. We [...]

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Flower Power

Every time I sit on our porch I see something new.  These orchids grow out of hanging pots in the garden and are practically hidden if you’re not looking for them.  But why not?  God forbid this house got any better…

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Our Ti Kay!

Nestled in the hills of Petionville sits a small gated community speckled with modern looking houses, trees, and the sounds of songbirds.  You drive down the small rocky road past the security gate and just before it ends you see it: the most amazing Ti Kay in all of Haiti! Now many of you probably [...]

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Moving Day!

Well everyone, the day has come for Jillian and I to go off on our own.  On Saturday we moved into our new ti kay (small house in Kreyol), and while we came to Haiti with a relatively small amount of stuff, in the past month we’ve already accumulated enough to make moving a day-long [...]

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