*** Disclaimer *** Long Post ***
Some people will visit a garbage dump and tell you how wonderful it was, others will visit the same dump and tell you how horrible it was, personal bias is impossible to remove from any writing but I am of the latter camp. I am not a journalist and this is not a journalistic piece it is a blog of my personal experience the last few days, this is a personal journal so please keep that in mind if you chose to read on.
Some people are travelers by their nature, they love to travel, they wake up and think hey let’s go visit Syria or Afghanistan or Nigeria it will be fun. I am not of this ilk either but my traveling companions as of late are.
Last Thursday my dear friend Alain (from France.. whose engine I am trying to get rebuilt for him) invited Elena and I to be his guests with him and his 2 other friends from France Thierry and Natasha. They thought it would be lovely fun to go visit the city of Cap-Haitien in North Haiti by car. The men had been there 30 years ago and had fond memories of the place, Thierry wanted to show his lovely girlfriend Natasha the city.
Alain and Thierry (whom I will often refer to simply as the boys) worked for years and years in Nigeria Africa in very scary and dangerous places and they loved it. For the boys this promised to be an adventure reminiscent of fond days long gone by.
For the girls, Myself (Lexi) and Elena and Natasha this would be a first time experience for us. Natasha has traveled extensively and was recently in Cuba for an interesting adventure, she was the prime motivator for this trip. Elena has done very much world traveling and also has the travelers spirit. Of course if you have followed me for any length of time you already know that I am internally composed entirely of chicken meat and simply abhor any situation which my brain perceives as dangerous.
We met early Thursday morning (September 26th 2019) at Las Velas packed and ready to squish together into the small white rental car for the road trip. With Thierry driving and the girls squished into the back seat, Natasha, navigating with her cell phone, chose a direct route and we simply began to drive west from Luperon.
The adventure began on Dominican roads with no posted speed limits only randomly interspersed large speed bumps, which often caught our fearless driver unaware, and my head bounced off the roof of the car as its undercarriage absorbed the grindy shock of the drivers mistake. Many speed bumps here are simply so big that every car, moving however slowly, still cannot help but scrape their mufflers clean.
Google maps does not differentiate between muddy rocky back roads and actual paved roads so it was not long before the road ahead disappeared into rough terrain best suited to an off-road SUV. The Dominican countryside is rather lovely and the people are often so friendly as the stare in amusement from atop their horses at the silly gringos slaloming their rented car amongst the rocky boulders up the steep muddy hill. Much credit is due our fantastic driver as he carefully kept the car on the move so the girls would not have to get out and push it from a mucky tomb.
After hours of interesting travel we stopped for a break in the splendid city of Monte Christie before pushing on for the road crossing into Haiti. The roads began to improve and as our speed increased so did the number of military checkpoints with armed soldiers. Eventually our eager band of travelers found our way to the border city of Dajabon where we would cross into the unknown territory of Haiti for our adventure.
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The Border Crossing
The affair at the border was one that even confounded and frustrated our well traveled European friends. We arrive on a road heading for the border, the world outside the car windows becomes hectic in a swirling vortex of people and noises and machines moving every which way. Our unassuming white car gets hemmed in by many vehicles into an ever narrowing path with no exists and no turns. People everywhere hollering and gesticulating wildly and men in uniforms with machine guns on every side, when suddenly a man in a white polo short approaches the drivers window waving his hand to pull over and stop, we have to get out.
In the crowded street there is no where to turn and no way to pull over our un-moving vehicle. The man is joined by a few armed soldiers and they halt other vehicles to make room for us to pull over to the side of the road. As we are all exiting the vehicle within easy sight of the border 50 meters away the man in the white shirt is jabbering away at us in Spanish that none of us understand.
Eventually the boys relay the message that it seems we have to walk back 50 meters and go to the unmarked white building to check out of the DR first, we drove right by without noticing it, bring our passports. As as five white people walk bewildered amongst the sea of locals and confusion we are directed into the white building on the south side of the road we just passed.
There are many men in groups crowded around the entrance but a man with an ID tag around his neck gestures us inside. We did not know it but many… hmmm… enterprising hustlers spotted us at a distance and are vying for our money already. This man does not work for either government he merely “assists” white travelers with money for a “donation”. We are directed to stand in a line so we comply. Half an hour later we get to the border agents bullet proof window and are instructed to surrender our passports, which they simply take, with our filled out blue declaration cards, and set them aside. No instructions are given and no process explained, the next person in line simply pushes us out of their way to step up to the window.
We are bewildered, none of my traveling companions have ever surrendered their passports in such a manner anywhere else in the world, rule number 1 of traveling is never surrender your passport. Our passports are gone and as we stand huddled in confusion at all the nonsensical jibbering around us someone jestures us into another line at an adjacent window, so we wait in another line, the extortion line.
Our hosts arrived by plane into the D.R. just a few days ago so their extortion tax is not so high, however for Elena and I we are sent to yet another window to wait to pay a much higher fee. We wait at the window for 40 minutes as we watch the border agents sitting at a desk having a splendid lunch, the concept of rotating lunches is foreign to their managers. It was painfully hot and sweaty as we were forced to await out turn to find out why we had been singled out for this line.
Eventually the border agent saunters to the window wiping her mouth and jabbers at us in Spanish, we have no idea what she is saying. Some man behind us with some English steps up to assist us dumb white girls and it seems we have to repay the customs fees we already pre-paid ahead for 3 months at the Luperon immigration hut. Thru the adhoc young interpreter we explain that when we arrived by boat in Luperon 3 months ago they made us prepay 3 months of immigration fees, we shouldn’t have to repay. Too bad, we don’t care, if you want to see your passport again you will give us much money.
Alain our host comes to our rescue and gives us the money to cover these extortion fees. Finally an hour after arriving, our friends are no where in sight and we are handed back our passports but ordered to go to the last window to pay another fee. It seems you have to pay Haiti a $20 US fee per person for permission to enter their country. The whole scene is bizarre and unlike any other border crossing we have ever seen but finally we have our permission to cross.
Us girls wander alone outside the building into the crowd of men gathered around watching us like hungry vultures. Nervous and uncertain of where our friends might be we walk back through the throngs of black men to try and find our friends back where we parked the car on the lead up to the border bridge. We were shocked and I got scared when we discovered the car was gone and our friends were nowhere in sight. Uh oh… now what?
We eventually find our hosts as they are fending off the hustlers approaching them for “fees” for various random things when they inform us that after all that border extortion, they will not allow the rental car to cross the border. Now we are not in D.R. anymore and we are not allowed to drive into Haiti to continue our adventure to Cap-Haitien.
For awhile it seems like we will have to walk across the border… pay their entrance and exit fees in Haiti to walk back here and pay D.R. entrance fees again to just abort our misguided adventure. After some time among our hosts talking it out in french, as Elena and I wait in the shade of our umbrella from the blazing afternoon sun, they decide, it is no problem we will just walk across the border and find a bus or something to take us to Cap-Haitien.
So that is exactly what we do. I was terrified and nervous as can be. This seemed like a terrible plan. I was absolutely incredulous that my friends were so hungry to visit the third world of Haiti that they would risk our lives to do it. As we are walking across the bridge between the armed soldiers in the sea of black men in the hustle and bustle of the crowd we got separated from our friends, the second we were allowed to cross through the big steel gate into Haiti we found ourselves alone and surrounded by men wanting our attention, to take our bags for/from us, and wanting to guide us to their taxi or motorcycle, our boys nowhere in sight.
I peak… my fear is almost at a panic level… holy crap… we have no idea where we are going… no idea where our friends are… and we are surrounded by the black hustlers wanting our white money. Elena and I can only stick together and keep pressing forward fending off the hands and advances of hustlers.
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Danger and Philosophy
My traveling companions and I have very different philosophies and ideas about risk tolerance safety and danger. I have had much opportunity to chat and explore the ideas firmly planted in the heads of my traveling companions, what I found was rather interesting.
They do not believe that the group of white people should stick together in the sea of poor desperate black people, they do not believe there is any safety or security in numbers. They believe that your life is already written and if it is your time to die there is nothing you can do about it so don’t worry about it. They believe that if it is not your time to die you can walk without any fear or concern into the most dangerous places on earth without concern. There is no way to mitigate against fate.
They do not believe that the men in a group should shelter or protect the women in the group from the advances of male predators around. There is no need to keep an eye on the young pretty women of your group if they get separated and surrounded by hundreds of men trying to hustle them, no danger therefore no need to protect. Even if the girls get assaulted it was destiny and unavoidable anyway, there was nothing they could have done.
I clearly have different, North American, ideas about travel. It is only the most basic north American common sense, to me anyway, that you stick with your group, men protect the women, and do not deliberately take unnecessary risks, do not walk deliberately down a dark alley controlled by a gang at night with no witnesses, it just seems obvious to me. Do not get separated from your group, stick together.
So when us two girls got held up at the big steel gate at the border crossing because the guard wanted to admire our passport pictures and hit on us and tell us how beautiful we were, we assumed our group would be waiting for us on the other side. We were wrong, they were completely self absorbed and wandered off without any awareness of us girls at all, not a clue and not a concern to be had.
So I was mortified.
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Interjection about Haitian Culture
I have to make an aside here to both preface the following pictures AND explain a little about Haitian culture.
They all believe in Vodoo. Literally. No matter how educated the Haitian or how well they may understand modern science they still all completely understand that the world really runs on magic, both good and bad spirits and energy. So as part of their Haitian culture they do not allow their pictures to be taken and do not take kindly to cameras, as they believe that if you capture their image on camera you can then use it to make a bad Vodoo curse on them or against them, so for them, it is too big a risk to take. In fact they can get quite violent and angry about it. It is very dangerous to even try to take pictures inside Haiti.
So all of the video footage and pictures I have of Haiti have been taken covertly and had to be smuggled out of the country. I could not dare to take pictures of the most dangerous parts of this adventure for when surrounded by a curious and on the edge of rioting mob it is unwise to piss them off with a camera. So my image quality is not great, please forgive me. Often I held the camera low in my hand near my waist and pretended it was not recording, therefore I could not always aim it or frame the pictures well. Sometimes I acted like I was scratching my head and just clicked away without looking. Sometimes Haitians saw my camera and started yelling at us and getting immediately angry and coming after us.
But these pictures of real raw Haiti are worth ten thousand words apiece so I will include a bunch of them for you at the end of the blog. Wanna know what Haiti is like, what it is really like, see the images below.
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Inside Haiti
We walk across the border and eventually spot our friends ahead in the crowd. We see a building ahead that looks like the border office and just bee line it towards our friends to keep safety in numbers.
I would also like to add the Haitian side of the border is particularly known as a very high crime area. Like highest crime area of the whole island. We had Dominican friends warn us to be extra cautious near the border on the Haitian side, it is very dangerous they say, even they would not go there. Every online article we could find also warned of the danger. Even the Dominican guards at the border warned us to be very careful when we cross because it is very dangerous.
The Haitian border is actually easier than the Dominican one. Us white people are immediately ushered past the crowds inside the building to the front of the line. The passport stamping is a simple affair and I don’t think the fees were very high, maybe $10 per person or something, our hosts generously paid the fees. When we get back outside the building, now as a group again, we still have the problem that it is like 60 kilometers to reach our pre-booked hotel rooms in Cap-Haitien. We need a ride.
Outside the border building we are again surrounded by men wanting our money and to offer us rides at the highest possible prices they can get out of us. If you are ever considering repeating our folly it is wise for you to know that the price for everything you need in Haiti will be exorbitantly high because you are white, so every price must be aggressively haggled, hopefully you enjoy the game as much as our boys did.
I think I will skip much of this part and share with you only the conclusion that after 20 minutes of negotiating, mostly in French we do not understand, our fearless leader, refuses all offers, and just begins to walk away into Haiti on foot and says “come on girls it is only a kilometer to the bus station… we will just walk there and find a bus to take to Cap-Haitien…” So we did.
I would say walking like that into the city was a very interesting experience to say the least. Five white people looking exactly like tourists carrying / dragging luggage bags with us, with the sea of black faces all staring at us, being followed by a string of hustlers all begging for our money or trying to get us to buy their products was nothing if not memorable.
Eventually our fearless leader (literally without fear of anything) finds some pickup trucks, with bench seats in the back, parked along the side of the road. He goes over and begins the process of haggling the price with them in french. Here it might be pertinent to mention that apparently France french is so very different than Haitian french that communication in French between our hosts and the locals, which we had assumed to be going along swimmingly, was in fact very difficult with little understanding.
It is very important to our wealthy hosts to save money and for $50 we could have booked the back of the truck to ourselves, but our host could save $20 if the driver picked up more people for the trip. In short order we all got crammed into the back of the truck and half a dozen more Haitians got piled on top of us, and the truck was off down the road.
Every time the truck stopped the locals would spot the white people and quickly swarm the truck to try and get our attention and sell us something or simply beg for money. I can still see the faces of younger men, knowing we do not speak their language, using their best international facial language for starving and hungry, with pouty lips and sad eyes hold their hands out for money. I am from Canada, I have never experienced this before, I have never had anyone beg me before, and my mother Theressa Christian spirit feels naturally compelled to help anyone in need, if they are hungry just give them money, but the first dollar will only cause a swarm upon the truck.
We drive on.
The ride to Cap-Haitien was long, bumpy, cramped,, wet (as it started raining halfway there) and interesting. The countryside is green and bushy with scattered huts along the side of the road. Eventually the rain begins and is dripping down my back and getting absorbed by my panties, wet bum on a bumpy ride is always an extra pleasure they do not charge extra for.
Soon the greenery of the countryside is replaced by the concrete and rust and rubble of the city. All of my traveling companions are tired and weary, it has been such a long day, we hope only that the hotel Natasha booked is nice and this rickety truck will drive us all the way there, I do not want to walk again.
I have decided to include some raw and unedited videos for you to show you the real Haiti. Please remember they have been taken covertly and smuggled out, the Haitians around me do not know I am recording, and if they suspect such, it could go remarkably bad for us in a hurry.
The truck / bus thingy eventually arrives at the “Bus Station”, I use the terms very loosely as it was more like a seething mass of black people standing around what used to be a gas station parking lot and they are quite surprised to see a bunch of white people show up. The truck is surrounded in chaos and my anxiety just goes thru the roof again, oh Lord please do not let my hosts decide we should walk thru this the remaining 4 kilometers to the hotel… please lord please… let’s not get out of the truck.
The driver says okay this is it… pay me and get out… dear lord please protect my soul and deliver me from harm… my prayers mumbling on my lips. Our boys start the negotiation again that they will not pay until we are delivered to the hotel as agreed 2 hours ago. Lots of yelling in various french dialects and mixed with Creole, the seething mob of black faces around us is growing by the minute, we are attracting attention.
The truck begins to drive further into the town, the lord has had mercy on this big chicken, we move on.
To be fair they do “clean up” part of the town for any tourists foolish enough to go there, it is well patrolled by heavily armed police in trucks and they do sweep or gather the garbage into piles. Our truck eventually gets to the nice part of the city and the mobs fade away behind us.
Video of the Clean part of the city
The architecture seems very similar to Cuba sayeth my hosts, with much concrete and brick cubes everywhere. Curved arches, and in the past people had tried to keep the buildings painted with various colours. One can imagine the glory days long past when this used to be a nice city 30 years ago, alas now… it is abundantly evident the city has been sadly in decline for decades.
The truck drops us off at the bottom of a steep hill and we are told the hotel is just “up there”, but we have to walk the rest of the way. At least there is no longer seething mobs around us, we have been deposited unto a quieter part of town and the locals only stare at us in curiosity.
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The Hotel and James “Bond”
The hotel owners name is James and the Mnemonic I use to help me remember is simply James Bond. James is a white guy but several generations of Haitian, he has been educated in Canada and is a remarkably pleasant and thoughtful person to have a conversation with. Later in the evening I spent some time chatting with him to get a better understanding of the ground we were on, I needed to allay my fears, find a reliable source of local knowledge, and it was James.
Haiti, explains James, has unfortunately become the shit hole of the wealthy countries to play out corrupt games of charity and fraudulent NGO’s to make a few men wealthy at the expense of his beloved country. Haiti was wonderful under previous dictatorships and runs best that way as long as the dictator is well intended. Since America forced Democracy here 30 years ago it has only gone down hill.
The Haitian culture, it seems, is still very tribal, bless and care for my “group” (family or tribe) and fuck everyone else. So every time any Haitian man gets himself elected they all act like they are entitled to steal everything possible, corruption is assumed.
The Haitian people, says James, are actually an interesting mix between Vodoo culture and Christianity. He laughs at my fears of sexual assault or getting raped here, he says they are not like that, they have the lowest violent crime rate in the Caribbean. They may want to touch a white lady, and sure often steal, but they do not outright assault very often, unless their Vodoo gives them a sign they have to. They are unlikely to hurt you physically, he says, but right now with the “Manifestations” it might not be safe.
I inquire further into this thing of which he speaks, what does this mean “Manifestations”?
James explains that they are in riots right now because of the gasoline shortage. So that is why we heard machine gun fire earlier in the night, and saw the thick black smoke rising above the city from our perch on this hill, tire fires at the road blocks. In Haiti they do not say riot or demonstration like we in the west do, instead they say that it was a sudden “Manifestation” of the peoples anger, arising like a ghost might arise out of the ether. It is controlled by the Vodoo magic that runs the universe and has a life of its own, nobody can predict it.
Although he does say the opposition party of the government has quite a bit to do with it, causing unrest and anger among the people to push a revolution, which may soon come, so they can seize power for themselves.
He says he was surprised any guests showed up today, he didn’t think anyone was crazy enough to try to get thru the road blocks and riots for a vacation. Saying our trip was ill-conceived and ill-timed is being generously polite.
James told us that in the morning, before we venture forth into the city, we should check with him first, and he will find out if the streets are safe.
The next day proved calm and we ventured forth to see the city on foot for ourselves in pleasant sunshine. Our traveling companions wanted to buy authentic Haitian art and we were told there was an art market beside the port. We walked the cleaned up part of the city protected by tourist police and only watched from a distance by most of the local population with curiosity. Only a few dozen times were we approached by beggars and not swarmed in any angry crowds at all.
I want to be fair here and show you both the good parts and the bad parts to try to give you a more balanced perspective. I will put a few pictures here for you. I do think it is fair to say that all of my traveling companions were in agreement that Haiti is the filthiest place they have ever seen, so dirty, so full of garbage. Even the nice pictures I show you still have piles of garbage on every corner, please do not think I am only sharing the worst of it for shock effect. It really is like this.
The city does sort of have a good side to offer if you ever want to tour Cap-Haitien.
At noon we found an open restaurant where we could get some lunch, we sat under lovely shade umbrellas on the deck over looking the beach, whilst the poor scavenged the beach front below. We enjoyed some interesting exotic local foods served with (sort of) french fries, that may or may not have been made of potatoes.
Here I choose to share, my Christian guilt has caused me much tears about this yesterday, this memory plaguing me like a war crime committed in dark corners, and is my guilty shame. As we sat eating like the privileged spoiled white people we are, local poor starving black men combing the beach came up to the edge of the deck fence to beg for food, they were starving and hungry, searching for something to eat among the garbage littering the shore. We refused them and sent mountains of uneaten food back to the kitchen for disposal because we did not want it. Easily we could have offered them the extra food we did not want, as a good Christians should, yet in the moment we turned a blind eye to their suffering for our own comfort.
Bad Lexi bad…
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We lost Alain
After lunch we headed across 13th street to check out the local food market outside the protected tourist zone.
Unbeknownst to me, but later Natasha informed me, a local Haitian man, desperate to escape this hell hole, began following us back to our hotel. He did not speak our language and stayed quietly shadowing us from a respectable distance, Elena and I did not even know he was there.
We eventually made our way back towards our hotel but we crossed the 13th street to the east and entered real Haiti, the place where the regular people live, their everyday lives. Where the garbage has not been removed for the benefit of the tourists and the tourist police do not go. It is difficult to describe the horrible smell of rotting decay, the sights of pure impoverished squalor, the looks of empty sadness on the faces of the people.
I was taking a secret video of some of our walk thru the local market with the camera innocently recording in my hand at my side. I have posted it, unedited for you, to try to give you some idea of what it was like. See for yourself.
If any of these people had noticed I was filming we would have found ourselves in trouble in a hurry, surrounded by angry Haitians, so forgive the covert nature of the video please.
After our interesting afternoon exploring Cap-Haitien, where we completely lost our friend Alain, we returned to the safety and security of the hotel. I was rather concerned that we had lost a member of our traveling group but Thierry said not to be worried at all, he has traveled with Alain all over the world and has not lost him permanently yet, Alain is known for just wandering off. I decided not to worry until sunset.
It seems, that our friend Alain, who was waiting outside the church while we explored inside the church we were given access to, decided to walk alone back to the hotel for an afternoon nap without informing anyone, and not notifying the hotel staff to let his friend know, when we returned, that he was in his room. In Canadian culture this would be rude at best and downright inconsiderate, but it seems, we were not in Canada were we.
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The Escape
That night we informed James that in the morning we would like to book a ride back to the border, could he arrange it for us? He said he would do his best, but he warned, the gunfire down below had erupted again after dark, there seemed to be another manifestation happening again. His informers told him that the road to the Citadel we wanted to visit was closed and the road to the border was also closed, but maybe in the morning there is a chance it might reopen.
Personally I asked my friends back home to pray for me and mused quietly to myself about how my companions found this type of travelling appealing? We needed to plan our escape to find a way out of a country suffering gasoline shortages and riots on the verge of a revolution in the morning, and with my hosts, it had to be on the cheap too.
In the morning James warned that the road to the Citadel remained closed but he could get us a ride back to the border for $100 usd, which was high for the area, but in my humble opinion, a very small price to pay to get my lily white behind safely out of this hell hole. My friends refused the ride because it was too expensive, a gringo price, and instead planned for us to walk the 4km back to the “Bus Station” where they would negotiate another cheap local truck ride back to the border.
I broke down, I begged them, please… I will pay the hundred dollars… please let us not walk 4km thru the angry crowds in the mud and filth carrying our luggage just to save a few dollars on the cab ride. My friend would hear none of it, Lexi there is no danger, nothing to worry about, you saw yesterday, it is safe.
I begged James, please at the very least give us a ride down to the “Bus Station” in your car so we do not have to walk thru the crowds and mud, he refused, it was far too risky for his car. Even if there was only a 20% chance all his windows get smashed out it is not worth the few bucks we would pay for the lift.
Eventually James came thru with a ride in a Lori Truck down to the “bus station” which at the very least gets us to the place our hosts can haggle another cheap ride in another truck headed to the border, maybe.
I had the camera sometimes filming and sometimes covertly clicking away at random pictures of the escape. At one point as we were driving past the crowds of people one of the men spotted my camera and began shouting in anger and people started throwing bottles and garbage at our truck, beginning a riot, the driver put pedal to the metal and raced to make our safe escape. It was quite scary and a very close call.
When we arrived back at the chaotic “Bus Station” there were just crowds of black people milling around as we pulled up. Everyone stopped to stare at the white people pull up and get out of the Lori. Elena and I were riding with the driver inside and we were afraid to get out of the cab. The mob of locals start shouting and clamoring about our vehicle and our hosts begin trying to negotiate our ride to the border.
This was one of the scariest times of my life and I dared not try to get any pictures whilst standing helplessly among the superstitious angry locals. Us two white girls get out of the cab as instructed and move to put our backs to the back gate of the Lori, Elena wearing her backpack on her front side for protection and we both stared wide eyed into the sea of angry black faces around us. I can still close my eyes and see it with a shudder down my spine.
Our fearless leader and Natasha headed off to the nearest trucks to try and negotiate a cheap ride for us, and instructed us girls to just wait by the Lori. There was one guy near us who could speak English, he was trying to help get us out of there, he had offered his seat and that of several of his friends on a “passanger Van/Bus” for $50 usd but our hosts still refused it because it was “too expensive”.
I still remember the guy looking at us girls and saying… “Do you know where you are…? Do you know how dangerous it is for you to be here…? You have to go before it gets bad…! ” I said yes we know but our friends do not and they have the money… tell them, and I bit my lip in fear and frustration.
Eventually Thierry and Natasha negotiated a $30 ride on the back of a truck to make our escape from the wretched country. They saved $20 from us sitting comfortably in seats in a van and saved $70 for us not to get a cab ride safely all the way back, I hope it is money well saved for their prosperous futures.
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A Side Story
I did not catch this at the time… but Natasha relayed it to me when we got back to good old Luperon that night. She said remember that guy that followed us yesterday from the restaurant back to our hotel and was just staring at us with desperate eyes…? We acknowledged we did… Natasha said do you remember this morning that as we left the hotel some guy tried to jump onto the back of our Lori and catch a ride with us… I said yes I saw it… she said it was the same guy and he had his passport in his hands… he was staring at us with pleading eyes… he kept saying please in french, like he desperately wanted us to take him with us… to rescue him from his hell hole… and we shoved him off the truck.
How do we live with these images in our heads… How does one go in amongst the desperately poor and keep their Christian virtue in tact? People were hungry and I did not feed them… the were poor and I did not give them money… they were desperate and I did not give them hope… instead I turned my back on them, turned a blind eye to all their suffering, and saved only myself.
I have much crying left to do… much begging God for forgiveness for my behaviour…. I have much to be ashamed of.
Cheers…
Captain Lexi……….
………the guilty and very sad…
.