Hidden Worlds, Hidden Words by Jane Smith

The island world of Haiti reeks of its culture, drips with sharing and

community, at least to the casual observer riding in a van on the narrow,

hilly streets.  On every corner, beside every wall, there are red, green,

yellow umbrellas that shade the men and women who sell clothes, cooking

utensils, hardware, shoes, art, drugs and whatever a group, a family, might

need.

Large numbers of dress shirts, golf shirts, women's blouses hang from the

fences, along side flip flops and athletic shoes attached to boards. They

barter among themselves, cook together, sit together, carry water together.

From my window in the air conditioned van, community seems palpable. And

yet.

That group may not associate with the group right beside it, I'm told.

There's an unwritten code of how business is done on the streets, in plain

view. There is no electricity, no running water, so they carry ice to the

group, chip it on the street and use it quickly in the heat.  In their own

communities, there is regard for the code of the street, the day-to-to day

business world they invented.

The government has started a recycle plan, and the women gather all the

plastic bottles and other recyclables - from the water they use to bathe,

wash their hair, and drink - and carry those empty bottles on their heads

in big bundles.  They get paid to do it, and a man who sat beside me in the

van told me the streets are cleaner now than they were on his February

visit. This is a government plan that seems to be working.

As I returned home, the newspaper headlines in the USA read of more trouble

at Penn State, new stories about no communication from the administration

who knew what was happening, even hiding information that could have made a

difference for young boys, other young boys not yet sexually abused.

Because of an unwillingness to talk at the time, more people are hurt,

legacies are tarnished, and people don't know who or what to believe or

respect.  They say take down Joe Paterno's statue, no, leave it. Now it is

down. Is all that he did for the university lost in the new context we all

have for him?  People don't know what to think.

And I read about Progress Energy and Duke Energy, the firing of the planned

CEO, Bill Johnson, replacing him with the planned Chairman of the Board,

Jim Rogers, 40 minutes after the merger went through, and people not

understanding what Rogers is saying to the Utilities Commission. How could

this have happened, didn't they know all of this? Did they lie to the

Commission, just to get approval?  What did they hide?  The story seems to

be that the Board learned of the "autocratic" style of the former CEO only

two weeks before the merger was approved.

Wasn't that enough time to talk to the fired CEO, to sort it out?  Or did

it have to become a hidden thing, too?  Now it is in the open, and many

people are hurt and confused, and the merger has a lower likelihood of

working, in a world where mergers, some say 90%, frequently fail.  And

people are confused, don't know what to believe, find it hard to trust.

In Haiti, there are at least two worlds.  There is the very public,

colorful world on the streets, the world of bartering and selling out for

all to see, the "tap-taps", public transportation painted with - in god we

trust, god is love, animals, fruit, people's faces, American flags, flames,

French words I don't know.  There's still some rubble in the public world.

The President's home is not repaired yet; the President said wait until all

of Haiti is in better shape. 80% of the people have no power; some of them

hook lines to the main lines and steal it.

No infrastructure or running water, cars riding all over the hilly streets

with no sidewalks or stoplights to guide the traffic, carrying things from

place to place on their heads, held up and high. proud, resourceful people.

The streets are open. What you see is what is happening. If there is a

traffic jam, someone will get out of a car and direct traffic. working

things out together in this apparently chaotic world.

Behind the walls, the other Haiti. beautiful homes, nice restaurants,

government offices with well dressed men and women talking about what Haiti

needs, people saying to various government dignitaries that they are going

to do projects then they don't, new yellow and orange hotels being built,

diplomats meeting VIPs at the airport, helping them get through the red

tape.

They dress up to go through the VIP house to avoid the heat and bother that

come with arriving at the small, basic airport that was the hub of the

outpouring of relief after the January, 2010 earthquake.  And we rode

around, on our business trip, with a driver and a guide, in relative ease,

air conditioning in our white van advertising Prestige beer. We saw the

world through those protected windows.  The places we visited aren't

available to the people on the street, not without "knowing someone."

In the USA, we have amazing infrastructure, order, the right to vote,

dissent, share our ideas and opinions, and create new worlds, new

possibilities every day.  Yet we still don't talk about what is right in

front of us.  We "power struggle," try to best the other person, win out,

and leave others to be hurt and wonder who to trust.  And hope things don't

get found out. which, somehow, they always do.

Does our kind of world promote this lack of communication, this distrust of

each other, this unwillingness to connect, to resolve?  Haiti is its own

culture, more humane in some ways than we are. Will turning a third world

country into "more like us" provide anything that makes us all better?  Or

will it just give us more Penn States, more troubled mergers, more withheld

communications that show up sooner or later?