Elections...

The Sunday before last, was the local elections to find out who would be the new mayor in each city in Haiti. I thought the whole campaigning thing was pretty entertaining, before the actual election took place. Since the people here don’t really rely on TV or newspaper to get the word out, each candidate for the election is responsible for finding his own way of making his views known to the people. What better way to do that than to strap giant speakers to the back of a pick-up truck, load the truck up with a bunch of people and parade the streets playing really loud music, and yelling all your promises into the microphone? With this process, no one can honestly say they didn’t hear what the candidate had to say! With no exaggeration at all, we’d be sitting in our house, the week before the election, and suddenly we’d no longer be able to hear ourselves talk while the campaigners drove by our house. Sometimes we’d sit outside our gate and just watch people parade down the street….I’ve been getting the impression that the Haitians just look for any excuse to party in the streets. They seem to really love it!