ASIN: B009LUMWF6
Publisher: Amazon.com Services LLC
Pages: 121
I spent two years (1984-86) as the Coast Guard Attache to the U. S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Looking back all these years later, I realize that those two years were the the most intense, most moving, most heart-wrenching years of my life.I was your typical middle-class white American when I arrived in Haiti--I'd grown up in the comfortable suburbs of the San Francisco Peninsula. I'd attended private schools, universities, and become a Coast Guard aviator. It was an easy, privileged life. Then I arrived in Haiti. Poverty and despair were everywhere. Garbage littered the streets; sewage ran in the gutters; naked children stood along the roads, their bloated bellies and reddish hair announcing their malnourishment; the corrupt government, led by Baby Doc Duvalier, stole money from the peasants, siphoned U. S. aid money into Swiss accounts, and lived a life of decadence made all ...
