It’s not the same, but it is. There is more stuff on the streets than there was when I left – more tons of brick moved, by hand, by the people of the city, but that’s because here, just as before I left, and just as it would be anywhere else, the ordinary people of this city are trying to recover some semblance of normal life. So they continue to unearth their homes from the earthquake’s debris. In that, Haiti hasn’t changed.

The sky was lovely when I arrived in Carrefour. Orange—just like the sky in Montreal at night—but here it’s the natural colour, not the glow of electric lights. And life? Everyday life? The hard reality? Children now climb on the roofs of the neighbourhood buildings, fragile roofs supported by half-walls. It just goes to show you that memory is a faculty that also forgets. The kites have returned to their place in the breezes that waft over the city. We cook, and the odours mingle with the mellow nectar of garbage in the streets. It doesn’t smell bad, just different.

Yesterday, I went down to the little neighbourhood shop because I really wanted some coconut cookies. A crowd of little ones gathered around this white man, to touch my hair and to make me laugh. They succeeded. I took a bit of fishing line in my hand, trying – and more or less succeeding – to make a sail from a piece of cloth—a sail for dreams. I managed to get it about 100 feet in the air and then lost the breeze. The kite came crashing down, and the children burst out laughing.

It’s interesting to see just how central a place the L’Arche community has become here in Carrefour—a meeting place for the people of the neighbourhood. Maybe it’s because it has been here for decades, or maybe it’s because the invisible barrier that kept people far from those who are disabled has crumbled in the wake of the earthquake. Society’s attitudes don’t change quickly, but sometimes events do remind us sharply of our human need for one another.

I lay my head on the rough bark of a coconut, closing my eyes and dreaming clumsily of an imaginary country: beautiful, warm, gentle—where, after an earthquake, all the reconstruction of the country is shaped by the desires and wishes of people affected by some form of disability. Inclusion would be total, says a sleepy voice from the core of my being. I am smiling slightly, and there’s a little spittle at the corner of my mouth – I am already asleep, in the shade of a rebuilding in progress.

J

PS No kites were harmed during the creation of this blog!