With one voice, the dogs bark out a requiem in the open air, during which my neighbours in the tent begin to pray. My eyes are still gluey with sleep, tongue coated; deep sleep, shallow dream, but when the earth starts dancing below our bodies, adrenaline quickly brings us back to earth. Besides, a little confused, I didn’t know exactly where I was, and the anxiety of being surrounded by concrete returned to me as the desire for holidays with the return to the sun. Am I in a shelter?

Yes, we are in a shelter.

The soldiers, I mean to say, our soldiers, real, good soldiers doing humanitarian work, have come to install all that we will need to live comfortably during these next months. Protected from the rain, from insects, from the sun, from cool nights, all the friends are now co-owners of a dwelling made of white canvas, with a waterproof floor, while the assistants and neighbours, are now co-tenants of modestly priced, rented accommodation.

Canadian Forces Members Work Magic for L'Arche in Carrefour, Haiti

I think of Hubert, that gentle and polite L'Arche extern with whom I shared a night on a church bench, outside, in the cool of a night without a moon. His words echo in my head like a simple truth: “We are all in the same boat...” Then he burst out laughing! Yes, more than ever, Haitians feel their individual poverty as the common situation of each and everyone, rather than as something that divides society.

The wind comes from the south this morning; it brings us the coconut perfume of the Antilles ...