5 minute overview

Aeroport Toussaint L'Ouverture lies thirty miles off the south coast of Haiti. Yet I felt the captain begin his descent just we came over the northern most extremity of the island. The entirely of this island of 9 million passed in the time it took me to drink my coffee. As we slowed the treeless red hills came into focus, as did brown streams bleeding Haiti’s topsoil out into the sea. Over the Gulf of Gonave indiscernible flecks of white slowly materialized into sailboats as we neared the ocean's surface. Lurking beneith the water sandbars stretched out like tentacle holding fast freighters ensnared long ago. In a blink the soothing azure blue gave way to scorched earth and rotting shacks of the capital's slums.