It has been two weeks since the final results of the Haitian presidential elections were published. We now know that on March 20th, Michel Martelly “should” face Mirlande Manigat for the runoff. Don’t be surprised if I said should, because here in Haiti a surprise is never a surprise. We have learned to live with the fact that anything can happen at any moment.
The campaigns for this famous runoff have started. You can be sure that I have skipped some details for you about the ongoing internal fight inside the elections council and the government on the coming elections. So do a lot of my fellow Haitians. We remain silent but watchful. We definitely prefer this “back to normal” appearance. Where is baby doc? And what is he doing? Nobody seems to care. Is Aristide coming back tomorrow or the day after or next week? We don’t want to know. We kind of prefer this surprise game that is never a surprise. However, whatever, our life is so simple and much better when we don’t care. Or I’d better say when we just care about our self.
Take care of ourselves and our own business – this is something I walk with all the time. People who care about themselves and who want nothing else than some opportunity and support. That’s exactly what I see every day while I am working at the C2C women’s clinic at Grace Children’s Hospital. Day by day I meet a lot of women who never say a word about politics, even when we have a female candidate on the runoff. I meet a lot of women whom are only concerned about their health, their coming babies, how they are going to get back home, what they are going to bring home. I see them laughing, sighing, complaining about the heat, but never being discouraged and patient enough to wait hours to receive health care. Good and proper health care. They don’t care about the protest going one a mile away. They don’t care about Martelly having thousands of people listening to him in a meeting next door. Their priority is to know if the doctors can make it to the clinic and if they will be able to complete their follow up until they deliver the HOPE that they are carrying. This baby, the HOPE for the future of Haiti. And that is what we call “back to Normal.”
