Monday, February 24, 2014

Michaëlle Jean’s unceasing love for Haiti: Porter

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI—It’s 7 a.m. and Michaëlle Jean is bouncing — bright-eyed and bursting with enthusiasm — in the back of a United Nations truck to her first appointment of another packed day.

After four years of searching, she found her childhood home last week. The one she snuck out of 46 years ago, for fear the Tonton Macouteswould return again for her father and, this time, finish him off.
“We knocked, there was a woman there. I asked her if I can come in,” she recalls, as all around us the city groggily pulls itself from bed.

“I was like a kid, I was so excited. So many memories came back to me: every single corner of that house, the staircase, the rooms, the balcony … My mother used to rock me on her lap on the balcony.”

Jean’s home in Haiti. It seems right, doesn’t it, given the passion she has poured into this place over the past four years: first as Canada’s beloved and heartbroken governor general, and then as UNESCO’s special representative to Haiti.

No comments:

Post a Comment