so over spring break i did what all wild and crazy grad students do...i headed down to haiti for my share of earthquake dust and 7 nights in the way more than five star starlite motel...the rating scale of course being how many stars you can see from your bed - or your bath. anyway, as per usual when heading to my beloved ayiti, i put everything i didn't want to lose into my purse and carry on and then covered them the chosen duct tape of the trip...in this case red. since my bag was on its last seams, it even got an extra dose of this wonderful identifying adhesive...
my bag and i both made it into beautiful haiti...just not together. i would find out later that we both made it out of haiti too, again, just not together. for all that i saw and felt, all that happened, all that i experienced with people i love so much in this nation that i love so much that has just been through so much...this dumb bag somehow remained a focal point. that was really annoying to me, even as i would mention it i was wondering why - it wasn't nearly as important to me as any 50 other things happening at any given moment there...or as any 50 other things i could have been telling someone who asked about my trip. even now i am kind of annoyed that this is the first blog about the trip that i feel i have to write. but for some reason, in this bag was more than cheese for dorothy and chocolate for keziah...more than martha's pantaloons and all the underwear i own (with one notable exception of course :). i have gotten so much stuff out of it even though i never actually unpacked it...as a lost bag it carried so much of what i needed to remember about haiti right now and so much of what i needed to realize about myself right now...talk about a heavy load...good thing i lost it before it became such a metaphor...i would never have been able to lift it.
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