Ezili Dantà ²: "But it's also from Vodun," I point out to our friend, that some biblical terms were "originally used and adopted from the world's original spirituality and Haiti's spiritual way of life -- Vodun. In Vodun, you need Haitian flesh and blood for spirit to live, for the Ancestors to live. Nou se Ginen depi là ¨ marasa, là ¨ mà ² e là ¨ mistà ¨. San yo se san nou. Pouvwa yo se pouvwa nou. Nou fà ¨ yon sà ¨l kà ². Inyon fà ¨ fà ²s nou. - We're Africans, one with the Ancestors, their blood is our blood, their power our power. "We're one body" was the cry at Bwa Kayiman that began the Haiti revolution. He agrees that's true."
I then ask, "did you see any UN soldiers while waiting for Aristide to arrive from the airport?"
"There was only the Haitian police there. Remember the UN head, Ban Ki-Moon called Zuma, South African's president, to try and stop president Aristide from returning, so naturally they weren't around to give him security. Escort him from the airport as they did with the bloody dictator Jean Claude "baby Doc" Duvalier on January 16 when he suddenly returned to Haiti after 25-years of luxurious exile in France without any objections from the former slave-holding powers who objected to Aristide's return."
Ezili Dantà ²: The US, Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton, France and the United Nations' Ban Ki-Moon had warned that Aristide return would destabilize Haiti as if Haiti wasn't already destabilized by their Bush regime change and bicentennial coup d'etat, lack of reconstruction after the earthquake, UN-imported cholera, NGO feudal pillage and fleecing of earthquake donor funds and these forced US-supported sham and fraudulent elections that denied the largest political party in Haiti the right to participate. (See Haiti Elections and UN Cholera , Haiti's case against the UN for importing cholera epidemic , and Haiti message to US Embassy in Haiti: The Will of the People. Also, according to newly released U.S report 800,000 Haitians will be infected with the UN-imported cholera).
On Monday, before the return, Obama's people told the media his return would put their farcical elections in jeopardy. Was it just an overblown ruse as usual to promote their interests in Haiti and keep the narrative going that Haiti's people are innately violent, corrupt and without discipline or did you, with all that massive crowd of people milling around, see a need for the U.N. to be there in Haiti to keep order?
"I'll tell you a few things I saw that belied this narrative of "violent Haiti,'" our HLLN collaborator who was on the ground, at the house waiting for Aristide's to arrive from the airport, says.
"The crowd at the residence was amazing and peaceful. Some things were just simply hilarious. I saw someone had dropped a bottle of juice and one of the young women who had come over the wall, picked it up. So they were conscious about leaving the courtyard clean. There were lots of lighthearted moments.
Thousands upon thousands of people were in the yard, moving up to the house, pressing their faces on the glass, staring into the windows. Many climbed the trees and after a while some managed to get to the top of the roof.
At one point when president Aristide's car finally got pass the crowd and into his own yard, someone yelled to a guy on the roof who sat with danglying his foot over the top of the roof. "Get your foot out of the president face. How would it look when he comes out of the car to see the bottom of your foot, that's not right. Show some respect." Something like that."
At the Aristides' home, thousands of Haitians, who had waited seven long tortured years for the return of their beloved president and his family, waited a little longer to welcome them. -- Photo: Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste*
"It was surreal. Imagine thousand of people chanting, saying the slogan and singing and a little thing like that was noticed and folks were complying. A few others started saying the same thing and the perpetrator quickly tucked in his foot. It was hilarious. Then someone said, you people are damaging the trees, get out of those trees. Misye nap kase pye bwa yo, desan. But the response was, n a plante li ankà ² -- we'll just come back and plant some more.
It was a celebration. It was a thousand Christmases. A million presents for a poor people bullied and terrorized by Bush regime change shock and awe in Haiti. People were happy, smiling, smiling. Hugging each other. Slapping each other on the back. Just elated. Some, for the first time in seven years. A leader who speaks for them was back in Haiti. When they finally left as Tidid didn't come out to speak to the crowd, some took the unripe, the green mangoes from the trees.
I heard one guy saying "that is Titid's mango, so it's my mango!" But then one of the people in our group commented later on that some of them were taking the mangoes to show their families they were at Titid's house on this historic and miraculous return." [End of HLLN on-the-ground-report, on Aristide's historic return to a celebrity welcome, March 18, 2011.]
You won't see this sort of Haiti media coverage anywhere except at a few outlets but especially on Aljazeera, Democracy Now, or posts by Jean Saint-Vil (Jafrikayiti), Ansel Herz, Kevin Pina, Denis Bernstein, Georgianne Nienaber, Znet, the Dominion, Haiti radio and newspapers and with our own Ezili HLLN coverage that is always graciously picked up or quoted by Chris Cook at Pacific Free Press, Mary and Willie Ratcliff at SF BayView, Rob Kall at Op Ed news, Matt Rothschild at The Progressive, Said Shabazz at Final Call and Dick and Sharon at LA Progressive.
As I wrote in Beating back the elite's rabid rage: Against all odds Aristide returns to Haiti :
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