Haiti, now devastated by an earthquake, was the first black nation to become independent in 1804 and only the second in the western hemisphere, after the United States , to do so. Haiti occupies a third of the island named Hispaniola by Columbus who happened upon it in 1492. The remainder of the island is the Dominican Republic. Until Columbus claimed it for Spain, the island was occupied by Arawakan people some of whom called their land Ayiti. In 2003, the year preceding Haiti’s 200th year of independence, award-wnnning Ghanaian International journalist, Kwaku Sakyi-Addo, visited Haiti. His diary is published below: In Transit I’m the only black man on the plane from London to Boston, en route to Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. But from Boston to Port-au-Prince, the demography is reversed. There’s one white woman on the flight. Fair. In the rest of the chocolate-hued passengers I see my own reflection. And I wonder how, despite centuries and oceans of separation, a people can be so unchanged. They could very well have been the very men and women the slave-traders snatched from Dahomey and the Gold Coast, except this is the 21st century and these ones are flying, travelling of their free will. They’re so African. So us! 95 per cent of Haitians are black. They travel heavy – just like ‘us’. I know those blue and red checked nylon bags. That’s where the presents are stowed. People at home expect them.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 20:07:41 +0000
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