Last year a well-traveled friend told me she was planning on visiting Haiti.

"Oh wow, really? There's only one place in the world I wouldn't go right now, and it's Haiti."

I don't usually talk people out of going to places.

In July of 2021, a group of 23 mercenaries, mostly from Colombia, stormed into the house of president Jovenel Moïse in Haiti's capital city of Port-au-Prince. It was the middle of the night. They beat him severely and then shot him twelve times, after which he promptly died. They shot his wife several times as well, only stopping when they thought she was dead, but she refused to cooperate and survived. Then the mercenaries ransacked the house looking for files the president was preparing to release, which would uncover the names of dozens of corrupt Haitian government officials that were involved in drug trafficking. The same men who almost certainly hired and trained these mercenaries to kill the president before this could happen.

"How is this kind of thing even possible?" you might be asking yourself. For one, it's Haiti. Almost anything is possible in Haiti. Moïse was apparently a trusting sort, as he only had about a half-dozen security guards posted around his house. Which is a choice I might rethink if I was about to drop the hammer on a bunch of powerful and corrupt guys who really didn't want to stop being powerful and corrupt. Those six guards were disarmed without a fight, and most if not all are thought to have been informants who collaborated with the mercenaries. So, lessons here: You need more than six bodyguards if you're the president of Haiti. And if for some reason you insist on only having six, you need to choose them more wisely than Moïse did.

Since then, Haiti has devolved from the regular kind of craziness Haiti is famous for, into a new and unprecedented level of near-anarchy. Port-au-Prince has been taken over by gangs who now rule the majority of the city. Scores of police officers have been killed, so many so in fact that the police got fed up last week and themselves rioted, breaking into the Prime Minister's mansion to have an angry word with him. When he turned out not to be there, they attacked the airport just as his plane was landing.

Haiti doesn't have a president. Their Prime Minister was never sworn in and probably shouldn't technically be in charge. As I write this, they have no elected government officials at all. Also there's a cholera outbreak.

This is all on top of the usual reasons you need to be careful when visiting Haiti, due to high levels of crime, intense poverty and the general aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, which killed around 260,000 people and destroyed much of Port-au-Prince. This is not to be mistaken for the earthquake of 2018, or the earthquake of 2021. Haiti has seldom been described as a terribly lucky country.

So in the end, my friend didn't go to Haiti. Then January of 2023 rolls around and I find myself rambling through the Caribbean, with plans to visit every country in the region early this year. Except for Haiti, which I was supposed to visit with my girlfriend at some unspecified and hopefully safer future date, only we broke up in December and so that plan was out. Then, one day out of the blue I get a message from my friend Mike, who I've visited approximately eleventy countries with over the past few years, mentioning that he's going to Haiti this month. But he's very anxious about going by himself.

Ah, so that's what it sounds like when the stars align.

And so I went to Haiti.

After doing some research and conferring with the other crazy travel people in our lives, we determined that while Port-au-Price was definitely too dangerous to visit right now, Haiti's second-largest city, Cap Haitien on Haiti's northern coast, was actually relatively untouched by the chaos. We'd have to fly in direct from Florida to avoid a transfer in Port-au-Price (you know things are bad when it's dicey to even transfer through an airport), and hire a driver to show us around and keep us in the safer areas, but it all looked surprisingly do-able.

The next thing I knew we were touching down in Cap Haitien. As we landed, the flight attendant came over the intercom and said "Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Port-au-Prince!" at which point the entire plane burst out laughing. Yeah right, we're not getting off the plane if we're in Port-au-Prince. Thankfully we were all able to look out the window and quickly confirm that you just don't know your Haiti, lady.

Walking across the runway, the sun beat down ferociously like a laser as we were waiting impatiently to get into the building and out of the sun. Next to the door, a band made up of airport employees wearing yellow safety vests absolutely tore through a festive Caribbean number, rocking way harder than a runway-based band has any right to.

Everyone was surprisingly nice getting through immigration and security, and in a jiff we were being whisked through the busy, sunny and trash-choked streets of Cap Haitien.

The Cap quickly reminded me of West Africa. I spent basically all of 2022 in Africa and the former French colonies in the west all had a similar mix of pretty French architecture falling into decay, along with a chaotic dysfunction that didn't speak well of the structures the French had left behind. I later found out that most of the slaves who were brought over by the French and who later founded the country of Haiti were from Guinea on the west coast of Africa, and this didn't surprise me at all since I felt like I could have been in Guinea itself.

The tiny shops formed a predictable pattern of auto parts shops, barber shops and "Boissons Gazeuse" (literally "gassy drinks" which made me chuckle at the specificity, but basically what we'd call "soft drinks"). We were talking about the odd prevalence of these three types of shops when we suddenly passed a storefront that impressively combined two of the three.

The other thing I found fascinating where the "banks". Every fourth shop or so said "BANK" on it but they were all approximately the size of your bedroom. Just a squat little concrete square. How could this possibly be a bank? Where would they fit the vault? There was barely enough room for a single person to sit down in there. A fascinating mystery.

Driving down the busy street we passed a minivan that was inches away from falling down the steep embankment along the side of the road. The land appeared to be slowly eroding away behind it, inch by inch, and any day now there wasn't going to be anything holding it up at all. This scene had the surreal feeling of watching a slow motion disaster, as the van would surely tumble down into the front of the store below, but it also seemed inevitable, as it was very unlikely that the van was going to get moved before this happened, since it had no tires at all.

We scoped out restaurant options in the neighborhood where we'd be staying, and the closest possibility was a place amusingly called Gros Bébé ("fat baby").

If you notice the strange words at the bottom of that sign, that is Haitian Creole. French remains the official language of Haiti, even though only about 40% of the population can speak it at all and only the most educated 5%-10% are fluent. Some have pointed to this as part of the reason for Haiti's dysfunction, the fact that the majority of the population are cut off from anything official within the country. Coming in from the outside, I quickly found it frustrating that no one seemed to understand my French, taking this to be an indictment of my pronunciation or just evidence of general French-based snootiness. But this quickly made a whole lot more sense once I learned that most here don't even speak that language.

Eventually we made our way up the steep, steep, steep road to our hotel, which featured an absolutely gorgeous view out over all of Cap Haitien from above.

So far so good!

The next morning we were picked up bright and early by our driver and whisked off to...

The private gas station! Amidst the chaotic hustle and bustle of Cap Haitien there are lots fenced off with high corrugated tin walls and a mystery gate that opens only when you honk the secret honk. After a long pause, the wall swings open, and an attendant waves you into a much cleaner space full of gas pumps where you can fuel up in this little oasis and where you're also probably somewhat less likely to get carjacked.

Newly full of beans, we headed off for the Citadelle Laferrière.

In 1791, the African slaves in the French colony of Saint-Domingue decided they'd had enough of this shit and rose up and fought their French masters, eventually defeating them in 1804 and founding the independent nation of Haiti. As a defense against the French coming back with more dudes to get their shit back, Henri Christophe, a man who had fought alongside George Washington in the American Revolution and then fought in the Haitian Revolution because he apparently couldn't get enough revolutin' and that's OK because tada now he's the new King of Haiti, build the Citadelle Laferrière. This massive fortress we were on our way to see atop Bonnet à l’Eveque mountain south of Cap Haitien.

As we drove up and up the windy road rising far above the green landscape, the work meeting I was callin g i...nto s tar t ed t o b rree aaa k up mmmor eee a n d m o-o-o-re whoop, there goes the signal. Well, you're not always going to look good at work living this lifestyle, c'est la vie.

We reached the top and hustled passed extremely aggressive souvenir hawkers who clearly had not seen a tourist this decade, and sidled up to the unfortunate horses that were going to take us the rest of the way up the steep, craggy path up to the Citadelle.

I immediately felt bad for this poor too-small horse as it dragged me up into more and more scenic vistas. The horse farted several times in protest. If I'd known it was walkable I would have passed on taking the horse at all, even though it was included in what we'd paid for the day.

As soon as we got to the top I tipped the horse caretakers and let them know they didn't need to hang around, I'd be walking back down. The horse looked relieved.

Up top, the Citadelle sat, monolithic among the gorgeous views.

The Citadelle was outfitted with 365 cannons, because who wants to fire the same cannon two days in a row? Gross. Keeping all those cannons busy takes balls.

The Citadelle itself was never used, as the French decided "nope, you can have it" after losing 13,000 of the 20,000 troops they sent to fight the Haitian revolutionaries. Henri Christophe had a stroke and many of his men mutinied. He wasn't very popular, since he'd used forced labor to build the Citadelle, which was one very, very small step up from slavery. Given the fact that all the people in Haiti at this time were former slaves, this might be classified as failing somewhat to read the room. It also didn't help that, according to our guide, 20,000 workers died building the Citadelle. Which... wow. Fearing a coup, Christophe committed suicide, shooting himself with a silver bullet. I'm not sure if that was considered super-romantic or badass back in those days, or if he secretly thought he might be a werewolf. In which case, sure, we've all been there.

Today, cute little plants grow sideways out of the Citadelle walls because they don't know they're not supposed to.

Inside is a maze of towering walls and Escher-like staircases.

Near the front entrance sits the tomb of Christophe Henri's brother in law, who was killed when the gunpowder room in the Citadelle exploded. All they found were one of his feet and one of his hands, which would seem like enough to grow another brother in law but science was not very advanced back then. Instead they buried these two odd bits in a much too large tomb within the Citadelle. The rest of him no doubt looks on us from low Earth orbit.

From the roof you can see out to the sea in one direction and out across the mountains in the other.

Some of the many, many cannons are housed inside the Citadelle, and mounted on cool swiveling bases that allow you to aim them in any direction, which immediately answered our question of "How in the hell did they ever hit anything with these things?"

After walking down the long steep path from the palance, followed by flautists playing "Frère Jacques" who really wanted a tip, we made our way to the Sans-Souci ("carefree") Palace, Christophe Henri's royal residence. A white horse followed us for a ways and I thought I was going to have to pay admission for him (who am I to stop a horse from seeing an important historical building) when it eventually became clear he was just looking for tasy grass and thought we looked like we might know where to find some.

Out front, a noseless Venus De Milo stared at us accusingly.

The central staircase was flanked by two guard shacks, both of which faced back toward the building, where there once stood a gigantic mirror. This allowed the guards to see anyone coming without being vulnerable to attack themselves.

The interior of the palace itself was little more than a ruin, but a lovely and impressive ruin packed full of pretty geometrical arches.

Ten days after his father Christophe's suicide, Jacques-Victor Henri, the heir to the Haitian throne, was bayonetted to death inside this palace by his fellow revolutionaries.

Wandering around the side of the palace, we found this absolutely adorable baby goat. I always find it fascinating how regardless of what is going on in history, what world war is going on or what name we give to this land or that, goats are just out there doing their goat things. It's all the same to them.

In the park outside the palace, under the shade of a tree stands a statue of René Préval, two-time president of Haiti. Préval was the first president of Haiti to peacefully take power from his predecessor, and the first to serve out his entire term. This was in 1996. That... that says a lot.

The next morning we were off on a city tour of Cap Haitien itself. Here, Christophe Henri got his due once again with this statue gifted by Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band.

Inside a nearby church, we stumbled across a funeral in progress and felt very out of place.

The streets outside were a boisterous mix of traffic, noise, trash, color, and ornate French buildings deep into the process of falling the fuck down.

A nearby ice cream shop salaciously invited us to enjoy ice cream and some mysterious "and more".

On another corner, another one of those "bank"s! What in the hell are these things? There's just a plywood counter inside the dusty concrete room. 50/20/10, what the hell?

I asked our guide, who was a lovely man but who did not speak English, how you say, real good. He explained that banks are where you get money. Thanks Dahley. For the rest of the day, whenever we walked past the rare normal bank, you know, a huge building with ATMs on the front, he would point it out to me and explain that this was where you get money. Then he would offer to take us to see another bank as this was obviously an area of intense personal interest to me.

Our guide then took us to see a friend of his, an architect with an interest in antiques. His home was full of antiques from the early 1900s, offering us a fascinating glimpse of what life in Haiti looked like back then.

This reflector helps a small lamp light up the entire room.

Our host proudly played his gramophone for us, a record player from 1904 that involved no electricity whatsoever. He cranked the handle separate times and the player sprang to life, spinning the record and amplifying the sound of the needle in the record groove passively through the shape of the cabinet itself.

This was extremely cool. Our host mimed the trumpet parts as we all enjoyed the big-band music from the early 20th century.

I had come to Haiti from Nicaragua, where I had ridden around the country in chicken buses and collectivos (public transportation vans) among other things. In Haiti, instead they have these pickup trucks with the bed tricked out to fit the largest number of people possible. When in motion, these things are absolutely stuffed with people.

English is hard.

All around us, the city continued to gently fall apart.

We ducked into a small row of souvenir shops, where I could finally fulfill my wish to own a plaque for my home that says THE BLOOD OF CHRIST.

On the coast, the water glistened as two old forts jutted out into the sea. Out in the ocean, a free diver with a speargun hunted for fish. Approximately 400 pounds of trash quietly lapped against the shore.

Sure, Haiti has problems. But, Haiti also has... BATMAN.

On the outskirts of the city, we visited the Heros de Vertieres monument, on the spot where the Haitian rebels finally defeated the French army for good in 1803.

Climbing up the hill to see the heroic statues, we encounteredJESUS goat, don't do that!

Traffic slid by on the avenue below as the heroes of Vertieres looked on.

We continued on, out of Cap Haitien, and Disney figures waved us goodbye as we headed off to find out what this voodoo stuff is all about.

Our first stop was Bois Caïman ("alligator forest"), the spot where, in 1791, hundreds of enslaved Africans met and kicked off the Haitian Revolution.

On the night of August 14th, two-hundred slaves gathered here for a voodoo ceremony. Their French masters tolerated voodoo as they saw it as a way to foster community in a way that made the slaves more cooperative. They probably would have rethought this if they'd known what was about to happen.

The voodoo ceremony was a pretense to plan a revolt. During the ceremony, a mysterious woman appeared and danced lasciviously, having been taken over by spirits. She led the group in sacrificing a pig that was said to have been magical. I don't know how a pig can be magical, maybe it could do card tricks. Whatever it had up its tiny little porcine sleeves has sadly been lost to the sands of time. The gathered slaves smeared the blood of the pig on their foreheads and swore to kill every last white person on the island.

The exact spot where all of this happened has been fascinatingly preserved. We waited inside a large, empty barn-like building that had strange bundles of offerings tied to the ceiling.

Eventually the voodoo priest ushered us into the much smaller back room, where two statues from the 1800s marked the events of that night.

One figure danced in front of a pig that doesn't look like he knew what was about to happen to his magic ass, while another blows into a conch shell to signal that it was time to kill every damned body.

And they did. Over the following days, the slaves in the surrounding plantations rose up and killed their masters and their entire families, setting the buildings on fire and marching across the countryside with French children's heads on pikes. The revolution had begun.

The voodoo priest had several flower bouquets in vases on his workspace, wrapped in plastic. I found them interesting and asked our guide what they were and what they had to do with voodoo. He explained that they were for weddings and funerals, as people often gave flowers at these kinds of events. Thanks, yeah, I get what flowers are, I meant why is a voodoo priest also the town's FTD floral representative? I know why people give flo- Wait. Dude, are you trolling me?

Our guide was amazing.

Up in the mountains near Bois Caïman, there is a tucked away little grotto where voodoo offerings are made and notes are written and left for the gods.

We continued on to Plaine du Nord.

On the drive I looked at the approximately 4,000 "bank"s that we drove by. Even in a rural area, there appeared to be one for every two people, more or less. This was making less and less sense. When we got to our destination, we happened to be parked right in front of one of them.

I got our guide's attention.

"Dude, that! What is that??"

"That's where you buy a bolet."

A who what now? I'd noticed that all of these things seemed to have some kind of rates chalked on the wall. Is it for money exchange? Is it... ohhhhh wait it says LOTTO on the wall there on this one. Is this some kind of lottery?

"I want to buy a bolet," I told our guide.

"No, no. If you win you won't be able to get the money!"

"That's OK. It's for the experience."

He laughed and escorted me in.

Talking to the ladies behind the dusty plywood counter inside, it became clear that this was in fact some kind of lottery. That is the absolute furthest extent of what I understood about this entire situation, regardless of the fact that we talked about this thing for 20 solid minutes.

I put down 100 Haitian Gourdes for myself and another 100 for Mike. This is about 67 cents each. It's not a high-stakes game. I was asked if I wanted to play Florida or New York. New York, of course. I want into the big time of whatever the hell this is. I was asked to pick a number, and given a set of options chalked on the wall, each corresponding to (I think) a day of the week.

I picked 76 for my birth year and was informed I'd win if 76 or 67 came up. Sure, of course. Everyone knows that.

I was asked a few more questions I didn't understand at all and then was informed that if I won it all, I'd walk away with a cool 2,500 Gourdes. This is approximately $18. Cool. I can buy some more French fries because goddamn there is no vegan food in this country.

I walked out of the shop triumphantly with my ticket.

I have no idea if I won or what. Though when we were flying out of Haiti I was upgraded to the big front seat, which is Spirit Airlines' version of First Class, which I guess is like Haitian First Class. So I felt like a winner.

It seemed sad to me that in a country where nearly everyone is struggling financially to survive and make it to another day, the most bonkers thriving business is the lottery. I guess it makes sense, but it doesn't speak well of people believing there are other ways to improve their situation. But, on the flip side, if it injects a bit of fun and hope into someone's life for 67 cents, maybe it's not the worst thing ever.

I didn't even know where we were going next. It turned out to be a cemetery. Two candles burned in front of the locked front gate as we waited for the guy with the key to go find the key.

Once we were inside, Mike kind of seemed ho-hum that he was seeing yet another cemetery, but I was fascinated that the graves were all above-ground, like in New Orleans.

The graveyard was in a bit of a shambles, but this wasn't surprising at all since everything outside of the graveyard was in a shambles too. It seemed fitting for Haiti.

But then I started to notice something odd. Between some of the tombs, there were coffins just sort of laying around. Angled all helter skelter, like someone had forgotten them there. Some were open.

"Did someone escape?" I joked to our guide.

"They're finished," he answered matter-of-factly.

I should think so. I walked on without giving it much more though.

Then I stopped at a coffin that was sitting right by the side of the line of tombs. The window on top was smashed open. There appeared to be clothing inside, made dull by being old and exposed to the elements for who knows how long.

I turned to our guide.

"Why are there clothes in this if no one has been buried in it yet?"

"Someone's in there," he answered.

I frowned, and paused for a second. I bent down close to the coffin and peeked through the broken window at the old-lady clothes and-

HOLY SHIT that's a bone.

This isn't an unused coffin. It's a coffin somebody pulled out of the ground. There's a dead body in there.

My head spun and I looked at our guide.

"They pull out the graves? Wha-"

"They burn them up when they're finished, so they can bury more people."

I... oh my god, all of these coffins strewn helter skelter all over the cemetery have dead bodies in them.

I ran over and grabbed Mike, who was off taking a photo of some rustic garbage. Mike. You need to see this right now.

He peered down into the coffin, frowned, and started to argue with me for a second until he saw the bone. His eyes got big and his face went white. We began scanning around the cemetery with entirely new eyes.

I stepped back and suddenly realized the coffin on the ground had been pulled out of the vacant morgue-like drawer space in the tomb in front of me.

On the other side of the tomb there was another smashed open coffin. I looked down into the rubble of the hastily opened tomb, and blinked twice. There was a human femur sticking out of the chunks of concrete. Oh God.

I wandered through the cemetery in a daze, suddenly feeling like I was in an entirely different place, now that I knew what was going on here.

Down one row there was a tree festooned with voodoo fetishes.

Below it, on the ground, there was another large human leg bone, just sitting there.

This is wild. You felt like you could turn a corner and encounter absolutely anything.

We wandered over to a large tomb on the back side of the cemetery, that had several open and empty spaces for coffins. The spaces were strewn with some random garbage, a plastic bag, a soda bottle, a... wait, what is that? An old pair of socks? Some weathered old knee-high leather boots? A... oh God.

It was someone's legs.

Completely mummified and shriveled, and seeming unreal, but undoubtedly a human being's legs. I stared at the toes. The skin seemed simultaneously both like leather and paper. I assumed it was a woman's legs, from their size. This place is one of the craziest things I've ever seen. It's a weird feeling to be looking at something and knowing full well what it is, but at the same time your brain won't quite accept it, as it's so unexpected.

Our guide called for us to follow him, we couldn't stay any longer. We walked slowly past the various tombs. Our guide warned us not to open any of the caskets as just a whiff of what was inside would flat out kill us. I didn't know if he was referring to germs, or bugs, or the spirits of the dead.

Mike and I both stopped at the rubble in front of one tomb. That's. Yep. That's a human skull.

Just sitting on the ground there.

We left the cemetery in a daze.

Later that night I hit the internet trying to understand what I'd seen. In Haiti, the folk belief is that a dead person's spirit hangs around their body for a week after death, then a ceremony is performed that allows them to go into "dark water" for 366 days, after which the spirit can cross into the afterlife. If the body is not intact at this point, the spirit is stuck to wander the Earth as a ghost.

So cremation is out. The body needs to be buried and kept intact. But a regular funeral and burial in Haiti costs more than the average person makes in an entire year. So the loved ones of the dearly departed end up renting a grave for them, paying a fee every month. If they stop paying, the body is dug up and someone else is buried in it. The dug-up body is supposed to be cremated, but I guess this happens whenever they get around to it.

This was all very shocking to see but also fascinating and makes a bit of sense. If you believe your loved one is going to need their corpse for a year, you do what you can to pay the monthly fee. Once they're safely in the afterlife, you're probably going to prioritize your money differently because you like eating food and not sleeping in the street.

After walking out of the cemetery with stunned looks on our faces, we made our way a few blocks over to the thing we were actually there to see, the Bassin St Jacques.

The Basin is a sacred pool of muddy water where voodoo practitioners bathe themselves as a form of rebirth and make offerings to the African god Ogou, sacrificing animals and covering themselves in the most disgusting water imaginable in hopes of gaining blessings or power. Some can be seen waving passports, praying for the visa necessary to leave Haiti behind.

The water is completely filthy, a muddy algae color with visible floating trash. A few locals came by while we were there and dipped their feet in the water, another man splashed it over his head. Things were pretty quiet while we were there, but on July 25th, Haitians make the pilgrimage from all over the country for the festival of St Jacques.

At the other end of the pool, the color of the water eerily shifts to a purplish-red. I might have some interesting facts as to why that is but this is when we were chased away from the basin by a screaming local who believed he owned the photographic rights to this mud puddle.

Around the corner I was kneeling down taking a photograph of an adorable puppy, when we were chased off the block by a screaming local who believed he owned the photographic rights to any and all dogs everywhere.

The next day we flew away to the Dominican Republic, the country that occupies the other 3/5ths of the island of Hispaniola. We had to fly via Fort Lauderdale because transferring through Port Au Prince was again out of the question. Riding in the back of an Uber through Santo Domingo's clean, wide and thoroughly modern streets was completely baffling. We might as well have been in Miami. How is this the same island? How does this side have Pizza Hut and Uber while the other has a big pile of trash with a dog in the middle? How is one country in 2023 while the other is in 1923? How did this happen?

There are many theories. No one can say for certain but it seems likely to have been a blend of a number of things. Haiti has been hit harder by natural disasters, no doubt. But it seems more likely that the lack of political stability has hurt Haiti even more, as no one wants to invest in a country where there might be a new government next week and you may lose your investment entirely. The crime hasn't helped either, as the Dominican Republic has done a much better job making itself an appealing destination for tourists, creating lavish resorts that are frequented by people from all over the world who don't like to take chances on being shot by rioting police officers.

Haiti has also suffered from intense deforestation, which anyone knows if they've seen the images of the stark line between dense forest and brown nothing right at the DR/Haiti border. This began during French Colonial times when ships would bring slaves to Haiti from Africa and bring back lumber from the island. This certainly hasn't helped Haiti but I think it's a bit exaggerated as there are certainly trees in Haiti to this day.

Other factors I found even more interesting. After the slaves revolted and formed Haiti, none of the other countries in the region (including a pre-Emancipation Proclamation United States) wanted to help them at all, because they didn't want their own slaves getting any bright ideas. No one really wanted Haiti to succeed. Is that true even to this day? Has there been less investment in Haiti because of its almost entirely black population? Or is it due in part to the hurdles involved in being the only French speaking country surrounded by countries that speak English and Spanish?

TV Evangelist Pat Robertson had a different idea, claiming that Haiti had been cursed by God for eternity because of the "pact with the devil" the voodoo practitioners there made to defeat the French in their revolutionary war.

Writing this from the Dominican Republic and still blinking at the insane contrast between the two nations, it seems like the explanation is a mix of all of the above (well maybe not the God curse), combined with all of the things the DR did right. Investing in education. Building roads. Creating a climate favorable to business. Not having a coup every seven minutes. Leveraging its beaches and natural beauty to create an environment appealing to tourists.

The Dominican Republic was ruled by a brutal dictator for 31 years, but even that stability may have helped it, as Trujillo did push a growth agenda and the economy grew and foreign debt shrank during his presidency. Haiti had its own mass-murdering dictator, François "Papa Doc" Duvallier (and his son after), who instead managed to alienate Haiti from the outside world, cutting off aid from the US and sinking the country further into poverty. Both men were terrible, but the DR seemed to come out of their nightmare much better off than Haiti did.

I'm glad I went to Haiti and saw it for myself, and experienced a country I'd always found intriguing and a bit scary from afar. Every person I've told I went to Haiti has responded like "HAITI OH MY GAWWWD!!!" so suffice it to say the news is doing its job letting people know things are not safe for Grandma there. And right now, they aren't. But, like every country in the world, there are startling and beautiful things to discover, wonderful people to meet, interesting history to uncover and unforgettable experiences to be had in Haiti.

The country was once a tourist destination, back in the 1950s and again for a bit in the 1970s. The Clintons honeymooned there and Truman Capote spent his vacations in Haiti. I hope it can be again, because that will mean life has grown much better for the people that live there, and more people will be able to experience a colorful and fascinating place.