I found out from one of the young men who runs the guest house where we stayed in Port Au Prince that three members of Haiti’s most popular rap / hip-hop group, Barikad Crew, had just died in a horrible car accident. They were driving between gigs, and a high tension electrical wire touched their car (circumstances are murky), and three of them were burned beyond recognition. That happened on Saturday night, the night before we arrived in country.
The following Saturday my group was returning from the countryside in a big open truck. Fourteen Americans piled into an open truck. I was clinging to the top of the cab, taking pictures of the approach into town. As we came into the city, I saw a mob walking in the street ahead of us … perhaps a couple of thousand young Haitians all wearing red bandannas and matching white and red shirts.
My first thought was “oh crap.” I’ve got a thing about large groups of upset people. I had never really been on the receiving end of thousands of people visibly, obviously not the same race or nationality as me … staring at me. The fact that they were all wearing matching bandannas was the really freaky part to me. This wasn’t random … it was organized. I was very much reminded that we were in their country … and I started giving mental odds that we were about to become a story on CNN.
Then I remembered that the funeral for the rappers was supposed to be that day. I looked closer and saw things like “RIP” and pictures of three men on the t-shirts.
Some of them gave us the finger as we passed, others gave us the peace sign … just like you might get from any crowd of young people. We encountered similar groups throughout the city for the rest of the ride back to the guest house.
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