Moving back to Haiti

I have decided to move back to Haiti. Got a very good offer from my friends, the owners of the Cormier Plage hotel, near Cap Haitien which has for 20 years been my preferred writer's refuge. I was visiting with Frank Esmann when we did the radio documentaries recently. My old friend Jean Claude Dicquemare, famous scuba diver, said straight away to me: "Why don't you come and live with us here? I'll make a good deal for you. And we will take good care of you." I felt immediately this is what I want to do. This cuts through all indecision and depression about feeling rootless in the Dominican Republic. I felt I will come home.

I always felt at ease at Cormier, able to write almost from the moment I arrived. In a long period living there I wrote 'Traberg'. And later 'The Imperfect Human' and poems (as you can see in notes). I just feel relieved after I made that decision. Then I will again be in the country I know a lot about and which taught me so much about life. And yet, I will be at a pleasant distance to the busy and dramatic circles and events of Port-au-Prince. When I want to go there, it's just a 20 minutes trip with Tortugair or Caribintair. I can have friends and family visit me, eventually flying directly to Cap-Haitien from Fort Lauderdale. You can see references to Cormier Plage in many poems and in the novel 'Traberg' and the memoires.

The idea of staying in Cormier Plage makes me feel at home. The next couple of days I will pack my belongings, including many books, here at Hostal Tierra Plana, in Zona Colonial, and Tuesday 1 February, I will get on the Caribe Tours bus that will take me from Santo Domingo through Santiago and Dajabon directly to Cap-Haitien. I have invited Schilaine to visit me the last couple of days here. She will arrive tomorrow morning with American Airlines from Port-au-Prince. That's the first time she travels alone on a flight.