The title of this post reflects how I am feeling after reading in the book that was provided to me by Heidi just hours before I left. How serendipitous that Hertz rental agent would recommend this book to me. It is called Mountains Beyond Mountains by the Pulitzer Prize winning author Tracy Kidder about Dr. Peter Farmer who works tirelessly among the poor in Haiti.
The title of this post does not describe what I have seen, but rather how disturbing my "views" of conditions are here and in other developing countries. It is becoming increasingly disturbing that that I am enshroading my views of povery, disease, malnutrition and social and economic injustice in cleverly labeled and tidy views. It is an attempt, I am sure, to keep myself estranged from becoming really engaged and to somehow organize in a coherent manner my position in all of this.
The author has been somewhat (as termed in the book towards the author by Dr. Farmer as he hikes through the countryside towards patients to check on their progress) my own personal Virgil to me as a guide through Dantes' underworld.
Pick up the book, not only to better understand Haiti, but to better understand ones' self. I have not even left the hotel this trip....
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