[Nolug] greetings from the land going under

Guys,

I'm safe and sound, so far, here in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and I've been
kicking around my hotel for a few days, waiting to contact and be
contacted by various pastors, but today I'm moving out of here and will be
staying with Pastor Gabriel (he lives on the westbank in New Orleans) for
a few days. He's taking me up into the mountains, near Jeremie. I'll be
back at the hotel some time next week.

I've finally heard from Lucien, who is a pastor here that the church I
attend back home supports. He's going to be taking me to the plains region
of Haiti for a few days next week.

Apparently there was a really bad mudslide up the coast a bit, in
Gonaives. There's a steady stream of relief workers that pass through the
hotel here on their way to and from the town, where they shovel mud out of
houses. The hurricane caused the mudslide, and there is up to six feet of
mud in some of the houses. And we thought Katrina was bad. Pastor Gabriel
sent a shipping container here, full of clothes and stuff, and he's going
to deliver it up to Gonaives and pass out the goodies, once we get back
from Jeremie. I am invited, but have other engagements I need to make.

I found out that there are a couple of cell phone providers here that
cater to the dirt-poor peope here. The phones are cheap-to-free, and the
rates are quite low, plus they charge by the second, so a thrifty
shoe-shine man is able to keep a phone, if he watches his airtime.

The Internet here is really slow and sometimes drops out, but there's an
802.11a ISP here that everybody's migrated to, from dialup. My problem is
that all of the access points here, including the one at the hotel, are
running WPA, and I've never dealt with anything but WEP before. I've got
Linux on my boat-anchor laptop, and I realized after a while that I
probably need to set up xsupplicant, which of course requires RTFM and
lots of fiddling, and I won't have time for that until I get back home.
Sigh...

I've been able to watch the cook here at the hotel and have picked up a
few tips from him. They save onions for last... once the entree is cooked,
they'll remove the meat from the pan, add a little tomato paste for
instance, and then quickly saute a julianned onion and bell pepper, all of
which is poured over the entree after it's been tranferred to the serving
platter. Oh, and before they are finished with the meat, they will brown
it in a little oil or margarine, after it's been braised. Interesting
method of cooking, but it makes for a very bright flavor.

Amyhow, be safe, and I'll try to do the same.

-- 
Joey Kelly
< Minister of the Gospel | Linux Consultant >
http://joeykelly.net
(sent via squirrelmail, no GPG signature)
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