This is the 143rd (or so) diary on the earthquake disaster in Haiti. The first diary was by Dallasdoc.
ShelterBox: TexMex is busy moving, but carolina stargazer is still watching the store. The next ShelterBox diary is planned for Friday morning, but activity in Tuesday's diary will be monitored until then. Help is still needed, heavy rains are coming!
The Norbrook Google doc has gone missing, so I will just start the diary with book ideas.
I started off reading Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, which looks at the founding of Partners in Health by examining it through the lens of the life of Dr. Paul Farmer, one of the founders. It does vividly give the feeling of walking over the dangerous hills of Haiti, and the poverty and hope to be found there. It also makes it understandable that Partners in Health does so much with so little. This is a very accessible book; Kidder knows how to tell a story and make processes understandable. It was recommended to me as a starting point, and it worked well for that.
The other two books I got at the same time were Damming the Flood by Peter Hallward, and Walking on Fire by Beverly Bell. At allie123's suggestion, I started reading Damming the Flood as my next Haiti book. I'm barely through the introduction, and I can tell it will give me a good grounding in recent politics/coups on the island, and how other countries, like ours, are implicated in the troubles.
Where to go next? In the bibliographies of the books above, in the Recommended Reading section of the Partners in Health site, in suggestions made by various people in previous diaries, these are some books that keep coming up over and over again.
Anything by Edwige Danticat. Novels that reveal much of the feel of Haiti.
The Uses of Haiti by Paul Farmer, which tries to give a peasant's-eye view of the uses other countries have made of his country.
In the Parish of the Poor by Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Aristide is possibly the key figure in Haiti's recent past and future, so insight into his thinking would be helpful.
The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James keeps turning up no matter where I look, lots of people have evidently found it very helpful in exploring Haiti's history.
Walking on Fire by Beverly Bell was also widely recommended; what women have been enduring in Haiti.
The Rainy Season - Haiti after Duvalier by A. Wilentz is another book on recent history that keeps turning up from all sorts of places.
From Columbus to Castro - the history of the Caribbean by Eric Williams also is recommended several times, and looks like it would give a broader historical context.
So - those are the ones that have caught my eye, that I may turn to next, and what kind of information I hope to get out of them. Until the lost Google document turns up, here's a link to J Brunner Fan's Wednesday diary.
What books do you think are worth reading on Haiti? What did you get out of them? Any that just were not worth while, that you want to warn us about?
UPDATE: In comments, parryander suggests Travesty in Haiti about the not-so-helpful role of some of the NGOs involved. Thanks, parryander!