Power sidenote

Electrical lines in Haiti - sidenote reflection:
In some of the pics we post you might see a tangled mess of wires that seem to be present everywhere there is a telephone pole in the city. This happens in part at least to the fact that people often run their own lines from these poles, and sometime just cut and splice into wires wherever they need to to get power. I've seen on previous trips this in action, a couple guys up on a wall or a rickety ladder shaving into the line while the city power is off (which is frequent) and running wires to their house, tent, shanty, etc. It's really pretty amazing to see and I don't know how more people don't get electrocuted here, it must just be the fact that power flows so little. : ) A Haitian friend was explaining today that Haitians that do this are allowed to basically slide by, or that there is nobody really checking, but that if foreigners tried to do the same thing...that would be trouble! Haitian jail for you my friend! Pretty funny stuff to me somehow, sort of a form of electricity socialism in action maybe? Just another interesting thing about the place, and maybe it'll help folks understand why power generation here is such a difficult and complex issue...I mean, who is really paying after all? hard to tell.
- mark 10mar10