too much of fire now

Reading M.S. Bell's biography on Toussaint Louverture, one cannot help but wonder what Ayiti, land of mountains (so-called by the Arawak Indians), looked like at the time of the famous slave rebellion against the French colonizers. Certainly, the verdure of the foothills and mountains exceeded that of even the lushest parts of present-day Haiti. Thousands of deserted slaves found cover in the jungle and rain forest that covered the steep terrain, which now mostly hangs in craggy, naked swaths above the limited plains.
The hills above Port-au-Prince offer a panoramic view of the capital city and the mountains around it. By day, the beige-colored land looks cracked and thirsty. By night, the hills still blaze in places where any vegetation remains. With nothing left to shelter the sun-baked land from tropical rains and winds, thousands die in mudslides like the one in Gonaive not too long ago.

Despite the senseless waste laid to the land here, sadly reminiscent of a destruction wrought all too often upon the people, the land retains a hint of its former ability to produce life. Magical places turn up suddenly and unexpectedly. In the mountains of the south, one still finds handfuls of untouched rain forest.

According to Bell's research, some still attribute Ayiti's 300+ years of tribulation to "the fact that the [slave] revolution was originally founded on fire instead of water," a statement based on the absence of Toussaint (who is said to have been protected by the water lwa - voodoo spirit) from the beginning and final stages of the revolution. Sometimes, in the face of intense structural violence, deaths from natural disasters and rampant poverty, this explanation seems as good as any other...