Next project:

A President Obama change purse. Then a President Obama doll. Then a President Obama afghan. I'm not going to stop for four years.

Of course, it's not just me who's inspired. It's not just America. I was lucky to spend the first week of Barack Obama's President-Electcy in Haiti, the First Black Republic. Friends who had been in Haiti during the election reported singing, dancing, and celebration everywhere in the country. I can report more "President Obama" t-shirts in the Port-au-Prince airport than in Miami. And as I went through customs, one of the uniformed officers took my passport, smiled, and said--in the same tone one might use to say "water" after crossing the desert--"Obama." And he didn't stop smiling.

First images of Haiti: The armed U.N. troops at the airport, the overcrowded streets, the chaos that is part of poverty and the aftermath of dictatorship and revolution and decades of corruption. Trash littered the streets and people urinated into open trenches along the roadside. Chickens, goats, and pigs rooted through the garbage. It seemed like chaos. It seemed overwhelming. It seemed hopeless.

Despite this, the mood on our bus was pure celebration. Most had been to Haiti before (many of Haitian descent) and were excited to be back. I was excited to be there for the first time. We were all excited about the election (though universally saddened by Prop 8 and spiteful sibs). As we traveled from the Port-au-Prince airport to our hotel up the coast, we stopped for lunch at a former sugar plantation, now a museum and restaurant. Though 99% deforested, the island landscape seemed lush and tropical. The food was delicious and plentiful. It was hard to imagine the horrors of the slave plantation and equally impossible not to try.

This isn't meant to be The Haiti Blog Post. There will be many, I suspect, and it takes time to process all this. The one moment I wanted to share now comes from one of the panels during the conference. After hearing several speakers talk about the environmental challenges on Haiti, on top of several other panels talking about problems with education, health, and policy, the speaker remarked that the challenges seemed overwhelming. "There's so much to do," he said. "Can we really change Haiti?"

And spontaneously from all over the room came the answer, from Haitians, Americans, Jamaicans, Canadians: "YES, WE CAN," with whoops and high fives.

Yes, we can.

It was a good time to be in Haiti.