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as I realized once I was back in London, having an op-ed published in the
Times right out of the gate was quite a big deal—sort of like my entry pass
into journalism. It was my first time being published, and it meant that I was
now, officially, a working freelance journalist.
After that, I took my first solo freelance trip to Haiti following the
earthquake in January 2010. I was still somewhat naïve about crisis-zone
travel and arrived at the airport in Port-au-Prince with no story to follow, no
contact to pick me up, and no idea what to do as I melted into a throng of
thousands of Haitians pushing and pulling and searching for people and
begging for help—a frenzy of desperation unlike anything I’d ever
experienced. Finally, to escape it, I jumped into a random car with a random
person and wound up in a beautiful hotel, the Oloffson, an old-world, woodand-wicker
colonial mansion untouched by the earthquake.
I felt somewhat guilty to suddenly be surrounded by such opulence in the
face of such devastation and despair, but there was also something exotic
about having a drink at the hotel’s plush bar, as if I were Graham Greene
reporting from French Indochina in the 1950s. I would soon learn that the
sudden and jarring contrast between the most dire of human conditions and
the splendor of a place or a view was one of the hallmarks of covering a war.
Horror and beauty were never too far apart. Spend the day at the front lines,
retreat to the swanky hotel.
My month in Haiti led to a few magazine articles, but not about the
earthquake. Instead, I went deep into the country, until I found myself in a
shabby concrete hut in the coastal commune of Petit-Goâve, where I was to
be christened in a late-night, backwoods voodoo ceremony performed by a
drunken voodoo shaman. As I sat on the floor in my silk wrap next to a pinpierced
doll in a miniature casket, I remember thinking: This is not a bit of
fun. I shouldn’t be messing with this. Nevertheless, I stuck it out, and when
the shaman asked me what I wanted, the desire to which my own voodoo doll
would be devoted, I thought first about my job, and I told the shaman that I
wanted to reach the top, the very top, of my profession.
“Whatever it takes,” I said, “I will do.”
Writing this now, I can’t help but wonder if my wish that day required me
to also give something up. I’ve certainly never believed in voodoo, but my
advice would be to maybe not play around with it anyway.
That night, I was taken to a voodoo ceremony in the middle of the forest,
where dozens of women in long robes danced around and around a fire to the