How to get shot:

How to get shot:

Try to get out of the capital city, Pourt-au-Prince, Haiti, in a beat-up Cherokee Jeep. Inevitably it breaks down. No fuel getting to the engine: Distributor: Filthy, clean it up.

Fuel lead: Press the nipple; fuel all over fingers – OK. Fuse box: Aha! It is loose on its mountings so the box bounces around under the bonnet (hood). Clean up the fuses. No good. Test circuits, inconclusive. Get mechanic – no joy, get electrician and 4 hangers on along for the ride – no good.

Consider flying – no good – airline grounded due to crashes. Night coming on. Dangerous to be out. Get a tow back to city. Lorry (truck) arrives. He produces a chain and really stupid fixing technique: modified reef knots. No good. Crazy tow. Now dark. Getting robbed getting more likely. We are on edged of city, the huge city dump: Continual fires of hell burn and gone-wild horses skit around. The stinking rotting dead horse has gone from last week.

The tow into town will be like Walpurgis-Nacht and Lutzow’s wild hunt and that Terminator 16 wheeler chase scene all in one. When you are being towed SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) is for the towed driver to act as the breaks for both vehicles. They don’t know this and I lack the determination to tell them. Abandon tow.

Consider local hotel. Opt to drive all the way back to city, abandoning vehicle with armed guard (shotgun and 10 rounds) who will guard it all night.

Route National 1 passes the Cité Soleil slum. This route is totally utterly off limits to UN staff and anyone not wanting to be shot. Madam H had her nephew tragically shot in crossfire here. He died. She has been really kind to me as an outsider because I am working against the violence. Madame M lost he husband in exactly the same way same road. She is a feisty woman, lots of bourgeois bling. Mulatto, keeps the blacks down I reckon. Canadian UNPOL shot here. Bullet came through side of Land-Cruiser door. (Windows are always up for security, occasionally a bullet will not go through a door because the windows are down and the combined door panelling and window may slow bullet down enough. But the window was up…)

The bullet was low enough to penetrate his leg and sever the main artery. The UN sent an APC (armoured personnel carrier) to rescue him. He was loaded up and the APC set off as fast as possible to the UN hospital – fortunately not far. But it was rush-hour. London taxis get stuck in London traffic and this was a third-word dysfunctional megalopolis. The APC crashed. The young Brazilian driver was probably scared out of his wits and the Canadian would already be grey in the back. He died.

It is night and I am standing in the back of an open lorry the wind in my hair, and – God almighty, we are not turning left at the airport, but carrying on straight up the very same route National 1.

Vladimir said when I climbed down after the ride I was like something deranged with a wild look in my eye.