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Jean-Claude Duvalier, who succeeded his father Papa Doc in Haiti, did not last long. Photo / AP

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Jean-Claude Duvalier, who succeeded his father Papa Doc in Haiti, did not last long. Photo / AP

A continual summer, one would have to say, rather than a continuous one. It arrived and withdrew, arrived and went again.

Here in Hawke’s Bay, you could have a beautiful day of unbroken blue and hours of lazy sun, only for the air to become as cold as death at 6pm.

But there were also the long, brilliant late afternoons and sunsets of ferocious rays and enthralling orange vermillion.

You might think not a lot happened at the farm. Friends came through, there was endless food and cooking and nights of wine and laughter but the curious weather caused much comment and mild complaint.

Mind you, I was still very occupied by the need to use the irrigators and the sprinklers to stop the hot spots on the lawns becoming dead as dodo spots.

This was a big responsibility and I kept a wary eye every sunny day. We have a very good little farm irrigator. It is attached to the end of a thick black hose and rotates with a ss-ss-ss for hours on end.

Then came Haiti. Poor Haiti. Haiti is a lost cause. Haiti is an eternal sore festering upon itself, re-infecting itself constantly, never healing, always toxic.

Haiti was where Columbus discovered the New World, of course. How’s that for bad luck?

You become the first man to cross the Atlantic from Europe and you miss North and South America, where the money is, and you find Haiti.

I first heard of Haiti when I saw some black-and-white BBC documentary back in the early 60s.

I recall shots of the mad old dictator, Papa Doc Duvalier, being driven through villages of desperate poverty in a black Rolls Royce. Every now and then, slow-moving old Papa Doc would stop the car and hand out dollar bills to his meek, incredibly grateful subjects.

Imagine, a President driving round doling out dollar bills. I suppose we’d be grateful too, if John Key started doing that. Then Papa Doc died and his son, Baby Doc, so called because of a chubby baby face, took over.

He’d grown up in Paris. Then Baby Doc was ousted and somewhere along the line a priest called Aristide came along but he couldn’t do much.

From then on, Haiti becomes a tragic, hopeless, helpless blur to me. Until now. No one can ignore Haiti now.

Sometimes it can seem a blessing to have as your only noise the wind in the trees and the ss-ss-ss-ss of the rotating irrigator.