May 2004 Caribbean floods with over 1,300 homes being destroyed and about 2,000 people being killed. Due to this destruction, nearly 15,000 people were displaced with nowhere to live. The area that felt the worst of the flooding was the town of Jimaní, near the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In fact, the destruction present at Jimaní was so bad that Dominican president Hipolito Mejia declared a national day of mourning after seeing the effects of the storm. A broad low pressure area developed over Central America on May 19, accompanied by heavy rainfall. The system drifted eastward into the Caribbean Sea,
Michel Martelly song, "Prezidan", "an exuberant ditty that called for a president who played compas". At the 1996 Carnival, to which Manno Charlemagne, the mayor of Port-au-Prince, invited him, Martelly dressed in a pink wig and bra. As Martelly explained, it was intended in part as a political statement: "If you see me as a Macoute, then I'm a Macoute. If you see me as gay, I'm gay. What you think of me is no problem, as far as I am concerned. You have the right to think what you want. I know who I am, and that's the main thing." In