On Haiti – Part Three

We started out on our trip to Lazil later than Madanm and Beatrice had suggested. When we told them we were going to take a machin up into the mountains they were vehemently against it. They said, “No, the best way to go is to wake up at 4 in the morning and go in one of the (Kreyol word escapes me) air-conditioned busses. The driver isn’t separated from the passengers and the only way to get in one of them is to go really early, around 4 a.m.”

Funny enough, that idea didn’t really appeal to us.

So we left around 8 and we got into a machin complete with chicken and blaring Haitian pop music. People kept piling in over the course of the 45 minute trip up the mountain and, as must happen, there was bickering and refusal to pay. The drive up into the mountains was pretty if you could see out through the welded sides of the machin, which I could every now and again. At several points you're convinced that the drivers must have ESP, or just guardian angels, because they drive about 55 mph around blind curves, and if you’re lucky they lay on the horn. The thing is, if anyone else was coming around in the opposite direction, they would also be laying on the horn, and it’s likely neither would hear. So, I’m not really sure how there aren’t more accidents than there are. The roads are certainly not wide enough to be called two lane roads. I just kinda hung out with my water bottle and my Rika, and a slightly blue looking Cara and said to myself, “Well, if you’re gonna go, there’s really not a whole lot you can do about it at this point. You’re not driving, so just enjoy the rush of possibly being flung to your death down the side of a mountain. It’s kinda like a rollercoaster, only less harness-y and more chicken-y.

We pulled into Tom Gato around 9, and had a snack of Rika (think Ritz cracker shaped lemony graham cookies) while we waited for Kim. She was hiking from Lazil to meet us so we could hike back together. Lazil is about a two hour hike from Tom Gato over the mountain ridge. After waiting about twenty minutes, we decided to head down and meet her along the way, figuring that she might appreciate not having to walk the last quarter mile which is all steep uphill. We met her and started on our way. Kim is a lovely woman in her mid-forties who used to be a lawyer, but found she wasn’t fulfilled by that, and decided to change directions. She entered the apprenticeship program around the same time as Cara, and came to Haiti about a week after Cara did. She’s funny, and has a great rapport with all the kids in Lazil. Along the road we saw some evidence of this as the children we passed all knew her by name and played word games with her as she passed.

On Saying Hello-

I’ve talked a bit about the generous spirit of Haiti. But I think it’s rather important to talk more about saying hello. One of the reasons why it takes two hours to get to Lazil is because along the way you will be greeted by every person who catches your eye along the road, whether they’re walking toward you, or sitting on their front porch, or working in the fields. It’s something that I really missed upon coming back to the states. I know part of the reason for this is that we were white, and we automatically draw stares, but it’s not just that. There’s a culture of visiting in Haiti that doesn’t exist here. The visits can range from long with not a whole lot said to short and sweet. On our trip walking to Lazil, Kim introduced us to at least seven different families, and one “fried stuff” vendor, as Cara calls them, who decided we needed fried dumplings for our journey over the mountains and wouldn’t take any money for them. This is contrasted with the visits you’ll have with people who want to talk (and talk and talk) and then finally they get around to asking you for something when you’ve decided that you’re talked out.

*tangent within a tangent* On our way back to the apartment one night on a walk through downtown Jacmel, Cara and I were approached by a man who spoke very good English. He was carrying a gigantic painting wrapped in tissue paper. He insisted on showing it to us, which led me to think that he was trying to get us to buy it. But no, he just wanted to show it to us, and to get our opinion on what it meant to us. “Where do you see yourself in my painting?” he asked. And after about ten minutes of talking with him we excused ourselves. He wouldn’t hear of it, and asked us to wait for him to wrap his painting back up so that he could walk with us, as he thought he knew which way we were going (Cara is somewhat of a celebrity in Jacmel because she’s one of the few blancs, and people she’s never met will yell out her name, “Kara!!” or sometimes “Farah!!” because Farah is a more common name and Kara actually means “carat” as in 24 carat gold, so why would you name your kid carat?). Turned out he was mistaking Cara for a different blanc and when we got to the top of the hill, he said, “I thought you were going to take a taxi with me. Can’t give me some money for a taxi to get home?” At which point it became clearer why he had insisted on following us.

But he’s the exception. For the most part, people just want to talk to you and find out how your family is, or where you’re coming from, or how long you’re going to be in town. On one hand it’s very friendly and warm, and you always feel so welcome. On the other, if you’re trying to get somewhere and it’s blazing hot, you begin to tire of the welcome because you just want to sit down somewhere and die. But the thing that I noticed is that if you’re going to go visiting, you end up being very tired afterwards, and it’s not like you did much of anything. The only explanation for the immense fatigue I felt was a combination of the heat and the fact that I was listening so intently trying to pick up as much Kreyol as I could. Attentive listening is actually a hard thing to maintain over the course of a day, and at some point you just get psychically drained. After the sixth house, I was just kind of smiling and nodding because often I’d reached my limits of answering, “When are you coming back to Haiti?” with, “M pa konne.”

~~~

We made it to Lazil, and to Kim’s host family’s house. Belange and Bemarie are kind of the heads of the community in Lazil (Lazil itself is rather small, and I gather it’s actually only about fifteen houses tops before you are in a community with a different name). Belange is the spiritual leader of the community, and he also founded a school that sits next door to his house. Bemarie is the only person with medical training for hours in any direction so the front room of their house doubles as a clinic for the area. As I was putting my pack down on what would be my bed, Kim said, “Just to warn you a little, there may be some kind of emergency in the night, and your bedroom may become a hospital. If someone has a machete wound or some other accident, this is where they’ll come.” My eyes just kinda widened at the thought of that, and the thought of what might happen if I should have an accident while I was here. I generally don’t think about stuff like that, but this brought those thoughts into sharper focus.

I’ll do an aside on food later, because food in Haiti is worth taking some time on, but I’ll just say that while I was staying with Belange and Bemarie I ate like a king. Kim had given them money for our stay, which Cara later reimbursed her for. So for the first time since I’d been in Haiti I ate three squares. In Dal, the norm was hot chocolate and bread for breakfast, and then one big meal in the middle of the day, with leftovers for dinner if you had them leftover to eat. You appreciate that because it’s all done over a wood fire with three stones to balance your pot on, and about four more people to feed. But in Lazil, I think Bemarie took great pride in being able to feed us a big breakfast both mornings, and both a dinner and a desert. Dinner was likely leftovers, but they were done with a little extra something. I also think that this was a big deal to her, because we weren’t really allowed to come help in the cooking. This was her love, this preparation and this presentation of meals. The table was set with panache, and when she joined us for the evening meal (she never ate lunch or breakfast with us I don’t think) she just smiled and seemed radiant with our yummy noises and full bellies.

Belange’s house is an amazing thing. In a community where most of the houses are at most three rooms, this house is a crazy mansion. I say crazy because it’s built on the side of a hill, and it was built as most houses in Haiti are, as the money comes in to build it. So while you can tell that rooms were added on at different times, and sometimes with different materials (some rooms were cement and others were made of palm trunks) you can also tell that there was some thought behind it, and that there were walls cut down in order to put up different ones. The main house consists of the front room or clinic, and the living/dining rooms, and it looks like the clinic was added on much later. The kitchen has three sections to it, and exists on three different levels of hillside, so you have to go down a step to get into the cooking room from the washing room. The main bedroom is on a step lower from the dining room, and is connected to Kim’s room (Kim’s room is also connected to the clinic by a different door). The other funny thing is that to get from the living room to the bathroom (and the latrine and back bedrooms, which are all one step again lower) you have to go through the main bedroom. I know this is confusing, and that’s okay because it was confusing to navigate in the dark so you get a bit of what that was like (oh, did I mention that if you have to pee in the night you gotta use a pail that you keep under your bed? No? Well, there it is). The point is that this place is not your typical Haitian house. They have electric light at night because of a solar panel that was sent to them by a daughter in Canada, and they are also the place where the community charges their cell phones. (no reliable phone service in Haiti, so the cell phone technology was a welcome thing when it came to this place)

The full day that we were in Lazil was spent visiting. While we were there I got to see how, for many people here, life is much harder than it seemed to be in Dal. We met Belange’s brother Castelle, who is in his mid-sixties and still works a mountaintop farm every day of his life. This is true of Cara’s host father Gabo as well, but for Castelle it’s a bit different. My first impression of the man was that of a kindly oak. His handshake reminded me of my friend Brendan’s father who would never mean to, but might just crack your bones with a friendly greeting. He’s just that strong. Castelle was like that, and his smile was so warm and inviting despite its missing front teeth. His machete hung on his belt, and his wife hovered off to the side with a quiet grace as he held court. We chita-ed with him and he told us what his life was like. His wife is ill with rheumatoid arthritis, and there will come a time when he won’t be able to work the fields because he’ll eventually become too old and fall ill himself but, “What can I do? There is no one else to work my fields for me. My daughters are in Canada and France…” and as he was talking, only then did I notice his left arm. He must have caught my gaze, and he lifted up his left sleeve. Under the sleeve of his shirt was a tiny shriveled wisp of an arm. “I was climbing a coconut tree when I was twelve. I fell and broke my arm in seven different places, and there was no doctor here then. There was no care. All that could be said of me was that I would be useless. My life was over. But every day I work that field. Every day I plant seeds and reap the harvest when it is time. And I will do that until I can no longer walk, because there is no one else to do it but me. My wife is sick. So it must be me to do it.” I had tears in my eyes as we said goodbye to him, because I knew that he wasn’t the first, nor would he be the last to live this way with no help to come.

Indeed, he wasn’t the last person I would meet in my time in Lazil with a limb that didn’t work. We sat with a family outside shelling beans one afternoon while we were there, and a woman came by and showed us her daughter’s feet. Curled up like fists they were. I wondered what this girl’s future would look like. Would she be ridiculed, told that she was useless? That seemed to be how it worked here, but something I saw later that day gave me hope.

We were sitting at the home of another friend of Kim’s, whose name escapes me at the moment. She was a lovely young woman of about 18(??? You never know in Haiti, as people look so much younger than they are sometimes, especially young people. Older people often look much older than they are as well, so it’s really deceptive) who was trying desperately to get Kim and Cara to sing. Neither would be budged, so this little lady took it on herself to sing and dance the songs that she knew as a way of connecting with us. Her tiny sister sat close by but also wouldn’t sing. After a few songs, I felt like she needed to be repaid for her kindness, so I sang a song for her. “Moody’s Mood,” I think, was what I chose. She clapped and asked me if I danced salsa. She had asked Cara to dance salsa with her, but Cara’s easily embarrassed and wouldn’t, so I obliged her with some very VERY rudimentary moves and finished it with a dip, which elicited peals of laughter. “That’s what she wanted!” Cara laughed.

We exchanged a few more songs together and then the rain, which had started slowly when we were at a different house, decided it wanted to be more of a real rain. So we moved out to the front porch to really appreciate it. The rest of the children in the family had come home by now, and they were all gathered around laughing and playing on the porch just out of reach of the big drops. Here is where I got my ray of hope for disabled folks in this village. I don’t pretend that this is proof that that little girl with the fist-like foot will be okay. But it made me think that there might be hope for her. One of the young people in this crew of about ten that were gathered on the porch was mentally disabled. He had the look of someone who had a birth defect, with a crooked mouth, and a squinty face, and he walked with a listing to starboard. But here was the ray of hope. In this place where I’d seen animals kicked and had rocks thrown at them, this boy was getting cheered on. He had decided to make good use of the rain, and for a few minutes he disappeared. I wondered where he’d gone, and then he reappeared running through the rain in his underwear with a head full of soap suds. He was grinning, and the other children were cheering his ingenuity. When he made his way back to the porch, a few of them scrubbed his back for him and helped him wash. It was such a nice thing to see, because I’d seen this kid before in our trip, and I’d silently worried that he hadn’t a friend in the world. In a place where “you’re on your own” takes a new meaning, I thought this kid might really be on his own. But here was proof that in some way he was loved and accepted. Even if I was wrong, and he really was shunned, as I know some mentally challenged people are even in our culture, at least here at this house he had some friends who had his back, if only to wash it for him.

Not a blog post about Haiti.

Although I am reminded of several sweaty nights I passed while there. But at least while I was there, I wasn't expecting to have air conditioning.

I'll say this short and sweet, because my laptop is about to scorch my shorts.

It's right hot tonight. So I decided to bite the bullet and get the window unit down from its winter home on top of my kitchen cabinets and put it in its summer home in the window. I do so, plug the thing in, and press the button. Nothing. Sweaty Sean swears a few choice ones and tries a different outlet. *chirp-chirp* Not a sign of life in the old girl.

So I decide, "Okay. I went without A/C while I was in Haiti, I can do it here too. Ahh, but I have that fan that's in the closet. I could get that out.

Ten minutes later, I've put the fan together (it's easier to store if you take it apart, and space is at a premium in my "deluxe studio") and I plug that mother in. Turn the thing on and it vaguely hums. I turn it up, and the fan blades slowly make an attempt at turning, as if the motor were saying, "Let's do give him a little mosey. He's sweating SO." At this point I laugh out loud, because just a week or so ago, I was thinking, "maybe I'll not need a fan this year. I mean, if I could take it hot there..." But yeah. I'll be running out tomorrow. Either that or I'll be Googling "do it yourself AC repair without turning into toast."

Tonight: the sweaty sleep of the damned.

A bus ride tangent.

A few mornings ago I was riding the 147 bus to work, and as I stood and nodded off, I looked at the people around me. Old Cranky Lady Who Thinks the World Owes Her Something was bitching again. "How you gonna have NO busses come for an HOUR and then three busses come all at the same time? I'm'onna call CTA and give them a..." on and on. Cute Eastern European girl was catching my eye and smiling again. And then all of a sudden I noticed Very Pregnant Lady standing up in the aisle a few meters away. I thought to myself, "Now, why the hell is that lady standing up? There's a very healthy looking young lad sitting down right next to her, and...Oh shit. Very Pregnant Lady just turned around and she has a beard. Very Pregnant Lady is in fact Man with Long Hair, Beard, and Disproportionately Large Belly to his Very Skinny Legs." So, I guess he doesn't need someone to give up their seat. Still. I hope the baby looks like its mother.

On Haiti - Part Two

That first night in Dal, we got under our mosquito net and went to bed, drifting off to the sounds of singing in the distance. I asked Cara what it was, and she said, “probably voodoo.” It went on throughout the night, and seemed to move around the valley, although that was probably an illusion. We asked at breakfast (hot chocolate and bread, which was, I’m told, for my benefit and not a normal thing. It was my breakfast every morning I was in Dal though, so they must have liked me at least a little) what the singing was about, and Madanm smiled and said, “They were praying.” And that’s all that was said about it until later on in the day, when Madanm said to us, “They weren’t really praying. They were praying to Satan. Ti Pay got possessed and climbed a tree and fell out of it. HAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!” See, Madanm really disagrees with voodoo. The family is Catholic, and Madanm especially thinks voodoo is the work of the devil. But the interesting thing is that later on in the day, Madanm said, “Anchelo is going to take you over to see the ceremony.” The ceremony had been going on since the night before, and the singing had only paused here and there in all that time. Madanm told us that they were holding the ceremony for a boy who was sick. They were trying to get the lwa (spirit) to leave him alone. And we were going to go see this. Cara was incredulous. “I can’t believe it! They’ve never let me go to a ceremony. This is all because you’re here.”

So we went. Anchelo took us over, and it seemed half the valley was in the front yard of the sick boy’s house. Gabo was there, and he motioned for us to join him where he was standing and watching. He explained things as they happened. “That woman has the spirit on her.” The woman he was pointing to was yelling over and over, “umwe! Umwe!!” (help me!) in a deep voice that was obviously making her hoarse. In kreyol she shouted, “Help me! Rum! Give me Rum!!” and when a woman threw water at her, I assumed in an attempt to rid her of the spirit, she laughed in the woman’s face and yelled, “Do you think I’m a spirit that is satisfied with water?” and walked away, still yelling, “Umwe!!” Finally, she came back and hollering all the while sat down in a chair and then fell back onto the ground. She got up, soaked with water and with sweat, and rubbed her eyes. She was helped away, and eventually came back changed into different clothes. “She won’t remember anything she did.” Gabo said.

The ceremony continued, as the small group of ceremony participants danced around the circle and sang. In the center was a plate filled with rum and bread, soda and rice and beans. Gabo told us that if the spirit, Congo, didn’t come to separate the food, that it would have to be hung in the tree for Job. Job is the head spirit of voodoo, and as such, the Christian missionaries labeled him Satan. I found myself wondering how Gabo handled the paradox of being a Catholic and a Haitian, given all that I’d been told about Haiti’s origins.

On Voodoo-

Please don’t think this is anything but a few bits I was told about voodoo. It’s not complete, or even necessarily true. It’s just what I was told while I was there. Voodoo is a religion that was brought with the slaves from Africa. As such it was very much a part of who the slave population of Haiti believed themselves to be. So it’s not surprising that when they planned their revolution (creating the first ever black nation in the process) the Haitian people had a voodoo ceremony to make sure it was started off right. This seems to have built in an additional element to the self-loathing that was inherent because of their status as slaves. Not only were they told that they were less than human, because they were slaves, but they were told that their religion was Satanic, and against God. As a result, you have a country of people destined to be, at the absolute minimum, conflicted, and likely more along the lines of fractured. One of the acts most closely associated with the creation of their nation is an act that they’re told is against God and should be shunned. What would you do? I’d go mad I think. More history later, along with some more reasons to consider why the first black nation might have some strikes against it from powerful people who wanted to keep a lid on such things.

For the next couple days we did a lot of visiting in Cara’s community. We would go and “chita” on the porches of her neighbors, and she would introduce me to people whose names I would have very little hope of remembering seeing as how there were so many of them. She said, “Don’t worry, I don’t know everybody’s name either. The only reason I know as many as I do is that I’ve been here for seven months.” So we would sit, and Cara would translate, and very often we would be offered some food as we sat. Keep in mind that these people are not well off. They generally eat one bigger meal a day and perhaps an ear of corn or a mango otherwise. So, in being offered an ear of roasted corn, you feel very welcomed and taken care of, even if the corn itself doesn’t really appeal to you.

We went to the “marche” (market) and I saw a goat being skinned, corn pudding being wrapped in banana leaves, and pieces of pork, fish, and plantain being battered and deep fried. Anchelo bought us a watermelon to take home, and I got to meet a number of Cara’s friends. She often goes to sit with them while they sell their wares at marche.

On Watermelon in Haiti-

It’s vaguely pink. Not red. Kinda like when you were a kid, and your grandpa would throw you the rind of his watermelon after he was mostly done, so you could suck on it. Kinda like that. I’d recommend the mangos instead

One of my favorite times of day in the countryside was dusk. The sun is down and less blazing hot, and it’s starting to get to the point where you can no longer see people’s faces. The family sits around outside the house and just chats. Sometimes, as in the picture above, Linda or one of the other younger girls would do hair. Beatrice is getting hers done in this shot. Cara was so exhausted from translating all day that she would sometimes kinda give up at this point. Sometimes not, and I’d get a good bit of conversation from Madanm or Margalie, or Beatrice. But I found that even when I wasn’t getting the play by play from Cara, I just liked sitting there with them. It’s something that’s often missing here, as we get together to watch movies, or see a band. It was something that I just really loved, soaking in the laughter and the obvious love the family had for each other, even if they were constantly teasing one another.

At this point I’ll say something that I’ll only come at obliquely, because to really talk about it, I’d have to start a new thread and it’s still rather raw and pointy, so I can’t really go into it all that deeply. The details are a bit too personal to share with the world on a blog, but during this time in the country, Cara and I split. We love each other very much, and she was a wonderful host to me, but she feels that she needs to continue her journey alone, and while it hurts rather intensely to let her go, it’s what has to happen. We gave it a real solid addressing later in the trip, but here is where it came up in the timeline.

Another favorite moment of my trip was the brief time that I got to spend with Cara’s host-cousin, Linda. As I said before, Linda slept in the room next to ours, in the little house, and at night, when she was done with her chores, we would hear (if we were awake still) a whispered, “Ka?” Cara would talk a little with Linda and then they would say the lord’s prayer in kreyol and I’d join them in English (with me about dying from the cuteness of “Au vada, ou aht in evan…”) and Linda saying, “Good night, I love you, good job.” “good job,” is something that Linda says a lot. It’s one of the most adorable thing’s I’ve ever heard, and her English is really good. Makes you cringe every time Beatrice or Madanm would say, “She won’t pass her examinations.” I wanted to yell at them, “Don’t tell her what she can’t do!!” But it’s not your place, you know? Anyway, one other thing that we did at night with Linda, was that I was able to give her another gift. See, Cara had told me before I came that the harmonica would likely get taken from Linda, just because everything that Linda has gets taken by somebody sooner or later. So, I planned on that, and I wrote her a song. My thinking was that I wanted to give her something that no one could take away from her. And so for a couple nights I taught her the song, and then I wrote it down for Cara, so that she could continue singing it with Linda until it was truly hers. I also asked Cara to make a project of translating the tune into Kreyol, so that she could sing it both ways. I won’t share the song with you, because I really do want it to remain hers, but I wanted to share the sense of gratification of being able to give her something that no one could steal.

After a few days, we went back to Jacmel to stay the night, so that we could leave for Lazil the following morning to visit Cara’s friend Kim, another apprentice, and her host family. Cara’s host family was not happy that I was leaving them. We told them that we’d be back in eight days, as we were going to spend a few days in Lazil, and then go visit Dabon, where our friend Maxandre lives, and then we were going to spend a couple days in Jacmel going to the music festival. Every time they told someone new the sad news that Chanm and Ka were leaving, the amount of time got longer. About ten minutes after we had breakfast, Gabo walked up and said, “So you’re leaving for a month.” HA! The nice part of that, is that it was a beautiful way of saying, “We’re going to miss you, and we wish you weren’t leaving for so long.”

We had dinner in Jacmel with Coleen, and her daughter Marika, who is only four, but has the beanpole legs of a nine-year-old. She’s adorable, and soaks up affection, and Coleen’s house is so nice. They’d just finished some landscaping, and Marika was anxiously awaiting the delivery of her swingset for the backyard. We had wonderful conversation with Coleen, and it was kind of a strange, lovely shift to be having a conversation in English again, with someone other than Cara. It made me glad that Cara has her around. After coming back to the apartment in Jacmel, we had showers and slept next to the fan. A welcome thing after several sweaty nights in the country, where you close up all the doors and windows tight, and where there is no electricity for a fan.

On Utilities-

In the country, you may have to walk for your water. Families send children with jugs several times a day to fetch water from a pipe, or directly from the spring when the pipe is broken. And the pipe may often be broken. If the water flow is weak down in the valley, someone may walk up closer to the source and break the main pipeline with a rock. The reasoning goes, “The people in charge of fixing the pipes won’t come to fix them if my house is the only house that hasn’t got any water but a trickle. The only way they’ll come to fix it is if everybody in the valley is hurting, so I’ll break the pipe further up.” Not sure what the bottom line ends up being, but you’ve got to think that they’d go through less pipe if you could count on the help coming when it’s needed. The pipe in Cara’s house empties right on their front yard, so normally they don’t have to walk for it. But eventually it did get broken while I was there, and we had to go hiking for our shower water. And sure enough, on the way there, we saw a gaping hole in a PVC pipe that could only have come from a hard blow from a giant rock.

No electricity in the country, unless your family has help from relatives abroad. In Lazil, which I’ll talk about next time, the family we stayed with had a solar panel on the roof, which they used to charge cell phones and to power electric lights after dark. In the city, and this is my understanding of the situation, power gets turned on for several hours every night, but it sometimes gets sent only on alternating nights to alternating neighborhoods. Which is a long way of saying, if you have power tonight, you probably won’t have it tomorrow. Beyond Borders has an inverter, which allows them to store energy when it’s on at night, for use during business hours.

In the city, we had showers, sometimes with running water (no hot, only cold) and sometimes not. In the country, a shower will likely always consist of a basin filled with water and a cup to pour it over your head. Cara’s family constructed a shelter for her made out of banana branches, so that she could have some privacy in her washing. And of course, in the country you have a cement latrine with tin walls. In the city, you may or may not have a flushing toilet. It’s a toilet as we are used to, but you may have to pour a bucket of water into it in order to flush. Luckily the shower generally has a big bucket in it which you can dip your smaller bucket into to flush.

The other thing I thought about only after I came home was that while the latrine situation and basin at Cara’s house in the country weren't hotel accomodations, they are likely still a lot better than some other families have in that same area. Cara’s family for the most part don’t use her shower structure, I think mostly because they never needed it before Cara got there, so they just leave it to her. They will often stand near the water source and wash just off to the side of the house, out of the way, but not hidden by any means. I found this out, when I was trying to get a look at a bird that was making a ruckus, and Anchelo pulled me over to get a better view. He didn’t pause or think twice about the fact that he was pulling me right past his very pregnant and very naked sister Maraglie who was just lathering up for a shower. I blushed, and she just smiled and pointed to the noisy bird. “Caw,” (crow) she said.

When in Dal…

On Haiti - Part One

I’ve been trying for about a week now, to figure out a way of organizing my thoughts on my three week trip to Haiti. I could do it chronologically, and just do my best to tell the narrative. I could instead break it down into areas of interest. No matter what angle I approach it from, though, it seems that you’re going to be missing out, and I think I just have to be okay with that. Because I could give you a Nabokovian deluge of descriptive prose, and you’d still not really have a clear picture of what it was like. So I think I’ll just dive in, and just try to write a bit each day, and post it as I move along.

Getting off the plane in Port Au Prince, I was met by a flash of heat, and the sound of a band. Well, band isn’t exactly correct. It’s more of a Haitian approximation. I chuckled to myself as I stepped off the staircase and saw a man playing a banjo, and a little person playing a tambourine and singing. There was a horn player who was taking a break, and looking rather bored. As I walked by I knew that this was only the first of times I’d feel a bit outside myself in this place. The little tambourine man smiled at me and held out his hand to ask for ‘bagay’ (something). Also the first of many times this would happen.

I met Cara inside (where she was being teased about me by airport security. The teases had turned a bit blue, I think, so she was happy to be off), and we were driven to the small airport to catch our flight to Jacmel. Not that we had to literally catch it. It wasn’t going anywhere. We sat in the airport for several hours waiting for it to fill up, and I got to meet Colleen and Guerda, two of Cara’s lovely compatriots in Beyond Borders. We also ran into a guy named Mark, who was there on a mission. I was ready to be asked about whether or not I’d been saved, but it didn’t come. He was the less pushy variety of missionary. Big zealous eyes, but very nice and willing to allow me my belief in ancient genomes, as long as he got the last word and made sure we knew he considered himself a son of Adam, genomes be damned.

The puddle-jumper to Jacmel was a gas. Our pilot seemed to like buzzing the mountaintops, which was okay by me. I loved seeing the lay of the land, and was surprised by the vegetation. I think that I’d heard so many stories about deforestation, and I’d transposed that into no vegetation. It’s true that you can see a severe lack of trees, but it’s a very green place. Just not so much with the BIG green.

We stayed two days in Jacmel, to kind of ease me into being in a new place. Keep in mind that I’d never been out of the U.S. before. So the sights and sounds and smells of Jacmel were a big departure for me. First of all, I was in scooter-heaven. A mayor of Jacmel had made a deal a few years ago with a Chinese scooter company, and consequently there are scooter-taxis everywhere. This is the way many people get from A to B. Also a big change for me, seeing as how in the states I wouldn’t get on my Vespa without a helmet, and the only time I ever ride with flip-flops is when I’m going a block to the beach near my house. Here, I rode with Cara and the driver, my pack behind me, and her pack backwards on the driver’s chest, Cara fixing the straps on his shoulders every couple miles. When in Jacmel, I guess. This brings me to my first of many tangents…

On Getting Around...

Getting around in Haiti is an art. You can take the aforementioned scooter-taxis, and many people do. You’ll see people carrying baskets of food on their heads riding behind drivers that are trying desperately to compensate for the crazy shift to their center of gravity. You can see someone dragging rebar behind them on a scooter. Another choice is the Tap-Tap. Tap-Taps are pickup trucks that have additions welded on and a roof added to the back, so that you can pack about fifteen people into the bed. Fifteen if you’re lucky. Twenty if you’re not so lucky, with people sitting on the roof. And a chicken. Gotta have a chicken. If you’re riding in a Tap-Tap and there isn’t a lady carrying a chicken in a straw hat on her lap, you should get out and wait for another, because your experience isn’t complete. There’s also the larger version of the Tap-Tap, called a “machin.” This is a flatbed truck, with a similar roof welded on, and usually a bench added in the middle, so that you can fit upwards of sixty people in it. Expect at least one verbal fight to break out over the price of the fare. If there isn’t a fight of some sort, or someone balking at the price, it’s not a true machin ride. There are cars in Haiti, and if you’re waiting for a machin, you may long to be in one. They’ll wave genially as they pass you by to bake in the sun. Depending on where you are, you may have to wait an hour or two to find a machin that’s going where you want to go, and actually has some room in it.

By far, my favorite way of getting around in Haiti was walking. There’s so much to see, and if you’re looking with an eye for beauty, you’ll find it. We walked a great deal while I was there, and twice we hiked through the mountains. Despite the heat, you find yourself wishing you didn’t have to look where you were stepping, because you feel you might be missing something, and you find yourself glad to be alive, because everywhere you go, you’re met by people who greet you with, “Coman ou ye?” (how are you?). But that’s another tangent…

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After a couple days of exploring life in Jacmel, with dinner at the Jacmelian - a local hotel - and a Coke on ice, a super great treat in a place where not all the ice is safe for foreigners to eat, we headed to the countryside where Cara’s host family live. It’s a village called Dal about twenty-five minutes Northeast of Jacmel, and it’s beautiful bumpy ride along the river to get there. The scooter drivers will weave back and forth following the least bumpy route over the roads. The roads are horrible, but these guys have it down to a science. They know exactly where to put their tires, and if someone happens to be walking along that route, they beep and beep until that someone moves. And they better move because there is no such thing as pedestrian right of way in Haiti. As such, the drivers just expect you’ll get out of the way, because you like living. The thought that someone might not move doesn’t seem to occur to them. Funny enough it occurred to me, and I’m sure more than once a driver wondered why he was being goosed by this crazy blanc. (a blanc is a white person in Haiti).

So, once we got to Dal, it was a short walk up through her small community to the home of Cara’s host family. I was introduced to everyone, and invited to “chita” (sit) on their front porch, where Cara filled everyone in on where she’d been and how her family was. Cara had brought back some “foto” with her, and the ensuing madness was truly hilarious. She had nicely separated the pictures by person, to make sure that everyone got the pictures of themselves. Picture processing not being an easy thing in the country, it is a special treat for a person to have a picture of themselves. Also, as I was soon to learn, mirrors are nowhere near the ubiquitous thing they are in the States. So, when the pictures came out, there were play fights, and games of keep away, and more than a little playful hording of other peoples ‘foto.’ In all of this, I got to see a bit of the spirit of laughter in this family. Gabo, (Gabriel) Cara’s host father, was stealing pictures left and right, saying that his children could have the pictures when he died, because he wouldn’t need them then, and then laughed as they were stolen from him and he had to chase down his pregnant daughter, Margaly, to get them back.

At one point, the foto coup had wound itself down, and I mentioned to Cara that I thought it might be a good time to bring out the gifts that I’d brought with me. I felt that it was a big deal for this family to be letting me live with them for a few weeks and I wanted to do something. So, for the two sisters I brought earrings. For Madanm Gabo, I got a head scarf. For the two brothers, sunglasses(which Anchelo immediately went inside and came out to show how cool he looked wearing them. Jean Richard quietly thanked me and went inside as well, but I’m not sure I ever saw the glasses on him). For Linda, a teen-aged cousin, and Cara’s special friend, I brought a harmonica, which was promptly stolen by everyone and we would hear it ringing throughout the valley in the coming weeks, rarely in Linda’s hands. Anchelo’s three-year-old son, Dede, got a mini-keyboard toy. This also was frequently passed around, as Dede refused to play more than one note over and over, and would come over to set it on your lap so he could do that near you. But my favorite gift, and that which I was most proud of, was a wall hanging that I’d made for the family (and given to Gabo). Here is a picture of the two of us holding it on the front porch. Upon opening the package, Gabo looked at Cara and said “peyizon!?” (peasants!?). He had never seen himself, or his people, depicted in art before and was so happy. It was an amazing feeling, to know that this thing I’d had in my imagination for many months was finally in the hands of the people for whom I’d created it, and they loved it.

That night, a little before sunset, Gabo took Cara and Dede and I for a walk to see his fields. He’s a farmer, and he’s very proud of his fields. This started my Kreyol lessons. As we walked, Gabo would point out different trees and plants and say their names in Kreyol, and I understood I was being told their names so that I would learn them and remember. “Yon pye bannann,” (a plantain tree), “yon pye mango” (a mango tree), “yon pye palmis,” (palm) “cocoye” (coconut), “pistach” (peanuts), “bef” (cow), “cabrit” (goat), “cochon” (pig), etc…and as he walked, I realized that not only was he teaching me, but this was a really wonderful way of welcoming me to the things that were most important to him. You could tell that he loved being out here, and that sharing this was a big deal. Dede followed his grandfather with his hands clasped behind him, mimicking the older man reverently. He loves his Gabo, and would follow him to the ends of the earth. And one of my favorite moments of the entire trip happened as we walked back to the house. Dede is obsessed with “motos” (scooters). He’s obsessed, but also has a healthy fear of them. So, at the moment that one goes zipping by, he runs either into the brush by the side of the road, or to the leg of the nearest adult, to be sure that the moto doesn’t get him. But as it goes off on its way, he’ll exclaim that it’s his moto. And on this particular occasion, he yelled, “VO-LE!!” When I asked Cara what that meant, she said, “Thief,” and smiled. We all laughed. That no-good taxi driver had stolen Dede’s moto. “Vo-lehhhh!”

On Dede-
Dede(pronounced somewhere in-between Day-day and deh-deh)is one of my favorites. He is three, but he obviously rules the roost. His aunts will threaten to whip him with a switch, but I think he knows it’s a ruse. He never really runs, or makes like he’s afraid. He knows they love him immensely. His wide grin, and pealing laughter are things I’ll remember for as long as I live. He is almost always followed by his machin, a yellow Fisher-Price volkswagon bug that he pulls behind him on a rope. He will also tie this car up to any low hanging branches. He seems to be tying it up the same way that Gabo ties up his bef, or his cabrit, and very often a family member will remark, “He ties that machin up like it’s going to run away!” Dede is always calling out to Cara. The family pronounces her name, Kah-ra, and sometimes shortens it to a simple, Ka. But for Dede, the K sound isn’t the easiest, so about fifty times a day you’ll hear him yell out, “Tah!” Sometimes he does manage a “Ka!” but usually, he doesn’t really have anything else to say. He just knows that Cara will answer him, and so he calls to her. And when she does, he grins, and knows that he is loved, sometimes holding up an ear of corn that he’s eating (which a family member has given him, complete with a twig inserted as a handle) or sometimes carrying flowers he’s picked to bring to his favorite “Ka.” Dede took to me pretty readily too, and gave me my Haitian name. Sean isn’t easy for the Haitian mouth, because the “aw” sound isn’t really in their ears. So Dede made it succinct and easy. He called me, “Chanm.” (pronounced, Chahm). The last moment I’ll share about Dede happened one night as we were lying down to bed. The family has two houses, and Cara and I were sleeping in the smaller of the two, with Linda in the next room. The rest of the family slept in the big house, and very often you could hear them talking and laughing well into the night. On this night, though as we settled in, we heard Dede doing a Waltons-esque series of goodnights. He got to us and yelled out, “Tahh!” Cara, yelled, “Wi, Dede!” “Pase bon nwi!” (good night). “Chanm!!” Me: “Wi Dede!!” Dede:“Pase bon nwi!” Me: “Pare, Dede” (you too). We later found out that as he’d said goodnight to everyone, and everyone had responded, he called out to his father, Anchelo, who said nothing. Dede then called him a “Mal bulrik.” Which literally means a bad donkey, but I think you can figure out what other meanings it might have. You have to love a kid who calls his father a bad donkey.

More to come...

Unplugged

This story makes me wonder what else our brains are going to have flying through them in ten or twenty years and what strange new forms of cancer we'll all be talking about because of it. Ahhh progress.

To summarize, a group of scientists figured out a way of sending power without wires. It uses the concept of resonance. A coil has energy running through it, and a coil with the same resonance is a few meters away. Because of resonance, the second coil starts filling up with the electricity being emitted by the first, and you can harness that electricity in the normal way, to power your cat-washing machine. They say there's about a 40% efficiency rating on the process. So I wonder if they can get that number higher with more tweaking.