Yon Rév

This is why I try to carve these stories into you dreams, so that you will not be deceived by birds and wolves who will want to make you and take you into the night... so that not only will you always remember the sound of my voice but yours as well. I tell you the story not even certain that you will know how to discern my voice, if you will stay silent or sing it back to me. But I have no choice but to tell you this story. It is all that I know. It is all that I have.
- Edwidge Danticat


I have been gone from Haiti now for one month and thirteen days.  Upon my takeoff, which I viewed from a window seat in a strange emotionally exhausted, overcaffeinated, essentially confused state, the country waited for a final election result that would bring, at least temporarily, some satisfaction to the people. 


But as I left, the matter remained unresolved. And so as I looked out for the last time in who knows how long at the broken streets teeming with people framed by the tree-stripped mountains, I thought back on a particular scene that will forever replay in my head.


We have been stranded in Kenscoff for 4 days. Normally, this wouldn't be such a bad thing, but today is a different matter. With the election trouble, the electricity has been even more sporadic for the last 3 days, so our showers are freezing with the mountain air and our only entertainment is an old checkerboard that neither of us wants to touch and irregular radio broadcasts (which I struggle to follow completely with my limited language comprehension). No one goes outside except for short walks to a friend's house. None of the boutiques, depots, or food stops in town have remained open.  But even worse than the low level of activity at home has been the attitude that the trouble has created in the community. It's proved especially bad for my roomate, Jean Buteau.  Unable to go to the bank, he has run out of money, and he is fed up with everything to do with his country. At night, we sit together, having just managed to find some food at a little house behind the road where they sell pâté. At the end of a difficult conversation, he repeats a similar refrain, the line he goes to when our electricity suddenly goes out or there are reports of trouble in town. "Ayiti," he says in his young but tired-sounding voice, his dark features shining in the candlelight, "se yon rév. It is a dream."


...


"It just seems so crazy.
"I was in Petionville on Friday, walking around with Job (he's a Haitian friend), and these kids come up to us, who I know because they want to be in our program. They greet me all amicably, then Job, both very shortly, and then we parted ways.
" 'One of those guys, he whispered something in my ear about you, which I want to tell you because we're good friends,' Job said to me. ' When you had your back turned talking to the other guy, he leaned in and told me that you are very powerful and can do many things to help people. Then he gave me a look and walked off.'
"I mean who are these people kidding? I'm 22 working for no money in a start-up NGO with capacity for 20 people. A lot of power? It's not even my program."


She, who has never been in Haiti, laughs slowly, and calmly reminds me that, "Given the situation, Chris, you do have a lot of power."


...


Riding through the countryside, I feel as if I could be viewing the early 20th century. Stone-faced farmers slice at their hillside plots while their wives cook rice over a coal fire and their children run naked through the yard.
A farmer shows me his palm-roofed house, a sturdy structure, but one that lets in rain during the wet season, making everyone and everything damp and miserable. Yet I cannot help myself from being fascinated that he has lived this way, in this time, for his whole life.
Ferel interrupts my thoughts, "In the United States, you wouldn't let your dog live in one of those things."


... 

I am choking on the thick, disgusting smoke which blows up into my face, bringing tears to my eyes, but I refuse to take the cigar away from my face for more than a few seconds. A far more rancid set of smells awaits beyond the smoke.
I am in the city morgue, 10 minutes away from the country's center of government. The deceased men, women, and children are kept in no organized fashion, just strewn about a not-cold-enough freezer, left to decompose. 
As I take in the smoke, rum, and singing while busying myself by putting little cloths on the deceased that we are taking to bury, the dizzying sights and sounds pass in a fray. In the midst of it all, I see a small hole in the old tin roof, a light peeking through and I think:
These battered remnants of life are the children of God.


...


I am in Jenny's farm house, listening to rhythmic drumming, a voodoo beat, I am informed. We are celebrating and mourning under the banner of endings and beginnings.  And the band breaks into song, playing Yele. 
Si ou gen zorey, tande
Si ou gen bouche, pale


If you have ears, listen
If you have mouth, speak


I smile, loving the music. OK, Clef. I will.


...


It is my second week in South Africa, and I have been thinking a lot about dreams. And I've been dreaming a lot about Ayiti. I am struggling to understand the disconnected vignettes that are my experiences in Ayiti; to link what seems like another lifetime to my reality in this new place. I look down at the floor of the District 6 museum and see a Langston Hughes poem:


Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

And I remember the stories of my Haitian students, friends, and collegues, who fight seemingly insurmountable circumstances. Who at their worst feel like nothing and no one, but still get up and fight for their lives every day. And I dream of their success, their happiness, their freedom. And I will never forget.

M'ap vini
I'm coming

I Dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended

For anyone unaware, I flew out of Haiti two days ago, as my time as an in-country volunteer with KCH is now up. I'm moving on to exciting new things in and out of the organization.

In: I passed the baton to two awesome new volunteers, Travis Carter and LeeAllie Buchanan, who will work for KCH likely for a period of about a year. Our program is in good hands with these two, and I wish them all the best. As for me, I'm taking a position on the KCH board as an aducation program advisor, which is related to...

Out: In a week, I'm moving again to South Africa, where I'm planning to spend two months working in a research internship for the University of Cape Town and hanging out with a girl who I've spent the better part of the last 8 months at least 3000 miles away from. I'm a little excited.
After South Africa, I'll be training for and then working in the Teach for America program in Miami, FL, hopefully keeping up the Kreyol. And speaking of this, I have to go take my Social Studies certification test!

Stay tuned for one last blog post about Ayiti to come later in the week!

Le Paix

Once upon a Time

“There was a time when, if I wanted, I could just climb a tree and take all the fruit I wanted. Mangoes, coconuts, anything – I could eat them until I had no more room in my stomach. Even, for example, in a place I was not from. I am from Okay, but I have a friend in Leogane. If I went to visit my friend, there would always be a big basket of fruit waiting when I arrived, and I would take as I pleased. 

Now, it is not so.  Those times are gone, here and everywhere.  Everything is commerce, money.  Even in prosperous places, people don’t have all they need. I lived for a time in New York. You know, even there, people are sleeping in the streets. Even in New York some people don’t have enough to eat.

Our hardship will continue, I think, for the earth is punishing us now. There are too many of us here, and we have mistreated the earth for too long.  And the earth is all that matters. Apre mwen pase, apre w pase, apre nou tout pase, late a se anko la. After I pass, after you pass, after we all pass, the earth will still be here. And it is angry with us for cutting the trees and destroying the soil. I do not know if there is anything we can do to stop the earth’s anger now. So I wait.

I await the return of Jesus. I await God. Paske lavi pa ka kontinye konsa. Because life cannot continue like this. What can we do?

 

And yet, this is still a good place. Always it is a good place. It is home, and so mwen renmen Ayiti.”

Lekol

“Come on, I need your assistance if I’m really going to help you learn anything. What are some words we use every day?”

“Well, good morning is something.”

“Yes, it is, you’re right.  For bonswa? Do you know how to say that?”

“Good… afternoon.”

“See, I’m telling you, you know how to speak this language. Now how about nouns – like things or objects that you talk about every day?”

“Well, I don’t know…”

“Ok, I’ll give you a few examples. House, that means kay; clothes means ràd, food means manje, bed means kabann –“

I pause, looking up from the little list of words I’ve prepared for our English lesson to find Guerline in a fit of giggles. “What?” I ask her, “What is it?”

“Oh, Chris, I don’t have one of those. I sleep on a piece of carpet.” She’s laughing hysterically.

Taking her cue, I begin to laugh easily as well. “Well tapi is carpet in English, dear.”

“Caaarpet,” she repeats slowly, still holding the ‘r’ in the back of her mouth, as is habit for a Francophone such as herself. Her laugh dies off, but her huge smile remains.

I’m happy when she turns her head down towards her notebook for half a second; it gives me a little time to release the embarrassment I’ve been hiding behind my eyes as I glance at my own paper. And, after the brief moment, we continue.

“Desk,” I say, “that means biwo. School, you know that already. It means lekol.”

Inescapable

“Always when you live in Ayiti, your life is not good.  Because even when you are doing well yourself, you can arrive another place to find that the people you love are suffering. Even when you are becoming someone, doing good things, upon reflecting you understand that others are hurting.  And then you cannot be happy yourself. In this country, it is always happening around you.

When I am lot bo a, in the other place, I am making money, doing well for myself, and learning. But today I return here to find that my family is not well.  My father is sick, my brother and sister cannot find work, and my family does not have enough food to eat. This will always stay in my head, taunting me.

Everywhere you go in Ayiti, you cannot escape this reality. It is always there. It is not a life.” 

Fighting the Tide

It is nice to occasionally affirm one's role as someone aiding others, but it is equally if not far more important to recognize and constantly re-acknowledge the enormity of the challenge. The following comment took place in a conversation with a middle class Haitian businessman who had just heaped a torrent of undue praise upon me. This is only a small segment of the problems we really have to tackle in serving our youth, and a small segment of the concerns that he presented.  As we continued to think about our options after the following comment, the last words in the conversation were, "Support your local revolutionary forces." It was a good reality check.

“I liken it to a prison.

"Here you are with access to exercise equipment, books, educational materials, and what have you. But you’re locked up for 30 years. It’s going to take a hell of a lot of focus, determination, patience, and what have you to actually follow through and continue to read those books, be invested in your education, in yourself. It’s going to take someone special even to stay interested in following a sit com, because here you are watching people do things you’ll never be able to do, at least not for 30 years. People driving cars, going to basketball games, and just generally being comfortable; these are all things that you realistically can’t do.

“So you say, 'You will make it if you work hard and try hard,' but you realistically have no idea if that can be true. There's certainly no way you'll make it without that, but even with you doing all these things, life is likely to be a pretty uncertain situation. And we can't say there's anyone looking out for them in the political structure. You're on your own.

"That is what it’s like being 22 in this country right now."

Di djab, 'Bonjou,' l'ap manje ou.  Pa di djab, 'Bonjou,' l'ap manje ou.

Say to the devil, 'Good day,'  and he eats you. Don't say, 'Good day,' to the devil, he eats you.

Haitian Proverb

DLO/EAU/Water

Today, as I passed Route Frere during one of the 5 hours I spent in the taptap, I heard a familiar noise. The usual noises of trucks, cars, and buzzing motos was interrupted by what at first what I thought was a novelty horn. Except it kept repeating, and quickly I recognized the drone of - could it really be? - the song of an ice cream truck.

But of course, it was not an ice cream truck. It was the water truck. Try to imagine running ecstatically after the man bringing clean water to your neighborhood. A slightly different thought than cold, sugary, delicious snacks, no?  

This past weekend, I walked from Kenscoff to Seguin, a 6-8 hour walk. The Haitians that take that walk often do it on a routine basis; for example the ladies in Segiun will bring their big baskets of oranges to sell at the public market in Kenscoff. We even saw a guy carrying 3 trees he would sell in Port au Prince. Almost no one brings water, and by almost no one I mean I saw one person with water on the whole walk.  One old man stopped to ask us for some, and upon receiving it, the 10 ounces disappeared in seconds.

Imagine walking from here over the mountain in the background without a single drop to drink... in the middle of the Caribbean heat. 

 Also, Cholera continues to threaten the Haitian people, especially in the poorest areas where there is not good sanitation.

"Can't we just get some affordable water into this country?" you say. A decent question. Although really clean water should be free, consider this: already, for a 5 gallon jug of treated water, the standard price is 60 gourdes. That's $1.50 (meaning a bottle of Fiji might cost 3 times that).  In December, a student of mine in Cite Soliel came to the office having not eaten in 2 days and having missed school because he got sick from drinking bad water.

That, when with $1.50, he could have had safe water to drink for a week.

If I saw the water truck, I would scream like it was ice cream too; talk about things to be thankful for.

Respe