Leaving (to return)

(written 12/18)

Kenscoff has been wet and overcast all week.  Three weeks out of the rainy season, Port au Prince has seen the unusual advent of a week straight of rain, muddying the roads and dampening the sheets hung out to dry.  As the roads run with gray water, the gasoline stations are drying up, and with that in-country travel grinds to a halt.  With the rain, the lack of gas, the cool (comparatively) December air, and the small chains of Christmas lights that surround the few doors of anyone lucky enough to have electricity, the country feels in-between, almost still, waiting for the outbreak of trouble but tempered by a tired holiday spirit.

Monday through Thursday, we worked.  There were early-morning school visits, meetings with partners, student appointments, and last-minute office details to work out.  One student decided that he’d had enough of exams and didn’t want to go, another had run out of food for his entire family, and a third visited in between his school hours and 12 hour work shift to find money for this month at school.  There was plenty to do.

Thursday evening, we celebrated.  My roommate and guide to everything Haitian left late that evening to work for an undetermined amount of time in the countryside, so we had his sisters and cousins and our friends from town over to bid our house farewell for a few weeks.  In between sips of popular Dominican wine (the sips were few; imagine red wine with two collosal scoops of sugar), it was decided that my next language would be French and that I’d visit the country soon.

That evening and the next day were frantic. FRANTIC. By 7:30 am I was walking up the mountain to check for a ride down to Tabarre, 2 hours away, where I would get a lift to the airport from a friend.  By 8, all the cars had gone down.  Throughout the day I talked to the passing cars of partner organizations, just to see if anyone would help me out.  They all came and went, and when it grew dark it looked like I would have to find my own way down the next day.  And just then, when the prospect of staying another night in Kenscoff had just sunk in, an old white SUV rolled past my house.

“Gina’s car! Go, stop!” my friend Frantz urged me, and I jogged over hopefully.

“Hey Gina, I know this is short notice but I’ve been looking for a ride all day and I don’t know when the next car will go down and I can’t really take taptap with my bags and I’m kind of nervous to wait to go down and, uuuuuh, could I have a ride?”

“Of course.”

So I bid adieu to my Haitian home for a few weeks, and we loaded my things into the SUV with the sturdy frame and extra tire on the hood, and down we went, conversing.

“How is work, Chris?”

“You know, good and bad. It’s a struggle but we’re getting somewhere I think.”

“That’s always how it is, you know.  This poor country, just being beaten the way it is right now.  I’m glad to 

know that things are going alright at least. Are you excited to go home?”

“Honestly I can’t wait.  I suppose it will be an adjustment, but I can only think of seeing everyone right now.”

“Yes, it’s the right time to go home for a break, good for you.”

The bumps in the road jostling the car back and forth, throwing us into the air, filled up the silence that neither of us felt we needed to fill.  I was happy for whatever conversation we had, happy to let it be. I was happy to have found a way down, I thought, as the dimly lit evening scenes of Port au Prince floating by from the windows of the tall car.  Past Laboulle, where the UN truck sits outside President Preval’s house, the guards holding their shotguns easily between their legs.  Past the Hotel where I sat wearily when the old lady asked me for money and I didn’t have the words or the energy to explain why no.  Past one of the tent cities in Petion Ville, the barefoot children scampering through the maze of the dirty white rows of tents and tarps in the night.  Past a fried food stand in Reute Frere, the grease gleaming from the old yellow streetlight overhead.  And somewhere along the way, Gina spoke again.

“Do you remember a tall, skinny boy named Eliphete, Chris?  Very deep voice, thin face, in his mid 20s.  You would have met him just as you arrived.”

“Yea, I do know him. He stopped by the office just three or four weeks back to ask about school.”

“He died last night. We’re going down to the wake right now. He had AIDS, you know.  He was very sick, with not a lot of people coming to see him.  At the end I think he lost the will to live.  In a way I’m happy for him.”

Tomorrow I will drink water out of the tap.  I will drive 100 miles in 100 minutes.  I will wake in manufactured heat.  I will have electricity, day and night.  I will know that my neighbors have food for their children.  I will have a family with a bank account and a home.

I will not enter a chapel to find that the dead outnumber the living.  I will not lift their resting bodies onto the truck bound for the morgue.  I will not take caution to survey the political landscape before I go to work.  I will not have to say no to the hope they harbor.  I will not be reminded, at least not so viscerally, from the time I wake until the time I sleep, that the world is not fair.

But today I know that it is not, and I am going back to the cholera hospital. Today, I am in Haiti.

L'eternal

Elections

“If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?”

This post will begin with an important cautionary note.  I am not an election observer, I have no firsthand knowledge of the vote-counting process, and I do not know everything about the criteria used by international organizations and governments used to determine the validity of an electoral process.  I have no concrete evidential basis for my opinions other than those of anyone else who observed the situation leading up to, during, and immediately after the election.  What I mean is, I only know what I see and hear.  When we base our opinions solely on our senses, we leave ourselves most open to bias or outright error.  Such observations are, admittedly, very fallible.  However, when articulated correctly, these perceptions are also incredibly direct conduits into the experiences of others, given the genuine passion they elicit in the speaker.  I hope you will forgive my subjectivity and use this as an opportunity to understand the angst of the Haitian people are showing and will likely continue to show.  

Yet again, electoral strife has arrived in full force in Haiti.  The country woke this morning to anger on the talk radio stations (the preferred media forum for dissent and discussion), chatter among anyone old enough to grasp the situation, and widespread manifestacion in the streets. 

Everyone sits by their radio, telephone at the ready, waiting to hear how the events of the day will unfold.  In Kenscoff, children are still walking or taking motorcycles to school.  But this flood of young people going on foot and the little boom in motorcycle business is indicative of greater trouble.  The taptaps, which every day carry hundreds of people into the city or to the towns on the way down the mountain, aren’t running today.  It is the first time, including 3 holidays, a hurricane, and the tense Election Day, that I’ve witnessed this since my arrival.

Last night, the electoral commission declared that the top two vote-getters of last week’s election were Madam Mirlande Manigat and Mr. Jude Celestin.  Since neither received over 50% of the vote, these two will go to a runoff in early January.  The commission did not declare a winner last night, but, with the aid of the international community that oversaw the elections, it did declare several losers.  Among these were 17 official presidential candidates and the greater Haitian populace.  The latter of the two lost in several ways; some regardless of the results given.  First, to the results:

Jude Celestin is the presidential candidate of the INITE (UNITY) party, formed by current President Rene Preval, who is constitutionally barred from running for reelection.  He is the former head of the government road-building division and thus preceding his candidacy was a relative unknown in the national political climate.  A kind assessment would refer to Celestin as Preval’s hand-picked successor; a blunter one would call him Preval’s stooge.  Writing on the reaction and mobilization of supporters following the election, an Associated Press report noted on Tuesday, “While Martelly and Manigat supporters were in ready supply, AP journalists had to search specifically for Celestin backers.”

On and before Election Day, I watched vociferous, excited Haitians dance through the street carrying posters of the third place finisher, konpa musician Michael Martelly.  Sweet Mickey’s (as Martelly is also known) supporters showed an incredible outward fanfare for their candidate to a degree that even Manigat did not receive.  Comparably, the most I saw for Celestin was among those he (read ‘he’: the Preval government, which used state funds to back his candidacy) employed to hold posters and wear t-shirts.  It is important to note that the populace has grown increasingly impatient with Celestin’s patron given the lack of progress since the earthquake.

Yet as I mentioned earlier, the people have lost regardless of the results.  Maybe the announced numbers were correct after all, though, and Celestin did narrowly beat out Mickey; it’s not completely improbable.  It was also not improbable, if you conversed with prospective voters on election day, to have spoken with more people who either a) could not find their names on the list at their local polling place even if they were previously registered voters or b) never received their voter identification cards even if they applied months earlier (official estimates are in the neighborhood of 400,000 undistributed cards) than people who actually cast a vote.  This, in case you’re wondering, was my experience. In addition, members of the international press reported several cases of sacked polling places, cases of stuffed ballot boxes, political intimidation outside polling places, and polling places closing early.  The night that the election finished, 12 of the candidates, including future winner Madame Manigat, collectively accused the government of “massive fraud” in a downtown hotel while the crowd outside chanted, “Arrest Preval!”

These responsibilities, for accuracy of the lists and card distribution, are those of the current government.  Yet since the election, Organization of American States, the chief election observation group, has said several times that the OAS “does not believe that these irregularities, serious as they were, necessarily invalidated the process."  Similarly, the Miami Herald writes, “The problems do not add up to a `nefarious plan to steal the election,' said Mark Schneider, a longtime Haiti observer with the International Crisis Group. `They were overwhelmed.'"

The prevailing attitude here seems to be “It already happened.  It will have to be good enough.”  Forget the blaring indications of inadequacy; that masses of people who wanted to vote were denied the ability.  Forget that instead of funneling money and effort into distributing cards or correctly preparing voting lists, the government poured money and time into the candidacy of its hand-picked successor, who just happens to have advanced to the second round despite clear indications that the populace is disenchanted with him and his friends.  It will have to be good enough.

So have said the people in power, notably the Haitian government and some international observers.  The conspicuous missing interest group is the Haitian populace, who are and will likely continue to voice their discontent in some productive and some unproductive ways.  Their dissent, while justified only to the point that it does not involve violence, is entirely necessary.  The attitude of “good enough” is the reason that 1 million Haitians are still living in tents 11 months after one of the most devastating and widely publicized natural disasters in recent world history.  “Good enough” will continue to suppress the voices of KCH’s students and the future leaders of Haiti.  

For our students, and young people like them, the situation surrounding the elections exemplifies the short and long term implications of growing up in Haiti.  In the short term, they will face danger to life and limb in walking the streets to go about their daily business, and their educational pursuits will be put on hold as their country grapples with its political difficulties.  It’s another set of things to worry about: the difficulties could add hours to already long commutes, spontaneous protests and clashes could erupt without warning, and they will have to be especially vigilant in attending to their personal safety.

“I’m not going anywhere,” my friend and KCH colleague Frantz Blanc explained to me this morning. “You will be safe; they won’t kill white people. I’m black – they don’t care what happens to me.”

This brings us to the long term implications of growing up in Haiti.  They are much like the long term implications of growing up in other places where life seems readily disposable.

In the way the electoral process is carried out, powerful actors degrade the voices of youth like Frantz.  Their ability to express their individuality in a safe, supportive, and productive way under a democratic system is tainted in the name of forward progress.  As follows, they will witness the disregard of their individual ability to impact the conditions (and even general direction) of their country and their lives. At the same time they can readily view the abilities that powerful actors, many of them foreigners and as such white people, have in impacting these processes.  If that observation alone does not incite some level of distrust and bring about questions of one’s own relative worth in the eyes of the powerful, then the outward difference in their safety vs. that of rich people and white people (as Frantz stated outright) almost certainly will.

In the absence of the ability to officially voice their opinion and stripped of the blanket of self-worth, angst and distrust can be expected to appear.  These are great preconditions for anger, stubbornness, and violence.  When the value of a life is perceived as degraded, affected people begin to treat life as such, throwing themselves into violence, apathy, or apathy to violence.  It’s an act that’s been played out far too many times in Haitian history, from the revolution through the 21^st century.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard even the most hopeful and intelligent Haitians say, “I don’t care about this life. It’s not important, this life.  I put my trust only in God.”

Go to bed in a tent, wake up to drink water that could kill you, eat sparingly.  Attempt to do your civic duty only to find that your government is not acknowledging your existence.  Wait for a solution only to hear that the people who so adamantly claim they want to help you have deemed the problems that have denied hundreds of thousands their right to expression and participation do not, “necessarily invalidat[e] the process.”

While your blood begins to boil and your children starve, you wait and wait and wait.  You wait for justice – or at least some clean water.

Graham Greene wrote the quote at the top of the page in 1966 in his book The Comedians, which described the situation of Haiti under the rule of a dictator.  What of our faith, and that of the Haitian people, in democracy?  What has it given them since the end of dictatorship?  Is it real; is it meaningful?  Or is this faith just a substitute, another mask for “good enough?”  There certainly seem to be some similarities today.

Lavi pa dim anyen (Life can’t tell me nothing) – Haitian proverb

 Note: My personal opinion is that the election results should be annulled and a re-vote should be held.  After apologizing for the botched first round, electoral officials promised to have problems fixed by the second round – so why not treat the first round as a practice and re-do things, letting the Haitian people really let their voices be heard?  It’s better than tones of violence, tension, and injustice prevailing throughout the country.  Many international observers are well-intentioned, hardworking people who want justice - let’s hope they do something to get the people out of danger.

Love in the Time of Cholera

“I also expected a little more blogging from you especially when you live in a country ravaged by cholera.”

OK, so if you’re reading this blog it’s fairly likely that, similar to the distressed reader above, you’ve heard or read that this country is in the grip of a serious disease, and you may even want to know what things are like here.  I can’t comment on the national mobilization of clinics or treatment centers any better than, say, you’re preferred source of world news.  I have witnessed the anxiety running through the aid workers here and observed a spike in sales of the medical products sold out of burlap bags in taptaps.  I’ve also seen a few instructional signs put up outside a few of the tent camps to make people aware of preventative steps.  All in all, though, I really just know what I see or hear in bits and pieces.  

The most intimate experience I’ve had with cholera thus far has been in working two weekends back at a clinic set up for patients stricken with the evil disease*.  Since, the clinic has doubled the number of beds to prepare for a possible swell of patients, although the number of sick people remains almost the same.  The pharmacy is housed in a mid-sized tent, the hospital’s manager is an emergency volunteer from the States, and the medical technicians are many of the young people asking for help from the KCH program looking to help out and make a little money.  Like most everything in Haiti, it is a tad makeshift but 100% genuine in its desire and effort to help people survive.

I had the good fortune, the weekend I was there, to not have to share in the experience of losing a patient.  If I had, I would have witnessed the ordeal that clinics like this in Port au Prince are currently going through: independent body disposal – the morgue isn’t taking any more bodies to combat the virus.   Luckily, this was not in the cards. Here’s what was (switching to present tense):

It’s 85 degrees in the shade, hot water seeps out of the faucets of the donated military sinks that bear the distinctive smell of surgical antiseptic, and a nervous silence sits in the hospital air.  The two big white UNICEF tents closest to the clinic’s entrance are full of babies and young children, whose sporadic crying bouts give voice to the ethos that the adults can’t or won’t vocalize in the same uncontrollable way.  But mostly, even the children can’t find the energy to shed their tears.  I’ve never seen so many completely exhausted people in one place at one time.  To speak is sometimes a monumental task for the patients.

One of the more mundane tasks I am asked to do is make and deliver the oral rehydration serum that is used to quickly replace needed fluids in patients;  it’s like Gatorade on steroids.  Soon the patients or the visitors sitting next to their beds take to snapping playfully at me to run and get them some more.  I have become a faithful errand boy.

It’s quite a sight to see the parents who will never leave their children from the time they enter the hospital to the time they leave, spending 48 hours straight in a sticky tent.  Between tending for their children or attending to their own needs, they’ll pause to throw a few words in broken English at the foreign volunteers – “good work”, “more serum”, “thank you”.  Over the course of the weekend, I had a bunch of these little interactions, but two stood out especially.

Before I left on Sunday night, dark had fallen and we’d run out of serum in several of the tents, so I started to make a few big batches for the upcoming hours.  As I went about the repetitive process, dumping bags of water and packets of serum into 5 gallon tanks, a little woman walked up and asked me for serum; she wanted to take a little home for her other two children in the neighborhood, just to be safe.  “It’s not for me,” she told me in Kreyol, “but for my children.  They may not have the ability to see a doctor, and me too, but I have faith.  My only doctor is Good God, for he tends to everything.  What may come in this life will come, but God will tend to me.”  The ability of seemingly every Haitian person to conjure up a piece of divinely-inspired wisdom at the snap of a finger is one of the great gifts that the people here have; it’s what happens when, even if 50% of the population is illiterate, innumerous proverbs of Biblical and African origins are printed on public transit vehicles and faithfully recited to every child.

The second of these brief interactions was far less touching but equally as memorable.  As I was doing a round to check for who needed more serum, one man stopped me, holding his hand out longingly.  “Tttt….taaa,” he said, struggling to get out more than a syllable.  “What – what is it?” I asked, sitting down next to his bed. “Taaa, ttaaammmmp, Tampico,” he stuttered.  “I’ll pay you back tomorrow.”  With hardly any energy to speak, when just hours before he was nearly dead, he was begging me for the Haitian version of Sunny Delight (with about 50 additional grams of sugar). And that, ladies and gentlemen, is evidence of true love in the time of Cholera. I gave have him a big bottle of serum and the assurance that, really, this was better.

M’ap Gade Sel Bondieu (I’m watching only God)

*Cholera is a bacterial infection; in layman’s terms (because that’s all I know), the bacteria survives the journey through one’s digestive system, and, basically, chows down on the intestinal track until it causes, through a delightful combination of vomiting and diarrhea, the loss of all the fluids in the body... So "evil" seems like an appropriate adjective.

Chickens

I was struggling to explain why living in Port au Prince is such a bizarre and awesome experience to a friend of mine the other day, and here's what I came up with:

So you're in the taptap, which is like a pickup truck or cargo bus designed to cram in as many people as possible, riding along, probably in the middle of a traffic jam, on any given day.  At last, life seems normal enough; the sight of a woman carrying a fifty pound bag on her head or a guy selling pharmaceuticals out of a bucket no longer phases you. You're in the zone.

Then, as the taptap pulls over to the side of the road, the plastic bag next to your feet emits a series of load squaks and you hear the desperate fluttering of wings. The woman next to you pulls out her chicken from under the wooden bench, its head protruding from the plastic bag, with necessary force and a routine manner. She probably bought her live chicken 5 minutes ago, in the middle of the largest city in the Caribbean.

And you are reminded that, yes, this is a normal day in Port au Prince.

Prestige

Need

Think about how many times every week you tell someone what it is that you need.  The words, “Mwen dwe” – I must, and “Mwen bezwen” – I need, were some of the first words I committed to memory after arriving in Haiti (right after “kob” – money).  I find it essential in communication to tell others what I must do; it conveys an immediate sense of obligation and reminds me of the importance of the task at hand.  But most of the time, it’s really a convenient linguistic inaccuracy I employ to stress necessity or urgency.  Most of the time, it’s really just a lie. 

When Haitian people, most people really, describe the more repetitive, mundane events in their everyday lives, they tend to focus on the immediacy of their condition.  One says, “I am hungry,” much more than, “I need to eat.”  One says, “I am sleeping in a tent,” rather than, “I need a house.”  Maybe communication has so developed because the power involved in describing one’s condition elicits some level of empathy in others, who know the impossibility of living without food or rolling around on a cold dirty floor every night.  Maybe it has so developed because of the more regular inability of the speaker to see past condition and identify necessity.  Maybe there’s just no one listening who can provide.  

But maybe, the things so mundane and repetitive, the things that every person really needs on a daily basis, become more like the facts of life in an environment to which one must adjust or face life as a speck in the desperate oblivion of poverty.  Every day, true needs take a back seat in the minds of those who fight to break their cycle of misery.  They convince themselves that their needs can take a backseat while they fight to become more than a casualty to their circumstances.  For the word “need,” when used sparingly, evokes a far greater response both to those who hear it spoken and to those who give themselves permission to speak it. 

I have seen “need” written only one time that I can remember in my month here.  It was on a small white cloth sign, hanging on the fence of a tent camp.  “We need food, water, tents, a doctor,” it read.  I hear the word, in one form or another, on a very regular basis in contexts things you might expect (we need jobs, we need a real government, you need to get on the bus or get out of the damn way, etc.).  But the most consistent usage I’ve heard occurs when young people, most of whom have little means of support and no family, enter my office.  “I need to go to school,” they say.    

The school is all that matters.  Without the school I am nothing.  The cost isn’t even too much, really.  I want to study medicine, I want to own my own store, I want to speak English, I want to go many places, I want to help my country. You have to understand, you have to, you have to.  And in their expressions, always carefully reserved, intentionally collared to shield hope from the much greater possibility of rejection, they scream, “I don’t want to be something.  I see something. I have lived something.  My family has disappeared into the thick, ugly fog of something.  Every day the threat of something lingers just around the corner.  Let me be my own.  Let me be someone.” 

If by some fortune, they are granted the chance to continue their studies, the struggle multiplies.  “Some of your students,” warned a Haitian graduate, “will not make it.  Me, I knew that I needed to go to school, that it was the most important thing.  That meant some days I would not eat; some will not continue to understand that.”  It will not stop there.  They will face these tradeoffs every day.  Use the precious daylight hours to study or to sell sodas for a little income?  Save what little extra money you have for a rainy day or give it to your sickly grandparents?  Shower or wash your clothes?  Cold medicine or condoms?  

Theirs is a struggle against all odds: they fight to untangle themselves from the web of poverty and despair into which they have been born and bred.  Making it requires constant discipline, careful consideration, and precision of movement.  And even for the most Spartan, following that lifestyle is sometimes not enough.  Also required is the ready attention to the unpredictability of the condition itself, for the web continually moves and tightens, squeezing inexorably the parts that one has pointedly ignored for the sake of concentration and ambition.  It is a web, most of all, which tugs at the blurry divisions between the immediacy of superficial want, the power of the deepest desire to overcome, and the inescapable call of true need. 

Because after all, like anything humans have the capacity for, one’s ability for transcendence is limited.  Need gone untended, when it is true and undeniable, will eventually eat away at health, ability and conscience. No one has the ability to concentrate and study without nourishment in mind and body.  

And yet the ones that make it, who stick it out through all circumstances, do indeed teach us something.  Need is not quantifiable or definite.  Nor is it confined to one place or another within one’s self.  It is a balancing act, pliable enough to bend but strong enough to always remain intact.  In practice it may be meted out, manipulated by the definition that one chooses to apply him or herself.  

And it will return unseen to attack them, clawing its way up and biting voraciously with big, horrible teeth that sink in too deep and too painfully with such a strong grip that it will stop them from moving at all. Caught, they will hurt and they will withdraw and they will cry out and they will most certainly sometimes fail utterly.  Then, with a helping hand and with the recollection of the task at hand, they will continue.  For as with one’s language, one can mold the conscience, so that the idea of need becomes a convenient existential tool employed to stress necessity or urgency.  Except, in the realm of our thoughts, maybe it’s less a lie and more a choice.

What is it you really need?  Really. And when you can’t figure it out, what is it that you really want?  It’s likely contingent upon a lot of things.  The first one is you.

No time to waste

Photos!

The link leads to a few pictures of my time here, both personal and a little bit of work.  More will be on the way soon as a part of the same album; hope you enjoy!

http://picasaweb.google.com/copolicr/Haiti?authkey=Gv1sRgCICTx6Wd1u7mHA#

In case you were wondering

It costs less than you would think to put a young Haitian through school:

For a year of ecole classique (high school) at a private school:

Yearly Fee and first trimester  $306.50

Second Trimester  $220

Third Trimester  $170

Supplies (uniform, shoes, student ID)  $75

Books – $100

Total = $ 871.50 USD

For a year of classique at a public school:

Including yearly Fee, School, uniform, coat, shoes, and books

Total = $250

Professional School (Example is in auto mechanics; 4 month course)

Uniform $40

Materials $100

Registration, monthly, entry $256.25

Total = $396.25

For a year at University (at the Academie Nationale Diplomatique et Consulaire)

Entrance Exam $25

Orientation and Yearly Fee $600

Session Fee (2 included) $1150

Renewal of Session Fee $25

Uniform $200

Total = $2000

For the sake of some perspective:
The costs for a full time, in-state student for a semester at the illustrious yet relatively affordable James Madison University (a public school) in 2009-2010 was $3,622 (more than all the rest combined).

So, in conclusion, I'd like to encourage anyone interested to consider sponsorship of a KCH student with your family, company, community, class, or on your own if you prefer. You can even co-sponsor a student with another group. 

VIV!
(live)

For this week

To lighten things up a little bit and give a few program updates:

We had a very productive week at KCH; we’ve started our first group, putting 14 people into school, most of who are enrolled in ecole classique (high school equivalent) or professional education programs.  Four students will be enrolled in university classes at the Academie Nationale Diplomatique et Consulaire (for diplomacy and political science students) and will start classes on November 2.  We’re also in the beginning stages of our livelihood program; this Saturday we will have a meeting with interested potential entrepreneurs who are applying to enroll in a 29 day training program.  I had the opportunity this week to tour a Haitian school where one of our students is enrolled; the students, teachers, and administrators were all very polite and kind.  Our program has a lot of work still to do, but we are headed in the right direction. 

Haitian meal of the week – spaghetti with beans, carrots, and hot sauce (Haitians eat spaghetti and anything, but it tends to include hot sauce)

Creole words of the week

Pike’ – hot sauce (accent on the e)

Bliye – forget

Pote – bring

Montre – show

Poze – relax, chill

Taptap word of the day is in homagge to the country that all Haitians seem to love for some reason

BRASIL

From last Friday (things are just so busy!)

Best day in Haiti so far I think

Such an exciting day.  Note: Life here runs on a different pace. There is a different set of criteria for what constitutes excitement, which are entirely dissimilar to what those criteria might be in the US or elsewhere.  On the best days, it seems that my head overflows with new sensory experiences and interactions. 

Since my last post I’ve been through the worst low as of yet.  I find that being tired or hungry or irritated about my inability to understand 90% of the conversations swirling around me everywhere is difficult in itself; it is at these times that I have to stay especially cognoscente that both desperation and stigmatizations appear in many unforeseen disguises.  I can certainly take in the scene of poverty and humiliation while retaining my dignity and patience of conscience, but the inescapable personal confrontations, invariably presented at a moment of unrelated weakness, always seem impossible to shake.  These moments rattle free my misconceptions (which are plentiful), overshadowing other likely important lessons that have passed in my inattentiveness, because they leave stabbing imprints of the truth.

My low point came at the end of the day last week, when finally I had the realization that Haiti will truly be my home for 6 months (the prospect of which was and is still very exciting but difficult to process at that moment).  Mostly, I was tired, hungry, very dirty, irritated at the isolation caused by a temporarily broken internet connection at our office, and annoyed at my lack of language comprehension.  The dark gray sky accompanying the rain cloud that had followed me up the hill on my walk from work didn’t help much either.  After a guard chased me out from the front of a luxurious hotel where I stood waiting for my ride, I sat down on the corner by a packed intersection in Peton Ville across from a tent city that envelops what was once a lush park.  I could hardly look around without the piercing sensation that I was a part of some insane circus. 

Just then, a little old lady approached my pathetic concrete stoop.  Now I’m a pretty big fan of little old ladies; they tend to know more than others how and when to extend some bit of therapeutic pleasantry.  As she approached, she looked right at me with the hint of a guarded smile, and said “Bonsoir.”  I let go of any reservations about this new contact immediately, attempting to return her good evening wish but instead stupidly spitting out the first thing that came to mind, “Merci.”  And right as the relieved word escaped my mouth, my conversant put out her hand in front of me and with the confidence of feigned kindness stated, “Ban mwen kob. (Give me money)”  

Neither her request nor the unkind words she eventually sent my direction after my refusal to give really stung so much as left me deflated and hungry for the safety of solitude.  It began to rain again a few minutes after my run in with the little old lady.  I sat trying to quietly accept this circumstance, putting out of my mind the expectation of a small positive interaction.  As the rain began to come down harder, people in the vicinity ran underneath the hotel awning.  A man, jogging towards the awning spotted me on the corner, and quickly looked my way saying, “Monsieur, vini,” and motioning towards the shelter.  At first I resisted, preferring my own spot, but he continued to encourage me to please just do the commonsensical thing and get the hell out of the rain.  I submitted, and although an overt thank you would have seemed unnecessary, even rude, I was glad for the man’s insistence. 

Earlier that day, I listened to the advice of a priest who insisted that to truly face a difficult task, instead of attempting to be strong enough to handle the situation, to acknowledge the weakness that accompanies difficulty.  At the time, I tried to remember his advice, not attempting to escape somewhere else in my head.  In hindsight, I don’t think times like that offer any other option unless we are actively willing to interpret things in a more hollow way.  Any superficial strength I would have conjured up would only have calmed my ego while a chance at real empathy for the people that have so displaced my thoughts blew by.  I think for me, burying turmoil when it reaches a level where it is really just that bothersome only enforces the desire to withdraw to my own familiar and comfortable state of mind; and then my ego instead of conscience or empathy or something else justifies my actions.  And that is a great way to end up isolated from anything reasonable.  It was uncomfortable because it had to be.  Either that or the old lady was evil, the weather was out to get me, and all of Haiti is generally insane.    

Today, we met with Fonkoze, a microcredit bank that has programs all over rural Haiti.  The meeting was very informative and exciting; it left us with a lot of pointers for what will certainly be a great deal of work.  We also left the meeting reminded of how important it is to target our specific group and with the sense that our program is brimming with possibility.  Some days, everything seems to work.  I got to talk to all the people I wanted to both here and at home, had the chance to see the potential in our program, talked to some intelligent and driven Haitian students.  I took the tap-tap up to Kenscoff, and the whole time, although I could only understand about a quarter of what was going on, people talked loudly and laughed, and the women next to me lightly chided me for my fairly obvious ignorance.  Today I had the chance to relate to things that are so enjoyable to people on such a basic level that I couldn’t possibly be overwhelmed with the more challenging parts of the day.  Some days it works, some days it doesn’t.

One misconception of note, if you haven't figured it out already: life in Port au Prince does not just continue through the rain; in fact it stops in a ton of places as people run under such things as hotel awnings (the director of my program called me out on my assertion that people ignore the rain).  I think it just seems that way because there are people everywhere at all times and not everyone can get out of the way.

Patience