halfway homestay

So I'm back in Port-au-Prince for a little weekend break in the middle of my monthlong homestay out in the "country." So far village life has been delightful. There's tons of walking around involved, which is always nice.

So I'll start by describing Creole. Basically, you don't have to conjugate verbs for plural or for tense or anything. Instead, there's just these little tense markers. In French, to say "I jump rope," you say "je saute corde." And if you want to say "I jumped rope" or "I'm going to jump rope" or "I will jump rope" it gets complicated. In Creole: "M'sote kod"

I jumped rope: M'te sote kod
I'm going to jump rope: M'ap sote kod
I will jump rope: M'va sote kod

You get the idea. It's very simple. And the masculine and feminine stuff from French is all gone, which is great. And the spelling is totally phonetic. This is a HUGE improvement on French, where you don't pronounce the last 1-6 letters of most words. Or worse, you DO pronounce them, but only in a coy sort of hinting way. In Creole, if you spell it, you say it. And you say it just the way you spell it. When people ask me where I'm from, the answer sounds the same whether it's in French or Creole. But it's not spelled the same.

"from the United States"
in French: Aux Etats Unis
in Creole: Ozetazini

I'm not sure why, but it's really fun to write and speak a phonetic language. Maybe because you don't have to worry about being a bad speller. Because basically a bad speller is someone who spells something the way it sounds, instead of with the arcane spelling that has evolved in the language over hundreds of years. Sow wen ahy trahy too wrahyt eenglish fonetikalee, it looks lahyk ayv got abowt half az manee brayn sels.

So, written in Creole, the name of the language is Kreyol Ayisien - hence the title of this blog. But that's a little misleading too, since I don't go by Kurt here. Since I arrived in Haiti, my name has been Felix. Kurt's just a little too clunky and German and hard to pronounce for French and Creole speakers. I picked Felix because that was my name in French class in high school. And in Creole spelling, it's "Feliks." Pronounced "fay-LEEKS."

Anywho, here's a run down of most days so far during my homestay. I first wake up with the sun and the roosters at about 5:30. Get up and and out bed by 6:30. Breakfast - maybe some bread, avocado and coffee - by 8:00. In the meantime I'm either reading or playing with Bechi, the 2-year-old at my homestay who sits on the stoop to my room and sings a one-word song when he wants me to keep him company: "Feliks, Feliks. Feliks, Feliks." Then I head down to the larger town, Dezam, where MCC has their big reforestation office. I meet up with Esther, a Canadian working here with her husband Matthew, and go to visit a school. Esther wrote a really great environmental education program in Creole and is working with all of the local schools to get the materials taught, and taught well.

And not a moment too soon, either. The environmental situation in Haiti is dire. I try to be optimistic about most things, but this is a special challenge. Haiti was about 98% covered in forest when Columbus first landed here. Now, about 2% of that original forest cover remains. Two damn percent. Haiti's covered in these mountains, and they're almost all totally bare, covered only in shrubs and grasses. I wouldn't really call it ugly. The mountains are like giant versions of the rolling grassy hills around Ashland, OR, or even Pasadena, CA. They look like trees never existed there, but it breaks your heart to know that before too long ago, it was all lush tropical forest.

So what happened? A whole series of tragedies. The first was the French, who logged the hills heavily, mostly for mahogany for their furniture back home. But mostly it's the Haitiens themselves who cut down the trees. Most Haitian kitchens use charcoal to cook. For many decades people with no other source of income would go cut down trees, or at least a few big branches each day and make charcoal with them. Haiti is one of the most densely populated countries in the hemisphere, which of course exacerbates the whole cycle.

But two things specifically made it much worse, and guess what, the they were both caused by the US. First, there used to be something called the Creole pig, a tough little breed owned by almost every Haitian family. They were a sort of a "piggy bank" if you will; they could eat anything, or very little at all, and whenever a family needed some cash, they could just sell one of these. The USDA became very concerned about an outbreak of swine flu in the 80s, and so started a program where they killed every one of these Creole pigs. They replaced them with grade A American oinkers, which, though much more valuable, were much too expensive for most families to take care of. This caused many people to head to the hills and make charcoal when they needed the extra cash for whatever. The second tragedy is that when Jean Bertrand Aristide was reinstalled as President of Haiti in 94 by 20,000 US marines, he did it by agreeing to an IMF program that got rid of all gas subsidies. So the people who were using gas for cooking and heat suddenly joined the rest who were using charcoal, and as with the Creole pig scandal, this caused a rapid acceleration in deforestation.

But as bad as that all sounds, MCC actually can point to some success in this area. The village of Christan, where I'm living, used to be totally visible from up on the hill in Valereux (where I take my Creole lessons). Since MCC started working there 20 years ago, the forest cover, at least in the village, has grown to where the school is now the only visible rooftop.

Okay, where was I? So I go to a school with Esther and watch the environmental education in action. Then it's back to my homestay for lunch - probably a giant plate of rice with a bean sauce covering the whole thing, and some okra and a couple morsels of beef or goat on top. Then it's off to my Creole lesson, a nice 30-minute hike to Valereux, the next village over. These I'm taking from a guy just a couple years older than me named Watson, he's sort of the town bookworm.

After Creole, I walk back to Christan in the blazing afternoon sun. Even though I'm way out there in the sticks, I'm constanly passing people. There's just so many people everywhere you go. And they couldn't be friendlier. In the mornings they all say 'bonjour!" and afternoons are all about "bonsoir!" Sometimes people with walk with me for a bit and just shoot the breeze. Ask me questions about where I come from and how many siblings I have. "Does your father have a car?" "Does your mother have a horse?" "Does your father own a horse?" "How many animals does your family own?"

Once back in Christan, I change into my board shorts and head down to the river for my daily bath. Plenty of guys just do this nude, but there seems to be a cutoff at about age 20 where guys at least keep their skivvies on, if not some trunks, while they soap up. The women bathe and wash clothes right around the corner, and everyone can see everyone else when they're coming and going, but there's a certain code of conduct where it's understood you don't stare. Only the little kids stare, and mostly just at me, since I stick out like a sore thumb.

By 6pm it's starting to get really dark. As mama Rosalie cooks up pudding (made with flour, rice, and a lot of sugar) for dinner, I talk with here brothers Miguel and Levi about their crops, or I play games with some of the kids in the neighborhood. Once dinner is served, I go inside to eat it alone. They insist on this, and I would hate it, but Bechi always comes and sits on my lap while I eat to keep me company, so that's nice.

Then, I go back to my room and read by the light of an alcohol lamp for as long as I can, but I'm usually out cold by 8:30. Gotta go now, but stay tuned for more stories of village life, including about my senile grandpa who used to be one of the nastiest government terrorists in the area, but now is a sweet old man.