I'm sure there's a better way to do this (and if you know what it is, please clue me in) but I've found a way to share some Carnival music for those who are interested. Just click on the following links and you'll go to a webpage where you can download them. Should be simple. These are some of the greatest hits from last year:
Top Alderman
Brothers Posse
Show Off
King Posse
You'll find they're very long, and go in stages. Some words you might recognize are "election" and "blackout" and "kidnapping." You'll also hear a lot of what sound like "f-bombs." But don't be scandalized, that's just how you say "it's necessary that" -- "gotta" -- in Creole. A lot of sentences start that way. If there's other lines you're curious about, just write me and spell it out phonetically and chances are you'll be writing it just as it appears in Creole. I'll be happy to translate, my rate is.....just kidding.
It's been a nice week. Winter is definitely over. There were a couple of nights when it was possible to get a tiny chill, even under my single cotton sheet, but those days are over. On Saturday I took a fellow MCCer and next-door neighbor for a driving lesson. More precisely, for a manual transmission driving lesson. So we drove around until we found something I didn't think existed within Port-au-Prince: paved roads with very little traffic. She did really well, and we'll be back at it this weekend. But it will still probably be a long time before she's comfortable on the busy streets. Driving here is something else. It's kind of wild and chaotic, but usually not going very fast. Absolutely nobody wears a seatbelt. I think it's a sign that you don't trust your driver. But I'm not much worried about getting hit by another car. I'm watching out for pedestrians. They're all over the place and they definitely get hurt by cars much more often than other passengers.
And to encourage extra caution, there's the fact that any driver that hits a pedestrian is instantly faced with an angry mob. Your only chance is to get out of the car right away and be very clear in your intentions to get the injured party to a hospital and take care of absolutely everthing and include pain and suffering money in the "settlement." I've heard people say that if, in some tragic circumstance, you kill a pedestrian, you should just take off, because it's an eye for an eye if you don't. I'm not sure I could, would, or should do that. It's a horrible thing to consider, but it definitely keeps me on my toes.
Another feature of driving is the use of the horn. I've never been a horn-heavy driver. The streets of Seattle are practically silent compared to here. But it's not like New York where people honk to express rage. Rather, it's an essential part of driving and communicating with other drivers. A tap-tap (public transport pickups) will just drift towards you until you give him a little honk-honk. I don't want to test this theory, but I think they would just run into you if you didn't have a horn. It's a substitution for looking in the rear view mirror. I heard an MCCer say that if he had to choose between brakes and a horn, he'd make do with the horn alone. And Port-au-Prince is built on a steep hill.
Finally, I should mention the traffic cops. As far as I know, Port-au-Prince, a city of two million, has two working traffic lights. The cool part is that they're solar powered. The funny part is that nobody pays any attention to them. The only real regulation on traffic is the cops that stand in the road and motion people around. One thing is for certain: these brave men and women have absolutely no positive effect. In fact, they seem to slow things down more. Haitian drivers have their own rules, and it works pretty well without help, however lawless it may appear on first glance. But it is fun to watch these cops do their thing. Each one has a signature move in their intricate language of traffic direction. Sometimes it looks like dancing, sometimes it looks like an epileptic seizure. During our commute, Jessica and Bethany and I like to keep our eyes out for one cop we call "tickle fingers" who's always gesticulating wildly, his digits all aflutter the entire time.
Okay, one last song. This one's not carnival music. It's by an artist named Belo who's definitely the most popular artist in Haiti right now, and always played on the radio outside of carnival season. I'm a big fan. Click on his name above and let me know what you think.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Kanaval!
I haven't yet been here for three months and I'm already on TV. Notice I didn't say I was on TV. I am on TV. Here's the story: as I've mentioned before, Sunday nights between now and Mardi Gras are little versions of the main event: a three day party in the central square of Port-au-Prince with a half million people, or one in sixteen Haitians.
So last Sunday, I went with friends to get an "avangou" - foretaste - up in my neighborhood of Petionville. It was wild. There were thousands of people, deafening music, and giant floats going by loaded with so many people they looked ready to fall apart. I watched from the upstairs of a pizza joint which hosts their own big party each time. There was a cameraman interviewing revelers and I got some airtime without knowing it. The footage was incorporated into an advertisement for the pizza place and played over and over on TV. I still haven't seen it - except for a soccer game I haven't seen but five minutes of Haitian TV - but I've had several people mention they saw me, all on different days at different times. There was music playing, so it's a given that I look like a doofus. I just hope the camera doesn't magnify the doofus factor even more.
But anyway, Kanaval. It was quite a sight. It reminded me a lot of a giant mosh pit. But the pit was everywhere. As far as I could see the streets were boiling with people. They had to be shoved aside by the police to make room for the floats. One minute a chunk of people would start jumping and singing. Then a human train would form and start chugging a hundred people together through the crowd. Inevitably fights would break out, sometimes just two guys, sometimes twenty. But it seemed like almost every time, after a few seconds of flying fists there would be an embrace, high fives all around, and more jumping and smiling. Bizarre, I tell you. The air was supercharged with electricity, and the powerlines were not. I know this because there were guys on the floats that would lift the thick wires by hand as the float snailed along beneath, probably going a quarter of a mile an hour.
Around 9:30 there were a couple of loud pops. Then screams, then several more of what I realized were gunshots. Everyone up in the restaurant hit the deck, and half a block away I watched the street that had just been full of people instantly clear. We still don't know what happened, though it was probably just someone firing straight up. But within 30 seconds the music was back on, the empty oval of street shrunk and disappeared, and it was as if nothing had happened.
And the music! I've really never heard anything like it. Political, raw, emotional, yet peppy. I remember my friend Jason Holstrom talking about some of the Caribbean music he had listened to and he described it in similar terms. The songs denounce insecurity and kidnapping as well as UN occupation and US, French and Canadian influence, but you'd think they were talking about soccer or beautiful women or whatever else usually shows up in happy Latin American pop.
And speaking of soccer, two nights ago Haiti won the Caribbean cup, beating Trinidad 2-1. It was yet another occasion for streets full of people and celebratory gunfire. As much as Haitians love football, they haven't had a decent team in a long time. Digicell is a Caribbean cell phone company that has ads up everywhere here. They basically bought the Haitian team and trained them and turned them into champions in a single year. The tallest building in Port-au-Prince (probably about 12 stories) is the Digicell headquarters. Their ads are in French sometimes and Creole other times. My favorite one shows three girls laughing together with a caption that says, "Friendship is sacred. And so is Digicell."
The cell phone thing is interesting here. As far as I can tell it's the only growth industry besides private security guards. It's great what they did for the football team, and all the street signs in my neighborhood are there, courtesy of Digicell. And yet, I've got to ask, is this a good thing? Cell phones are ubiquitous here, just as much as anywhere in North America. Maybe more so. It's not at all uncommon for people to carry three of them, one for each major provider, since calls are free between phones of the same company. Last year the president of Digicell, in an inspirational speech, declared that he had a dream that one day every resident of City Soleil would have a Digicell phone. City Soleil, a slum on the edge of the water in Port-au-Prince, is hands down the most wretched concentration of human suffering in the Western Hemisphere. We should all be dreaming that people there don't starve. But if the other slums of Port-au-Prince are any guide, the Digicell president may see his dream come to pass. Cell phones are becoming common to the point that even though they cost money, money that most people don't have, they're worth any sacrifice. The social pressure must be tremendous. I say this because I don't think it's possible that the convenience of a cell phone is really worth the amount people pay for them. And it's only pre-paid cards here. But I suppose every society has its own irrational "needs" that are little more than keeping up with the Joneses on a massive scale. Like I should talk. I held out until the ripe year of 2003 to get a cell phone, and within weeks it was impossible to imagine life without it.
So last Sunday, I went with friends to get an "avangou" - foretaste - up in my neighborhood of Petionville. It was wild. There were thousands of people, deafening music, and giant floats going by loaded with so many people they looked ready to fall apart. I watched from the upstairs of a pizza joint which hosts their own big party each time. There was a cameraman interviewing revelers and I got some airtime without knowing it. The footage was incorporated into an advertisement for the pizza place and played over and over on TV. I still haven't seen it - except for a soccer game I haven't seen but five minutes of Haitian TV - but I've had several people mention they saw me, all on different days at different times. There was music playing, so it's a given that I look like a doofus. I just hope the camera doesn't magnify the doofus factor even more.
But anyway, Kanaval. It was quite a sight. It reminded me a lot of a giant mosh pit. But the pit was everywhere. As far as I could see the streets were boiling with people. They had to be shoved aside by the police to make room for the floats. One minute a chunk of people would start jumping and singing. Then a human train would form and start chugging a hundred people together through the crowd. Inevitably fights would break out, sometimes just two guys, sometimes twenty. But it seemed like almost every time, after a few seconds of flying fists there would be an embrace, high fives all around, and more jumping and smiling. Bizarre, I tell you. The air was supercharged with electricity, and the powerlines were not. I know this because there were guys on the floats that would lift the thick wires by hand as the float snailed along beneath, probably going a quarter of a mile an hour.
Around 9:30 there were a couple of loud pops. Then screams, then several more of what I realized were gunshots. Everyone up in the restaurant hit the deck, and half a block away I watched the street that had just been full of people instantly clear. We still don't know what happened, though it was probably just someone firing straight up. But within 30 seconds the music was back on, the empty oval of street shrunk and disappeared, and it was as if nothing had happened.
And the music! I've really never heard anything like it. Political, raw, emotional, yet peppy. I remember my friend Jason Holstrom talking about some of the Caribbean music he had listened to and he described it in similar terms. The songs denounce insecurity and kidnapping as well as UN occupation and US, French and Canadian influence, but you'd think they were talking about soccer or beautiful women or whatever else usually shows up in happy Latin American pop.
And speaking of soccer, two nights ago Haiti won the Caribbean cup, beating Trinidad 2-1. It was yet another occasion for streets full of people and celebratory gunfire. As much as Haitians love football, they haven't had a decent team in a long time. Digicell is a Caribbean cell phone company that has ads up everywhere here. They basically bought the Haitian team and trained them and turned them into champions in a single year. The tallest building in Port-au-Prince (probably about 12 stories) is the Digicell headquarters. Their ads are in French sometimes and Creole other times. My favorite one shows three girls laughing together with a caption that says, "Friendship is sacred. And so is Digicell."
The cell phone thing is interesting here. As far as I can tell it's the only growth industry besides private security guards. It's great what they did for the football team, and all the street signs in my neighborhood are there, courtesy of Digicell. And yet, I've got to ask, is this a good thing? Cell phones are ubiquitous here, just as much as anywhere in North America. Maybe more so. It's not at all uncommon for people to carry three of them, one for each major provider, since calls are free between phones of the same company. Last year the president of Digicell, in an inspirational speech, declared that he had a dream that one day every resident of City Soleil would have a Digicell phone. City Soleil, a slum on the edge of the water in Port-au-Prince, is hands down the most wretched concentration of human suffering in the Western Hemisphere. We should all be dreaming that people there don't starve. But if the other slums of Port-au-Prince are any guide, the Digicell president may see his dream come to pass. Cell phones are becoming common to the point that even though they cost money, money that most people don't have, they're worth any sacrifice. The social pressure must be tremendous. I say this because I don't think it's possible that the convenience of a cell phone is really worth the amount people pay for them. And it's only pre-paid cards here. But I suppose every society has its own irrational "needs" that are little more than keeping up with the Joneses on a massive scale. Like I should talk. I held out until the ripe year of 2003 to get a cell phone, and within weeks it was impossible to imagine life without it.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Krazy Kreyol
I'm going to indulge myself today and geek out about Creole for a bit. For me, learning Creole was one of the most exciting things about this opportunity, and I haven't been disappointed. I've been interested in linguistics for a while, and a "creole" is a fascinating example of linguistic evolution in action. "Creole" is a general linguistic term, like "pidgin." A pidgin is a sort of trade language that spontaneously evolves when two or more groups of people who don't speak the same language need a way to communicate. A pidgin is very easy to pick up, and handy when you want to order food, buy livestock, or something like that. But it's not very easy to communicate complex ideas or emotions in pidgin. So, when a generation of children is raised speaking pidgin, something magical happens: it takes on rules and syntax that allow it to be a real language, capable of expressing anything that can be expressed by other languages. A creole is a second generation pidgin.
When African slaves were brought to Haiti centuries ago, families were forcibly separated and people from different tribes were placed together to ensure that they couldn't easily communicate and plot against their masters. But eventually they did cobble together a pidgin using mostly French words, along with some Spanish and English. And yet the article structure is a remnant of some of the African languages previously spoken by these tribes.
A lot of the French words get glued together. Words that start with vowels often get the article permanently attached. "Church" in French is "eglise"; "the church" is "l'eglise." In Creole, it's "legliz." "Friend" in French is "ami"; "my friends" is "mes amis." In Creole, it's "zanmi."
The best part about Haitian Creole is that there's none of the complicated grammer or gender of French. But that complexity is expressed in other ways. The poverty of grammer is offset by a richness of expression. There are endless idioms and proverbs and certain specific ways of saying things in Creole. We have a book in the office of 999 Haitian proverbs. There are 40 of them just about dogs. I think my favorite is, "you can't neuter the same dog twice"; kind of the Haitian equivalent of "fool me once..." When I first saw this book, I thought, a lot of these must be specific to villages or areas, there's no way every Haitian is familiar with all of these. But I tried reading ones I selected randomly and asking people if they'd heard them before, and 9 times out of 10 they had indeed. There's other books of proverbs that get up in the thousands.
English and Creole have a lot in common. The French invaded the British Isles a few hundred years before they invaded Hispaniola, but they left about the same imprint. Most words that are three syllables or longer are roughly the same in English, French or Creole. People who are learning either English or Creole often say that it's easy to get the basics down for simple communication, but there's a sort of false summit that comes when you realize that fluency is a long way off.
And just as English was long considered inferior to French, even by those who spoke only English, language is a matter of status in Haiti. I've heard different figures, but the one most often cited is that only about 20% of Haitians speak French. Those that do sometimes lord it over others to show how educated they are. But every Haitian speaks Creole. Some say that they don't, but that's like people in North America who say they don't watch T.V. My landlady speaks Creole to her maid and her gardener, but she only speaks French to me. I always reply in Creole, and I can tell it's somewhat annoying to her.
I much prefer to speak Creole here for a lot of reasons. It's more fun, and at this point it's easier. And unlike with Creole, when I speak French here I'm likely to get corrected on every little mistake I make.
Well I should go, I'm hogging the computer. As they say in Creole, "a pi ta": later.
When African slaves were brought to Haiti centuries ago, families were forcibly separated and people from different tribes were placed together to ensure that they couldn't easily communicate and plot against their masters. But eventually they did cobble together a pidgin using mostly French words, along with some Spanish and English. And yet the article structure is a remnant of some of the African languages previously spoken by these tribes.
A lot of the French words get glued together. Words that start with vowels often get the article permanently attached. "Church" in French is "eglise"; "the church" is "l'eglise." In Creole, it's "legliz." "Friend" in French is "ami"; "my friends" is "mes amis." In Creole, it's "zanmi."
The best part about Haitian Creole is that there's none of the complicated grammer or gender of French. But that complexity is expressed in other ways. The poverty of grammer is offset by a richness of expression. There are endless idioms and proverbs and certain specific ways of saying things in Creole. We have a book in the office of 999 Haitian proverbs. There are 40 of them just about dogs. I think my favorite is, "you can't neuter the same dog twice"; kind of the Haitian equivalent of "fool me once..." When I first saw this book, I thought, a lot of these must be specific to villages or areas, there's no way every Haitian is familiar with all of these. But I tried reading ones I selected randomly and asking people if they'd heard them before, and 9 times out of 10 they had indeed. There's other books of proverbs that get up in the thousands.
English and Creole have a lot in common. The French invaded the British Isles a few hundred years before they invaded Hispaniola, but they left about the same imprint. Most words that are three syllables or longer are roughly the same in English, French or Creole. People who are learning either English or Creole often say that it's easy to get the basics down for simple communication, but there's a sort of false summit that comes when you realize that fluency is a long way off.
And just as English was long considered inferior to French, even by those who spoke only English, language is a matter of status in Haiti. I've heard different figures, but the one most often cited is that only about 20% of Haitians speak French. Those that do sometimes lord it over others to show how educated they are. But every Haitian speaks Creole. Some say that they don't, but that's like people in North America who say they don't watch T.V. My landlady speaks Creole to her maid and her gardener, but she only speaks French to me. I always reply in Creole, and I can tell it's somewhat annoying to her.
I much prefer to speak Creole here for a lot of reasons. It's more fun, and at this point it's easier. And unlike with Creole, when I speak French here I'm likely to get corrected on every little mistake I make.
Well I should go, I'm hogging the computer. As they say in Creole, "a pi ta": later.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Konbit
I'm in the middle of my first "konbit" with MCC Haiti. Out in the sticks, a konbit is a work crew, assembled to do a harvest or dig a ditch or something like that. Within MCC, it's a meeting we do a couple times each year where all of the Haitian and blan staff get together and plan out the coming months. It's nice to get a break for a few days from the office, though I'm really starting to get comfortable there. I've even got a couple of new nicknames, or "tinon"s. Fito, who sits next to me, calls me "direkte," but my favorite is "blalman." Blalman is the words blan (white) and Allemagne (German) smooshed together. At first I assumed that this was because of my German last name. But I was totally off. A couple of the guys in the office assign soccer teams to people according to how much they eat. Big eaters are named after countries with strong teams. Someone who eats like a bird will be called Saudi Arabia, or the United States, for that matter. Pierre, the boss, loves to heap food on employees' plates, especially mine. And since I always eat every last bit, I'm called Germany.
Speaking of work, here's a good moral dilemma to chew on, if you feel like it. Jessica, the other MCC worker in my office, told me about something that happened last year. She was in the office one day when a couple of lawyers came and said that they needed to go to a police station and help get a man out. The story: the arrested man's brother was a mechanic who did some shoddy work on a car. The car owner's dad was a cop, so he showed up at the mechanic's house. The mechanic wasn't there, but his brother was. The cop and his partner beat up the mechanic's brother and tossed him in the clink. This kind of thing is all too common here.
So these lawyers showed up in the office looking for help for this poor man whose human rights had clearly been violated. When they saw Jessica, they eagerly asked her if she was available for the afternoon. She said yes. On the way to the police station, they told her what to say, and insisted that she speak only in English, even though she speaks Creole perfectly well. Be as blan as possible, they told her. This would supposedly attest to the fact that she was connected to powerful people, organizations, or governments, so much so that she didn't have to bother learning the language. The lawyers hoped this would sufficiently scare the policemen, who otherwise would have simply waited until some family member showed up to pay a hefty bribe.
Well, it worked. The mechanic's brother was released from jail. A wrong was righted. But it grieves me that the wrong was righted only by a larger wrong. Jessica felt really conflicted about the whole thing after the fact. Was she in fact reinforcing racism? Why should a seemingly clueless white person be able to do things that even trained Haitian lawyers could not? It's a toughie. I'm sure I'd do the same thing she did. It's not like she made anything worse. But still, it doesn't leave one with a sense of satisfaction.
There's a lot of stuff I would love to write about work, though I'm not really at liberty to do so because of the sensitive nature of human rights cases we work on. The good news is that kidnappings have hit a lull. Apparently it's pretty normal for crime and political unrest to mellow out during carnival season. I'll write more about this later, but every Sunday between New Year's and Mardi Gras is a huge party in the streets of Port-au-Prince. It disrupts absolutely everything, apparently including crime. I haven't yet taken in one of these carnival nights, just been stuck in traffic waiting for a cha (pronounced "shah") to pass. A cha is a party on wheels. Most are as big as a giant yacht, loaded with speakers, a dj or live band, and maybe a hundred or so people. There will be a guy in the front with a long stick to lift up power lines as the cha slowly rolls down the thoroughfare. And the streets are full of people, some with masks or hoods on, hanging out and waiting for the music to come to them. I'm sure I'll get some good photos sometime between now and Ash Wednesday.
I'll wrap it up now. We're about to head for dinner at Chez Wu, one of the two Chinese restaurants in Port-au-Prince. From what I hear, the Haitian version of Chinese food has a lot more goat than in North America.
Speaking of work, here's a good moral dilemma to chew on, if you feel like it. Jessica, the other MCC worker in my office, told me about something that happened last year. She was in the office one day when a couple of lawyers came and said that they needed to go to a police station and help get a man out. The story: the arrested man's brother was a mechanic who did some shoddy work on a car. The car owner's dad was a cop, so he showed up at the mechanic's house. The mechanic wasn't there, but his brother was. The cop and his partner beat up the mechanic's brother and tossed him in the clink. This kind of thing is all too common here.
So these lawyers showed up in the office looking for help for this poor man whose human rights had clearly been violated. When they saw Jessica, they eagerly asked her if she was available for the afternoon. She said yes. On the way to the police station, they told her what to say, and insisted that she speak only in English, even though she speaks Creole perfectly well. Be as blan as possible, they told her. This would supposedly attest to the fact that she was connected to powerful people, organizations, or governments, so much so that she didn't have to bother learning the language. The lawyers hoped this would sufficiently scare the policemen, who otherwise would have simply waited until some family member showed up to pay a hefty bribe.
Well, it worked. The mechanic's brother was released from jail. A wrong was righted. But it grieves me that the wrong was righted only by a larger wrong. Jessica felt really conflicted about the whole thing after the fact. Was she in fact reinforcing racism? Why should a seemingly clueless white person be able to do things that even trained Haitian lawyers could not? It's a toughie. I'm sure I'd do the same thing she did. It's not like she made anything worse. But still, it doesn't leave one with a sense of satisfaction.
There's a lot of stuff I would love to write about work, though I'm not really at liberty to do so because of the sensitive nature of human rights cases we work on. The good news is that kidnappings have hit a lull. Apparently it's pretty normal for crime and political unrest to mellow out during carnival season. I'll write more about this later, but every Sunday between New Year's and Mardi Gras is a huge party in the streets of Port-au-Prince. It disrupts absolutely everything, apparently including crime. I haven't yet taken in one of these carnival nights, just been stuck in traffic waiting for a cha (pronounced "shah") to pass. A cha is a party on wheels. Most are as big as a giant yacht, loaded with speakers, a dj or live band, and maybe a hundred or so people. There will be a guy in the front with a long stick to lift up power lines as the cha slowly rolls down the thoroughfare. And the streets are full of people, some with masks or hoods on, hanging out and waiting for the music to come to them. I'm sure I'll get some good photos sometime between now and Ash Wednesday.
I'll wrap it up now. We're about to head for dinner at Chez Wu, one of the two Chinese restaurants in Port-au-Prince. From what I hear, the Haitian version of Chinese food has a lot more goat than in North America.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
D'oh!
I'm trying to put a video up on here, but the computer's giving me grief, so I'm just going to wait on that one.
But anyhow, it's Christmas in January for me. I got a box of goodies from the fam today. I asked my mom for two shirts. I got four, of course. Plus beef jerky and chocolate (which arrived a little melty, but still so good).
My friend Heather asked a question in an e-mail a couple weeks ago - do you have many opportunities to meet 'regular' hatians?
It's one of those simple questions with a complicated answer. The Haitians I work with in the office everyday are not really part of the elite, but they're certainly not poor. They're part of the middle class, which is tiny in Haiti - who knows, maybe even smaller than the upper class. The thing is, poor people can't really leave, and most of the wealthy elite must stay because Haiti is the source of their wealth, though they usually send their kids abroad to study. The middle class is that group of people that both wants to and is able to move away. But plenty do stay, like the folks I work with. Pretty fun group. I'll give a video office tour some other time.
Beyond that, it's tough. I like talking to the woman I buy grapefruit from or the barbecue master I buy chicken from on occasion. But for getting to know people my age, so far I've been restricted to meeting friends of friends. And they're great, but they're all coming from that same small sector as the people I work with. The poorest population of Port-au-Prince is kind of off-limits. One of the first things that happened in my in-country orientation was looking at a big map of the city. My supervisor pointed out a swath of land, the four inches closest to the water for the whole length of the waterfront - a huge area - and said, "this is the no-go zone."
It's true that kidnappings have been pretty bad, and it's a good idea to be careful. But there's something about the phrase "no-go zone" that's inherently frustrating. It would be hard enough to establish any kind of real friendship with someone living in the "no-go zone" for any number of difficult social reasons. But add to it the fact that these people live somewhere white people almost never, ever go without automatic weapons. I'm hopeful for change in this category. In three years' time, there's a good chance the UN will be out of here, and I feel like that will be a good thing.
But anyhow, it's Christmas in January for me. I got a box of goodies from the fam today. I asked my mom for two shirts. I got four, of course. Plus beef jerky and chocolate (which arrived a little melty, but still so good).
My friend Heather asked a question in an e-mail a couple weeks ago - do you have many opportunities to meet 'regular' hatians?
It's one of those simple questions with a complicated answer. The Haitians I work with in the office everyday are not really part of the elite, but they're certainly not poor. They're part of the middle class, which is tiny in Haiti - who knows, maybe even smaller than the upper class. The thing is, poor people can't really leave, and most of the wealthy elite must stay because Haiti is the source of their wealth, though they usually send their kids abroad to study. The middle class is that group of people that both wants to and is able to move away. But plenty do stay, like the folks I work with. Pretty fun group. I'll give a video office tour some other time.
Beyond that, it's tough. I like talking to the woman I buy grapefruit from or the barbecue master I buy chicken from on occasion. But for getting to know people my age, so far I've been restricted to meeting friends of friends. And they're great, but they're all coming from that same small sector as the people I work with. The poorest population of Port-au-Prince is kind of off-limits. One of the first things that happened in my in-country orientation was looking at a big map of the city. My supervisor pointed out a swath of land, the four inches closest to the water for the whole length of the waterfront - a huge area - and said, "this is the no-go zone."
It's true that kidnappings have been pretty bad, and it's a good idea to be careful. But there's something about the phrase "no-go zone" that's inherently frustrating. It would be hard enough to establish any kind of real friendship with someone living in the "no-go zone" for any number of difficult social reasons. But add to it the fact that these people live somewhere white people almost never, ever go without automatic weapons. I'm hopeful for change in this category. In three years' time, there's a good chance the UN will be out of here, and I feel like that will be a good thing.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
That Voodoo You Do
I've been meaning to write about Voodoo for some time now. I don't have much to offer but the conversations I've had and things I've heard, seen, and read. I still haven't been to a Voodoo ceremony, though during my homestay, a couple times a week, I could hear those drums beating not far away.
The first thing I've observed is that everyone believes in Voodoo. Not everyone practices it, but everyone believes in it. Plenty of Haitians think it's evil and wrong and the source of all the country's problems, but nobody thinks it's untrue. So what does a Voodooist believe? To be very brief about it, Voodoo is the belief that there are spirits or gods called loas. They can possess people momentarily, and put them into a trance where they may not feel a candle held directly under the palm or even the chin, or perhaps the person would move around on the ground like a snake and even go up trees and walls in ways that don't seem quite humanly possible. Again, I haven't seen anything like that for myself here yet, but it's just a given for Haitians. Baptists missionaries believe it's devil worship in another form. But from what I gather, even though Baptist Haitians think it's evil, they're still operating from a worldview that includes the Voodoo gods and werewolves and all that.
Ah yes, werewolves, or lougawou. It's believed that some people slip out of their human skin to reveal a werewolf that can fly and shoot fire from its hind quarters. If a person who is secretly a lougawou comes to the house of a pregnant woman, he or she will ask the pregnant woman for salt. If the woman gives the lougawou salt, her child will be stillborn. Random, I know. The way to deal with a lougawou is, if you find the human skin that has been shed, put salt and pepper on it. When the lougawou returns, he'll put on the skin and start itching and eventually go crazy.
The roots of Voodoo are African animist beliefs combined with Catholicism. In fact there is a corresponding Catholic saint for every loa in the Voodoo pantheon. And practitioners, or houngans, will tell you that their spells and incantations have no effect on an unbaptized person. The memory of slavery is also a strong element of Voodoo. Old shackles are incorporated into shrines often. It was in fact Voodoo which inspired the slave revolt that led to independence in 1804.
Speaking of, here's an interesting tangent. Within twenty years of Columbus landing in Haiti, on Christmas Eve of 1492, the indiginous population was withering and on the verge of collapse from disease and abuse at the hands of the Spanish. The representative of the Roman Catholic Church was struck to the core by the disappearance of this beautiful culture. He begged the Spanish colonizers to leave the Taino and Arawak people alone -- but don't cheer yet. To placate the colonizers, this priest argued that they should bring slaves from Africa instead. The deeply ingrained racism of Europe had been directed specifically at Africa. Of course white people were superior to non-white people, reasoned Europe, but Africans weren't even considered human.
This conscientious priest helped kick off the international slave trave. And because of him, Haiti became slavery ground zero. Slavery made Spain and then France incredibly wealthy -- the single colony was more lucrative than the thirteen British colonies combined at the time of independence. Haiti was the place where the process of breaking the spirit of west Africans was fine-tuned into a science. It was a vast machine that chugged along for centuries, fueled by the blood of human beings. But under this incredible oppression the slaves would find ways to carry out their traditions the way they had in Africa. The network of people who practiced and officiated these rites allowed a level of coordination that would have been impossible otherwise. While the white God of the colonial overlords told these slaves that they deserved their lot in life, Voodoo gave an outlet for people to escape their suffering through ecstatic worship. And eventually, Voodoo allowed people to say that they deserved freedom, and would fight for it, possessed with the strength of the loas.
For these reasons, Voodoo is fundamental to the character of Haiti. It's been a force of inspiration, to be sure. But there are many problems that come along with it. There are two branches of Voodoo. Kind of a leaded and unleaded. White magic versus black magic. Many practice Voodoo to get in balance with unseen spiritual forces, to get answers to plaguing questions, no harm done. But it is also used for outright malicious ends. The acquired knowledge of Voodoo is immense. There are plenty of quacks among the bokors (witch doctors) as in any medical field -- but generally these are people with an encyclopedic knowledge of natural cures. But this goes both ways too. The knowledge also includes recipes for all sorts of poison powders and things like that, often used to exact revenge. An American woman I met here, who is very sympathetic to Voodoo, did tell me that these days Haitians go to church when they feel like being good and they go to the Voodoo priest when they feel like being bad.
Crossroads are very important in Voodoo. It's common to see Voodoo effects at a place where paths cross. Things like coins pounded into the soil. In Dezam there was a spot I walked by everyday where a path crossed a dry riverbed. One day there was a half of a coconut shell, filled with some kind of chopped plant matter. A lot of red and black (the unofficial colors of Voodoo) thread was wound around the half-shell so the plant stuff wouldn't spill out. Next to this was a wand of leafy twigs, wrapped in a sheet of notebook paper with handwriting on it, and also wrapped in red and black thread. I asked someone what it all meant and here's what he said was the most likely explanation: a person, let's say a man, went to an houngan (Voodoo priest) either because he was in love with or angry with some other person. The man brought some paper that the target person had written on, as well as some money, and told the houngan about the situation and where the target person would usually walk. The houngan then prepared these things and put them by the road so that a) this woman might fall in love with this man; or b) the enemy of this man might be struck down by illness.
There's definitely a lot of money spent in the practice of Voodoo that could be put to more practical uses; the same is true of all religions. Sometimes Voodoo is a source of solidarity; sometimes it will divide a community with vicious backstabbing or worse, where nobody gains except the houngan. Again, not radically different than any other main religion, in reality.
So what do I think? I have no idea. Haiti isn't going to get rid of Voodoo, no matter what happens. I'm a pretty skeptical person, so it's easy to brush off the idea of roaming invisible spirits. But the things I've read and stories I've heard send chills down my spine. Crazy things happen; whether or not there's a natural explanation for it is another question. I'm sure I'll continue to learn more about it, and when I do I'll write about it here. And if you have any questions, e-mail me or comment here and I'll see what I know.
The first thing I've observed is that everyone believes in Voodoo. Not everyone practices it, but everyone believes in it. Plenty of Haitians think it's evil and wrong and the source of all the country's problems, but nobody thinks it's untrue. So what does a Voodooist believe? To be very brief about it, Voodoo is the belief that there are spirits or gods called loas. They can possess people momentarily, and put them into a trance where they may not feel a candle held directly under the palm or even the chin, or perhaps the person would move around on the ground like a snake and even go up trees and walls in ways that don't seem quite humanly possible. Again, I haven't seen anything like that for myself here yet, but it's just a given for Haitians. Baptists missionaries believe it's devil worship in another form. But from what I gather, even though Baptist Haitians think it's evil, they're still operating from a worldview that includes the Voodoo gods and werewolves and all that.
Ah yes, werewolves, or lougawou. It's believed that some people slip out of their human skin to reveal a werewolf that can fly and shoot fire from its hind quarters. If a person who is secretly a lougawou comes to the house of a pregnant woman, he or she will ask the pregnant woman for salt. If the woman gives the lougawou salt, her child will be stillborn. Random, I know. The way to deal with a lougawou is, if you find the human skin that has been shed, put salt and pepper on it. When the lougawou returns, he'll put on the skin and start itching and eventually go crazy.
The roots of Voodoo are African animist beliefs combined with Catholicism. In fact there is a corresponding Catholic saint for every loa in the Voodoo pantheon. And practitioners, or houngans, will tell you that their spells and incantations have no effect on an unbaptized person. The memory of slavery is also a strong element of Voodoo. Old shackles are incorporated into shrines often. It was in fact Voodoo which inspired the slave revolt that led to independence in 1804.
Speaking of, here's an interesting tangent. Within twenty years of Columbus landing in Haiti, on Christmas Eve of 1492, the indiginous population was withering and on the verge of collapse from disease and abuse at the hands of the Spanish. The representative of the Roman Catholic Church was struck to the core by the disappearance of this beautiful culture. He begged the Spanish colonizers to leave the Taino and Arawak people alone -- but don't cheer yet. To placate the colonizers, this priest argued that they should bring slaves from Africa instead. The deeply ingrained racism of Europe had been directed specifically at Africa. Of course white people were superior to non-white people, reasoned Europe, but Africans weren't even considered human.
This conscientious priest helped kick off the international slave trave. And because of him, Haiti became slavery ground zero. Slavery made Spain and then France incredibly wealthy -- the single colony was more lucrative than the thirteen British colonies combined at the time of independence. Haiti was the place where the process of breaking the spirit of west Africans was fine-tuned into a science. It was a vast machine that chugged along for centuries, fueled by the blood of human beings. But under this incredible oppression the slaves would find ways to carry out their traditions the way they had in Africa. The network of people who practiced and officiated these rites allowed a level of coordination that would have been impossible otherwise. While the white God of the colonial overlords told these slaves that they deserved their lot in life, Voodoo gave an outlet for people to escape their suffering through ecstatic worship. And eventually, Voodoo allowed people to say that they deserved freedom, and would fight for it, possessed with the strength of the loas.
For these reasons, Voodoo is fundamental to the character of Haiti. It's been a force of inspiration, to be sure. But there are many problems that come along with it. There are two branches of Voodoo. Kind of a leaded and unleaded. White magic versus black magic. Many practice Voodoo to get in balance with unseen spiritual forces, to get answers to plaguing questions, no harm done. But it is also used for outright malicious ends. The acquired knowledge of Voodoo is immense. There are plenty of quacks among the bokors (witch doctors) as in any medical field -- but generally these are people with an encyclopedic knowledge of natural cures. But this goes both ways too. The knowledge also includes recipes for all sorts of poison powders and things like that, often used to exact revenge. An American woman I met here, who is very sympathetic to Voodoo, did tell me that these days Haitians go to church when they feel like being good and they go to the Voodoo priest when they feel like being bad.
Crossroads are very important in Voodoo. It's common to see Voodoo effects at a place where paths cross. Things like coins pounded into the soil. In Dezam there was a spot I walked by everyday where a path crossed a dry riverbed. One day there was a half of a coconut shell, filled with some kind of chopped plant matter. A lot of red and black (the unofficial colors of Voodoo) thread was wound around the half-shell so the plant stuff wouldn't spill out. Next to this was a wand of leafy twigs, wrapped in a sheet of notebook paper with handwriting on it, and also wrapped in red and black thread. I asked someone what it all meant and here's what he said was the most likely explanation: a person, let's say a man, went to an houngan (Voodoo priest) either because he was in love with or angry with some other person. The man brought some paper that the target person had written on, as well as some money, and told the houngan about the situation and where the target person would usually walk. The houngan then prepared these things and put them by the road so that a) this woman might fall in love with this man; or b) the enemy of this man might be struck down by illness.
There's definitely a lot of money spent in the practice of Voodoo that could be put to more practical uses; the same is true of all religions. Sometimes Voodoo is a source of solidarity; sometimes it will divide a community with vicious backstabbing or worse, where nobody gains except the houngan. Again, not radically different than any other main religion, in reality.
So what do I think? I have no idea. Haiti isn't going to get rid of Voodoo, no matter what happens. I'm a pretty skeptical person, so it's easy to brush off the idea of roaming invisible spirits. But the things I've read and stories I've heard send chills down my spine. Crazy things happen; whether or not there's a natural explanation for it is another question. I'm sure I'll continue to learn more about it, and when I do I'll write about it here. And if you have any questions, e-mail me or comment here and I'll see what I know.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Land of the Free
New Year's is when Haitians traditionally celebrate their independence. What that means around here is pumpkin soup, and lots of it. More like stew, actually, with the big chunks of bone and meat, potato, taro, onions, cabbage and other good things. Experienced MCCers in Haiti can usually finagle at least three separate servings of pumkin soup between New Years and Jan. 2. My landlady showed up with an enormous bowl of the stuff yesterday, and I didn't finish it until this morning.
Also yesterday, I got together with a friend of a friend. A woman I used to go to church with, Joanne Sprunger, was excited when she found out I was coming to live in Haiti. She did a homestay here in the early 80s (if I remember right) and stayed with a family that she remains in contact with. I got in touch with Madame Madeleine Boncy a few days ago and she invited me to spend Independence Day with her family. It was my first time hanging out at home with the Haitian upper class. Madame Boncy's two sons, Pierre and Jacque, are both doctors - one is the head of neurology at the Haitian University Hospital.
As is often the case among upper class families in Haiti, there was a variety of skin tones present. I hope it won't seem crude or inappropriate to talk about skin color so openly, but I've become used to these kinds of conversations. Haitians are expert at recognizing and comparing skin tones. Walking around on the streets, most of the Haitians you see are quite dark. But if you start looking into windows of the SUVs flying past, it's a different world. That's where you're likely to see many more white people as well as Haitians with much lighter skin than those sharing the sidewalk with you. Haiti has always been stratified in this way. The country's wealth is concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite, which is largely mulatto. Oh, and "mulatto" is not an offensive word here, it's used all the time. The elite has been a target of public resentment at different points because those with wealth are obviously benefiting somehow from a situation that can only be described as miserable to most Haitians. And indeed it's true that much of the wealth in Haiti is ill-gotten.
But there are also people like the Boncy family. They used their relative wealth to send their boys to school in the states and return to Haiti as doctors. Pierre and Jacque were both very interesting men to talk to. Jacque, who studied at the University of Illinois, informed me that it was a native Haitian who founded Chicago. I looked it up, and what do you know? Both of the doctors had a Colin Powell kind of complexion. Their father, who was also a doctor, died twenty years ago. The family clearly loves Haiti and chooses to live here, though they are part of that tiny group who has the ability to leave.
Madeleine Boncy will go down in memory as one of the most elegant women I've ever met. She was incredibly gracious, funny and welcoming, and spoke with a slight Barbara Walters rasp. Agewise, I would have guessed she was in her 60s, and very well preserved. Truth is she's in her 80s and very very well preserved.
Sitting out in the leafy courtyard of the Boncy house, the conversation would flow easily from English to French to Creole and back to French. The food was phenomenal. An older woman was there, a friend of the family who lost her husband some years ago. Her skin, if this is even possible, was lighter than mine, though she clearly had some African ancestry. She was telling about a friend of hers from the states who came to visit and was shocked by the organized chaos of Port-au-Prince traffic. "You really are free here in Haiti, aren't you," the friend said. A good joke for Independence Day.
While I'm talking about race and classy women, I should also mention my landlady. Her name is Madame Assali. She is very dark and her face bursts with expression. She certainly understands Creole, but her own speech is about 90% French. Her husband is either totally or mostly French in ancestry, though he uses Creole more than she does. Her house is immaculate and she runs a little boutique out of her front room selling fancy French perfume and stuff like that. As soon as I'm done writing this I'll head home for dinner with Madame and Monsieur Assali.
Speaking of, I should probably wrap up. But first I want to answer a couple questions. It's hard for me to know what are the big holes in your picture of Haiti if you are reading this and you've never been here. If you can put them into words, e-mail me. Here's some questions I got from my friend Almarie:
Does the air there have a smell, a distinctive smell? More than the difference between Port-au-Prince and andeyo? Did you bring three backpacks full of books to read over the next three years (or three months), and are there places to buy or borrow new and used books/reading material there? If so, what's the selection like? Are men and/or women more likely to be wearing a hat, footwear, or both? Or neither? What, so far, is your favorite sound in Haiti? Is there new year celebration?
Most of the smells are like anywhere in the third world - exhaust fumes, burning garbage, rotting plant matter in the gutter. But there's also the flowers and other plants that grow in abundance and seem to deflect a lot of the badness. Overall I don't mind it a bit. I hate that I'm breathing so much particulate matter in the air, but it's a smell I've grown to love. It's a smell that says: adventure awaits. The one unique addition in Haiti is the charcoal. Sometimes it's nice and it smells like a barbecue everywhere you go. Sometimes it smells more like too-green wood being burned, which is unpleasant. I think that's more when the wood is being burned to make charcoal, and not when the charcoal itself is being used.
Ack! The time! I'll have to answer the other questions later. Happy New Year to everyone! Out with the old, in with the new!
Also yesterday, I got together with a friend of a friend. A woman I used to go to church with, Joanne Sprunger, was excited when she found out I was coming to live in Haiti. She did a homestay here in the early 80s (if I remember right) and stayed with a family that she remains in contact with. I got in touch with Madame Madeleine Boncy a few days ago and she invited me to spend Independence Day with her family. It was my first time hanging out at home with the Haitian upper class. Madame Boncy's two sons, Pierre and Jacque, are both doctors - one is the head of neurology at the Haitian University Hospital.
As is often the case among upper class families in Haiti, there was a variety of skin tones present. I hope it won't seem crude or inappropriate to talk about skin color so openly, but I've become used to these kinds of conversations. Haitians are expert at recognizing and comparing skin tones. Walking around on the streets, most of the Haitians you see are quite dark. But if you start looking into windows of the SUVs flying past, it's a different world. That's where you're likely to see many more white people as well as Haitians with much lighter skin than those sharing the sidewalk with you. Haiti has always been stratified in this way. The country's wealth is concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite, which is largely mulatto. Oh, and "mulatto" is not an offensive word here, it's used all the time. The elite has been a target of public resentment at different points because those with wealth are obviously benefiting somehow from a situation that can only be described as miserable to most Haitians. And indeed it's true that much of the wealth in Haiti is ill-gotten.
But there are also people like the Boncy family. They used their relative wealth to send their boys to school in the states and return to Haiti as doctors. Pierre and Jacque were both very interesting men to talk to. Jacque, who studied at the University of Illinois, informed me that it was a native Haitian who founded Chicago. I looked it up, and what do you know? Both of the doctors had a Colin Powell kind of complexion. Their father, who was also a doctor, died twenty years ago. The family clearly loves Haiti and chooses to live here, though they are part of that tiny group who has the ability to leave.
Madeleine Boncy will go down in memory as one of the most elegant women I've ever met. She was incredibly gracious, funny and welcoming, and spoke with a slight Barbara Walters rasp. Agewise, I would have guessed she was in her 60s, and very well preserved. Truth is she's in her 80s and very very well preserved.
Sitting out in the leafy courtyard of the Boncy house, the conversation would flow easily from English to French to Creole and back to French. The food was phenomenal. An older woman was there, a friend of the family who lost her husband some years ago. Her skin, if this is even possible, was lighter than mine, though she clearly had some African ancestry. She was telling about a friend of hers from the states who came to visit and was shocked by the organized chaos of Port-au-Prince traffic. "You really are free here in Haiti, aren't you," the friend said. A good joke for Independence Day.
While I'm talking about race and classy women, I should also mention my landlady. Her name is Madame Assali. She is very dark and her face bursts with expression. She certainly understands Creole, but her own speech is about 90% French. Her husband is either totally or mostly French in ancestry, though he uses Creole more than she does. Her house is immaculate and she runs a little boutique out of her front room selling fancy French perfume and stuff like that. As soon as I'm done writing this I'll head home for dinner with Madame and Monsieur Assali.
Speaking of, I should probably wrap up. But first I want to answer a couple questions. It's hard for me to know what are the big holes in your picture of Haiti if you are reading this and you've never been here. If you can put them into words, e-mail me. Here's some questions I got from my friend Almarie:
Does the air there have a smell, a distinctive smell? More than the difference between Port-au-Prince and andeyo? Did you bring three backpacks full of books to read over the next three years (or three months), and are there places to buy or borrow new and used books/reading material there? If so, what's the selection like? Are men and/or women more likely to be wearing a hat, footwear, or both? Or neither? What, so far, is your favorite sound in Haiti? Is there new year celebration?
Most of the smells are like anywhere in the third world - exhaust fumes, burning garbage, rotting plant matter in the gutter. But there's also the flowers and other plants that grow in abundance and seem to deflect a lot of the badness. Overall I don't mind it a bit. I hate that I'm breathing so much particulate matter in the air, but it's a smell I've grown to love. It's a smell that says: adventure awaits. The one unique addition in Haiti is the charcoal. Sometimes it's nice and it smells like a barbecue everywhere you go. Sometimes it smells more like too-green wood being burned, which is unpleasant. I think that's more when the wood is being burned to make charcoal, and not when the charcoal itself is being used.
Ack! The time! I'll have to answer the other questions later. Happy New Year to everyone! Out with the old, in with the new!
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