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.