It feels like a long seven days. A week ago I went to church with Josef, one of the employees of MCC who takes care of a lot of the driving and other errands. His church starts at 7:00am, so he met me outside of my house at 6:30 and we took a tap-tap (pickup with two benches and a cover over the bed) down the hill. They meet in the basement of a building not far from the MCC guesthouse. People were packed in like sardines, and there were ushers that would come along now and then with new arrivals, looking for a few inches of bench space where they could be squeezed in. The sermon was pretty heavy on the prosperity gospel. I thought it was interesting that the guest preacher began by asking everyone to keep the main pastor in their prayers, since he had been really sick for the last couple of weeks. Then the preacher got going into his sermon, talking about how God always blesses people who are faithful, and how your health and finances are indicative of your spiritual wellbeing. I had to wonder if it was an intentional jab at the main pastor, or if it was just assumed that he must be some exception to the "rule" that health and wealth depend on godliness.
Then, Sunday night, was the first night of Carnival. In the middle of Port-au-Prince, next to the palace, is the Champs de Mars, pronounced "shahn-mahs" -- the largest single public space in the Caribbean. For Sunday, Monday, and of course Fat Tuesday, the square is absolutely loaded with people. Monday through Wednesday are a national holiday -- most stores are closed and few people are working. From what I've heard, 500,000 is the conservative estimate of the crowd. People either watch the events from stands, where you have to pay to get in, or down in the street, where things are much more exciting and sometimes dangerous. I was only in the crowd when I was on my way to a stand with those I came with, and then again on our way back to the car. Both times we had to hang on to each other and charge through the crowd, still getting pulled apart now and then by a surge to the right or left.
Each day, the festivities begin with bands that march around the plaza Then there's the floats with people decked out in ornate costumes. Then, from probably 10pm until 3 or 4am, if not later, is the "shahs." Each of these is an enormous stand on wheels with a couple hundred people and a live band, pulled by a semi and with a huge generator in tow. Depending on who the sponsor is, they'll be throwing things out to the crowd in the street, as well as the people watching from the stands. The loot includes t-shirts, handkerchiefs, cigarettes, lip gloss, bags of rice, candy, you name it. I was only there for Sunday, but the majority of people, especially those who aren't paying for a spot in one of the stands, go for all three nights. And unlike myself, they aren't able to go get a nice long rest in between sessions. For most, it's a 72-hour party that stops only when they drop. Fortunately, there was very little violence this year compared to in years past. I don't know if it's true, but I heard there were no gunshot wounds. Most of the injuries that did take place were just the unavoidable side effects of too many people in one place. As with every year, there were a good number of people asphyxiated. In the middle of a crowd like that, it's common to get squeezed so that your feet don't even touch the ground, and any number of things can set off a stampede. It was a thrill to be there, but one night was enough.
The rest of the week felt like a nice long vacation followed by two short days in the office. Then last night I went to the Canadian Film Festival. The couple who until last year ran MCC Haiti were Canadian, so they often got invitations from the embassy for special events. We received invites to the opening of the film festival, also in Champs de Mars, so I took advantage of the opportunity, assuming that there would be some kind of fancy reception and little cakes and wine and what not. I got dressed up and went together with two other volunteers and a Haitian friend. Unfortunately, there was no reception. It was an open-air event, with the movies projected onto a large screen in the middle of the plaza. I assumed that the movies would be recent, but the first was probably from around 1989, and the second from the late 90s, I'm guessing. The first film was just 30 minutes, and not much more than a history of Haiti. But at least it made sense why it would be chosen as part of this film festival.
The second film was baffling. It was called Mambo Italiano, a Canadian film, dubbed from English into French, but French with an Italian accent. Basically, it was a gay romantic comedy set in the little Italy of Montreal. Boy meets boy. Traditional parents of boy freak out, in a very comedic and ethnic way. Eventually they come to love and accept their son and everyone is happy. This was a bizarre choice of films. I try and avoid unfair generalizations, but I'll say that most Haitians are very, very conservative on the issue of homosexuality. That's not to say it doesn't exist here, but the context is quite different from that in North America. I work at a human rights organization, and gay rights isn't even on their radar screen.
For one thing, it's complicated by the issue of AIDS. In the 80s, Haitians were listed, along with Homosexuals, Hemophiliacs, and Heroin Users, as one of the four "H" groups at high risk of HIV. There were even assertions made that HIV and AIDS originated in Haiti and spread to the US. Research done in the 90s showed that the opposite was true -- North Americans brought AIDS to Haiti. Through the 70s and 80s, Haiti was a popular place for sex tourism among Americans and Canadians. They frequented clubs in the red light district of southwest Port-au-Prince; places full of young Haitian men who, regardless of their own sexual orientation, would do anything to make a little money. Since that time, the AIDS in Haiti exploded in a way that it never did in North America. For this reason, homosexuality is seen by many Haitians as yet another example of North American extravagance and moral decay that has come to prey on poor, vulnerable Haiti. And this is in addition to the plain old cultural conservatism on the issue, which exists in most societies worldwide.
So, try to imagine sitting in the middle of, say, five hundred conservative, rural Americans, and watching Brokeback Mountain. That's about what the atmosphere was like. In fact, Brokeback Mountain would have been a more appropriate choice, because at least it acknowledges a deep social stigma attached to homosexuality. Mambo Italiano was more like a wink and a nudge to some old curmudgeon to say, hey, c'mon, get with the times. That message was completely lost on the audience, which included a lot of homeless children who came not because they got a fancy invite from the embassy, but because they were hanging out in the plaza anyway. Any displays of affection between the male characters in the movie were met with shouts of "masisi!" -- you can take a guess what that means. The Haitian friend who came with us was incensed. He said he was going to write a letter to the Canadian government in protest. For him, it was a horrible message to send to these kids; social stigma was the only thing that might keep them from falling prey to the sexual exploitation, and this movie was undermining that.
But while I recognize this, I can't help the fact that I've lived in Seattle for the last 10 years, I've had gay friends and coworkers and fellow churchgoers. While it's a very complicated issue, I just don't see it as a disorder or a sign of spiritual decay, nor in most cases as a choice. It's just how some people are, not that there's anything wrong with that. I think a lot of the North American and European volunteers who come to work in Haiti feel the same way. I wish that Haitian boys and girls who grew up knowing that they were "different" had a chance to be themselves without fear of persecution, or at least to know that there was a place in Haiti they could go and be safe.
But at the same time I'm uneasy with this tendency to look at Haiti as "not ready yet" when it comes to the question of gay rights and gay romantic comedies. It smacks of cultural imperialism, as if to say that someday, when the moment is ripe, that Haitians should be expected to have a cosmopolitan, Western attitude towards sexual orientation.
Perhaps this is the reason why some committee at the Canadian Embassy chose Mambo Italiano, of all Canadian films, to show at the premiere of the Canadian film festival. Maybe they wanted to go out of their way to show Haitians a prime example of cultural difference -- rather than follow some paternalistic notion of what parts of Canadian culture Haiti is "ready" for. Either way I think the point was totally lost. To be sure, there are places in the world where this film would have sparked riots. It wasn't like that. It was just a few hundred people who for the most part were flabbergasted by what they saw.
I'm curious how this strikes you all. Please comment if you have thoughts to share.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Sunday, February 18, 2007
This and that
Here's a photo I meant to publish a while back. Our team spent a day and a night in the lovely town of Ti Goave. We went to a pristine beach and ate coconuts, walked along streets that were surprisingly free of litter looking at brightly colored houses full of friendly people. And somehow this is the only photo I came back with:
I took it for Heather Riden and all the rest of you arachnophobes out there. That is one giant cobweb. On closer look, it's dense with leaves, trapped insects, and big fat spiders. On that note, here's one of a spider in my kitchen. I don't know how you define a tarantula, but this thing was hairy, and you can compare its size to that orange there. Sorry so blurry.
Here's some photos of the training seminar. First, me with Gibbs and Viles, coworkers of mine who organized the training. I'm holding a drum that was used for the song we sang as a group to welcome each trainer, and then again to thank them when they were done.
Here's another coworker, Lelene, with her son who sat in on her talk about gender equality:
'
Here's the group photo of most of the trainees. See if you can find me (hint--I'm the bald one):
I've written here before about how people who live outside of Port-au-Prince rarely smile for photos. This is a great example of that. The only people smiling in this photo are those who live in the city. Everybody else is playing it cool.
Here's the chapel, upstairs from where we had our training sessions:
Early every morning there would be a half dozen or so sisters scattered around the pews praying. Then at 7:00 they'd start singing in a transcendent, echoing acapella.
Now for something completely different. If you've got Google Earth on your computer, I've found my exact coordinates, and you can check out my pad from space: 18°30'33.59"N/72°17'18.52"W should take you to my deck, where I like to get my quota of hammock time each week. My studio is just the bottom left corner of the structure you see. A block east and you'll see the bright green roof of the Kinam Hotel across the street from St. Peter's Place, a city park. As you'll notice, I'm on the edge of the tight grid of streets that is known as Petion-Ville, one of the few areas like this in Port-au-Prince. But just west of my place, you'll see an enormous bidonville, or shantytown, called Jalousie. Unlike the squareness of Petion-Ville, Jalousie is like a blanket of houses draped over the contours of the steep hills. From above there's a sort of organic look to it, resembling a seashell. The houses are built right on top of each other, and some of them collapse each year when heavy rains erode the ground that they're leaning against. Many of them are about the size of my studio, but there might be 10 people sleeping there each night. Now, look just to the south of the Jalousie, further up the hill, at the sprawling mansions, some with swimming pools. The ultra rich and ultra poor, a stone's throw away from each other. Is it any wonder that Port-au-Prince is a tinderbox of class tension?
Well that's it for my grab bag of a posting today. Hope y'all are enjoying your Sunday.
I took it for Heather Riden and all the rest of you arachnophobes out there. That is one giant cobweb. On closer look, it's dense with leaves, trapped insects, and big fat spiders. On that note, here's one of a spider in my kitchen. I don't know how you define a tarantula, but this thing was hairy, and you can compare its size to that orange there. Sorry so blurry.
Here's some photos of the training seminar. First, me with Gibbs and Viles, coworkers of mine who organized the training. I'm holding a drum that was used for the song we sang as a group to welcome each trainer, and then again to thank them when they were done.
Here's another coworker, Lelene, with her son who sat in on her talk about gender equality:
'
Here's the group photo of most of the trainees. See if you can find me (hint--I'm the bald one):
I've written here before about how people who live outside of Port-au-Prince rarely smile for photos. This is a great example of that. The only people smiling in this photo are those who live in the city. Everybody else is playing it cool.
Here's the chapel, upstairs from where we had our training sessions:
Early every morning there would be a half dozen or so sisters scattered around the pews praying. Then at 7:00 they'd start singing in a transcendent, echoing acapella.
Now for something completely different. If you've got Google Earth on your computer, I've found my exact coordinates, and you can check out my pad from space: 18°30'33.59"N/72°17'18.52"W should take you to my deck, where I like to get my quota of hammock time each week. My studio is just the bottom left corner of the structure you see. A block east and you'll see the bright green roof of the Kinam Hotel across the street from St. Peter's Place, a city park. As you'll notice, I'm on the edge of the tight grid of streets that is known as Petion-Ville, one of the few areas like this in Port-au-Prince. But just west of my place, you'll see an enormous bidonville, or shantytown, called Jalousie. Unlike the squareness of Petion-Ville, Jalousie is like a blanket of houses draped over the contours of the steep hills. From above there's a sort of organic look to it, resembling a seashell. The houses are built right on top of each other, and some of them collapse each year when heavy rains erode the ground that they're leaning against. Many of them are about the size of my studio, but there might be 10 people sleeping there each night. Now, look just to the south of the Jalousie, further up the hill, at the sprawling mansions, some with swimming pools. The ultra rich and ultra poor, a stone's throw away from each other. Is it any wonder that Port-au-Prince is a tinderbox of class tension?
Well that's it for my grab bag of a posting today. Hope y'all are enjoying your Sunday.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
My Haitian Valentine
The title is a little misleading. Here's what I'm talking about:
I made this video with some help from the people I work with. We held a five-day training seminar for members of grassroots organizations all over Haiti. The people came to learn about the prison system, the police hierarchy, the judicial works, women's rights, children's rights, and nonviolent conflict transformation. Some of the participants appear in the video. I got the idea when I saw one participant named Hubert (pronounced "ee-bear" in Creole) wearing a Seattle Supersonics tank top. And the scary guy with the glowing tomatoes is Sayil. He's the caretaker for the MCC office/guesthouse. Kind of a gentle giant. The video I took of him was so dark he was invisible, so I tried to mess with the effects and that's how it came out.
I'll write more about the training later. I'm pretty sure that with the exception of a phone call from my folks, it was the longest I've ever gone without interacting with a native English speaker. Coming back to the office today and reading my e-mail and talking to Jessica and Bethany was like diving into a swimming pool after five days of trudging through a dusty desert. That's overstating it a little.
The setting for the training, and most of the clips you see, was a beautiful spot called Our Mother of Wisdom, or something along those lines. It's a Catholic facility with dormitories and nuns and an enormous collection of potted plants. I'll get some of those photos up too.
Anyways, best Valentine wishes to all. Like Sayil with the radioactive tomatoes said, I love you and miss you.
I made this video with some help from the people I work with. We held a five-day training seminar for members of grassroots organizations all over Haiti. The people came to learn about the prison system, the police hierarchy, the judicial works, women's rights, children's rights, and nonviolent conflict transformation. Some of the participants appear in the video. I got the idea when I saw one participant named Hubert (pronounced "ee-bear" in Creole) wearing a Seattle Supersonics tank top. And the scary guy with the glowing tomatoes is Sayil. He's the caretaker for the MCC office/guesthouse. Kind of a gentle giant. The video I took of him was so dark he was invisible, so I tried to mess with the effects and that's how it came out.
I'll write more about the training later. I'm pretty sure that with the exception of a phone call from my folks, it was the longest I've ever gone without interacting with a native English speaker. Coming back to the office today and reading my e-mail and talking to Jessica and Bethany was like diving into a swimming pool after five days of trudging through a dusty desert. That's overstating it a little.
The setting for the training, and most of the clips you see, was a beautiful spot called Our Mother of Wisdom, or something along those lines. It's a Catholic facility with dormitories and nuns and an enormous collection of potted plants. I'll get some of those photos up too.
Anyways, best Valentine wishes to all. Like Sayil with the radioactive tomatoes said, I love you and miss you.
Monday, February 05, 2007
twa mwa
...that's how long I've been here: three months. It feels like the time has flown by in some ways, and yet memories of North American life are so distant. And as much as I'm impatient to speak Creole fluently, I'm now to the point where I dream in the language and find myself saying words I don't remember learning, if that makes any sense. Things are good. Felix abides.
A new couple arrived here yesterday. Talking to them made me realize even more how much I've acclimated, even if it all continues to feel fresh to me. It's great to have other people who also feel fresh. When I arrived, everyone on the team had been here for at least 16 months already, and in some cases much longer than that.
The new couple will both work as "policy analysts." Their job is to network around Haiti and get a feel for trends in economics and immigration and things like that, and then work with MCC volunteers in DC, Ottowa and at the UN to lobby for change. One of the easiest targets, and most difficult hurdles, is rice. That is, the subsidized rice from the United States that continually floods the Haitian market. Shorthand for it here is "Miami rice," just as "Miami" is a sort of shorthand for the whole USA.
"Where do you come from?"
"Have you heard of Seattle?"
"Where's that?"
"In the United States."
"Oh! So you're from Miami."
"Well, no, but, uh, nevermind. Yes, I'm from Miami."
The other way of referring to the states, which I love, is "lot bot dlo." Say that five times fast. It means "the other side of the water."
But anyhow, back to Miami rice. The USDA spends so much in subsidies keeping American rice growers from going out of business that it can actually undersell the rice farmers here in Haiti where the average income is one dollar per day. Most of the rice that Haitians eat is grown in the states. So at the same time that Haiti is chastised for not accepting the most draconian "free market reforms" it's being economically strangled by the richest country in the world.
I want to share a story I found fascinating. Another MCCer, Esther, who does reforestation was telling a story about one night she was preparing a meal with some Haitian women. They gave her the job of cutting up the tomatoes. Once she'd diced up a few, one of the women checked in on her and demanded that she stop, saying that she had cut them up wrong. The women shook their heads and decided they would have to throw the tomatoes away, or maybe feed them to the pigs. Esther protested that they would taste exactly the same, but it hardly mattered. For these women, there was only one way to cut tomatoes, period.
What does this story mean? First of all, let me point out that I don't know if all Haitian women are so strict in their tomato cutting rules. That said, I think it's a great picture of how easy it is for miscommunication and frustration to occur between Haitians and North Americans. I feel fortunate I haven't endured too much of this frustration as of yet, but I'm three months in and 33 months to go, so it's bound to happen. But my coworker Jessica said it best. When people back in British Columbia ask her why she likes Haiti, she says, "Haitians know who they are." I don't know if that will make sense to anyone who hasn't been here, but as soon as she said it I knew exactly what she meant. There's a sense of shared culture, shared identity that is beyond anything I've experienced before. As soon as she said it, I thought to myself that the only things that can span the culture of North America like that are probably TV and movies. I keep wanting to sum up my observations about Haitian people. To say that they are a proud people, or a shamed people, or a people tortured from within and without. A beautiful people, a scarred people. But I hope I can resist the temptation. It's just wrong. From my experience thus far, it's enough to say that I'm glad to be here. Haiti is a complex place with complex people; human beings, like anywhere else. But who know themselves in a way that somehow escapes me.
A new couple arrived here yesterday. Talking to them made me realize even more how much I've acclimated, even if it all continues to feel fresh to me. It's great to have other people who also feel fresh. When I arrived, everyone on the team had been here for at least 16 months already, and in some cases much longer than that.
The new couple will both work as "policy analysts." Their job is to network around Haiti and get a feel for trends in economics and immigration and things like that, and then work with MCC volunteers in DC, Ottowa and at the UN to lobby for change. One of the easiest targets, and most difficult hurdles, is rice. That is, the subsidized rice from the United States that continually floods the Haitian market. Shorthand for it here is "Miami rice," just as "Miami" is a sort of shorthand for the whole USA.
"Where do you come from?"
"Have you heard of Seattle?"
"Where's that?"
"In the United States."
"Oh! So you're from Miami."
"Well, no, but, uh, nevermind. Yes, I'm from Miami."
The other way of referring to the states, which I love, is "lot bot dlo." Say that five times fast. It means "the other side of the water."
But anyhow, back to Miami rice. The USDA spends so much in subsidies keeping American rice growers from going out of business that it can actually undersell the rice farmers here in Haiti where the average income is one dollar per day. Most of the rice that Haitians eat is grown in the states. So at the same time that Haiti is chastised for not accepting the most draconian "free market reforms" it's being economically strangled by the richest country in the world.
I want to share a story I found fascinating. Another MCCer, Esther, who does reforestation was telling a story about one night she was preparing a meal with some Haitian women. They gave her the job of cutting up the tomatoes. Once she'd diced up a few, one of the women checked in on her and demanded that she stop, saying that she had cut them up wrong. The women shook their heads and decided they would have to throw the tomatoes away, or maybe feed them to the pigs. Esther protested that they would taste exactly the same, but it hardly mattered. For these women, there was only one way to cut tomatoes, period.
What does this story mean? First of all, let me point out that I don't know if all Haitian women are so strict in their tomato cutting rules. That said, I think it's a great picture of how easy it is for miscommunication and frustration to occur between Haitians and North Americans. I feel fortunate I haven't endured too much of this frustration as of yet, but I'm three months in and 33 months to go, so it's bound to happen. But my coworker Jessica said it best. When people back in British Columbia ask her why she likes Haiti, she says, "Haitians know who they are." I don't know if that will make sense to anyone who hasn't been here, but as soon as she said it I knew exactly what she meant. There's a sense of shared culture, shared identity that is beyond anything I've experienced before. As soon as she said it, I thought to myself that the only things that can span the culture of North America like that are probably TV and movies. I keep wanting to sum up my observations about Haitian people. To say that they are a proud people, or a shamed people, or a people tortured from within and without. A beautiful people, a scarred people. But I hope I can resist the temptation. It's just wrong. From my experience thus far, it's enough to say that I'm glad to be here. Haiti is a complex place with complex people; human beings, like anywhere else. But who know themselves in a way that somehow escapes me.
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