Big Fat Tuesday

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.