Kreyol Kurt

Awesomest camera ever

2009-05-13T20:49:00.004-05:00

Here's some photos from my amazing shock- and water-proof camera, which my folks got me for Christmas. The girl is Hillary, who many of you know and love already. My next post will be about our trip to Gonaives.

And you can click on this picture to see a video I took:

Oh yeah, and here's my favorite picture of Gabriela:

Go fly a kite

2009-04-08T20:09:00.006-05:00

I just had a lovely experience. April is a windy month in Haiti, and that means that it's kite flying season. Anywhere you drive around Port-au-Prince, you'll see kids on rooftops and hillsides and running around in dirt soccer fields flying colorful, hexagonal kites. Most people who read this blog (though it's so outdated now that I've probably lost even my own mother's attention) know that I'm a bit of a kite fanatic. I've got a few kites at home, mostly the two-string steerable variety. They're a far cry from the very disposable kites you see for sale all over the city these days. They're made with sticks and colored crete paper or cellophane. They usually cost somewhere between 10 and 50 cents, as they come in a range of sizes, from as small as an LP to as big as an umbrella. But the shape is always the same - three sticks tied together at the middle, with a string connecting the tips, wrapped in some sort of material. I've seen kids whip these things together in a minute using twigs and a plastic sack. I've always loved that about Port-au-Prince, and looked at those hundreds of kites fluttering above the slums as a welcome sign. Unfortunately, I didn't bring any of my kites, and besides it seems to be a kid thing. I guess it's kind of a kid thing in the states too.

However, I was getting on the motorcycle to leave the office today when I looked up over the front gate to the roof of a house some ways away, where I saw a full grown man with one hand at hip level and another one in a fist held up, doing a downward tugging motion that could only mean one thing. I was seized with inspiration that if this guy could enjoy flying a kite, or "monte kap" as they say in Creole, on this cool and breezy afternoon, so could I.

I blazed home, since it was already 5:30 and the sun wouldn't be up for much longer. I stopped on the way and picked out a nice blue, orange and black kite. I got to my apartment building and walked up to the roof where I passed some of the neighbor kids, hanging out in their usual spot in the stairwell. "Wow, nice kite!" they admired. "I'm going to go fly it right now, you can come watch if you want," I said, thinking to myself, yes, come and learn from the master.

It was a total debacle. I thought, how hard can this be? I tied the roll of string to the short piece coming out of the center of the kite, and hung it over the ledge of my five-story apartment building, which was plenty windy as usual. The kite kind of went in circles but mostly dove downwards. I reeled it in and tried again and again with no luck. The kids hadn't shown up to watch yet, but I was beginning to attract a crowd of people in the building next door, who were slapping each others backs and laughing at my pathetic attempts. Then I lost the roll of string over the side of the building. Eventually I got the attention of a passerby who knotted the string so it wouldn't unravel anymore, allowing me to pull it back up to the roof. By then the three or four kids from the stairwell had shown up. They could see that I was getting nowhere with this. Humbled, I asked them what I was doing wrong.

Well, duh, my kite didn't have a tail. At first, I thought this was a purely ornamental thing, and therefore unnecessary. But in reality, it's more of a rudder that keeps the kite moving straight up. One girl delegated another to go get something to use for a tail, which in this case ended up being a scrap of lace. Then, it was pointed out that I hadn't rigged up the standard little string harness. Pretty soon, there were ten kids buzzing around, prepping the kite and giving me a remedial course about how this is done in Haiti. The ringleader, a gangly teenager who was as tall as me and clearly the authority in all things kite, was like a master crafstman - a Stradivari of crete paper kites. He attached the tail, tied up the harness, carefully measuring the amount of string needed in proportion to the radius of the kite. Pretty soon, he was flying it, making it do all kinds of cool tricks. At one point, the leash was at least 100 meters long. By then, dusk was fading into evening, the moon was rising, and I was surrounded by a gaggle of kids cheering me on as I took a turn flying, pulling off a couple of loop-di-loops, slowly regaining my kite ego. It was fun.

Here she is:

I'll write soon about other current affairs, like my new job as the representative of MCC in Haiti, my wonderful girlfriend, and the cool underwater camera I got for Christmas.

Anticipation

2008-12-25T00:00:00.004-05:00

Ding, dong. It's the stroke of midnight, Christmas Eve. I'm sitting at gate C14 in Dulles National Airport, where I'll soon be lying down to sleep. Early tomorrow morning, I'll be on my way to San Francisco, and then on home to Medford.

It's not how I planned on spending this Christmas, especially since it's the first time I've been able to travel home in three years. My plane from Miami was late because of weather in Chicago, and through the domino effect of delayed flights, that translated into me spending the night in Washington D.C.

But really, all told, I've got it pretty good. I've seen plenty of people who are much more exhausted, and have been put through much more than I. And I feel the most sorry for the United Airlines customer service people, dealing with countless travelers who are missing their loved ones, stuck on the wrong side of the country, and on the verge of tears.

And the best part of the day by far, was commiserating with a woman on my same flight from Miami to D.C. I was worried about missing my connection to San Francisco, she was trying to figure out what to do since she wouldn't make her flight to Montreal. It wasn't until we were getting ready to deplane that I saw her Haitian passport. So then I got to wish her a merry Christmas in Creole and talk Haiti for a little bit. Most people I know who have lived in Haiti and then visited Miami, New York, or Boston have some story about hearing people speaking Creole on the subway or at a store or something like that, and getting a chance to say hi as an honorary member of the Haitian diaspora. If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend it.

Just being a foreigner in Haiti and speaking Creole is always a lot of fun. I can't count how many times people have been amazed to hear me speaking their language, and tell me stories about other blan they know who lived in Haiti for years and never learned anything other than hello and goodbye. It's always immensely appreciated. If you try speaking French, you're likely to get corrected on a number of things, but say it in Creole and you're golden. But speaking to a Haitian expatriate who might not get the chance to speak their native language often is like showing up at a stranger's house with a rare gift for them, and being warmly received for making the effort.

Tomorrow I'll be enjoying my first white Christmas since I was maybe 10 or 11, if memory serves. To everyone out there who is celebrating Christmas, either alone or with loved ones, blessings be upon you. I hope the season finds you well.

No excuses

2008-11-19T18:55:00.006-05:00

Now that I've been so lazy in posting things here that there's only one person even checking it anymore (yes, mom, that would be you), I'm determined to get back on the ball. At the very least, I should point you to the blogs of two new couples who are on the team, who are still relatively new to Haiti and taking it all in. The first is of the Thompsonowaks, Sharon and Bryan, who are from Philadelphia, and now live in Dezam where they work on the reforestation and environmental education programs. The second is Ben and Alexis Depp, who live here in Port-au-Prince. She works at a Haitian human rights organization like me, and he is a photographer for a microfinance organization called Fonkoze.

I know it's normal for people in my situation to spend a lot of time thinking, and communicating with people back home, about the new, exotic place where they find themselves living. But as the months wear on, the mind is less boggled and the senses are less saturated. Crossing the street no longer makes the heart race.

But Haiti is an unending feast of observations. There's no shortage of things to write about. And really, I'm often just as amazed and baffled by this place as I was when I first arrived. In addition, I've just moved into a new place. It's a fresh, new experience. I'll post photos or a video soon. It's an apartment on the fifth and top floor of a large, concrete building. From down the street, the building looks just so slightly off. The up-down lines don't quite run parallel. The floor plan of my apartment would resemble a slice of pizza, with the shower tucked into the tip, followed by the kitchen, living/dining room, bedroom, and finally the terrace as crust. It's got access to a walled-off section of the roof, also shaped like a wedge, where I dry my clothes. And there's a nearly steady breeze which keeps it nice and cool.

The most interesting part, for me, has been living without an inverter and batteries. The state power grid generally gives about six hours of electricity every 24 hour period. People of means usually have an inverter system, which charges 4-8 car-size batteries during those six hours, and then provides energy, hopefully, for the rest of the time. When you're using a system like this, florescent lights and energy-conscious habits are not a proud badge of environmental stewardship as much as they are a very practical strategy for keeping the lights on. Living like that was interesting for those 18 months in my first apartment. But now, I'm trying something new. I'm seeing how the other half lives, even if only in a limited capacity. After all, most people in this city can't keep typing on their laptops that have their own built-in battery, connected to someone else's wireless internet that is itself connected to an inverter, as I am doing right now. But it is an interesting exercise in appreciating randomness, because you never really know when the power is going to come on. Or if it's going to come on at all. Sometimes a good 48 hours will pass with no power at all. And when it does come on, you can hear a collective shout of joy from the surrounding houses. Now I'm one of those happy shouters. The state power company is called EDH, for Electricité d'Haiti, and their logo is a big lightning bolt over a gear. Fitting, I think, because the role EDH plays is much like that of Zeus - lounging on his cloud, lightning in hand, arbitrarily deciding when to strike. The difference, I guess, being that people look forward to the lightning that EDH sends. Today, it was already on at 6:30 when I got home, which is much earlier than usual. I think it was because there was a big soccer game on. And I have noticed that customarily in the week before Christmas there will be very little electricity each day, but then it comes nonstop for a solid 24 hours at least. The gods of EDH are apparently not without sentimentality.

Summer round-up

2008-09-13T12:21:00.004-05:00

There's been no shortage of drama for me in Haiti, nor for Haiti in general, for the last three months. The MCC team has gone through some big changes, including the resignation of our country director, the arrival of four new service workers, and the celebration of 50 years of MCC in Haiti.

I moved out of my apartment, fell in love, busted my tail working on a huge grant proposal from the European Union, and got malaria. These items are listed chronologically, not in order of significance.

And Haiti? Well, let me tell you. Haiti, which generally has a conservative attitude towards homosexuality (as I've noted here before) managed to end up with a prime minister who is a lesbian. What's more, this is after several other candidates for the position, nominated by President Preval, were rejected by Parliament on technicalities. Prime ministers here go through much of the same process as nominees for the supreme court in the United States.

Not that the prime minister's private life is anyone else's business, but it's kind of an open secret. While Prime Minister Pierre-Louis has publicly denied these rumors - to not do so would be political suicide - every media outlet in the country held an open debate all summer about whether or not Haiti would be ruined if its government was being run by a homosexual.

The turning point came about halfway through the summer, shortly before the Senate was set to debate whether or not to confirm the nomination. One day I showed up at the office and went to say hello to the director, Pierre. In his office was a woman standing up and screaming into a telephone while Pierre held his hand over his mouth and gave me a look that said, "don't ask." I came to find out that the woman was the mother of a sixteen-year-old girl who had been raped by a sitting senator. It just so happens that this senator had said on the radio, just a couple days prior, that his Christian faith would prevent him from voting to confirm a known lesbian to run the government. Apparently the United States does not have the market cornered on shocking levels of hypocrisy among it's elected leaders. I can't say for sure that this turned the tide, but I think it took the wind out of the sails of those who were trying to make a moral case against the nominee.

And then, right around the time that the new prime minister was assembling her cabinet, a series of devastating hurricanes and tropical storms hit. Many of you have written to check in on me and express your grief at the images you've seen or the stories you've heard. Thank you. I've been fine. Port-au-Prince was not hit very hard other than Hanna, which caused a few trees to fall over. One day on the way to work I actually had to ride my motorcycle over a fallen telephone poll. But Gonaives is in especially dire straits. Just yesterday MCC sent a delegation out to survey the damage and determine how aid money could be spent. They had to switch vehicles about seven times because of damaged bridges, flooded roads and the like. The photos they brought back are heartbreaking. People are living on their roofs. The streets are filled with water. Some actually had a flowing current.

In the midst of the onslaught from Hanna, the UN actually abandoned its post in Gonaives. But for the people without tanks and amphibious vehicles, it's been a day-to-day struggle living on their rooftops and occasionally foraging through the mud in what used to be their living rooms and bedrooms for salvageable belongings. According to the official count, there have been 700 bodies recovered. The receding waters may reveal many more. It's unlikely it will approach the 2,000 killed by Tropical Storm Jeanne in 2004, though by all reports the flooding this time has been worse.

Please continue to keep Haiti in your prayers. Some of you have written asking how you can help. It's been frustrating being right here, and yet having few options for ways that I myself can help the victims. As relief efforts get more organized, I'll post information here for those of you who would like to contribute.

2008-08-10T23:14:00.005-05:00

At long last, photos from the motorcycle trip with my dad and John Mills way back in April. If it's going too fast, hit pause and go through at your own pace. You can click on pictures to see them full size.

The whole world is watching

2008-07-11T10:42:00.004-05:00

I had to post this article Lindsay sent me. It's a piece by Al Jazeera on rice imports to Haiti.

The missionaries

2008-07-01T16:36:00.003-05:00

Catching up a little bit...I'll fill in some of the highlights of the last three months. One of them was during the motorcycle trip with my dad and John Mills. I'll get photos up here soon. But let me tell you what happened on our first stop. Halfway between MCC's reforestation office and the city of Mirebalais is a beautiful waterfall called Saut d'eau, or Sodo in Creole. It's also a sacred Vodou site. Here's a post about the first time I went there. So my dad and John and I are riding up this very steep, rough road to get to the falls and we passed a bunch of pasty white folks. As we got off the motorcycles and walked down to the falls we were talking about this group and wondering who they might be.

"Missionaries," my dad said.

"Really? Are you sure?"

"Oh yeah. You can just tell."

So, we got down to our skivvies and climbed up the rocks to get behind the falls. It was gorgeous, as always. I pointed out the half-full bottles of rum and candles and other little effects that had been left there as offerings. Nobody really knows what to expect from a Vodou holy site, and my dad and John were just taking it all in.

I looked down below and the white people started filing in and staking out an area near one of the lower falls. I noticed that one of them had a good number of tattoos, which is when I started to doubt my dad's theory. Then they circled up and held hands and appeared to be singing. I thought, maybe dad's right. But the sound of the falls was so loud I couldn't tell if it was kumbayah or what.

When we decided to hit the road, we went back down to where our clothes were. There I found a woman I know who is a travel agent for groups coming to Haiti. I asked her who these mysterious white people were. She informed me that it was a group of Vodouisants from Philadelphia who were here to be initiated as priests (houngan) and priestesses (mambo). That's right, white Vodou people. I've known for a while that there is a lot of academic interest in Vodou, and even the rare white person who will participate in ceremonies and undergo possession. I was not, however, aware that there were enough non-Haitians practicing Vodou in the whole United States, let alone Philly, to justify a group initiation of about 10 new houngans and mambos. I suppose they could be going back to Philly to minister to Haitians living there, but I reeeeeeeeeally doubt it.

I love telling Haitians that story. Some aren't surprised at all, but most of them give a kind of laugh like "what are those crazy white people going to do next?"

Back and fat

2008-06-11T14:54:00.006-05:00

I'm back in Haiti all safe and sound after three and a half weeks in the states. I guess I never got around to all that blogging I was going to do, but someday...

I definitely need to write about the political thing. Over the course of my trip back home, Obama won the nomination and Haiti is now has a good case of Obamamania, or whatever you call it. I can't count how many times I heard people here tell me that the United States is too racist to ever elect a black president. That might rub a lot of my fellow U.S. citizens the wrong way, but you hear it a lot around here, and as far as anyone knows, they could be right. We won't know until November. But, something really changed after he won the primary. While people in the states were getting frustrated with Clinton's refusal to concede, Haitians were just coolly waiting to hear the catch. Many were sure that Clinton would eventually win, despite Obama's lead. And so many were genuinely surprised at the outcome.

As for me, it's good to be back. Most every Haitian friend I've seen since coming back has been lavishing me with praise for putting on weight while I was back in the states. It's a Haitian thing. When you haven't seen someone in a while, and you want to tell them that they're looking good, you tell them that they're getting big. They mean it literally, but it's complimentary because it's seen as a sign of health and happiness. As far as I can tell, it works the same way as "have you lost weight?!" in the U.S. They use the word "gwo" which means to get bigger, and is sometimes used interchangeably with "anfòm" which means "in shape." (I'm definitely not in better shape.) Even if there is no real change, people will say that you've filled out. The fact that I did pack on a few pounds only adds to the excitement. Here's some of the comments:

"You're so fat!"
"Wow, you're huge!"
"Even your face is getting nice and fat!"
"Did you join the U.S. Olympic team while you were over there?"

One man, a senator who visits my office from time to time, came through today. I haven't seen him in a couple months, but he took one look at me and said "you must have just come back from the states."

All of these exchanges were in Creole. But my favorite one was with one of my colleagues who always practices his English on me. "Welcome back. You are fat. No no no no! I'm only joking. (20 seconds of laughter and knee-slapping) You're not fat. You are heavy. Yes, that's right. You are overweight."

I think that in my colleague's English course his teacher probably told the students that it's impolite to use the word "fat," and that the words "overweight" or "heavy" should be substituted. I hope the teacher at some point lets the class know that North Americans don't take kindly to being told they've put on weight, no matter what euphemism is used.

Waiting for Bubba

2008-05-19T19:30:00.007-05:00

Last night I was on my way to use the bathroom and the secret service told me to hold on and wait while President Clinton finished up in there. A little context: I am back at home in Medford, Oregon right now for vacation. My sister got married on Saturday in a beautiful service at a winery. Here she is on her way to the altar with dad (who also performed the wedding):

Here's the new husband and wife:

And here's the three Hildebrand kids all together:

What can I say? The wedding was perfect. Everybody cried a lot. And then everybody danced a lot. The bride and groom arrived at the reception with my sister driving a creamsicle colored 1960s Vespa, and her new husband in the sidecar. Yes, a Vespa with a sidecar.

It was of course a big day for my sister. Kind of a big day for me too, just in the fact that it was my first time back in the states since I left for Haiti in November 2006. And it was my first time back to my hometown since August 2006. The wedding was a flood of faces that I haven't seen in two, four, even ten years. Naturally everyone was asking me what it felt like to be back and whether I was freaking out or not. I generally told people that if I had gone straight from Haiti to some random place in the states for, say, a conference, and had to stay in a hotel and be surrounded by strangers, I probably would have gone nuts. But, being surrounded by family and friends made it possible for me not to miss Haiti too much. My digestive system couldn't be fooled though. It's still in open rebellion against non-Haitian food.

I'm hoping to spend some of my time back home on this blog and fill in some of the big gaps since I haven't been very good about blogging for the last few months. For now I'll just finish the story about the former president.

If you're following the US democratic primaries, you'll know that tomorrow, May 20th, is Oregon's day to vote. It sounds like Barack Obama may clinch the majority of pledged delegates. Over the weekend he held a rally in Portland that was the biggest in US political history. Bill and Chelsea Clinton were campaigning in Southern Oregon over the weekend, giving a talk at the state university in Ashland (just south of Medford) on Sunday. A neighbor and friend of ours owns a restaurant in Medford - and we got word that the Clintons would be eating there Sunday night afterwards. So after all the friends and family and the bride and groom left town on Sunday, mom and dad and I decided to go down and try to get a look at the former president.

Once we heard he had arrived, I left the outdoor patio to walk through the restaurant to the bathroom and get a glimpse on the way. I squeezed by Chelsea, and then I saw the big, pink-faced man himself. He was dressed just like he is in the picture below, which came from the Medford newspaper:

I was going to walk by and pretend I didn't recognize him, but before I got there, he turned around and went to go take a leak. So I ended up waiting outside the bathroom. A burly secret service guy told me to step back away from the door. And so I stood and waited. When the door opened up, and the security detail turned around to lead him to the dining room, I waited for just the right moment and grabbed his collar and slammed him up against the bathroom door and shouted in his face, "Because of your craven political posturing Haiti has become dependent on subsidized rice exports from the United States! Thanks Bill! Now the country is starving and protesting and rioting and the prime minister lost his job because of forces far beyond his control! Forces that you helped set in motion! Haiti's food problems are more your fault than his! Shame on you! SHAME ON YOU!!!" That's when I got the tasered.

Kidding, of course. I just let him walk by and then took my turn in the bathroom. But I do wish I could have told him that. If you want to read more about the factors that created Haiti's current crisis with food prices, here is an article that gives a good analysis of the situation, though it doesn't specifically name Clinton's role in forcing Aristide to drop tariffs in 1994.

I'll write more this week about the motorcycle trip in Haiti with my dad and his friend John, and also about how Haitians are viewing the US presidential race.

Follow up on "Lavi chè"

2008-04-27T09:42:00.003-05:00

My teammate Lindsay made a comment on that post that is worth copying here. Specifically, what she says about Preval's comment to "pase cheche m."

Lindsay said...
Here are my 2 cents worth (which you, Kurt, already know but others might not)...

The Le Matin photographer was shot with a rubber bullet. Still shot, but at least it wasn't lethal.

Digicel is also well known amongst the population for its foundation's work, which may have added to it being protected. Saul also sighted the 50gd phone cards Digicel sells, which are more accessible for the general public.

I heard that Preval's inital statement was "pase cheche m," meaning he wanted to join in if people were going to protest. hmm...I wonder which he actually said...

Shortly before Preval's speach was broadcast on TV, there was a series of shooting by the palace. We figured it was evoked by the crowd getting impatient. During Preval's broadcast, you could hear that very same round of shooting in the background. So he did record it in advance, but not by much.

I really misunderstood what Preval was saying, but Lindsay gets it right. He wasn't making a "bring it on" type of provocation. He was saying that if the crowd was protesting the high cost of living, they should come by the palace and get him so he could join in the protest. A funny note is that when they took him up on his offer, he reportedly sent word that he couldn't come out and join them because he didn't bring his tennis shoes to work that day. So protesters showed up with tennis shoes for him to wear. No more excuses after that.

2008-04-18T18:32:00.007-05:00

First the disclaimer. I am a guest blogger. My name is Don Hildebrand and I am proudly known as Kurt's dad.

John Mills and I arrived this morning. John is a close friend from college and and we have shared many adventures over the last 35 years. Riding bikes across Haiti is the current goal.

Because of the situation in Haiti the past 2 weeks, we considered postponing our trip to a later date. And in fact there have been some truly terrifing moments since we have been here---but they all were a result of the car ride out to Desarme this afternoon. Somehow we arrived safely and no pedestrians were hurt either.

It is a beautiful country in so many ways with so many beautiful people. We rested a bit after we arrived and then took a walk to see some of the reforestration projects that are happeining here. Jean Remy, a resident of Desarme began planting trees on a wood lot about 20 years ago and you can see the result. As we were walking through the woods we came upon several large baskets with clothing, ghord shells and some money inside of them. Apparently voodoo practices take place in the woods from time to time. Brian, our guide and host of the Mennonite project here in Desarme said that when people try to drive out an evil spirit they will come here and cleanse themselves. They remove all their clothing and change into new clothes and leave other objects like the money and ghords that have some special significance. We left it all undisturbed.

The Artibonite Valley is beautiful and one of the most fertile places in Haiti. You can see rice and sorghum plants in the valley behind Kurt and John.

Tomorrow we leave for the motorcycle part of the trip. We will wind our way up to Papaye for tomorrow and then on to Cape Haitian on Sunday.

But it is dinner time in Haiti for us and we are about to head off to the town square--a single street light at a crossroad. I am told they have great egg sandwiches there.

Some wonderful girls met us on the hike and offered us some mangoes. They tasted so good. Here the guys are taking care of the natural result of eating those mangoes. Doesn't anybody carry floss anymore?

Lavi chè!

2008-04-15T10:00:00.002-05:00

Okay, so, where to begin? The initial outburst of street demonstrations has subsided. The movement began in the southwest corner of Haiti, in a relatively peaceful beach town called Les Cayes. There have long been murmurings of unrest over the skyrocketing cost of living ("lavi chè" in Creole). For at least four months there has been a vague expectation that something like this might happen. But a lot of factors came together to light the fuse. The UN force stationed in Les Cayes got drawn into a violent confrontation which incited a major demonstration. The protests were driven in part by students.

The Haitian government responded by saying that the unrest was being provoked by drug traffickers. I have no idea what truth there is to this statement, but it certainly is true that drug traffickers have benefited from the chaos. The protests spread to Jeremie and other places before finally arriving in Carrefour, just west of Port-au-Prince, within a few days.

I went to work on Tuesday morning unaware of what was going on in the city. By 10:00 a.m., there were large crowds in the streets all around our office, chanting, banging things around, making plenty of noise. I found out that a photographer from a newspaper where a friend of mine works was shot while taking pictures in Champs de Mars, the public area surrounding the national palace. The protesters nearly succeeded in destroying the barricade surrounding the palace, chanting all along that the president must leave the country.

This is an intriguing part of the story. When President Preval was elected for his current term, in 2006, there were some questions as to whether some sort of runoff vote would be needed. There were reports of ballots being burned in parts of the country (my organization has photos) and crowds began forming. The masses of people that turned out in the streets were by and large the supporters of President Aristide who had been aggrieved ever since he left the country under murky circumstances on February 29, 2004. Their aim was clear: the obvious winner of the election – Rene Garcia Preval, former prime minister to Aristide, president from 1995-2000, champion of the poor – must be declared the winner immediately. The crowds stormed the Montana Hotel, where the election headquarters were located, and eventually everybody in charge decided not to test the wrath of a desperate population. Preval was declared the winner.

If you’ve seen the movie “V for Vendetta” you probably remember a line where the hero says something like, “People shouldn’t be afraid of the government. The government should be afraid of the people.” So when I think about those crowds of people demanding that their sheer mass be respected, I think, sure, whatever, patience is a virtue, but if the point of a democracy is to represent the will of the people, then a big enough crowd is effectively a vote, and one that cannot be vetoed without destroying that democracy. The people protesting for Preval to be declared the winner were largely being driven by a distrust of the election authorities, thinking that the elites would pull their strings and use some obscure legal maneuvering to undermine Preval. This is not a paranoid delusion. Both rich and poor countries offer plenty of examples of the popular will being subverted even under the banner of democracy.

However, this time around things were much more complicated. The enormous crowds of people protesting last week were the largest seen here since the 2006 election. Only this time, two years later, the crowds were demanding that President Preval leave office. The primary demand of all of the protests has been to lower the price of basic foods and gas. (Gas is over $6 a gallon here, the minimum wage is $2 a day, and most people are unemployed.) Secondary to these demands has been the demand for the UN mission to leave Haiti, and the demand for President Preval and Prime Minister Alexis to step down.

So this begs the question, were these anti-Preval crowds made up of the same people that made up those pro-Preval crowds just two years before? Did “the masses” really turn so decisively against the man they used to support? In just two years? I won’t try to answer, but I’m sure it’s not just a yes or no kind of thing. People often think of Haiti as an overwhelming majority of very poor people with a tiny middle class and a tiny elite. There is some truth to this, but it’s a mistake to then assume that any one of these three groups thinks or votes all the same. The tension between Evangelicals and Catholics and, of course, Vodouisants, is another frame that doesn’t really adequately explain the situation. And, as in any protest, the property damage and looting was being carried out by a small minority of the people in the streets. Always good to keep in mind when you’re looking at pictures of mayhem and destruction.

I was in the office listening to the radio reports of crowds of people forming all over the city, barricades of flaming tires going up on the main roads, windows being broken, etc. I started a googlechat (surreal? yes) with another MCCer, who was at a house outside of the city. His wife was stuck at her house right on the main road of Delmas which had massive crowds marching past it constantly. She watched the convenience store for the gas station across the street as it was looted until completely empty. It was only then I realized that this thing was going to last a while.

A friend of mine called from Champs de Mars where she went to see the aftermath. The building for Air France was gutted entirely. One of the strangest things she observed was that Digicel was left alone. There are two major cell phone companies in Haiti: Digicel and Voila. They each have their signature colors, they each have endorsements from Haitian celebrities, and they each give away lots and lots of t-shirts and backpacks and the like. And yet the protesters drew a clear line between them. They destroyed a Voila office just a few doors down from a Digicel office. My friend saw one protester get beaten up by other protesters after he threw a rock at Digicel. She saw a guy raise his fist in the air and say, “Digicel. Respect.” She saw another man come out of the Voila office with a laptop. He declared that he could take it and sell it for a lot of money, but since Voila is run by thieves, he preferred to make a point with it. Which he did, by cracking it in two over his knee.

I have to say that I’m baffled by this. It’s true, Digicel has superior customer service. It’s also true that Digicel has invested a lot into making Haiti’s soccer team competitive. But how in the world could that make such a crucial difference to an angry crowd? I don’t know. I guess it just attests to the fact that an angry crowd is not a mindless crowd. It is made up of people who are making very specific choices for very specific reasons.

Around 4pm, people started leaving the office in groups, planning only to take routes that were verified as clear. There was one road I could take to get to my house up the hill in Petionville. My friend called from Champs de Mars to tell me that a big crowd had just left there to march up that same road. I thought I was going to be stuck at the office for another couple hours, but my boss told me to get on my motorcycle and high-tail it home while I could.

Driving up Rue John Brown I passed a couple of burned out cars, one upside down. There were burning tires here and there, and several big trash containers had been upset into the street. In Petionville the mood was tense. Every other intersection had something burning in it. There were few cars on the road. I talked to all the other MCCers on the phone. I entertained the thought of getting up early and getting out of town to wait things out with friends away from the action. Ultimately we decided to hunker down where we were.

On Wednesday I woke up and turned on the radio. There was lots of talk about protests in Petionville. I heard shots from time to time. I called my boss to check in and he made me promise to stay in my house all day. I was glued to the radio, while at the same time listening to the sporadic fire and the occasional roar of a crowd not more than a few blocks away.

Radio reporters were talking about how the president had promised to make an address to the Haitian people at 8:00am, and everyone was hanging on to see what he would say. While he may in many ways be a captive to this horrible situation, his handling of the protests so far left much to be desired. His reaction to the Les Cayes protests, as I mentioned, blamed drug traffickers for the unrest. While this could be true, it also seemed to dismiss the validity of the protest, at a time when all Haitians are hurting, and some starving, because of rising food costs. When protesters announced to the press that they were going to come to the national palace and demand Preval’s resignation, Preval responded saying, “Pase cheche l.” This is Creole for “go and find it,” but a more appropriate translation would be Bruce Campbell’s “come get some.” Probably the best comparison is with George W. Bush, who responded to the insurgency in Iraq with “bring it on.” Note to all world leaders: don’t bluff with big crowds of thousands of people that already don’t like you. It wasn’t much longer after “pase cheche l” that the protesters decided to take the president up on his challenge. So here we were, a day after the protesters trashed his front yard. Millions of us with our ears cocked to the radio speaker, waiting to see what the hapless president would say. Eight o’clock came and went, and nothing.

Mid-morning I watched a very large crowd come up my street, moving along at a jogging speed. In stark contrast to what I had expected, I saw a lot of smiles. The people in the front were carrying leafy branches. I didn’t see any guns or rocks. Eventually the crowd thinned out and then I saw people running a lot faster to catch up, as the sound of shooting got closer. Several of the people in the street ran into the narrow, clogged entrance to the huge slum of Jalousie, which is about 100 feet from my window. A white UN S.U.V. and two big armored UN vehicles pursued the crowd past the entrance to Jalousie, firing tear gas canisters into the slum. I saw lots of troops with guns, though I don’t specifically remember seeing any of them aim and shoot. It all happened pretty fast.

Perhaps 15 minutes later I heard my landlady’s housekeeper running and saying “gas! gas!” Soon the guard, the housekeeper and my landlady and myself were all doubled over coughing with tears streaming down our cheeks. Being Haitian, they knew immediately what to do in the situation – we picked a few limes from a tree in the yard and bit into them, and then flushed our faces with water. Not long after that there was several minutes of intense gunfire coming from Petionville’s main park, a block away. I still don’t know exactly what was happening there, but I believe it was mostly the UN firing, since they have rubber bullets. The Haitian National Police were also in the mix, and they don’t have rubber bullets. But if live rounds were used, they must have been fired in the air, because otherwise what I heard would have been a massacre. There is still no clear picture of the casualties. I’ve heard six most often as the number killed, with 60 injured. That’s for all of Port-au-Prince, for the duration of the unrest. I’ve also heard stories about the UN bagging up corpses and chucking them into dump trucks, but these are probably not so reliable. Still, six?

Sometime around 11:00am the radio started playing the president’s address on a loop. I’m not sure if the speech was ever broadcast live. I got the impression that he recorded it and sent it out to the media outlets. Reaction to the speech was swift and unanimous: BOO! People started calling into the radio stations to complain that the president didn’t really say anything. He talked about some long term solutions, but not enough short term ones. He talked about how the whole world is dealing with high food prices, not just Haiti. True, perhaps, but not what a starving person wants to hear. Everyone agreed that the president blew it. Some announced that they were still waiting for the president to address them, because what they had just heard must have been a joke. And yet, there haven’t been any major protests since the speech aired. The country finally had something to react to and debate about. It was like everyone took a big breath of air, stretched their arms, and took a look around. The situation we found wasn’t pretty. Lots of businesses damaged, which would surely mean more people unemployed. Everyone I talked to had the same attitude: the president hasn’t done enough to avoid the situation we have now, his speech definitely sucked, but those people who took advantage of a tense situation to break and steal things are making the situation worse for everyone.

Shortly, the news on the radio shifted to a group of senators who was demanding Prime Minister Alexis to step down. This is where the politics get really murky, and I must confess I know very little about all the ins and outs of how this works. But as background, there was an effort just a few weeks ago in the senate to force Alexis out with a vote of no confidence. It appears that these senators are simply taking advantage of the situation to achieve a political victory against President Preval. Over the weekend, everyone went through the motions and Alexis found himself and his whole upper level of government employees without jobs. It’s too bad, really. True that there’s a whole lot of dead wood in the Haitian government. But Alexis has a good reputation as an honest, serious, uncorrupt prime minister. It’s hard to judge someone on job performance whose main task is to save Haiti.

Well, that’s about it for now. Things are calm. Still a lot of broken glass everywhere. Lot of trashed gas stations. Other than that, situation normal. Port-au-Prince is already in permanent bunker mode with big walls and gates absolutely everywhere. There have been scattered reports of protests in other parts of the country – but never all at once.

It’s frustrating to be right here in the country and still not have a clear idea of what exactly happened, why it happened, and what’s happening now. Oh, I should say, it’s kind of embarrassing that a story was on cnn.com quoting me as “Felix Kurt Hildebrand.” That’s just how my name got passed along to him. I’m not running around down here introducing myself to CNN as Felix.

Also, I’m sorry I didn’t take any photos of anything I saw. It honestly didn’t occur to me until days later that I should have had my camera ready. Another MCCer on the team got some footage of the Haitian National Police beating a crowd of totally nonviolent protesters without provocation.

Sorry this is so long, and congratulations if you made it all the way through! I’m sure a lot of it is vague, and you might have a lot of questions about what’s going on. If so, send them along. I’ll do my best.

I’m not just saying this because I need a silver lining to every cloud, but there have been some positive aftereffects rippling out from the chaos. Communities pull together. It’s Haiti, so there’s always going to be a lot of sidewalk debate. But the sidewalk debates these days seem to be more about big picture stuff. How are we, as Haitians, going to free ourselves from the abusive international relationships that ensnare us? What can we expect from the government? Are we a free country, or an occupied country? None of these questions are simple.

I also don’t want to gloss over the fact that the situation is, in every way, dire. Just looking at the numbers of people in Haiti who live on less than a dollar a day, I cannot possibly imagine how people aren’t starving by the thousands. The very survival of the Haitian poor is a miracle. But that’s how it was before the prices started doubling.

Thank you, cousin Jay, for praying. Everyone else, whether you pray or not, please pray for the Haitian people, especially those who are most vulnerable, and all people suffering acutely from the convulsions of our global economy.

Safe and sound

2008-04-10T08:23:00.002-05:00

I know that it's been a really long time since I've written anything here, so I doubt many people will see this. But in case you heard the news about what's going on in Haiti and wanted to check in, I'm fine. Everything is calm now, Friday morning, April 11th. It's been chaos for two days. Lots of property destroyed. I heard five deaths and about 60 people wounded, but that seems really low.

I will write a lot more about this later, but rest assured that I am okay and the situation seems to be more or less normal on the streets of Port-au-Prince.

At long last...

2008-02-22T11:06:00.005-05:00

...the photos from the Caribbean vacation! Thanks Shane. Slacker.

Enjoy:

You should be able to click on the photos to see them full-size and you can click the pause button to look through at your own pace.

Che - Bob 2007

2008-01-10T10:24:00.000-05:00

November 23: Port-au-Prince - - - > Miami, FL

I knew for sure that I was becoming at least partially Haitian when I caught myself staring, slack-jawed, at the endless lines of white people shuffling past me in the Miami airport. The last snippets of Creole faded away throughout the customs process. The stores were overwhelming too – I get the impression that the Miami airport contains more cash value in goods than whole swaths of Port-au-Prince.

Miami, FL - - - > Montego Bay, Jamaica

The last three flights of the evening arrive in Montego Bay airport at the same time, meaning that the beleaguered staff of four occupy a fraction of the agent booths, and are forced to process an instant crowd. Not that they could be hurried in any way. They took their time. When I finally made it out to the taxis, the first person I saw was a cheerful 40-something guy holding a sign that said “Esquerto” – my bogus Nicaraguan travel nickname from 2006’s adventure with Shane and Kamala.

The cabbie’s name was Trevor. He became our man in Jamaica. I found Shane and Carly at our hotel - a place called Toby’s Resort - around 10:00 pm. We had a lot of catching up to do, and we did it over Red Stripes and barbecued chicken in a second-story, open air restaurant located right on the “hip strip” that runs parallel to the Montego Bay waterfront. The waitress was wonderful and she gave us all kinds of Jamaican slang. And there was a little Rastafarian guy named Troy there too. I asked him all kinds of questions about the religion. I can’t do it justice here, of course, but here are a couple interesting things about Rastafarianism: (apologies if this is not new information)

- Rastafarians have churches.

- The churches always have a table to one side that holds the “chillum pipe.”

- The true Rasta man never consumes alcohol or tobacco.

- They worship the 20^th century Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie as a black messiah. Ethiopia is their holy land.

- Their cosmology is shaped by biblical terms, and they represent oppression and suffering with the name Babylon in their music and literature.

We were out pretty late and didn’t get up until 10 the next day. Our man Trevor was there waiting for us and we drove to Negril, a miles-long strip of perfect white beach. It’s almost completely developed with enormous all-inclusive resorts – the mothership of which, is Sandals. We didn’t go in or near any of these places, and chose instead to stick to the public beach with its endless restaurants and shops and beautiful sand. We drove back after sunset.

November 25: Montego Bay, Jamaica - - - > Havana, Cuba

Leaving Jamaica, Shane and Carly and I were all careful to watch the officials and make sure that they didn’t stamp our passports as leaving the country. This, of course, because U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba can be fined $250,000 and thrown in the clink for 10 years. Despite this, I read that some 100,000 Americans visit Cuba each year. Plenty of those are legally authorized trips, but most aren’t. Jamaica is a big entry point for this kind of illegal tourism, along with Toronto and Mexico City. So we knew that when the officials saw our U.S. passports and tickets to Cuba, they’d let it slide. They did. But, in the months after September 11^th, when the Bush administration absurdly launched a crackdown on travel to Cuba, some Jamaican officials began stamping American passports again. It’s long since stopped, though.

In preparation for the Cuba trip, I consulted with a friend of mine here in Port-au-Prince. She’s Cuban, and she runs a video rental near where I live. She renounced her Cuban residency by coming to live in Haiti for more than nine months. Since then, she cannot return for more than a few weeks at a time. She can never live in Cuba again. She has a friend who has an amicable ex-husband in Havana. My friend told me that he would drive us around Havana for $25 a day – a pretty good deal. She said he would come to the airport to pick us up, and that he would be dressed all in black and carrying a single red rose, for Carly.

And true to his word, Manolito was there in black. As soon as we were introduced, he said in his very limited English that if asked, we were to say that we knew his ex-wife, which wasn’t true. We made it out to his car with our luggage, and then realized that we needed to check on something at the Air Jamaica counter, back in the airport. On our way back, we were approached by a young cop. He separated Manolito from us and spoke for what seemed like a very long time. Then we were escorted to a trailer set up as a makeshift office in front of the airport. I couldn’t quite call it an interrogation, but there were a lot of questions, mostly in Spanish, and they took our passports. There were a few cops there, and they were all pretty young and unintimidating. They didn’t give the impression that they knew or cared much about what they were doing. Eventually, they brought Manolito back to us. And then after that was an even longer wait, answering the same questions, sharing a half cup of coffee between us three Americans, Manolito, and the Cuban keystone cops.

Finally, we were allowed to go with our passports on the condition that we hired another cab to follow Manolito’s car, which would carry our luggage. Another $25 down the tube. We drove through the outskirts of Havana, then towards the Miramar district where we were to stay at an apartment with a nice retired woman named Dora. This was another arrangement made by my friend in Haiti. Manolito helped us carry our luggage up to the fourth floor of this modest apartment building in what is considered the “posh” part of Havana, where most ambassadors and embassy staff live. When we landed, Manolito broke it down for us about the ins and outs of Cuba. He explained that we could hire him for the whole day, and he could take us anywhere except the old city (the best part) and anywhere outside of Havana. So in the end we didn’t need help from Manolito. We opted to take taxis, which occasionally included beautiful fifty-year-old Chevys and what not. There are some 60,000 classic automobiles on the roads in Cuba. Most of them have Russian parts under the hood to help them along. Some are flawless like new, some of them are more like warriors of the Revolucion.

According to my video store friend, everyone in Cuba has some way of making a little cash on the side. The government rations will keep you alive and not without luxuries like cigars and rum, but in reality people will want more than that, and there are a lot of ways to find it. One man lured Shane into a bar to buy some cigars. He had a big plastic gasoline container with a false bottom. He lifted it to reveal a box full of contraband. Cuban citizens buy these cigars for a pittance, but are forbidden to resell them. The government does what it can to funnel tourists into its state-owned stores where the cigars sell for many times what the Cubans pay. There’s a kind of ever-present moral dilemma. On the one hand, it’s nice to get a good deal, and it’s nice to help out a guy just trying to get a birthday present for his kid or something like that, but it’s not the same as in other countries. The Cuban government is of course repressive and far from perfect, but I don’t feel good about denying money to a cash-strapped state that is struggling to provide food, education and health care to every single one of its citizens, and doing an admirable job.

The dilemma was the worst with the taxis. Unmetered taxi trips are a huge source of untaxed revenue in Cuba. Most cabbies wouldn’t negotiate much, they would just quote a price that would work out to be more or less what the meter would end up reading. But instead of that $5 going to further the revolucion, it would go into the guy’s pocket. Of course you could insist on using the meter, but we never really did.

We went to Old Havana. Block after block of dense history, with the brightly colored, yet crumbling buildings morphing from one era into another. I could have paid $2 to see the hotel room where Hemmingway wrote some of his best stuff, but I opted out.

There was music everywhere, and there was more laundry than I’ve ever seen in my life hanging out to dry between fire escape ladders. It’s one of those places that has such a look and feel to it, it makes you stop and soak it in. And of course, pictures don’t do it justice.

I don’t have much to say about the food in Cuba. We had some lovely meals, but overall it was unimpressive. The sandwiches sold on the street were nice and cheap and greasy and salty, but you can only do that so much. I do remember one restaurant we searched out after reading the Lonely Planet guide. It was a hole-in-the-wall that would have been more suited for Seattle, with it’s kitschy plastic decorations and shrine featuring a few Buddhas, a Jesus and a three-foot tall Native American. The beans and rice were delicious, and I got a giant chunk of ham that I could barely finish.

We crossed under the canal in a big screaming black Buick from the 1940s, on our way to the traditional firing of the cannon. Every evening at 9:00, a troop or garrison or whatever of people dressed as colonial troops gets itself into formation and marches to the 16^th century fortress walls to fire a cannon to the oohs and aahs of tourists both foreign and Cuban.

We spent some quality time in the posh neighborhood where we were staying. We checked out a couple of the very un-communist-looking high-rise hotels on the water. Their pools were beautiful, the lobbies were like those of any other luxury hotel. Except, every single one had a wall with a series of photos from the revolution, including a couple good close-ups of Fidel and Che, chomping cigars. The words “A Moment in History…” were painted on the wall above the photos in English and Spanish.

As far as I know, Cubans are not allowed as guests into hotels like this. The world of tourists and the world of Cubans coexist, though they are carefully segregated. The two populations pay different prices. They use different money. Each has their own restaurants, hotels, and forms of transportation that the other is forbidden to use. You heard that right. Havana has scores of hotels and restaurants that will kick out any Cuban citizen who tries to enter. I guess this is to discourage underground markets by cutting the supply of places to spend your illegally earned cash. A Cuban citizen could never afford to eat at these restaurants which only accept the tourist currency, which has ten times the value, but about the same spending power as the money that Cuban nationals use, if that makes any sense at all.

But of course the two spheres do intersect in plenty of places. There are indeed hotels, restaurants, and of course cabs which serve both tourists and Cubans. By and large the Cubans we encountered were lovely people. Salty, for sure. Many of them are working on their English and eager to try it out. The woman we were staying with, Dora, was not herself Cuban. She used to work for a South American embassy in Havana. She was sweet and attentive and between her 60 year-old high school English courses and pathetic travel Spanish from me and Shane, we were able to communicate. Her favorite food to make for us was toasted rolls with scrambled eggs and diced hot dogs. Deeee-licious!

After a few days of Havana we headed to Varedero, a long, very thin peninsula with white sandy beaches on both sides. It is dotted with resorts and hotels of all shapes and sizes – thousands of rooms. Fifty flights a week arrive directly to the Varedero international airport from Toronto alone. It is surely the most un-Cuban place in Cuba. And yet, ironically, the all-inclusive resort is probably the closest we could get to the experience of a Cuban citizen. I’m being trite, but the cafeteria-style food, the little cups, the avoidance of circulating too much cash was, in the end, equal parts liberating and limiting. We spent two nights in an a lower-middle range all-inclusive. First time ever, I swear. Probably the last. Not that it was all that bad. There was certainly a variety of food, but nothing very special. The bureaucracy was stifling. It took something like six trips by foot across the sprawling compound to get beach towels, which involved deposits and receipts and multiple desks and unmotivated personnel. Getting reservations to the sit-down-and-order-like-a-real-restaurant restaurant was just too complicated for us.

The best part was when we took the pedalboat. They had a few of those side-by-side bicycle-pedal style boats, but these ones were fitted with seats in the back, so Shane and I powered out past the waves and down the coast while Carly snapped photos from the back. We all took turns pedaling and steering. We checked out the other resorts. When we got back to our own beach, two hours later, we got chastised by resort staff. We had violated the rules on taking the boats out for 30 minutes at a time only. Never mind the fact that there were other pedalboats lying there unused.

Ican’t complain at all really. It was two days on a perfect beach in the Caribbean. But once we decided to quit the resort and find a hotel in town, we sort of wished we had done that in the first place. There, we found a restaurant that was in an old house – every wall of which was covered with graffiti, signatures, mottos, proverbs, drawings and whatever else. I can’t even remember what I got, but it was good. Italian I think. I know I bagged on the food earlier, but I do have to say that I was impressed by the variety of cuisines, styles, and atmospheres of the different state-owned restaurants we visited. I have no idea how much the management of these is controlled by the government. On the one hand, there was about as much ethnic variety in food as you would find in a mid-sized American city. Chinese, Indian, Italian, Spanish, Mexican. On the other hand, I noticed that for a lot of the bars and restaurants in Havana that were supposed to be “hip” had a similar look, and their signage was all in the same funky font. I imagined some poor guy at the Ministry of Restaurants or something trying to come up with cool names and slogans for these places.

I didn’t expect to see products advertised in a communist country. But there were plenty of billboards displaying not only pro-government messages, but rum, cigars, and all kinds of other stuff. Not far from where we were staying was a restaurant with a giant inflatable can of Bucanero beer, Cuba’s own. The grocery store we checked out looked in many ways like something from the states. Except for that entire aisle devoted to mayonnaise. A lot of times they would put a couple hundred bottles of a single product on the shelf, right next to a hundred bottles of another single product. So it looked full, but it could have taken up only a fourth of the space.

Anyhow, back in Varedero – for our last night in bizarro Cuban resort-land, we decided to go see a cabaret. Don’t judge me! There’s a lot of different kinds of cabaret, and this was a very innocent, very Latin-American version of what goes on in Las Vegas and Paris and wherever else. In fact, I would have to say that Cuba is the country least polluted by sexual exploitation that I have ever visited. I’ll bet there’s more pornography in Salt Lake City than all of Cuba. It’s totally illegal.

Back to the cabaret - it was in a cave. With blacklights. The female dancers looked like peacocks and the vocalists blasted out song after song while people danced and spun around in perfect symmetry. It was called the Pirate’s Cave Cabaret, and had a seedy feel despite the ostensibly family-friendly show. I’m not sure how to account for the contradiction. It seems like most of the watering holes we saw in Cuba were somewhat seedy. Maybe this is because almost everyone engages in illegal buying or selling, so everyone’s got a little something to hide. Everyone’s a little on edge. Any time a Cuban gets stopped by a cop, they must be thinking of all the different ways they could get into big trouble at that moment.

We went back to Havana for a couple of days, and then headed back to Jamaica. There’s so much more to write about Cuba, I just have no idea where to start. There were police officers everywhere. It’s Cuba’s answer to unemployment. In the neighborhood where we stayed, every intersection on the main road had a little booth with a cop inside. There’s pictures of Hugo Chavez all over that say something like, “welcome to your homeland, brother.” And how could I not mention Che?! He is more beloved than Fidel, and he is absolutely everywhere. Books, postcards, photos, posters, keychains, wood carvings, underwear, hats, and of course, t-shirts.

Cuba was lovely. Seven days was not nearly enough. There are some challenges there for the illegal tourist, for sure. We had to travel with all of our money in cash, since ATMs and credit cards that are issued by American banks are not accepted – and if they were used by accident, Uncle Sam and his Patriot Act could be all up in our business. Internet was expensive and slow, and at times seemed to be shut off, island-wide. There’s so much we didn’t see. Trinidad, Santiago de Cuba, the Isle of Youth, the tobacco fields of the west, the mountains, the cooperative farms, the caves, the Bay of Pigs. Next time.

December 2: Havana, Cuba - - - > Montego Bay, Jamaica

Coming back to Jamaica was our last big hurdle in terms of keeping our tracks covered. All of us had entry stamps to Jamaica, but no exit stamps yet. As long as we didn’t get stamped again until leaving Jamaica, our passports would only have a record of us being in Jamaica the entire time. But my immigration official didn’t get the memo. She had the stamp up in the air about to bring it down on my passport until I screamed, “STOP!” She looked up at me like I was crazy. I explained I was in Cuba illegally and that my passport must not reflect this. She said that she had to stamp it. I made her ask the official next to her, who backed me up and said it was okay not to stamp it. Which is why I’m not writing to you from sunny Guantanamo Bay right now.

As cool as Cuba was, Jamaica was in many ways a relief. People spoke English. ATMs and visa cards worked. The food was fantastic. And best of all, Trevor was there. He met up with us at the airport food court before we took off for Ocho Rios, two hours away. Ocho Rios is a very special place in Jamaica, laying claim to both Bob Marley and civil rights activist Marcus Garvey. Trevor set us up in a perfect, classy old hotel right on the water. We had a room looking out on the catamarans, fishing boats and jet-skis that crossed from time to time. A short paddle out from our back yard was a long stretch of coral, just full of colorful fish, perfect for snorkeling. We spent the next five days there, managing to get in one good activity each day, but with plenty of time left over for cards, books, backgammon, iPod, and alternating between the pool and the calm, salty Caribbean.

One day we went somewhere called the Dunn’s River Falls. Since we had arrived, everyone was asking us if we’d seen the falls, so we went. We didn’t know what to expect. What we found was a series of waterfalls, and chains of white folks from the all-inclusives, laughing and slowly walking up the rocky steps of the cascades wearing little rubber shoes. We had to pay admission and then rent the shoes. Once we had worked our way up the exciting part of the river, we changed back into street clothes and tried to leave. But to do that, we were forced through a little village of tourist trap shops with, hands down, the most aggressive sales guys I have ever seen. One guy grabbed my wrist, shoved a wooden carving in my hand, closed my hand, and continued to hold it there while he pitched me about how this was his gift to me, I just had to take a look at the other stuff he had to sell. Once we got out of there we all breathed a sigh of relief. It made me long for the more lackadaisical service workers of Cuba.

The two countries seemed about as different as could be. And they aren’t in a hurry to understand each other, either. Everyone in Cuba asked us why we would want to spend any time in Jamaica. People in Jamaica asked us the same thing about Cuba. Jamaica is very unrepressed, convenient, expensive, and dangerous. Cuba is very safe, difficult, and bound by lots of rules. Jamaica has a lot more wealth and a lot more misery. There are three murders a day in the Capitol of Kingston. Cuba is very integrated, with lots of intermarriage between people of African and Spanish descent. Jamaica felt more monocultural. Superficially, it’s more like Haiti: almost totally black, and on average, poor, with a wealthy light-skinned and white elite as well as some smaller ethnic groups from Asia. The difference is that instead of white missionaries and development and relief workers and UN soldiers, like we have in Haiti, Jamaica just has a bunch of white tourists. And the streets are all paved and they have 24-hour electricity and fast food – that part’s pretty different from Haiti too. Drugs are everywhere. Walking down any street, really at any hour, you will be offered every kind of drug. We got used to ignoring it, even though a couple times we were accused of being racist for doing so. Needless to say, this doesn’t happen in Cuba.

One of the great ironies of Cuba-American relations is that the hardliners on both sides have very similar ideas of social policy. Both abhor pornography, liberal drug laws and homosexuality, and have a soft spot for baseball and classic American cars. Fidel used to publicly denounce homosexuality as a decadent outgrowth of the cancer that is capitalism.

Jamaica on the other hand has a thriving sex trade and drug laws are just another opportunity for police corruption. They do share the aversion to homosexuality, though. Gay people are killed from time to time in Jamaica. It’s deeply offensive to the conservative Christians and Rastafarians alike. Whereas among the younger generation of Cubans, homosexuality is becoming more accepted. At one point while Shane and Carly and I were in a taxi driving along the malecon, the cabbie pointed out a big crowd sitting on the seawall. He snickered and said that they were all gay, and as we looked closer we saw that there were a lot of same-sex couples. Cuba’s a-changin’.

December 8: Montego Bay, Jamaica - - - > Miami, FL

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Miami, FL - - - > Port-au-Prince

It’s been said that Haiti begins in the Miami airport. In addition to the janitors, who are almost all Haitians, there are the planeloads that pass through, always hauling giant bags full of stuff for friends and family back in the city, town or village. As I start to recognize those Creole words, those vivid expressions, a part of my brain that is like a dried sponge begins to absorb each drop, getting more supple every minute. My favorite Haitian musician, Belo, was seated three rows behind me in coach. He was just as cool and humble in person as his songs would suggest.

It felt so good to touch down in Haiti. I was picked up at the airport by Joseph, MCC’s chauffeur and one of my top ten favorite people of all time. He gave me all the news of friends, coworkers, the security situation and what not. He told me about the new class of police officers that just graduated from the academy. We passed a couple of them, wearing their strange new camouflage uniforms which look nothing like any other police uniform in Haiti. And on we rolled, catching up, running side errands, until we arrived at the big, locked gate to my house.

Cuba and Jamaica...

2008-01-09T09:58:00.001-05:00

Yes! Still working on it! In the meantime here's pictures of a pre-Christmas trip to Jacmel...

...a New Year's trip to Jérémie...

...and a close-up of my foot injuries from falling off a waterfall during that last trip. Believe me, it used to be a lot worse. I just took this photo after five days of antibiotics and not walking anywhere.

2007-12-27T16:59:00.000-05:00

Okay, I’m finally going to sit down and write about my trip to Cuba and Jamaica. But first I have to talk about an incident that has somewhat haunted me. It happened just before I left on my Caribbean vacation. I tried to write about it then, but I just wasn’t able, emotionally.

As I mentioned in my most recent post, my birthday was on October 31st, and I was lucky enough to have a couple parties in my name, both of which were wonderful. But the best party, without a doubt, was held on the weekend after. I hosted a joint birthday party along with three women who are working at GHESKIO, an AIDS clinic and research facility in Port-au-Prince.

To prepare for the big day, I got up at 4:30 am to ride my Honda down to the MCC guesthouse where we were to hold the party. There I met up with Joseph, the MCC chauffeur, and Saul, the guardian who lives there on the property with his family. We took off in the pickup towards La Saline, the number one place in Port-au-Prince to purchase a live goat on Saturday mornings.

I stayed in the car during the actual negotiation and purchase so as not to double the price. Here’s a picture of Saul and Joseph returning with their find. I snapped it through the rear-view mirror of the pickup.

After that, we picked up a hundred oranges and passionfruit, spices for the goat, a giant sack of charcoal, a pile of avocados, bunches of plantains, a couple flats of soda, and plenty of other things that I can't even remember now.

Let me explain how parties work in Haiti. If you throw a party, it is assumed that you will provide food - including some kind of meat - along with rice, beans, and a bevy of side dishes and a plethora of desserts. A wide assortment of soft drinks must be available. Most occasions also provide a healthy supply of Prestige, the national beer. And believe me, this is the bare minimum. Asking invitees to pay anything is a faux pas most grave. When I invited people in my office to the party a couple days ahead of time, they got very excited, and then got down to business telling me how not to blow it. I heard stories about foreigners living in Haiti who threw parties where there wasn't enough of this or that or big events where people were asked to chip in at the door. My coworkers were slapping each others backs, laughing hysterically at the thought of it.

So, does it seem like the expectations are a little high for hosts and hostesses in the poorest country of the Americas? Yes, they are. Ridiculously so. People go absolutely broke and into debt all the time just trying to fulfill their social obligations. The other option is to have friends over just for drinks and dessert or maybe just for some rice and chicken, but this requires you to insist at every opportunity that you are not throwing a party - it's just a little get-together.

As unfortunate as that is, it's great to go to a party knowing that you'll be well taken care of. But for our own party, we tried to lower the expectations a bit, reminding people that it was just us ignorant blans throwing it. The party was going to cost plenty already, and we were all on pretty tight budgets. We let people know we wouldn't be providing drinks. Still, we wanted to go for it and throw a party that was a step above the chips-and-salsa hangouts that we are used to back home. So we decided to kill and barbecue a goat.

I'll be merciful with the pictures from that whole process. I'll just show you a video of just before the deed was done...

...and what the goat looked like about an hour later.

As you can imagine, goats aren't very meaty. This one cost us about $30. A female. We could have gotten a male with more meat for about $45. And $60 would have bought us a strapping "chatre" or neutered goat, which is the meatiest of all.

For the slaughter, they cut the jugular while keeping the windpipe intact so that the goat would stay alive long enough to pump out as much blood as possible. After this rather excruciating display, Joseph went and pulled a long-stemmed papaya leaf off a tree. He removed the leaf and inserted one end of the two-foot long stem into a slit cut into one of the goat's rear ankles. He started blowing, and the goat's fur began separating from the muscle. The bubble grew and grew until the goat became an inflated goat. The ankle was tied off and the goat hung from a tree for slaughter. In about fifteen minutes, using only a machete and a kitchen knife, they had a bucket of organs and a bowl of meat.

I didn't stick around for the rest of the process, but it involved thoroughly washing each morsel of meat with sour oranges. This tenderizes the meat and removes that gamey, goaty smell and flavor. Then the morsels are marinated for hours in a sauce that includes a long list of spices, the only one of which I remember is garlic. Eventually, the goat is roasted over coals, in what they call buccaneer style. The result is a big plate of tender, delicious and flavorful meat. Unfortunately, the big plate wasn't quite big enough to feed everyone there at the party. The birthday kids all went without, but most people got at least a few bites. Plus there was a mountain of rice and beans, crispy fried plantains, salad, and plenty of other food. Plus a few pitchers of fresh squeezed orange-passionfruit juice. Plus three birthday cakes and an artistic birthday jello, made by the husband of one of the birthday girls.

The party was a great success. Probably fifty or sixty people all told. Some photos:

And the birthday kids:

But I have to write now about what happened afterwards. One of my coworkers had come to the party with a birthday present for me. I put it down on a table in the kitchen while we continued to prepare some of the food. Later, as the last of us were leaving, I looked and saw the gift on the table, and decided I would pick it up the next day when I came to clean up the giant mess left from the party.

The next day, the gift wasn't there. I hoped there was an explanation. I looked at my house, just to be sure. I called everyone that might have known where it was. But the more I looked at the situation, the more it seemed to me that the gift was taken by Saul. Saul is my friend. He is a warm and cheerful man. Physically, he is somewhat imposing, which is thrown off by his surprisingly high voice.

I played through the facts over and over again. Saul was the only person who had been in the house during the time when the gift disappeared, except for a woman who is living in the guesthouse - another friend of mine - who wasn't able to make it to the party until later on, and went straight to bed anyways as she was exhausted from writing papers for her online graduate courses. It was either Saul or her that took it, and I immediately suspected Saul. How could I? Things have gone missing at the guesthouse before. One time, just a couple weeks after I arrived here, I lost some cash. I was sure that I had left in on my dresser. The same thing happened to a female colleague. From that time, I had always held a little suspicion of Saul. It seemed to me at the time that he was the only person who would have the access, or at least he would have the most access. The truth is, things just go missing a lot in Haiti. It happens to everyone who lives here long enough. It's a very poor country, and of course people steal. Most houses in Haiti don't have a simple nuclear family living inside. Most live with relatives or friends. And in big houses with guards and housekeepers, there are even more people. And there is therefore a steady stream of friends and visitors coming and going, hanging out and what not. The MCC guesthouse is no exception. This is what I was told when I mentioned back then that the money seemed to have been taken - that it was probably someone who slipped in unnoticed when there were a lot of people around. Or perhaps a friend of one of our Haitian support staff who was visiting, saw the money, and couldn't resist what would seem to them like a lot of cash.

I still don't know what happened to that money. If someone took it, I don't know who. And of course I could have lost it all on my own. I always assumed it was Saul, though I never felt like I could ask him directly. When the gift went missing, however, I felt like I had to say something. He is the guardian, and MCC trusts him to keep things from getting stolen. If he himself is stealing things, well, that's not acceptable. I started thinking about how to deal with it. The next day after the gift went missing, I was in the office for a meeting and I took the opportunity to ask Saul if he had seen it. I tried to phrase it in a way that would allow him to save face by saying that he had it, but only because he wanted to make sure that it was safe until he could give it to me in person.

So I explained the situation, and he said he clearly remembered seeing the gift, but that if I didn't have it then he had no idea who did. I was frustrated. I became even more convinced that it was him. I began thinking about how I would deal with the issue. Often in Haiti, when someone needs to approach someone else over a very sensitive issue, they will send a third party to talk for them. I decided to take this route. I spoke with Garly, our office administrator, who I like a lot and consider a very thoughtful person. At times I felt uncomfortable there as a white man telling a Haitian man that I thought another Haitian man - his friend - had stolen from me, and I wanted him to help me find out if it was true. I tried to lay out the situation as fairly as I could. I told him that if Saul had taken the gift, and he simply gave it back once confronted, nothing drastic would happen. But I had no idea what to expect from my emissary. I became very afraid of the possibility that it would turn into an ugly situation. That Saul would be fired. That he would be forced to find not only a new job, but a new house for his wife and three children. And yet another part of me felt that I had been violated. The episode was like an open wound in my mind that festered more each day. I wanted badly for it to be resolved.

One week after the party, I stopped by the guesthouse to pick up my mail. Garly was there along with Saul and Joseph. I wasn't expecting the confrontation to happen then, but before I knew it we were sitting down together around the dining room table. We talked around the issue. I never accused Saul directly, but everyone there, including Saul, knew that I suspected him.

Garly and Joseph calmly and carefully laid out the facts, and arrived at the only conclusion possible, which is that the gift must have been taken by either Saul or the woman who was living at the guesthouse who, alas, was not Haitian. I said that I would go talk to her and ask about it, but being convinced that she hadn't taken it, I said that I didn't know what to do if she said no. Faced with the real consequences, I said that if both she and Saul denied responsibility, we would just have to forget about it. But Joseph and Garly were insistent that we could not do that. That it was necessary for us to resolve the issue for people to feel secure in that house.

So I went upstairs to talk to my friend, the woman living there. I began to ask about the gift, trying not to sound accusatory in any way, and she quickly said, "Oh yeah, I have that, was that yours?"

My first reaction was a wave of relief. There would be no further confrontation with Saul. Then my friend started feeling extremely guilty. She had been exhausted that night, and she saw something she thought was leftover from the party, and assumed it didn't really belong to anyone. And I told her then, and honestly still believe, that I completely understand. I've lived in big houses before where people are always coming and going, and the idea of property gets blurry. I explained my relief that it was her and not Saul, and that I did not in any way consider her a thief. She began crying all the same. That felt horrible.

Then I went downstairs to clear things up with Saul. I went out into the yard and found him and Garly and Joseph. I quickly explained that the gift was upstairs and everything was okay. I looked at Saul, and began to tell him that I was sorry. Before all the words came out, he winced, and then began to cry, and then sob. He staggered towards the door as Garly and Joseph moved to stop him. They held him and tried to calm him and explain why it was necessary to do this, and why it wasn't my fault. Joseph wisely said that we had to take this kind of thing head on because, "se Ayisyen nou ye": what we are is Haitians. He acknowledged in these few words, that being Haitian meant dealing with these kinds of accusations - and that overcoming these perceptions could only be done with fearless transparency. But Saul just stopped and said yes, while that may be true, he always felt that I was accusing him. And he continued to cry.

He was right. I always accused him. He could barely eat during the prior week. To be accused of stealing in Haiti is a very big deal. Thieves in the marketplace are sometimes beaten to death. And for Saul, to be accused by a white man, someone he considered a friend, was more painful than I can imagine. I'll never know what it feels to be judged like that. It was prejudice pure and simple, and prejudice hurts. I could probably spend the next ten years here and not see another Haitian man cry. It's very rare. But I saw it that day because of the emotional violence I had inflicted on this kind man.

I looked at Saul and it dawned on me just what I had done. I began to cry as well. Immediately he embraced me and told me that everything was fine, and that I shouldn't worry about it.

I couldn't stay at the house, I had to leave. I went home and didn't really go out much for the rest of the weekend. I kept playing over the events in my mind, wondering how I could be so wrong, so presumptuous. I felt like a monster. The comforts were few and small. I called Garly to tell him that I was having a very hard time with it, and he assured me that he too had thought it was most likely Saul who took the gift. Still, I though, how much of that was due to the way I explained and interpreted the whole affair from the beginning?

I went back to the house a couple days later, just to tell Saul that I still felt awful, and that I didn't deserve his forgiveness, and that I would be marked for the rest of my life with the lesson I learned there. Again the tears flowed. He just smiled and put his hand on my shoulder and that said it all.

I know this is a very personal thing to write on my blog. I was reading Geez magazine (if you're unfamiliar, check out www.geezmagazine.org) and I came across a quote that struck me. An activist named Sherene Razack "observes that white, privileged and respectable identity builds itself by being able to enter places of degeneracy and come out unscathed, willing and ready to tell the tale." I saw myself in this description, and I regret that. I do want to keep writing about my experiences here. Haiti has a tale to tell that's worth hearing. But not for the sheer thrill of it. It's important to hear because it reflects back on all of us who live lives of comfort and convenience, and who never have to suffer injustice and racism the way that people here do. I don't want to seem unaffected by the reality here. I am affected. I am quite scathed. Haiti has exposed me to my own ugliness, and as much as I'm ashamed of that, I don't want to hide it and pretend that I'm invincible and righteous and intent on teaching the people of Haiti a thing or two. I'm just glad I have an excuse to be here for the time being.

Year one, year thirty

2007-11-03T22:08:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday, October 28th, was International Prisoners' Day. To mark the occasion, I went to the National Penitentiary with a couple of my Haitian colleagues.

Imagine a U.S. prison big and crowded enough to hold about half of the country's prisoners. Now imagine that it was built just a couple of blocks away from the white house. Imagine that there was one day every year when the highest ranking officials of the prison and justice systems, along with a bunch of journalists and human rights activists, sat down together on one side of the main prison yard under a big tent. Across the aisle from these civilians was a corresponding number of prisoners, selected to represent all of the inmates. Imagine a religious service held there in the prison yard that emphasized the dignity and worth of all prisoners, stating in no uncertain terms that they were no different from anyone else, and that all free people would be judged for every injustice suffered by those incarcerated people. Then, imagine representatives of the government taking turns speaking to the crowd, doing their best to provide explanations for the problems of the criminal justice system. And finally, imagine that the prisoners themselves were then able to send their own representatives up front to say whatever they want, no matter how angry or inflammatory.

This was the scene, more or less last Sunday, and it was quite remarkable. The shame of the officials and the anger of the prisoners was not without reason. The prisons here are hellish. International treaties on prisoners' rights declare that each prisoner should have at least 4.5 square meters of space to themselves. In Port-au-Prince's National Penitentiary, as in most of Haiti's prisons, the actual figure is less than a square meter per inmate. The prisoners are packed in their cells worse than sardines; they have to sleep in shifts because there is not enough room for everyone to lie down on the floor at once. Many suffer from tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, beriberi (vitamin B deficiency), contagious itchy rashes, and other sicknesses which are impossible to contain in such overtaxed conditions.

Only a tiny fraction of the inmates have even been convicted of any crime. In Haiti it is legal to lock someone up once they have appeared before a judge to learn what crimes are being brought against them. But after that time, they are not supposed to spend more than two months in prison before going to trial. Of course, the vast majority of the prisoners at the National Penitentiary have been there for at least two months - some longer than two years - without yet going to trial. The reasons for this include corruption, gross incompetence, and a plain lack of resources on the part of the justice system.

Still, all told, I was impressed by the courage of the state authorities to acknowledge these problems, and the courage of the inmates to speak out against them, demand better treatment, and continue to hope that a better future is possible. The Haitian government is the author of many -- NOT all, but many -- of it's own troubles. But on this one occasion, you have to give them points for humility.

Special mass for the prisoners:

At times the priest's voice was drowned out by prisoners chanting in anger from their cells. It was a painful reminder that we all might be equal in God's eyes, but that spiritual reality means precious little to these miserable detainees.

Here's one of the prisoners speaking to the audience.

He was calm and dignified, but his words were heavy with determined, righteous anger.

The director of the penitentiary authority:

I've actually met with this man before. He's a giant. He is also a very serious and somber man, who I dare say feels real compassion for the prisoners that have been put under his charge. More than you can say for many of the wardens of individual prisons around the country.

The director presenting trophies to the soccer teams that won the tournament they played on the prison yard concrete.

There were also awards given to the winners of the dominos and checkers competitions. All of the winners were given the microphone to make a victory speech. And every one of them opted instead to denounce their conditions, demand justice, or mourn fellow inmates who had died.

Finally we were given a tour of the prison from the top of the wall that surrounds the complex. Here's some of what I saw:

How do you feed three thousand prisoners?

Surely this was made special for International Prisoners' Day -- the rice doesn't usually have beans in it. And even on this day, the beans were pretty skimpy by Haitian standards.

* * *

Wednesday was a fairly significant milestone. It marked my 365th day in Haiti, as well as my 30th birthday. I had a party at my office for lunch, along with Stephanie from Belgium, who's birthday was on the 30th. Then that evening I had my fellow MCCers and Remi over to my house, where my landlady/Haitian mother cooked an amazing, all local feast for us. Photos here:

Birthday 2007

I was kind of lazy and didn't write any captions. Remi did a better job on her album here.

I've heard several Haitians refer to a folk belief they have, that if a person isn't married by age 30, they will never be married at all. So all day on Wednesday, my Haitian coworkers were wishing me a happy birthday and promising to find me a nice wife, or telling me that they'd be praying for the right woman to find me. Even Russa, my Haitian mother, true to her role, gave me a big talk about how she was just sure that this year I would meet that special someone. Then she said something that my own mother definitely would not have included: "Because, Felix, I don't have to tell you that there are all kinds of dangerous diseases out there like AIDS and what not."

Uhhh, right. I'm not too worried about getting AIDS, so this wasn't a big selling point for marriage. I'm not one for superstition, either. But for all those women out there who are, I've got two words for you: last chance. Just one year to go! Start your engines! Fly, row, swim, do whatever you need to do to get to this island if you want a shot to be Mrs. Felix. Because if this fish gets away before Halloween 2008, he's gone for good!

I'll alert the coast guard to prepare for the major spike in immigration to Haiti.

* * *

Finally, I wanted to share some photos and video from the Gede celebrations. two Saturdays ago I went to a seminar on the celebrations that occur within Vodou every November 1st and 2nd. These are national holidays, and they focus on a class of Vodou spirits known as the Gede, who are the mediators of the life and death cycle. Chief among them is a figure known as Baron Samedi - sometimes depicted as a black man, sometimes as a skeleton, but always wearing a black suit and top hat.

One of my coworkers invited me to go with him to the Port-au-Prince cemetary -- the Gede ground zero -- on the morning of November 1st. The colors of Gede are black, white and purple, as you'll notice. The video Dafus and I took below is pretty rough, and I didn't edit it at all. I'm leaving it in its entirety for those of you who are really curious. First you'll see us approaching a crowd gathered around the black cross of Baron Samedi, where people are lighting candles and offering prayers and pouring out sacrifices of rum. Then, you'll see a couple of men dressed in purple and black approach from far away while the crowd makes a hubbub. There's some debate whether these men were actually gay or only pretending to be gay, but everyone started chanting right away men masisi!, which is a somewhat vulgar way of saying "here come the homosexuals."

Homosexuals live very secret lives in Haiti because public persecution can be very serious, but there was a certain tolerance on this occasion. There was also a lot of tolerance for taking photos. Normally, snapping close photos without permission can get you roughed up in Haiti, but people weren't bothered at all when Dafus and I were snapping shots or taking video.

After the scene by the Baron Samedi cross, you'll see some panning footage of the cemetary chapel as well as the tall, New Orleans-style graves. In Haiti, the graves are almost always these above ground plots for stacking caskets, or they are shaped like little houses. you'll be able to pick out a couple of those in the video too.

Finally, you'll see a crowd of people dressed all in white, chanting and singing. These are a bunch of new initiates into the Vodou priesthood. There's a lot more I could write about the things I saw there, but I don't even know where to start. Feel free to send questions, and I'll try and answer them.

Here's the video:

Here's some photos:

Gede

You can take the boy out of Seattle...

2007-10-20T14:38:00.006-05:00

I don't think that Seattle deserves the reputation it earned among some editorialists as the birth of the anti-globalization movement. I was there at the WTO protests in November 1999. It was pretty cool to see burly teamsters and other union members marching alongside wacky environmentalists dressed as turtles. Not to mention the Wiccans, the indigenous central Americans, the students, the hipsters, the hippies, the enviro-yuppies and the giant paper mache puppets. And then there was me and my fellow churchgoers, marching along under our patchwork banner: "Mennonites for Fair Trade." As if there weren't enough strange juxtapositions already, we spent a couple of blocks marching alongside a train of women who chose to go topless on that cold November day. Perhaps it was in this sense and this sense only that Seattle was a new kind of thing: a massive mobilization where people from very different walks of life decided to make a statement that they didn't like the trends they were seeing in the world.

It was a fun, even whimsical time. I'm proud that I was a part of it, even if it was eventually overshadowed by property damage and tear gas. The voices were many and varied. Robert Reich, the former labor secretary, was talking about that term, "globalization," when he said that never before has a word gone so quickly from meaning nothing to meaning everything. That is, a couple decades ago, you would just scratch your head if someone used the word globalization, and now it seems to encompass everything from the internet to McDonalds to worldwide jihad. So when all those people came together in Seattle, there wasn't much of a unified message beyond, "we're paying attention, and we don't like what we see."

That said, the vast majority of those gripes are rooted, I think it's fair to say, in the liberal trade policies that have made the United States of America the wealthiest, most dominant nation of all time. The people who run the United States are smart. They know they've got a good thing going, and they know how to make it even better. That's why the ideology of free trade is nicknamed the "Washington consensus." Remember that all those protests were directed at President Clinton. There's practically no difference between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to trade. (Nor on the military, really. As my pastor once said, putting a Democrat in the White House wouldn't do anything more than put a happy face on the American empire).

There is a vocal minority on each side of the isle that is plenty angry about losing jobs to China or environmental degradation, to be sure. But is there any chance in these modern times that someone could get elected to the highest office and actually treat the concerns of poor Americans (either in the national or the continental sense) as anywhere near on par with the concerns of the business community? I think not. Especially when the academics are backing them up all the way with endless charts and graphs that all say one thing: don't worry, we're still getting richer.

Inequality is growing everywhere?

Don't worry, on average we're still getting richer.

Glaciers are melting and storms are getting more extreme?

Different scientists have different opinions. The predictions are pretty speculative. But I've got good news: these numbers right here tell me that we're still getting richer. Besides, we're going to invent a way to make energy from garbage, like in Back to the Future.

We're spending more than we're making and we're only getting away with it because China and Japan are buying treasury bonds and financing our irresponsibility?

I know! Isn't it great? It's almost as if there's nothing we can do to stop getting richer! Woo hoo!

So anyways, as you might have guessed, Haiti hasn't been one of the big "winners" in the game of globalization. Most people would imagine that because of this, Haiti is nothing but a drag on the world economy. As Paul Farmer and Noam Chomsky have argued, however, there are plenty of ways to make money off of a pariah state like Haiti. The bourgeoisie do it. The Dominican Republic does it. And the United States does it. Well. And they all do it with a pitying attitude, like they deserve a pat on the back for finding ways to squeeze wealth out of the poorest people in the hemisphere.

I bring all this up to say that it could actually get worse. There's a free-trade agreement being proposed between Europe and poorer countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific rim. The agreement would only further weaken Haiti's feeble industry by reducing or abolishing tariffs on imports. Before it signed similar trade deals with the United States, Haiti was able to feed itself. Now it is the dumping ground for subsidized rice and any other product that can't compete in markets elsewhere. Supposedly it's worth it to undersell the local producers and put them out of business, because at least it brings prices down for consumers. But in reality, the consumers see very little change in their purchasing power, and it's the importers and retailers that make a killing.

So a lot of activists in countries that would be affected by this agreement have been staging protests. Luckily I got to see some of the action right here. Haitians love protesting even more than those ragamuffin Seattle people. My organization collaborated with other NGOs to do a press conference, a big concert, and, of course, a march. In another odd similarity between my life here and in Seattle, there are steep hills everywhere. In Seattle the protesters usually try to stick to the flatter parts of the city. But here, last Tuesday, I found myself trudging up an urban mountain, sweating profusely, carrying part of a banner that said, among other things, "BARE APE!"

It had nothing to do with primates. APE stands for Accord Partenariat Economique, which is French for "trust me, it's a win-win situation!'' "Bare APE" is Creole for "Block the Economic Partnership Agreement." The march was a lot of fun. There were between 50 and 100 of us for most of the time. We chanted, we sang, we danced. At one point we came across a completely unrelated protest and we stopped and pumped each other up to carry on our spirited, yet peaceful display.

The march almost got a ugly at one point. We stopped in front of the French embassy to register our outrage. At that moment, a UN vehicle came down the driveway to leave. We sort of got in their way and made them listen to what we had to say. Eventually, the big white SUV pushed its way through, and just as it broke free of the crowd someone threw a rock through the rear window.

The culprit--a one-handed man, incidentally, who was not part of the march--was immediately surrounded and loudly denounced. That didn't stop a Haitian website from posting a big picture of the shattered window (I also appeared in a photo attached to the same story, marching along with one fist in the air). And later in the day, probably as a result of the rock-throwing incident, a couple of guys with guns showed up. Lindsay and I got our picture taken with this nice gentleman because he was also an American:

The only way I knew his nationality was a little flag sown on the back of his kevlar vest. He had no official markings of any police or military agency, which makes me wonder if he was a private military contractor à la Blackwater. He kept his finger on the trigger like that the whole time, and muttered at one point that if anyone got out of line he was going to "kick some ass." His colleague, a slightly less evil-looking Austrian man, asked us how much we paid all of these Haitian people to protest with us. Charming.

All in all it was a good day of protesting.

A week and a half before that, the MCC volunteers in Port got together to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving -- or as the Canadians referred to it, "Thanksgiving." I know, weird. And we did our part to make it as local as possible. Josh and Marylynn even killed and plucked the chickens themselves. I made a fudge/mousse sort of thing using Haitian cocoa and avocado. You can read about it on the website for the 100-mile diet here. We're about a quarter of the way down.

What I did on my summer vacation from my own blog.

2007-09-29T12:38:00.005-05:00

My sincere apologies to family and friends. I've been fairly distant for the last month or so, both on the blog and on e-mail. There's been lots of problems with the internet both at RNDDH and at the MCC office. Basically everyone in Haiti is connected to the internet through the same sattelite service, which I assume means we're all using the same sattelite. I have no idea how these things work. But I've wondered if there might be something wrong with this one sattelite, and if this island might eventually be cut off completely from cyberspace. Seems like things are better now.

So, here's some of what I've been up to in the last month:

We had a team retreat. The reforestation team in Desarmes met up with those of us in Port-au-Prince for a few days at a resort called Club Indigo. The place was beautiful, if just ever so slightly dilapidated. Up until 1993 it was the Club Med. It's been rehabilitated lately, and has a nice kind of faded-glory ambiance to it. They even still use the Club Med plates and coffee cups and disposable napkins and paper placemats with a map of all the Club Meds in the world, circa 1990 or so. On this little map, Haiti is refered to as "the Magic Island." And best of all, whereas the food was probably all European back in the day, it's all pretty Haitian now. This was really good news for our Haitian staff. If there's one thing I can say confidently about Haitians - those who have not spent time off the island, is that they are not very adventurous when it comes to food. As far as they are concerned, Haitian food is far superior to any other kind. One day Josh (Canadian) was talking to Joseph (our Haitian chauffer) about favorite foods. I can't remember what Josh said - probably Thai-style noodles or something exotic like that. What is Joseph's favorite kind of food in the whole world? Rice. What that means is that every single day of his life, Joseph sits down to at least one meal of his favorite food in the whole world. "Yesssss! Sweet! Rice, AGAIN!"

But anyway, Club Med. There were pools, ping pong tables, a beautiful beach, a soccer field, what more could you ask for? We played a soccer game pitting the reforestation staff against the Port-au-Prince staff plus the reforestation team's administative assistant. So basically, it was the burly outdoorsy Haitians and North Americans versus the pencil pushing Haitians and North Americans. And guess who won. Pencil pushers, 10-0.

We did a lot of fun games and team-building stuff, but the highlight was probably the first-ever screening of "Crokinole" in Haiti. Let me explain: Josh Steckley, who works here in Port on advocacy issues, made a documentary with his cousin before he came to Haiti. Crokinole is a sort of board game where you try and flick a little puck into a circle. It's like a miniature version of curling. Not far from where Josh grew up in southern Ontario there is an "international championship" every year. The movie is really funny. I don't know if you can call something a "mockumentary" -- in the style of Spinal Tap or Best in Show -- if it's based on real life. But that's the feel of it. Catch Crokinole fever here.

Speaking of filmmaking, Josh and I spent a morning trying to get some good footage of the streets of Port-au-Prince. He's got some great ideas for short films he can make to get the word out on Haiti, and how US and Canadian policies affect people's lives here. So one day we devised a sort of hidden camera so that we could get some candid footage. We came up with a pretty cool one, made from a small cardboard box with a hole in the corner where we placed my little Nikon digital, but then all of our batteries ran out, so we didn't end up with much footage. And when Marylynn (Josh's wife) saw our little project, she just shook her head.

I'm lucky to have a team full of really cool people. But the winds of change are blowing here at MCC-Haiti. The first departure is Bethany, my next-door neighbor, and moto-pooler for the last two months. During most of my absence on this blog, I've been commuting by motorcycle to work, usually with Bethany on the back. She's a great sport. When she fears for her life, she keeps it quietly to herself. There should be a video game of driving in Port-au-Prince, complete with blind taptap drivers, blinding clouds of exhaust, and obstacles ranging from packs of dogs to chains of schoolchildren to guys trying to run across the road with 12-foot planks balanced on their shoulders. So Beth is now finished with MCC, and will be back at home in British Columbia before too long. And tomorrow Matt and Esther and Gabriela are moving to Port-au-Prince. They're finished with MCC, for now, but fortunately they'll be sticking around on the island for a little while. Matt will be working with an NGO here in the city while Esther balances between working with the foundation for the pine forest in Seguin (best place in Haiti - refer to earlier posts) and managing a campaign to get NGOs in Haiti to buy only local products. I'll be writing much more about that later. For people that like to vote with their dollars, there can sometimes be tough choices between buying fair-trade, buying organic, and buying local. In Haiti, buying local is clearly the way to go. More and more I'm convinced that this is true everywhere. "Organic" and "fair trade" can be pretty vague concepts, easily abused to make a quick buck because it's "cool" or whatever. When it comes to buying local I'm a more conscientious shopper here than I've ever been. But will I and my fellow MCCers be able to eat nothing but Haitian products for a year? Haiti imports something like 90% of the food it consumes, mostly thanks to the United States' bullying trade policy. So if a local diet can be done here, it can be done anywhere. Tune in and find out!

So those are the departures from team MCC-Haiti. In the arrivals department, Lindsay Williams has just finished her first week working with me at RNDDH. She's settling in nicely. I love the people that I work with at RNDDH, but I couldn't describe it as an easy place for a North American to get integrated. But already Lindsay looks like a really good fit. She's got her own blog too, which you can find listed under "MCC blogs" over on the right. I've made some other additions over there including a brand spanking new Haiti blogs section. There you can get a flavor for some of the political currents in Haiti. Also there is a blog by Rhemy Aleppo, a woman who is teaching in Haiti through the Reformed Church's development organization. She's originally Nigerian and so she's got an interesting perspective on life in Haiti, where people will often assume at first that she is a native. Also check out "three innocents and a spirit", which is a blog by Carla Bluntschli and Ari Nicolas. I haven't written nearly enough here about Ari and Carla. They've certainly been the most influential people for me in terms of understanding what Haiti is all about. Carla is an American who came here in the 80s with her husband Ron and daughters to do reforestation with MCC. Ari is a Haitian man who spent months in hiding at the MCC guesthouse, where I'm sitting now, after the coup of 1991. He's one of those people that just exudes wisdom. When he speaks, you listen. The blog is in regards to their play. They've been touring around the states for weeks now with a dramatic representation of the encounters between the indigenous people of the Americas, the Europeans, and the African slaves.

What else has been going on? I've had the use of a laptop for about a month now. It's pretty old, and not good for much other that watching DVD's. This means that instead of enriching myself with books, I've been watching films like "S.W.A.T." and "Bridget Jones' Diary." I probably could have spent that time better. I really knew it was getting bad when I found myself watching the featurette on the making of "Hitch."

On a less pathetic note, things are going well at work. It's been incredibly busy for the last month, and especially these last two weeks have flown by while I leave each day feeling like I've sunk a little deeper into the hole of work that I had planned to crawl out of. But at least it continues to be exciting and interesting. And at times, it feels like maybe, in some small way, I'm able to actually make a difference. A couple weeks ago I went on a routine visit to the Port-au-Prince central police station. We spoke with all of the people that were being held in the jail there. One young man informed me that he had been there for months, which is bad enough, and still hadn't seen a judge. The Haitian constitution says that all people arrested by the police should spend no more than 48 hours in jail before seeing a judge to find out exactly what charges are being brought against them. So my coworkers and I brought up the issue with the chief investigator. Long story short, this detainee's file had been shuffled into the archives accidentally. Sloppy bookkeeping turned this poor man into a ghost. It's impossible to say how long he would have languished there if we hadn't come along to point his case out to the police. The investigator was sincerely embarassed (rightfully so) and promised that they would do everthing to get him out of legal limbo as soon as possible.

I'll leave it off there for now. Like I said, things are good here, despite my relative silence. I very much appreciate all the e-mail I've received from people with news about what's going on with y'all. Love,

kurt

My First Hurricane

2007-08-21T14:59:00.000-05:00

I'll just come out and say it, so you can judge me however you want: Hurricane Dean was a letdown. I wanted more. I know that's a horrible thing to think, let alone write, but there it is. I only say it because I've heard other people, blans and Haitians, say the same thing. And actually, I got a better show than most of the people I know in Port-au-Prince. The capital just got a little bit of rain, nothing compared to the torrential downpours that hit the city at least a couple times each week in the rainy season. When the hurricane came, I was on the southern coast, a little closer to the action.

On Friday I flew from Port-au-Prince to Jeremie, a good sized city, and one of the most remote parts of the country. If you look at a map of Haiti, it resembles a lobster claw, with the southern half of the country as one long peninsula. Out at the end of the peninsula, on the north side, sits Jeremie. Jeremie calls itself the city of poets, and it has produced some great writers, including Alexandre Dumas, who wrote "The Three Musketeers" among other books. The city is well-known for a pastry you can get there called "konparèt"; it's about the size of a hamburger bun, but sweet, dense, and hard as a rock. The closest thing I can compare it to is biscotti. It's made with lots of ginger and it's delicious.

I was glad to be flying because I've heard nothing but horror stories about the road that connects Jeremie to Les Cayes, the nearest city. I went there for another human rights training for police officers. All day Friday was perfect and sunny. Saturday was noticeably windier, but still quite sunny. The UN outpost next to where we did our training was busy stacking sandbags all around their compound. I was supposed to fly back to Port on Saturday afternoon, but the flight was canceled on account of hurricane. But generally, people weren't very anxious about it, speaking casually of the coming storm, which they referred to as "move tan" pronounced to rhyme with "mow a lawn." In literal translation, move tan is Creole for "bad time" or "evil time" and refers to tropical storms, hurricanes, or anything that causes a day or two to go by without sunshine.

So, with no flight back, my coworkers and I had to decide what to do. Most of them had come a few days earlier by SUV to take care of other stuff. We decided to drive to Les Cayes, hopefully getting there before dark, and well before the hurricane. Thing is, there were six of us, and only five seats. I knew they'd be happy to cram four into the back seat, but I figured I'd just as well ride in the back with the luggage, and they'd definitely be more comfortable that way. So for five hours I was getting pitched around with the cooler and suitcases while we worked our way south. I can't overstate how bad the road was. It would have been impossible without a 4x4, and even then it was slow and torturous.

We landed at our hotel in Les Cayes, which happened to have CNN. One of their correspondents was in Port-au-Prince, breathlessly reporting that people were doing nothing to prepare. The computer models showed the storm coming right for us, since Les Cayes is out at the southwestern end of the peninsula. It looked like a buzz saw tearing through the city. After a little while I went upstairs and slept right through the whole thing.

In the morning, one of my coworkers came and woke me up to survey the destruction. He had woken up at 3 in the morning when the eye passed by several miles to the south, and said that the wind was very strong. When I went outside to take a look, it was cloudy and rainy and windy, which is incredibly rare here in the morning. The wind wasn't too very strong, but every few minutes a big gust would come through and rattle the tin roofs all around us, threatening to pull off the ones that weren't nailed down tight. Off on the horizon I could see the hundreds of coconut and palm trees that line the seashore, their branches flapping in the wind like pompoms held out the window of a moving car.

We left Les Cayes after breakfast. We got news that the worst part of the storm would be rolling through there at noon, so it seemed prudent to hit the road and get further inland, driving east back to Port-au-Prince. Leaving Les Cayes we drove along the coast where the water, usually azure, was muddy brown and beating against the shore in big, rough, irregular waves. The wind was intense along the shore, pushing the car around quite a bit. As the road took us away from the coast, we saw banana and plantain trees that had been blown down in their fields. Several big trees had been knocked down onto the road, but they were already pulled off to the side and in the process of being hacked into firewood.

The drive back was generally uneventful. Around 11, we hit the tail of the storm, which packed the biggest punch. It was a solid wall of rain that forced our chauffeur, who normally drives like a maniac, to creep along, hunched over the wheel and unable to see, even with the wipers full-speed. But once we made it through that it was smooth sailing. We got back to Port-au-Prince and talked to people who said the storm was a little anticlimactic for them. Oh well, maybe next time.

Just kidding.

Sort of.

The Family Hour

2007-08-11T07:14:00.000-05:00

My family, or most of it, was here from the 21st to the 30th of July. I was so excited in the week before they came that I could barely concentrate on work. And then once they were here the time flew by and before I knew it we were saying our sad goodbyes at the airport.

I asked my mom, dad and sister to jot down a paragraph about their experience here. Here's what they had to say.

Dad:
A vacation in Haiti!!! Friends gave me THE LOOK when I explained that Haiti was our destination. Now, eleven days after returning, I can report that it was a great time. Exiting the airport and seeing the BLAN, Kurt, across the parking lot still ranks as one of the highlights of the trip. Other highlights:
*Visiting with Kurt's (Felix's) co-workers and getting a sense of the mission
*Cool showers out of a 5 gallon bucket
*Gabby's Birthday party
*The beautiful beaches and warm water
*Driving through the DR and having the road blockaded by 40 women and children
*-and them telling us that they wanted our money................ so they could make soup for their husbands/fathers for Father's Day, which was the next day, and then seeing them all laugh hysterically, was wonderful.
*Watching and listening as Kurt conversed with the Haitian people and sensing his pride in this country and its people
*A late night meal by candlelight, roadside in Desarmes--best egg sandwich I have ever had
*Meeting and seeing some of the most beautiful people I have ever met in my life
*Holding our son again
*Meals, travel, conversations, sweating together, laughing, praying and having most of our family together again was just so good!

Now I am looking forward to that motorcycle trip across Haiti!!

Don (Dad)

Mom:
Haiti is such a place of contrasts: Intense poverty, but a wealth of pride in its history and culture. Poor infrastructure, but orderliness with street vendors' merchandise and sweeping of front steps. Lack of organized labor, but Haitians are well-dressed, polite and their children follow suit. We found the people to be lovely and accommodating. The food was wonderful (although we said, "Nyah-ah-ah" to Kurt's offer of a bite of goat stew). Haiti is not for the faint of heart....but one can't help but be impressed by its most important resource: its people.

And Holly:
One of the most impressive things I observed about Haiti was the community. Considering the very little I've learned about Haitian history (about as much as Cuba), I knew enough to realize that the small country has pretty much seen it all. However, despite the amount of violence and danger that we usually associate with Haiti, it is yet another place of community, of homes, of families, of friends. On a normal walk down the street I exchanged more "good mornings" than in my own hometown, and even the most persistent hawkers will share a laugh when possible. The people we came into contact with on our short visit were always hospitable in a way that seemed more customary than merely kind. And while I'd like to say it was because of Kurt's Kreyol that people were so quick to converse, I think it has more to do with the culture. We met a few nationals or second generation Haitians visiting from the States, and each one was so eager to move back to Haiti. This was also common among many Californian Central Americans I've met in the past few years, however the Haitians I met were not doing various hard labor jobs away from their families. These were privileged Haitians who were given the opportunity to leave home and pursue a completely different life. There was a sincere appreciation from the people I talked to that did not dismiss either their American or Haitian culture, but preferred the Haitian lifestyle to that in the States. I realize that this is not the case for all, that many Haitians would probably love to go to America and work, as many families depend on expatriate earnings overseas. Maybe it's because of my own discontent with parts of our culture that I would so gladly live somewhere else that it was refreshing to hear of such appreciation. Either way, the country's political and economic situation are definitely not making people want to stay- it's obviously because of the community and culture. These are of course the most important assets to any country, and in my own experience, Haiti is rich in both.

* * *

I picked up mom, dad and Holly at the Port-au-Prince airport on the morning of the 21st. Right away we drove out of the city and up the interior coast, called the Arcadian Coast. We stopped at a place called Moulin Sur Mer, or windmill on the sea, which used to be a sugarcane plantation, but now is a beach resort and a museum.

I had imagined my family showing up here, being somewhat bewildered by the sights and smells, and I would confidently stride in and show them how Haiti works. But in what became a sort of theme while they were here, I had plenty of firsts, bests, worsts, new experiences and revelations of my own while they were here. For starters, I had never been to Moulin Sur Mer before. I showed up with my family, and walked around thinking that this has to be one of the loveliest places I've seen in Haiti.

We walked into the buffet area just as the best man was delivering his toast at a wedding reception held there on the beach. It was typically flowery and tedious, and of course in French. We didn't waste much time. After eating we jumped in the warm Caribbean water and just floated around, catching up on everything that we could think to ask. If I remember right, we were the only white folks at the place -- somewhat surprising, considering that it wasn't exactly cheap to get a day pass there. My family looked around at our Haitian beach-mates, remarking about how beautiful everyone was. It's something they continued noticing throughout their stay in Haiti.

After the beach, we continued driving until we arrived in Desarmes. We walked out and bought egg sandwiches on the street, which is always one of my favorite part about visiting the reforestation program, and my dad mentioned it above as well. The next day, Sunday, we woke up for some bread, fruit and delicious Haitian coffee. We took a little hike and looked at the Artibonite river, guided by Esther and Gabriela:

Then we hoofed it over a small ridge to check out the view of Desarmes, and all the trees growing there, thanks in part to the work they've been doing there for the last 20 years.

On Sunday afternoon, Matt and Esther had a party to celebrate the one-year anniversary from when they brough Gabriela home. Check out their blog about the event here. There was pineapple upsdide-down cake, water baloons, bubbles and other fun stuff. The Haitian kids who came with their parents to the celebration were all dressed up, and not quite ready to go crazy with water baloons and the like. Some were more outgoing...

others not so much:

On Monday we drove back to Port-au-Prince in time for lunch at my office. Even though the Hildebrands were running late, everyone there waited until we arrived, after 2:00, to eat. It went well. My boss, Pierre, welcomed my family by telling them that they were much better looking than me. Oh yes, this was another theme: everywhere we went in Haiti, people said the exact same thing, "you parents are so young!" Then, inevitably, about ten minutes later, at least one of the guys would take me aside, put his hand on my shoulder, and discreetly say into my ear, "Kurt, your sister is very beautiful." I never really knew how to respond to this. Thank you?

There was a good mix of me translating for coworkers, coworkers doing as well as they could in English, and my family just speaking English to each other. My mother thanked them for lunch with a box of See's Candies which somehow, miraculously, didn't turn into a box of See's chocolate syrup in the tropical heat.

After lunch, we got back into the car and took a little tour of Port-au-Prince. At the absolute busiest, hottest part of the day, I attempted a drive down Jean Jacques Dessalines (the George Washington of Haiti), which is basically main street. The building facades all rusted and crumbling, traffic at a near standstill, and the street and sidewalks pulsating with human activity. Merchants selling everything from produce to cell phone chargers sat beneath umbrellas, crowds pressed up against them. At each intersection was a mountain of slimy refuse, much of it organic matter trimmed from produce. And there we were, watching it all from the cool, air conditioned bubble of a beige Nissan SUV. As I was focused on not running anyone over -- surprisingly hard, considering we probably never got above 10 miles per hour -- a man was standing outside of the car trying to get my family's attention. I didn't see him, I just heard their responses. "Kurt, this guy just said he was going to kill us." "Wait, what's that mean? He wants to eat us? He wants to kill us and eat us?!" "Oh, and now he's acting all nice like he wants to be friends with us."

This became a big revelation for me. The man in question approached the car windows to get their attention. First, he drew his index finger across his neck. Then he moved his fingertips, clustered together, towards his mouth. Then he smiled, hand held out. My family was surprisingly calm during this confusing display. The very next day, I saw a young boy make the same gesture as we passed. Finger across the neck, hand held out. That's when it all came together for me.

In my nine months here so far, I've been in some fairly dicey situations. Apocalyptic rainstorms, surging crowds, belligerent police, stone-throwing mini-riots. Last night I was at a vodou ceremony (more about that later), which wasn't scary at all, though I can imagine a time in my life when that would have been nothing but heebie jeebies. But, the scariest moment, hands down, happened on an afternoon in February. I was hiking around the hills north of Port-au-Prince with a friend, when we passed a field where two men were working. They were about 200 feet away. When one of the men saw us, he turned towards us, shrugged his shoulders with his arms up in the air -- a machete in his right hand -- and then pretended to slit his throat with the machete, and finally put his arms back up in the air. I have always assumed that the throat-slitting gesture is a fairly universal way of saying, "I am going to kill you" or "you're going to die" or something along those lines. I didn't think he was actually going to come kill me. It just struck me as a very hostile gesture. In my mind, he was saying, "Who do you think you are? You don't belong here, and you're going to learn that the hard way, maybe even the violent way, and there's nothing you can do about it." How wrong I was.

What I realized that day when the little boy made the same gesture, is that in Haiti, it doesn't mean "I'm going to kill you," it means "I'm dying." So the man standing outside of our car that day wasn't telling my family that he wanted to kill and eat them, he was telling them that he was starving to death, he needed food, and he needed them to give him either food or money. The scary machete guy was just asking me for some money, nothing more, nothing less. Amazing what a little miscommunication will do. It still chills me to think about the impression that machete guy left on me. It was always there, in the back of my mind. Anytime I felt like I was getting really comfortable in Haiti, this red button marked REMEMBER THE MACHETE GUY would start blinking and beeping. Nice to know it was unnecessary. That's not to say that Haiti is Disneyland, but it's good to realize when your own fears have been unfairly projected onto other people.

Anyway, as intense and interesting as the main street tour was, we all breathed a sigh of relief once we got out of the hurly burly of the downtown market. Our tour of Port-au-Prince continued the next day when we drove up into the mountains overlooking the city, where it looks so much more peaceful:

The two nights that we slept in Port-au-Prince, we stayed in Bethany's apartment, which is right next door to mine. As luck would have it, a blown transformer had knocked out all the power on the block. (to this day, we haven't gotten power back.)

I've gone weeks with only one or two hours of power a day, but I'd never been stuck with absolutely no electricity, at least not until my family came to visit. But we made the best of it. We lit candles. We took bucket showers (no power means no pumping the water up to the tanks on the roofs, which means no running water). And generally we crashed out pretty early.

On our last night in Port-au-Prince, I was lucky enough to introduce my family to the Assalis, the family from which I rent a studio. I was worried that my landlady would be out of town and unable to meet them, but her trip was delayed, so they got to meet her after all. My mother came bearing gifts: aplets and cotlets, which my landlady loves, and smoked salmon. They couldn't have given us a more gracious reception. Madame Assali chided me for not letting her cook us a big Haitian dinner. She called her 15-year-old daughter Tarah, who spends the school year in Tampa Bay, down to entertain the family in English. While they were all chatting, Madame pulled me into the parlor boutique that she runs out of her house. It's an aromatic little showroom where she sells fancy French perfumes and toiletries and designer clothes and shoes and that kind of stuff. She made me pick which fragrance of body wash my mom would most appreciate: citrus or lavender. I protested that it wasn't necessary, and she wouldn't hear anything of it. She wrapped it in newspaper and then wrapping paper and a little bow, all the while going on and on about how great my family is, how young my parents look, how gracious and perfect my mother is, how I really should have told her earlier so she could cook dinner, on and on. Just as we were finally about to go deliver this little gift, Monsieur Assali showed up.

Robert: What's that?

Russa: It's a gift for Felix's mom.

Robert: What about his dad? Why is everybody always giving things to moms? What about dads?!

Russa: Alright, let's wrap up this [very fancy looking hygiene product].

Robert: That's what I'm talking about!

Me: Please, really, you don't need to-

Robert and Russa: Nonsense!

-- the wrapping rigamarole ensues again, we're on our way out again --

Russa: But what about Holly? We can't just give Felix's parents these gifts and leave Holly with nothing! What about this lotion?

Robert: Yes, good idea! Wrap it up!

Me: Honestly, please, please don't worry about it.

Russa: I can't believe you didn't give me the chance to cook for your family!

At this point, my 75-year-old, charming, toothless landlord sidled over to me, put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Felix, your sister really is very pretty."

So we finally got out of there after being showered with gifts. We stashed them in my apartment and then headed out for dinner. Before we could open the front gate, my landlady called me back over.

Russa: Felix, Tarah just told me that it's your mom's birthday today!

Me: Yes it is.

Russa: Well, I just gave your family welcome gifts, but I had no idea it was your mother's birthday!!

Me: Oh, no, please, madame, don't-

Russa: I have to give your mother something! Would she like this painting?

Me: Of course she would like it, but it really isn't nec-

Russa: It will be wrapped and waiting for you when you get back from dinner.

* * *

On day five we took a bus to the Dominican Republic. The music was way too loud. It was all Dominican music until we got to the chaotic border crossing. Once we left Haiti and were driving across the smooth-paved Dominican freeway, it switched to Haitian music.

We found a hotel in Santo Domingo, across the park from the first cathedral built in the western hemisphere.

There were a lot of firsts in Santo Domingo. First hospital; first monastery; first fortress; first paved road; tallest building of the 16th century and that kind of thing. Dominicans are very proud that this was the first island where Christopher Columbus chose to settle down. We walked right by the house where Columbus' son lived for many years, as well as the house of Cortes, where he lived before he set out to destroy the Aztec civilization of Mexico. I couldn't help thinking that this island is so full of history and tragedy. European colonization started here. The utter annihilation of the indigenous population was done first here - I wonder if Columbus would be celebrated as much if even a tiny fraction of those Taino and Arawak people had survived the 16th century. The intercontinental slave trade started right here. The only bright spot is the Haitian slave revolt, the only successful one in history. And even after this, Haitian society went to war with itself, slavery began again in earnest, this time with Haitian masters. It also invaded the Dominican half of the island, and was later kicked out. A hundred years later the Dominican dictator Trujillo ordered the killing of 20,000 Haitians who were living on the Dominican side as field workers. Both sides of the island have had more than their share of tragedy, and they have nursed a steady grudge towards each other, despite the fact that their economies are completely intertwined. Haitians provide no less than 90% of all agricultural and construction labor in the Dominican Republic.

But anyways, I should really wrap this up. We hit the beach, we snorkeled, we ate delicious seafood, we drove many miles through the lush Dominican countryside. It was relaxing and wonderful. We stayed at one beach with, literally, boatloads of white folks getting shipped around like cattle, boozing all the way. We were a little more low key. We hired a fisherman to take the four of us out to an island for swimming and snorkeling.

Then we drove from the south coast to the north coast. Instead of a beach packed with pasty whitefolks, we found this beach where, with a couple exceptions, you couldn't see anyone on that entire stretch of sand in either direction. Mom and I were out in the waves when an official coast-guard looking guy showed up and told Holly that we shouldn't get too far out, because there were sharks in the water. Maybe that explains why the beach wasn't so crowded.

That night, the random hotel we found in the middle of nowhere served us a big, beautiful Dominican dinner, family style. Dad and I followed it up with island-made stogies. The next couple of days took us back to Santo Domingo and then back to Port-au-Prince, and then, for my dear family, back to the mainland. I still can't believe how quick it all flew by. It took me no time at all to get comfortable with them being here. But when they left, I became so aware of how much I had missed them in those first 9 months, and how much more I would miss them now that they'd visited and seen my life here.

So to console myself, two days after my family left I went on a dirt-bike trip with the other MCC guys. We spent three days and two nights up in the central plateau. Except for me getting giardia, and Brian getting a flat tire, it was a pretty smooth ride. We spent a couple afternoons at a waterfall called Bassin Zim. Here's me almost plowing over Josh as I dive off the rocks.

Here's what the falls look like from above, where there are three more pools:

And here's the whole thing. Those light colored dots near the middle of the photo are me and Brian, to give you a sense of scale.

Here's what we looked like when we got back. No Brian doesn't have an identical twin, this is a composite of two photos.

And just to bookend this post with another significant Gabriela life event, her baptism was held on the day after we got back from the bike trip. You can read about it on Matt and Esther's blog here.

Haitian Wedding

2007-07-11T20:07:00.000-05:00

Two Saturdays ago, I went to the Sacre Coeur Cathedral in downtown Port-au-Prince for a special treat: the wedding of my coworker Rosy Auguste.

Beautiful, isn't she?

I don't expect to see a lot of weddings in my time here. From what I've seen and heard, they don't happen very often. There's definitely not a wedding industry the same way there is back home. I believe that Seattle has something like three different wedding magazines. Seattle Bride and Seattle Wedding and that kind of nonsense. Rosy, on the other hand, had to wait for her mother to visit the United States, where she bought the wedding gown and brought it back to Haiti.

I can't say that weddings are rare. On the whole, there's plenty of Haitians getting married. But doing the whole official wedding thing doesn't seem to be a big "must" for most Haitians. This may be due to economics; weddings are pretty expensive no matter where you are. But at the same time, Haitians both rich and poor place a very high priority on baptims and funerals, often going way into debt for the sake of these social and religious obligations. But when it comes to marriages, there is a much more relaxed attitude.

This could be because dating is taken very seriously, there's nothing casual about it. Haitians don't generally "date around" much. They refer to their boyfriends and girlfriends as "menaj," which comes from the French word "ménage" that usually refers to a married couple. There is no step below menaj. You don't work your way up to menaj. Once you've declared that someone is your menaj, it's assumed that you are quite serious, perhaps even living together as if you were married. Perhaps with children. Women in relationships like this are often referred to as the "madam" or wife, of their boyfriend. Men, however, don't earn the title of "mari" or "husband" until they produce a ring. There's also a fairly common practice of men who are already in relationships taking a "ti menaj," or "little girlfriend" or two on the side. This double-standard is a Latin America-wide phenomenon, and some would say it's much less common in Haiti than in some of it's Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking neighbors.

But maybe there is a real split between Haiti and the rest of Latin American when it comes to marriage. Whereas abortion is completely illegal here, much like other Latin countries, divorce is as easy as can be. The laws are incredibly accommoding. Steely Dan even wrote a song called "Haitian Divorce," owing to the fact that there used to be a sort of niche market for "divorce tourism" here in the 70s. North American couples that wanted to untie the knot without all the legal fuss could get it done in an afternoon, and then stay for the weekend and come home tanned and ready for life as a single once again. Haiti is to divorcing what Las Vegas is to getting married. You can even get a unilateral divorce here, no matter how much your poor spouse protests.

But like I said, weddings still happen all the time, and I'm sure they're usually as lovely as the one I saw. It's especially interesting that Rosy chose to have a traditional wedding considering this: her father was a prominent houngan, or voodou priest, who had several madams. Rosy was the last of the thirty children he fathered. We've never spoken at length about it, so I don't know if her mother had a traditional catholic wedding or not, but I would guess not.

* * *

I also wanted to follow up on one of the comments to the last thing I posted here, about sayings in Creole. Matt shared one of his favorites, which I totally should have included the first time:

M ap kraze rak
I heard this a few times in my office before asking what it meant. A "rak" is a big bunch of trees, or a small forest. The phrase "m ap kraze rak" literally means, "I'm going to destroy a forest." People say it when they're about to leave somewhere. "Whoa, look at the time, I'm going to destroy a forest." The idea is that you're going to take off, you're going to hit the road, you're getting out of there at full speed, and you'll be going so fast that there won't be any trees left standing near the path you blaze.

My friend Almarie e-mailed me about the phrase "anpil bet" or "lots of animals" referring to wisdom. Whereas I thought it had to do with valuing wisdom as much as livestock, she had a more enlightened understaning: "my theory is one more based on animism, and on all the animals really being there, talking, with input, like in mythical times." A couple of days ago, a friend used the phrase this way, "moun sa a te gen anpil bét nan tét li." Translation: That person had a lot of animals in his/her head" -- which means "that person was incredibly wise." In light of this, I think Almarie has it right.

These are a few of my favorite things...

2007-07-05T20:06:00.000-05:00

...that Haitians say. I've said before here that Haitian Creole has a lot of colorful expressions, perhaps to offset the utter simplicity of the grammar and vocabulary. Here's some of the more interesting expressions I've learned in the last few weeks:

Tèt nèg
Literally, it means a black man's head. In normal conversation, it's used to describe something that's expensive. If Haiti had Starbucks, you'd probably hear someone say "You're getting a frappuccino?! Those things are a black man's head!" The expression probably goes back well over two hundred years, to the days of slavery, when saying that something cost as much as a human being may have been shorthand for "it ain't cheap."

Radyo trant-de
Or, Radio 32. It's another way of saying "the grapevine." Why number 32? Because there's 32 teeth in most people's mouths. "What? Those two hooked up? That's crazy! Where did you hear that?" "Oh, you know, Radio 32!" I don't know if I've ever seen people that love talking as much as Haitians, which of course means that they're also terrific gossips. I can attest to this by the fact that I've heard at least 4 other expressions for "the grapevine" in addition to Radio 32.

Bèt
A friend of mine, a Haitian journalist, was recently in Geneva for a human rights seminar. When he got back I called him up and asked how it was. He replied. "Li te vreman enteresan. Te gen anpil bet la." Translation: "It was really interesting. There were a bunch of animals there." Huh? I got off the phone with him and asked one of my coworkers about it. He just laughed and said, that's a way of saying a lot of useful information was shared. "Bèt" comes from the same latin word that gives us "beast" in English. Here, it refers to any animal. Insects are called "ti bèt," or little beasts. But in the context of a classroom, a seminar, or a long conversation with a wise person, when you say that there were animals there, or that a person had a bunch of animals, or that you gained a bunch of animals, you're saying that you learned a lot. This has become one of my favorite sayings; my theory is that it reflects how much Haitians value knowledge. Since animals are a form of wealth for most Haitians, it means that learning something new is like someone handing you a nice fat pig. But that's just my theory.

Depi berejenn goumen ak konkonmb
This one is rare, and it makes absolutely no sense to me. When something has been a certain way for a long time, Creole has a couple ways of remarking on it. You can say "se konsa", or "that's how it is." You can say "it's been like that since the king was a colonel," which has a nice ring to it, even in English. Or you can say "se konsa depi berejenn goumen ak konkonmb." Which means, literally, "it's been like that since eggplant fought with cucumber." I've asked people to explain this to me, and so far everyone is at a complete loss. Of course, those are some of the best expressions, the ones that nobody can figure out, though we go on using them, like habits we don't remember picking up.

Sa ki pa touye w, li angrese w
"What doesn't kill you makes you fatter." I'm not sure if this means the same as, or the polar opposite from "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger." It could go either way.