Kreyol Kurt

Hispanola is a Bird #3

2010-06-04T20:41:00.004-05:00

My brother came to Port-au-Prince two weeks ago. He was checking out a place where his church might send a work team, but we were lucky enough to have a few days together.

Here's us at the airport:

I took him to a house up in the mountains above the city where people on my team go to take a break from the crowded streets of Port. After I showed him around and we started eating the tasty (greasy) fried street food we had picked up, he said, "okay, I'm not waiting any longer to hear the end of the story from your blog. What happened next?"

First of all, I'm sorry that I wrote the first two parts of this story back in January and February and am only just now getting the next part out there. Second, I imagine that some people who know me and have read this blog are much more interested in what's happening in Haiti right now, considering that it's not in the news much anymore. But I'll try to sum up what I told my brother up there in Kenscoff.

For me, the story of those first couple of days is closely tied together with the story of J and R who miraculously survived the collapse of their 5-story apartment building. When I saw them on the back of B's motorcycle, I could hardly believe it. Even though I would have spent all night looking for them, I couldn't imagine how anyone could survive that fall. B told me that their next door neighbor, an American woman, was at a hospital down the street with M, and that her back was probably broken. They were lying in the yard with a few hundred other people, the hospital staff long since overwhelmed. B told me I should go check on another hospital that was closer to downtown to see if they could get her admitted there.

So I got back on the motorcycle and headed down that way. I got to Champs de Mars, the huge public space where the palace is located. It was already filling up with people. Before turning the corner to swing by the other hospital, I thought I should check and see if it's true what I had heard about the palace. From my memory, it was actually fairly intact at that point, and for the first couple of seconds I thought that its collapse may have been only a rumor. But once I saw the minaret-type rooftops on the left and right sides slumping towards the front lawn, I realized that it was just a matter of time until it would be demolished.

Today Champs de Mars looks like a refugee camp that's been there for years. The palace continues to decompose slowly. It appears to have had a few truckloads of rubble hauled away from the front of it, but otherwise it remains a poignant national symbol of What the Hell Do We Do Next?

I turned around and drove back up the hill towards the CDTI hospital that would hopefully at the very least have a few beds set up out in the yard where we could get J and R's neighbor set up with a neck brace or something. A block before I arrived at the hospital, I looked to my right and saw the Sacred Heart cathedral. The face of it had dissolved into a slope of bricks, coming up around the ankles of the life-size sculpture of Jesus on the cross which was perched on the corner of the front of the lot. This was another jolting moment, and I thought about the wedding I'd been to there back in 2007 which I wrote about here.

I wanted to be further along than this, but my battery is almost dead and it's probably best to just publish this and keep writing more later. My calendar program is now set to remind me each week to write on the blog, so I don't intend to leave this story hanging for much longer.

Hispanola is a Bird #2

2010-02-10T23:41:00.000-05:00

I handed the baby to a man who clearly had some practice holding kids. They decided it was best for him to get away from the wrecked building and over to the gathering of people where they could hopefully find some someone with a bottle and formula. The baby couldn't have been more than 3 months old.

The mother was almost free of obstruction. She had become much calmer, and was instructing us about where to dig. Her husband had died in the collapse and now laid next to her with one arm slumped over her midsection. I still think about this family. The man was large. He had probably died from a sharp blow to the head, since we could see most of his body and it wasn’t pinned down under anything. He had given his life to protect his family. And his wife had suffered lots of scrapes and cuts to protect her baby. And because they reacted automatically the way they did, without any time to think, their baby was alive without so much as a scratch.

We dug around the mother’s legs a bit more and moved some big chunks of the concrete flooring before we were able to lift her out. We sat her down on a flat piece of concrete. We gave her some of the bottled water that had been in that sideways crushed refrigerator. She had been stuck in that building for probably five hours at that point. When she caught her breath, she looked up at us and asked, “what happened to this building?” A younger guy bluntly replied, “This building?! This whole country has been destroyed! It’s finished!” She stared at him blankly, unable to process what he was telling her. After another minute we carried her down a path of concrete, twisted metal railings and a fallen telephone pole to get her over to the crowd that had spontaneously formed.

I asked around again if anyone had seen a younger white couple, and still nothing encouraging. I realized I had no choice but to move on and check on the rest of the team. I walked back up to where my motorcycle was parked. My t-shirt was still with the man from the other building, all covered in blood and concrete dust. But I didn’t quite realize that I was half-naked until I got on the bike and was hit with the wind-chill.

I was climbing up Canape Vert, on my way to check on another American couple, A and B, when I heard honking behind me. I pulled over and there were A and B on their motorcycle. It was an incredible relief to see them. I told them that I had been down the hill looking for J and R, and that I was afraid that they might be gone. They said they were just down there as well, and that someone had told them that J and R hadn’t come home from work yet when the earthquake happened. I wanted to be encouraged by this, but it was difficult.

I got around to explaining why I didn’t have a shirt on, and B told me he had one in his backpack. I’ve never told B this, but I always saw him as the number one person I would want with me after some kind of apocalyptic event. He’s always as cool as a cucumber yet prepared for whatever. And sure enough, at that moment he was able to give me the one thing I needed most, other than cell phone service.

We traded all the information that we had, and made a plan to check on the rest of the expats. I showed up at M and E’s house and there was already a small gathering of team members and other friends. We all told our stories. E was the group mother, full of positive energy and seemingly unfazed. She encouraged everyone to drink water and at least have some bread and peanut butter. We all hurried to process what we knew of the situation. Every now and then someone would say something that would remind us all that there were surely thousands of people alive but trapped under concrete. And we all responded with silence. I learned that the supreme court building had collapsed, that the Caribbean supermarket had collapsed, that the Montana Hotel had collapsed. I heard that the national palace had collapsed, but then the word was that it was only a wing of the national palace that was damaged. We all figured that the way rumors travel in Haiti, we should maybe take all this news with a grain of salt.

After A and B showed up, we came up with a plan to go back down the hill looking for J and R. I would go check with their coworkers who would have seen them last, and then check the office where they worked in case they had gone there for shelter. M and B would go drive around their neighborhood.

I left E and M’s house to drive down Delmas, the biggest arterial in Port-au-Prince. The street had become a vast campground. Where there used to be four lanes divided by a median, there was now two, and in some places only one, snaking back and forth between the two sides. Everywhere people sat on mattresses or blankets or just sheets on top of the asphalt. They swayed back and forth with their arms in the air, singing.

I drove by the corner where the Caribbean supermarket used to be visible high above the 15-foot walls that surround its parking lot. Now I could see nothing beyond those walls. Some buildings had fallen right onto Delmas. Others had collapsed sideways. It was very dark, and I remember at times seeing the silhouettes of buildings that seemed perfectly intact, but were several degrees off kilter.

I arrived in the neighborhood where some of J and R’s coworkers live. Everyone had brought chairs and mattresses out into the street and were talking in hushed tones. Because there were no working streetlights I announced myself. I couldn’t see anyone but I asked them to tell me who all was there. Then I asked if anyone had news about J and R. They said that no, the last time anyone saw them was at 4pm, when they left work. I told them that I had seen their apartment building, and that it was completely collapsed. There was a heartbreaking silence. It may have lasted only three or four seconds, but it felt like forever.

Then someone said, “They probably went grocery shopping after work.”

Someone else: “No, they liked buying things on the street, they were probably outside when it happened.”

“They’re probably safe with some friends of theirs who live in the area.”

It had probably been eight hours since the earthquake, and maybe seven hours since I saw J and R’s apartment building in shambles. I’d been through all of these possibilities over and over again in my mind and was craving some certainty. I took off again for their neighborhood. This time I went along the roads that I knew were relatively clear. When I arrived back on their street, I went to talk to people at that same improvised gathering where we had brought the mother and baby. I asked the first person I saw if he had seen a white couple. He said no. I started running towards the building to climb back up and see if I could maybe hear something. As I ran away I heard someone say, “Blan!” (white guy!) I ran back. A man told me that he had seen a young white couple.

“Did the guy have a beard??”

“Yes!”

“Did she have long hair??”

“Yes! And glasses.”

“Glasses?” R didn’t wear glasses. But I thought, what are the odds this isn’t them? “Where did you see them last?”

“Just around the corner in front of the police station. The guy had some blood on his face.”

We ran together up the hill and around the corner to the police station. As we were turning on to Canape Vert I heard Theodore shout from one of the groups of people huddled next to a floodlight there. “Hey, did you find your friends?”

“I think so! I hope so!”

And right at that moment I saw B – shirtless himself this time – coming towards me on his motorcycle with J and R perched on the seat behind him. I don’t know what sound I made, but it was probably something between a shriek and a laugh. I bear hugged them and told them how happy I was to see them. They told me that they had been at home, in their apartment on the fifth floor, when the earthquake came and it all fell to the ground. I was dumbfounded. At one point I remember I was so happy I slapped the tops of their helmets, perhaps to make sure they were really there. J, in his typically kind manner asked me to take it easy with the slapping, and that’s when I saw the dried blood on his face.

B told me to go check on M, who was waiting in the parking lot of a hospital with a woman who probably had a broken back. We made plans to meet up later, and I took off down the hill in that direction.

Hispanola is a Bird (title to be explained later) #1

2010-01-26T00:03:00.003-05:00

I can't sleep. Tomorrow will mark the second week since an earthquake forever changed the lives of everyone in and around Port-au-Prince.

When the earthquake hit at 4:50pm, Tuesday the 12th, I was in the MCC office/guesthouse. Everyone had left for the day, and I was sitting down to write a couple of e-mails when it came. At first it felt like intense nausea. I hung on to the ironwork that surrounds the porch area of the office and rode it out. Having experienced a pretty strong earthquake in Seattle back in 2000, I quickly figured out what was happening, but was still baffled. Natural disasters come with the territory here, but they're usually weather-related. After the shaking stopped, the first thing I noticed was a rising cloud of dust everywhere I could see. I ran around the house to survey the damage: a bunch of broken glasses on the kitchen floor; the library turned upside-down; water gushing out of a broken pipe in the tank on top of the house; the wall that separates the back yard from the ravine behind it simply disappeared.

Immediately, everywhere, shouts rose up. People waved their arms around and screamed, desperately, "Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Thank you God!"

No, it wasn't sarcasm. It was, from what I could tell, two things - thankfulness from those that were spared, and a surrender to the second coming of Christ. And in those first disorienting moments, I was ready for anything, and wouldn't have been much more surprised to see the sun blotted out of the sky. It felt biblical indeed.

But soon enough I felt able to focus my thoughts and I went to speak to the people who live in the rickety lean-tos in the ravine behind the house. Looking through the huge gap where the wall had fallen into the ravine, I asked them if anyone had been hurt. They said no, thanks be to God. "Are your houses okay?" "Yeah, they're fine." and sure enough, everyone's houses looked fine. I could hear people wailing in every direction, but at that moment I saw very little destruction, only a large dust cloud that continued to rise and dissipate. I thought to myself, maybe it wasn't so bad.

I went up on the roof and plugged the hole in the water tank with a felt-tipped marker wrapped in a t-shirt. I tried making a few phone calls, but none would get through. The same exact thing happened after the Seattle quake, so I knew it was no good trying after that. I grabbed my backpack and prepared to head out on the motorcycle and check up on everyone. Right after I put on my helmet and locked the front door, J, our Haitian administrative assistant came running through the front gate. He was hysterical. He was weaving around, as if no longer in control of his tiny frame, clutching his bible in one hand. He was alternately speaking to God and wailing in anguish for his family that he had not yet seen and for whom he feared the worst. It was almost as if he didn't see me, but he came towards me all the same and his legs gave out from under him as soon as his head collided with my chest. I sat down on the driveway and held him like a child. He spewed out a dreamlike narrative of the utter destruction that he had seen.

After maybe 15 seconds, I told him that we would go immediately to his house and make sure that his family was okay. We took off on the motorcycle and were soon driving through shell shocked crowds, and everywhere people with their arms in the air and faces turned upwards. The road was littered with cinder blocks from fallen concrete walls. Here and there were wrecked cars, already abandoned. As we neared J's house, we drove by what used to be a large, beautiful hotel. Only a third of it remained, and a boy was dragging a lifeless woman out of its parking lot towards a growing, awe-struck crowd. The sense of nausea and disorientation came back in force and J amped up his semi-coherent rambling.

A minute later we were at his house where he collapsed into the arms of his wife and two kids. Thankfully, they showed no signs of injury. I said goodbye and took off towards the apartment building where one of our team's couples lived, the one closest to downtown. Now on major streets, there were wrecked cars everywhere, giant buildings reduced to rubble, fallen trees, and downed power lines. I can hardly believe that I made it through the surging crowds of people, almost all of which were trying to get up the hill and away from the city center as quickly as possible. It was very dark except for my own headlight and the illuminated cellphones all around. At times it seemed like there was no way to get down the hill against the rush of people, and yet even turning the motorcycle around seemed impossible, so I pushed on with a lot of honking and apologizing. Eventually I arrived in what was my old neighborhood. I gave J and R this apartment so that they could be walking distance to work. I came around the corner and saw, in the place of what used to be a five-story building, a pile of concrete no more than twenty feet high. My old apartment, J and R's place, had been a corner unit on the fifth floor. My heart sank. I stopped the motorcycle and ran to the nearest person and asked him if he'd seen a white couple in the area. "I saw an older white woman being pulled out of that building there," he said pointing in the direction of J and R's place. "You're sure she was old??" "Yes, white hair."

I scrambled up to the top of the building, standing on that same spot of the roof where I used to go to watch the sun set over Port-au-Prince bay. I shook and staggered and screamed J and R's names as loud as I could. I felt like I was dying. I thought of J and R's parents, and how they might not even know yet that there had been an earthquake in Haiti. I got down on my knees to see if I could hear anything. A baby's cry came out from somewhere under the concrete.

Just then a man came climbing up on top of the building. He was shirtless and carrying a hammer. He asked me if I could come help him. I told him that my friends might be in this building. He said that yes, they might be there, but we had no way to know, and there was someone pinned under rubble in a building a block away, and that we could save him. I think this man is the closest thing I've seen to an angel. His name was Theodore. He was calm, but insistent that I come help him save someone who wasn't a friend or even an acquaintance of his. Just a total stranger. And he kept referring to the trapped man not as a man or a person or a victim, but as a life. "We have to go now, we can save a life."

"But can't you hear that baby crying?"

"Yes, this building is full of people. We'll come back. But right now we can go and save a life."

I still don't know how to feel about what I did next. It's as if the distinctions between all people were erased. I am personally responsible for some 23 national and international staff, and at this point I only knew that one of them was safe. And where I was standing at that moment, I could hear a baby crying under the rubble. And yet I stood up and told Theodore that I would follow him, because we could save a life.

We walked across the roof of the building and down the other side and up the street to another collapsed building that before the earthquake was almost identical to the one where J and R lived. Sure enough, there was a man, lying on his left side, with his right arm and right leg pinned under a mess of concrete and rebar. The man was calm and coherent, definitely in shock. Theodore began hammering away. He asked me to take off my t-shirt and put it over the man's face to protect him from flying bits of cement. We were positioned right at the bottom of a big concrete avalanche waiting to happen. Every ten minutes or so another tremor would come and we would stumble down the side of the building to safety, wait a few seconds to catch our breath, and then climb back up. I don't know how long we worked to free the man, but it was probably about 90 minutes. After a half an hour, we all exchanged names. Other people came and went from time to time, sometimes shining a flashlight so we could see what we were doing. After about an hour, both limbs were still pinned. His right arm was clearly broken in several places. When we dug out his right leg so that we could see almost to his ankle, we realized that it was another person's arm that was wrapped around his foot. This was the final obstruction. At one point I was yanking on this arm as hard as I could, literally trying to free this one life from the grip of death. When we finally got him free, we carried him down to the street, and laid him out.

I told Theodore I had to go and he said he wouldn't be far behind, but that he had to make sure the man got some medical attention. I ran back to J and R's building. The baby was still there crying. It seemed to be coming from under a smashed, sideways refrigerator. I don't know if it was a really cheap refrigerator, or if this was one of those super-strength adrenaline moments, but I ripped that refrigerator apart with my two hands. Then I was lifting big chunks of floor and rolling them off the side of the building. Soon a few other guys joined me. A woman began screaming for help. I told her to save her strength and that I knew where she was and that we were coming, but she just kept screaming. After digging for maybe 20 minutes we lifted a huge slab of concrete and could see into a space under a section of floor the woman on her back with a tiny baby almost perfectly upside-down against her waist. I laid down on the floor slab and reached down and under and got a single hand grip of the baby's onesie and pulled him out using the other hand to cradle his head. He was by all appearances unharmed.

Well, shoot, that felt good to get down in writing. But it's late now, and my computer battery is almost dead. I'm still sleeping outside, as is everyone I know. The aftershocks just keep coming, at least one each day. But we're all feeling phantom aftershocks every now and then too.

I guess I'll have to tell this story in a few installments.

On the long and winding road in Haiti

2010-01-06T07:54:00.001-05:00

This may well fall under the "you had to be there" category, but here is a video - a trilogy if you will - of myself, dad, and Tad coming back into Port-au-Prince after our motorcycle trip in southwest Haiti.

Enjoy (I hope!)

And the photos (I'm hoping to get some captions in there before too long)...

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.

First Annual MCC Haiti Film Festival

2007-06-22T14:58:00.000-05:00

This year, tying for the coveted golden rooster prize, were two films: one by Josh Steckley, and one put together by Matthew Van Geest and Esther de Groot.

First, by Josh Steckley, a video montage of life in Dezam, set to the music of an a capella men's chorus that performed at MCC's last team meeting. Critics are calling it a "tour de force" and "cinéma vérité at its finest."

And finally, the cinematic event that has everyone talking: Gabri Walks! Yes, Gabriella -- star of such films as Gabri Stands! and Gabri Tries to Eat a Cat! -- is now fully mobile. Watch out red carpets everywhere! This timeless tale of a baby walking takes a surprising, twenty-first century twist. To find out what, you'll have to watch it yourself. Hint: it makes walking while chewing gum look like child's play, so to speak.

Hallowed ground

2007-06-20T20:23:00.000-05:00

Last weekend was my third return to Dezam, where I originally went for a month to learn Creole. The MCC reforestation project holds what it calls "livrezon," or delivery, each year around June. This is when their network of tree nurseries hand out thousands of trees for free to the peasants that live in this part of the Artibonite valley. I drove out with Josh and Marylynn on Saturday, picking up a couple watermelons from roadside stands on the way.

We woke up early Sunday morning to get the word out. Teaming up with tree nursery workers, we fanned out in teams of three or four and visited churches. We talked about the importance of trees, which of course wasn't lost on any of these people. We also informed them that because there had been three days of no rain, the delivery wouldn't happen on Monday morning unless the dry spell was broken. I've never actually been affected by a lack of rain before in my life. Supposedly a few years ago in Seattle was one of the worst droughts the city had ever seen, but the water kept flowing out of my tap the same as ever. Here, just three days without rainfall is enough to disrupt the normal flow of life, and everyone feels it.

Unfortunately, the rain didn't come Sunday afternoon as we had expected. So the livrezon was delayed, and we came up with other plans. Not far from Dezam is a place called Saut d'Eau, literally "jump of water."

A couple of weeks ago I received a care package from my home church, Seattle Mennonite. Among the goodies were a stack of letters written on recycled squares of paper. One of them was from Jennifer Delanty, whose children I taught in Sunday school. Last year, when Jennifer found out I was going to Haiti, she was very excited, and recommended a book to me called Quitting America. It's by a civil rights lawyer named Randall Robinson, who has fought many years for reparations for slavery. In the last few years, he got so fed up with the cynical politics of race in the Unites States that he up and left to live on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, the birthplace of his wife. Quitting America is a challenging, and sometimes angry book. It has a whole chapter of righteous indignation towards the misery of Haiti, and America's complicity in it. Definitely not for the faint of heart, the proudly white, or the blindly patriotic. And while part of me (regretfully) was put off by his very strong rhetoric and blanket statements, what he said had a ring of truth to it. In the end, while I knew I couldn't truly understand his point of view, I felt like some of my reasons for moving to the Caribbean overlapped with his.

So I was delighted to see a letter from Jennifer included in the care package, the last line of which struck me deeply: "you walk on hallowed ground!"

She's right. I feel it often here. But I rarely feel it as strongly as at Saut d'Eau, which is a vodou pilgrimage site. Each year during Easter week, and at a couple of other times, massive crowds pack into the steep hills that surround the falls, digging their feet into the mud to experience the mystical healing powers believed to be there. Plus it's beautiful and refreshing.

And as always, Gabriela stole the show:

End chapter one

2007-06-13T20:00:00.001-05:00

Wow, the time has flown by since my last blog entry. A lot has happened, including the passing of the seven month mark for my time in Haiti. Things feel different, in a good way. There's a sense that I've made one lap around the track, and I'm left wondering if the chapters of this trip will come in roughly half-year increments.

The first fun news is that Josh and I went to see our friend Jacky Chery graduate from seminary. You may remember him as my first Creole tutor from my first week in Port-au-Prince. Josh and I were delighted to find out that he was actually the president of his class, and therefore he gave the keynote speech. And best of all, the speech totally didn't suck! It was even relevant and inspirational. Not that I would expect any less from Jacky, but if you told me I was going to a Protestant seminary graduation to hear a keynote speech in French, I would prepare myself for a bunch of flowery blah blah blah about bringing the gospel to the unenlightened masses, and very little about the day-to-day realities of most Haitians. But Jacky put me and my expectations to shame. Here's us post-ceremony:

I feel I should point out our matching undershirts. I've never been an undershirt guy. I never really understood the point. They just add a layer of insulation, making you hotter, and won't even protect against pit stains. But since I've been here, I've never once gone to work without one. Unless you have air-conditioning (less common here than in cold-to-mild Seattle) you're constantly sweating in Haiti, even if it's just a little bit. So the undershirt comes in handy. I even wear it around the studio as I'm cooking or reading or whatever. I'm that guy. Along with my occasional indulgence in a shoe-shine, it's one of those things that make me feel like I'm living in another era altogether.

When I got home from Jacky's graduation, this was sitting on my mosquito net waiting for me:

So as I was saying, it feels like a chapter is closing. As a random example, tonight here at the guesthouse, where I blog when I can, I ran into Eileen. She was one of the first people I met here back in November, though it was very brief and I hadn't seen her since. She's on her way back home to British Columbia now, and it was good to catch up.

Another person I saw here in my first weeks was an MCC volunteer named Rebecca Bartel. She lives in Columbia and works on advocacy, lobbying North American governments to stop financing one of the most murderous conflicts on Earth. She was at the end of a two-month trip to learn about Haiti and start thinking about how to do advocacy here. We had a few good discussions, at times resembling debates. Right away she impressed me as exactly the kind of person I imagined working with when I signed up with MCC. We kept in fairly close e-mail contact. So anyway, she came back to Haiti three weeks ago for a week of vacation, and then a bunch of time working with Josh and Marylynn on their vision for advocacy.

Before she arrived, we started planning out a weekend trip for anyone who was interested. In the end, it was Rebecca and Jessica and me. We planned to do a big loop from Port-au-Prince to Jacmel on the southern coast, and then up the mountain to magical Seguin, and then back down the mountain to return to the opposite side of Port from which we departed. And we planned to do it all on public transportation or our own six feet.

And off we went. After a beautiful trip through the mountains on a not-so-bad bus pumping nonstop konpa beats, we landed at the beach. Jess made friends:

I made a coconut:

And later we landed at a lovely hotel where Rebecca made a balm for her sunburn with fresh-picked aloe.

Sitting on that pristine beach, it was a little daunting to think of going up the mountain to Seguin, only to have to hike at least four hours the next day to get home. But we decided to buckle down and do it. We woke up Sunday morning and after breakfast we took tap-taps (pickup truck with benches in the back and a canopy) to a little town called Peredo. From there, we hired three moto-taxis to drive us up to Seguin. These were not dirt-bikes or the puny little scooters that serve as taxis in the flat cities. These were chromed-up road hogs. Not quite Harleys or anything, but they flew up the mountain. We ascended quickly on the mostly unpaved road, going in and out of rainshowers and feeling the temperature drop dramatically with each big gain in elevation. Jess and Rebecca's drivers were racing each other while my guy hung back a little. I thought to myself, yeah, that's right. We've got nothing to prove. I'm glad my guy's a little more prudent.

Then about a kilometer from the Seguin market, my driver managed to run right over the top of a rock. The only big loose rock in the middle of a flat, wide road, it was about as big as a canteloupe with a sharp point on top. The impact jolted me sideways and immediately blew out the back tire, and it could have been all over right there. But somehow the driver regained control and I hung on and we rolled to a stop. He honked his horn and I whistled constantly as we watched the other two bikes roar on up the hill and out of sight. As we started walking the bike up the hill, my driver removed his shades to reveal a left eye that was completely clouded over and surely blind. I asked him if he had blown out tires like this before, and he said yes, three other times. I didn't ask if the whole half-blind thing was a cause of all these wrecks, or perhaps a result of one of them. I just made small talk until the girls turned around and came back down to meet us.

We hiked the rest of the way to the lodge where I have stayed two other times. About halfway there, the rain started dumping on us and a woman graciously welcomed us onto the covered porch of her very, very humble house. I think we probably sat there for about twenty minutes. At least twenty minutes. Almost totally in silence. I've said it before, but there's just something about Seguin that inspires reverence and tranquility. Eventually the rain eased up enough for us to go and I thanked the kind woman with some treats made of sesame seeds and cane syrup.

Just past the house, we walked through a maze of giant rain-sculpted rocks:

The explanation I've heard is that these rocks used to be covered by soil, but had become exposed after years of erosion. An ugly reality behind a beautiful thing. It's a little sophmoric, but I feel as if almost everything I observe in Haiti can become a metaphor for Haiti itself. I'll just leave it at that.

Once we arrived at the lodge we changed into dry clothes and drank some tea made of fresh-picked mint leaves - the unofficial arrival ceremony in Seguin. Rebecca sipped.

Jess bundled.

I connected.

We headed out to watch the sunset. On the way, we ran into Eliphete, the cook for the lodge. He's also the guy that loaned me his boots last time I was in Seguin, after mine were stolen from the side of a stream where I went swimming. Good guy.

Here's some dusk pictures.

And us taking it all in.

I could go on and on about that half hour or so looking out from our little spot on top of a hill. In Creole, there's a phrase to describe when something "hits you": "Sa frape m". It comes from the same word "frappé" that appears as the highest setting on most blenders. What hit me that night is that I can't share my experiences. I can try, as I'm doing here. But all I wanted up there was to put my arm around my brother, my sister, my pastor, my high school English teacher and every other person that has ever shared a connection with me, just to hold them and look out and drink it all in. And part of me wonders, as I've been here for half a year now, even if I could have all of you wonderful people here with me, would you see it the same way I do? I'm sure we could all appreciate Seguin together. But I get frape'd sometimes looking out over downtown Port-au-Prince, or the mountainside slums, or the endless street scene on the way to work. I remember when I first got here, trying so hard to appreciate it; trying not to think that it was all so ugly, or sad, or whatever. Now, it's just home, and it's full of beauty. Whew, maybe I should check back in on this in six months.

So anyway, the next day we took the long way out of Seguin, stopping to see some caves on the way:

Winnie, who runs the lodge at Seguin, recently went into the caves with some American geology professors. He said they went about four kilometers in(!), walking at times through enormous caverns, and sometimes just barely sqeezing by.

Then we hiked for a few hours, which flew by. At the end of the road, just at the point where we usually start the hike going into Seguin, I got this shot of almost the entire road:

Just over that last saddle where you see it zig up the mountain is where the road meets up with the pine forest.

Here's another view from the road:

Every little cluster of trees conceals a house or group of houses. And absolutely everything else is worked as farmland. Here's how:

So that was the trip. The day after we got back, Jess found out she would be leaving Haiti two months ahead of schedule because of an illness in the family. Here's her second-to-last day:

Left to right is Stephanie (a Belgian volunteer), Esaie (Isaiah--funniest guy ever) and Viles (pronounced Vee-less). My desk is just on the other side of that indoor window.

Here's Jess and Rosie at the going away party:

The next day, Jess and Rebecca flew out of Port-au-Prince on the same flight. And just like that, I'm now the only native English speaker in the office. This would have been a little scary even three months ago, but I feel like I'm taking it in the stride. Beth is out of town this week, so I'm riding a motorcycle to work instead of the usual grey Toyota pickup. Pictures of that whole scene next time!

B-listers, big crowds, and sudden blasts. And databases.

2007-05-22T20:54:00.000-05:00

Apropos of that last post, I’ve got a good pandemonium story this week. Last Friday was Flag Day, or Fet Drapo. In preparation for the big event, Digicel threw a big party in the Champs de Mars, the enormous cluster of public parks and monuments that surround the presidential palace. The featured artists included a couple of well-known konpa bands, Krezi and Djakout Mizik. But the headliner for the night was, get this, Shaggy. As in the states, his three or four big hits can still be heard on the radio from time to time. But there is no way that he would get a reception anywhere in North America like he got here last Thursday night.

I drove down with three other volunteers and a Haitian friend. It was supposed to start at 6, but we figured we wouldn’t miss too much if we showed up around 7 or so. When we got there, the crowd was massive already. We were a little puzzled to see Digicel still painting the VIP stands – constructed the day before – around the main stage. Apparently there were a couple wrinkles in the event planning. There was no music yet, but we were still early, according to island time. But regardless of the lack of entertainment, the people kept coming. When we approached the stage area, still a good hundred yards away, choo-chooing through the dense crowd, we were eventually stopped by a wall of solid people that simply couldn’t give an inch. We stood there for about a half hour before realizing that the music might still be a long way off, and instead of getting cooked in this 98.6 degree oven, we should probably seek out a better spot.

We eventually found a nice grassy area about four times further away. We could barely see what was going on on stage, but it hardly mattered. Hour after hour, the same roadies and techies continued meandering around the equipment. And the people just kept coming. By nine o’clock, the crowds extended as far as we could see, which was pretty far - Champs de Mars is the largest public space in the Caribbean. There were easily a hundred thousand people there; possibly many more, considering that everyone close enough to see the whites of Shaggy's eyes, if he ever showed up, was packed in like sardines.

Around eleven o'clock, Shaggy was still nowhere to be seen. Not that we were so eager to see him, but we'd been expecting live music, and we were getting restless, along with everyone else there. Josh and I went on a walk for something to do, and on our way back we heard what sounded like Shaggy. By the time we found everyone else, Shaggy (or someone impersonating him) had played his three biggest hit songs, shortened, back to back. He didn't seem to be anticipating an encore. Apparently, there were some major technical difficulties, and someone decided to give the people some Shaggy. But after the already-faint music died down, there was some sort of disturbance in the dense crowd in front of the stage. From where we were standing, all we could see was the beginnings of a stampede. People were pouring away from the stage in rivers. We still don't know what caused the panic - we didn't hear any gunshots or anything. But I was starting to get worried as the wave of people moved closer and closer to where we were standing. And just as I was starting to ask myself, how are we going to get back to the car, there was an explosion.

Some ran, some ducked, everyone looked around frantically. And then, directly overhead, the giant blossoms of Disney-scale fireworks. People stopped, laughed, and clutched their mouths and chests as thousands and thousands of frantic pulses evened out and slowed down. I've rarely felt more relieved in my life.

* * *

I thought I should write briefly about what I've been working on in the office. Shortly after I started there in December, I found out that they were going to pay a freelance software techie to build a database to store all of the information from their human rights monitoring activities. The idea was that every time my coworkers went to visit a prison or a police station, for example, they would return to the office and record the information in a series of customized forms on the computer. Luckily enough, I designed such a database, though much simpler, at my last job. So I asked if I could do it instead, since paying a private contractor to build one from scratch would take a lot of time and money.

The project has grown a lot since I began in late January, as well as going through several revisions, but at this point it's a fuctional tool for keeping track of the police, prison and justice systems of Haiti. It's actually been a lot of fun to work on. I needed to populate the database to see if it would work as desired, and to do that, I needed "dummy data." So, I started using the names of coworkers, friends, family, old college professors, musicians and whoever else I could think of. If you're reading this blog right now, there's a decent chance that you appear in my database as a Haitian police officer, prisoner, warden, or judge. Don't worry, I'll try and clean it up before we load it with real information and let the press snoop around in there. But if one of you slips through the cracks, I guess you'll know who to blame when you're summoned before the International Criminal Court.

The week in review

2007-05-15T18:59:00.000-05:00

All last week I was up on the north coast of Haiti with another delegation. We went to a series of schools and conducted workshops about nonviolent conflict resolution. Here's the highlights:

Biggest forehead-slapping moment:

Walking out my front gate Monday morning, ready for work as usual, seeing a carload of my coworkers giving me the palms-up, shrugging, "dude! what the hell?" expression, and realizing that I had, in fact, forgotton all about the trip. I ran inside and stuffed a backpack with clothes and ran back out to my exasperated colleagues.

Second biggest forehead-slapping moment:

Realizing, before we had even left Port-au-Prince, that although my book, my swimming trunks, and even my iPod made it into the backpack despite my haste, my socks, underwear, and toiletries did not. The only drawers and socks I had were the ones I was wearing on my already sweaty body.

Dorkiest joke photo:

You might have to click on it so you can read the sign.

Most adorable Haitian schoolchildren (tied for first with all other Haitian schoolchildren):

The guy is Dafus Richard. He was one of the two trainers on the delegation. Here he's making an illustration with a couple of students, talking about an imagined conflict and how they managed to find a solution. Dafus has a James Earl Jones-style low, low bass voice. Really funny guy. My second week at RNDDH he walked up to my desk for the customary handshake. He kept his grip and said, "yon sel Feliks la, pa gen de": the one and only Felix, there is no other. He's greeted me the same way most mornings since then.

Speaking of rare Haitian names, the other trainer that came with us was Gibbs, first name Alfred, though most just call him Gibbs. Here he is:

His greeting, most days, is a wide-swinging high-five with a locking thumb grip, and "Kurt! How are you, man?!" in fairly authoritative English.

Most telling language lesson:

Speaking of Gibbs, something really funny happened halfway through the week. He's been teaching himself English for years with the help of the blans he works with as well as English language books, including the Bible. He's a very devout guy. So as we were hanging out after a day of workshops in Cap-Haitian, the second largest city, situated on the north coast, he asked me a language question, as he often does.

"Kurt, I have a question."

"Yes?"

"In Genesis, when it says that Adam was lonely, what does that word mean? Lonely?"

"Uh, hmmm. Well, it's how you feel when you're all alone. Sort of."

"So it is like the word solitaire, in French?"

"Yeah. No, actually it's not like that. Because sometimes you can be all alone, but you don't feel lonely. And sometimes you can be in a crowd, but you still feel lonely."

"I don't understand."

"It's like the word manke in Creole. You feel like you lack a person or people. Sorry, this is difficult to explain."

"I think I understand."

But I don't think he did. I can't help but chuckle when I think back on this exchange. It was like bad sci-fi, and I was Captain Kurt, confronted by the alien or robot or whatever, pleading "tell me of this 'loneliness' of which you speak." Incidentally, I was reading a book on Haiti during the 1994 Marine occupation shortly before this conversation, and the author said something to the effect of "Haiti is a country where it's impossible to be alone." This is something I've often felt in the last six months. There's eight million people on this little part of this little island, and it's really hard to find anyplace where you can't hear or see anyone. And even with the streets and sidewalks and public transportation jam packed with people, Haitians genuinely prefer being close to each other, holding another's hand or shoulder for the duration of a conversation, sleeping several to a bed even when there are other options. I wonder what's less likely for an average Haitian: being alone, or being lonely. Of the Haitians I have come to know thus far, the only ones I can even imagine being either alone or lonely are those who have spent significant time in the U.S. or Canada. Gibbs is going to spend a month in Montreal this summer, and I wonder if this might be the first time he experiences that Adam-esque emotion.

Best diversion

Just up the hill from the town of Plaisance, we came upon this scene:

That's a full size truck trailer that almost totally plunged into a ravine when the semi driver turned too sharply around this hairpin corner. There were already hundreds of people hanging out at the scene when we arrived. By the time we left an hour later, there was at least a thousand. In the middle of nowhere, mind you. It was a fun atmosphere. Even the cops were able to keep cool and enjoy the spectacle.

Best fake news

If you're a fan of theOnion.com, you may have already seen this. If not, be forewarned it's not, I repeat, not real. It pokes some fun at Haiti. I'm generally sensitive to people who haven't been here making comments to the effect that Haiti is a basket case. But, but, but. I can't deny that it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between a mob and a street party. If there's one word that describes Haiti since the fall of the Duvaliers and military dictatorships, it's uncontainable. For good or ill. At least it's not boring. So this made me laugh pretty hard. You can laugh too, but not too much.

2007-05-02T21:14:00.000-05:00

Here's some photos from a big tree planting that we did in Port-au-Prince. MCC contributed the trees, but the whole thing was organized by a Haitian youth organization called JUPED. There were about 100 students from schools in the area, and we walked around the neighborhoods in four big groups, planting trees in yards for whoever was interested.

This is before we hit the streets:

My little brigade of Johnny Appleseeds even had a banner. It reads: "No to trash! Yes to cleanliness!"

Check out the poor kid who's about to get flicked on the ear.

After handing out all the trees, Matt led the kids in an exercise to help them think of trees as one part of a bigger environmental picture.

Two days in the valley

2007-04-27T19:20:00.000-05:00

Okay, I know it's been a couple weeks since I posted anything up here. Believe me I've tried. The flesh is willing, it's the satellite internet technology that's weak. But I'll make it up with photos and video and a couple good stories.

Last weekend was my second "konbit" here with MCC Haiti. Konbits are meetings we have, three times a year, with the whole staff altogether in one place, and not divided between Port-au-Prince and Dezam, as we usually are. The word "konbit" refers to a Haitian work crew that's assembled for a specific task, such as hoeing a single onion field. Crews like this can be seen all over Haiti at all times of the year, sometimes working to the beat of a hired drummer. For our konbit, the city folk went out to Dezam, located in the Artibonite valley, the place where I did my month-long homestay. As soon as we rolled into town I got all nostalgic for those early days of breathing clean air, walking for about two hours of each day, and struggling mightily to understand what people were saying. Don't get me wrong, I still struggle to understand, just not as mightily.

It was great to have a break from Port-au-Prince. We spent a day checking out some of projects that are part of MCC's reforestation program. But to get there, we had to cross the Aribonite river:

Here's a couple photos from the tree nursery, which was our first stop. We had a time to sit down and try and identify trees (I failed miserably, hence the confused expression).

Then this guy and others took turns explaining what each species was good for, be it fruit, wood for houses, or using the leaves in medicinal tea.

All of the baby trees in this shot are growing in little clear bags, as you can see.

In Haiti, the quickest and easiest way to get drinkable water, unless you live by a spring, is to buy a little bag of it for a few cents. Bad news is that this creates lots of litter. Good news is that the bags can be picked up and used to plant trees, in fact they're perfect for it.

MCC is also active in the schools in the area. We visited these students who were using the bags in a mini-nursery they had set up next to the playground. We ate mangos together and the students taught us how to cut open the pit and get the seed and plant it.

You know, sometimes as an outsider who's working alongside Haitians all day, I feel like I'm wearing two hats. And other times, I feel like I'm wearing two hats because I'm wearing two hats.

Here's us coming back from our visit to the other side of the Artibonite.

Here's the official staff shot:

And how could I not throw in this picture of Gabriela? This is from Easter in the pine forest. Check out the needles on the ground!

That was a great couple of days, which I haven't yet written about here. We played games by the fireside and went on long walks through the misty forest. We played baseball with only improvised equipment and we visited the local market which was jam packed and lively, in spite of the rain and mud.

Fortunately, I was able to spend both the first and the last weekends of April in a pine forest. This last weekend I returned to Seguin, which is perched up at the top of a mountain range from which you can see all the way to the southern shore of Haiti. I was there for two days after Christmas with Matt and Esther and Gabriela. I returned this time with those three as well as a couple of their cousins, Nate and Dan.

The day began at 4am. We drove uphill from Port-au-Prince for an hour or so and then parked and started walking. It's a four-hour hike, with very steep hills, both up and down, to arrive at the pine forest. There are only little pockets of trees along the way. Mostly you're looking at rocky slopes where every inch of decent soil is ploughed and molded into rows. In many cases you see multiple crops planted together. I should have pictures, but something always keeps me from pulling out the camera. Maybe it's because I know the image could never do justice to the sight of mountains beyond mountains, nearly treeless, covered with thousands of little farms, which are pressed together into an asymmetrical, organic quilt.

At the bottom of the last big ascent, we started looking for somewhere to take a break. Haitians love coffee, and some of the world's best grows here. But outside of Port-au-Prince or a nice resort, it's hard to find coffee that isn't presweetened. Normally I take it straight, but after trying some of the sweet stuff during my homestay in Dezam, I drink it when I get the chance. Andeyo, people brew it up in cauldrons roadside, sweetened with a heavy dose of sugar cane syrop. I knew it would hit the spot before the last big climb.

Our hiking party decided to park it at the next little cluster of houses. When we did, I asked if anyone was selling coffee. No dice. But then Esther started talking to a woman who lived there, and she said she had some she could reheat. A man brought a steaming mug out to me a few minutes later. It was delicious. When I asked how much he wanted for it, he just shrugged and said, "whatever you pay me."

A couple hours later we had arrived at the lodge - a guesthome maintained by the Seguin Foundation, which exists to protect the pine forest and ecourage other agricultural innovations. One such innovation is the bamboo forest they planted a few years ago with the aid of Taiwan. In addition to all the good work they do, they run this lodge which, though very rustic and almost electricity-free, has hot showers. These come in very handy on those chilly mountain mornings. They also feed you meals that use mostly local products. They guys that run the place are incredibly laid back. When a bunch of French people showed up (without reservations, I might add, ahem) the director came and asked us if we wouldn't mind sleeping upstairs in his house. Not only did we get a free meal out of it, the attic was even cooler than the lodge. When it's clear, you can look out the window and see the ocean, 6000 feet and many mountains below. When it's misty outside, the clouds blow right in through one window and out the other.

After some food and a nap and some more food and a sudoku, four of us hiked to the actual town of Seguin, which is a 45-minute trip from the lodge. Halfway there, across a few acres, we could hear a semi-musical racket coming from a little wooden shack. We went to investigate. We found a squad of about 8 kids dancing and singing, some banging on cooking utensils or beating their palms against the planks of their little room. The kids themselves seemed almost miniature. I don't know if it's the climate or the diet (or lack thereof) or what, but there is a marked difference in the size of people up in mountains. They were singing church songs in Creole. Esther danced with a couple of the little boys. They sang and sang and sang, excited to have some strange, large visitors, but really more excited just to be singing. Eventually we decided we should keep going and left the party, walking along little picturesque gardens as their voices grew faint. I though to myself, if I saw that scene in a movie or a painting, I would think it was cheesy and sentimental, some lame attempt to romanticize the poor. But it was real, and it was one of the more enchanted moments of my life.

But that was Saturday. Sunday, for me, was a bad day. Not bad like where you lock your keys in the car. That would have been easy. Sunday was comically bad. It started after breakfast. I walked back to the director's house, where we slept, and walked upstairs to my bed. There I found my wallet sitting on top of my shorts, though I thought to myself that I wouldn't normally leave it out like that. I picked up my wallet looking for the sixty American dollars I brought. It wasn't there. My heart started thumping and I looked through my bag and all my other clothes and all around the bed and over and over again in the wallet, and found nothing.

The first thing I thought, was that I should just ask to borrow some money from Matthew and forget about the whole thing. I was terrified at the thought of confronting the director, who trusted us enough to let us stay in his house, who treated us like family. But after a while, I decided he would want to know that it had happened, and I would still pay for my stay there, without question.

Esther and I went to talk to him. She explained the situation, and he very calmly expressed regret and surprise at what had happened. I felt like a jerk for even bringing it up. They started talking about what could be done and I ran upstairs to get my things together. When I saw my wallet again, I thought, you know I should really make absolutely sure. I opened it up and quickly discovered those three twenty dollar bills crumpled into a little side pocket. I was mortified. I actually considered not mentioning it - saving myself the embarrassment. In hindsight it isn't quite as serious, but at the time it felt like I had just informed someone that their house had burned to the ground, and now I had to go say "just kidding!" So I bit the bullet and ran out and apologized a million times and still felt like a mean, distrustful person.

Eventually we took a walk to the local waterfall. We stopped at the stream and took off our boots and waded upstream until it was deep enough to plunge into the cold spring water. It was, like everything else in Seguin, somehow perfect. Eventually I forgot about the ugly business with the money. I was feeling good. Then I walked back to where we had left our stuff. In the place where I had left my socks sitting on top of my hiking boots, I found only socks. Just as with the equally horrible revelations of that morning (I've been robbed; I haven't been robbed, but I said I was), it was a moment that made me stop as my mind churned through the awful implications. But it was also so perfectly fitting, that it was hard not to laugh at the whole thing. Still, I thought, the car is on the other side of a four-hour hike on a rocky, steep path. I can't just stop by the nearest Payless Shoe Source. Plus I'm taller than pretty much everyone I meet here; what are the chances that I'll find something to wear?

I walked barefoot back to the lodge, which was probably about a mile. Fortunately the trail was mostly surrounded by a soft bed of pine needles. But when I got there, I had to go to the director, humble as I've ever been, and tell him that my boots were stolen; yes, I looked really hard and am sure about it this time; and can you please help me?

That was the end of the awful part of the day. By a great stroke of luck, the guy that cooked our meals for us had boots that fit me perfectly, and he said I could use them for the hike down. Undeserved grace.

The return trip was as pleasant as could be, and Sunday night we were back in Port-au-Prince eating at the fancy pizza and gelato joint. Even with a big plate of tabouli in front of me, I was already missing the mountain.

Wow it's late now. I've got some pretty cool photos from a tree distribution I participated in yesterday. I hope to get them up soon. Until then.

2007-04-18T21:02:00.000-05:00

Here's how you keep a room full of Haitian cops from falling asleep in the middle of your human rights training.

Here's a translation of the song:

M gen yon doulè ki nan tèt mwen, ki kembe mwen anpil,

I have a pain in my head, which is driving me so crazy,

kembe mwen anpil, fòk retire l!

driving me so crazy, I've got to get rid of it!

Then it moves down the body so the "doulè" is...

nan bra mwen: in my arm

nan vant mwen: in my stomach

devant mwen: in front of me (this is where people are giggling with their hands over their pant zippers)

nan pye mwen: in my foot

nan ren mwen: in my hips

They have another song like this, but more reminiscent of "Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" where you're bending and slapping and the song gets faster and faster. We're lucky no guns went off.

Sick day

2007-04-12T19:39:00.000-05:00

I'll start this by apologizing ahead of time. I'm a sucker for a good disease story, so now it's my turn. Beware: if you don't like details, or if you don't want to know how juvenile I really am, you may want to skip this one. Actually, I'll try to go light on the scatology, I mostly wanted an outlet to talk about how cool my landlady is. That will make sense later.

Here's the story: two fridays ago I was sitting up in Jessica and Bethany's apartment. We were trying to figure out what to do with the evening when in a matter of minutes I went from feeling great to ultraqueasy. I tried to play it cool for a while, but then decided I'd rather spend the evening hugging my own toilet than someone else's. I walked down the stairs from their apartment, took a few steps towards the big iron gate, and couln't even muster the will to get out my key. I launched a volley of vomit into a bed of palm trees and other foliage. And then another one, and then another one.

I'm not a puker, so every time it happens I feel like I'm going to die. But once it was all out, I went home and actually felt pretty fine. Then a week later I woke up in the middle of the night feeling awful, and spent probably 50% of the next six hours on the toilet, hating life. I'm surprised my skin didn't turn raisin-y, I was losing so much liquid.

And in what seems like a pattern, today, exactly a week later, I woke up feeling half dead. Knowing that I was full of awful things that needed to get out somehow, I called Jes and Beth and said I couldn't work, spent my first marathon session on the can, and then tried to go back to sleep. Eventually, I heard a knocking at the door and in my haze, lying there in my underwear, I said, "oui?" The housekeeper just walked right in and started pitying me and asking what was wrong. Then she disappeared and my landlady came up the stairs, in full-on mother mode. I still don't know her first name. To me she is Madame Assali, or simply, the Madame. She loves telling me thatI'm like a son to her and taking care of me. And the food she cooks for me! I hit the jackpot for sure.

So anyways, she bursts into the room where I'm curled up in pain, still just wearing the underwear mind you. If I'd had my wits about me, I would have probably been really embarassed, but I mostly just sat there thinking, helpmehelpmehelpme. She asks a couple quick questions and then rattles off a huge list of things I should do. Then she disappears and comes back with something she called "tea":

I have no idea what was in that tea, but the awful taste would tell me that it was doing something good. I hope it's not assumed to be medicinal just because it tastes bad. Funny side note: in the office I take my coffee without cream or sugar, which Haitians refer to as medikaman: medicine.

So I choke this stuff down. Then I had a banana, because as awful as I felt, I knew I needed something in there. And bananas, like raisins or yogurt are supposed to slow down the plumbing a little, right? But when the madame came back and saw the banana peel, she tsk tsk tsked me, saying that when you're not feeling good, you shouldn't eat bananas unless they're underripe. So I'm not quite sure what to do with the advice. Sometimes, I just know she's wrong. Like when she told me I shouldn't have plants in my bedroom because they breathe oxygen just like me. I just nodded nicely. I can't argue with her, she's got an amazing green thumb. Her yard is lush with big leafy plants. But inside her house - not a one. I've since discovered this is fairly common for Haitians.

Later on she brought two more things. The first was lunch:

That's a sort of cornmeal chowder with pastries stuffed with aransol, a smoked fish from Canada. In the pitcher is hand squeezed lemonade.

The other thing she brought was laundry soap. She insisted that if I was feeling achy, I needed to take a shower with a bar of brown laundry soap and lather up twice. This goes back, I think, to the Haitian love of cleanliness that I've mentioned in another post. To me it sounded like washing your car when it needs an oil change. But I've got to say, I did feel significantly better after that shower. She then gave me another bar of soap and some fancy French body wash, because clearly, the blan has some hygiene issues if he's sick this much.

For dinner, this showed up:

That's a potato soup and a giant hunk of what I think is goat. When she unveiled it, I was reminded of that part in the flinstones opening where they get a side of dinosaur ribs and it tips the car over. I thought, there's no way I can eat this thing. But sure enough I sent back an empty plate and bowl. And because I did, this showed up next:

Why? Because there's always room. I'm not sure if there's always room for a liter of jello, but I eventually put it all away.

So I wouldn't say I'm back to 100% yet, but I'm definitely on my way. I owe some of that to the pill of ciproflaxocin I took after lunch, but I know that my Haitian mother's special regime helped too.

t-shirt

2007-04-11T21:40:00.000-05:00

Once again, my time has evaporated. I hope I'll be able to put a couple videos and photos up tomorrow from the police training as well as Easter weekend. For now, I want to start doing something new here, which is to tell you about the hilarious t-shirts I see around Port-au-Prince. Here's three of my favorites so far, which were all written in English:

Fat People are Harder to Kidnap
I Survived Haiti!
Hebrew School Dropout

As is the case all over Latin America, second-hand clothing from the states is really popular here. One of my favorite t-shirts ever was one I bought in Nicaragua. It has a picture of a plate of rice and beans, the preferred breakfast, lunch and dinner of Nicaraguans. The other day I saw a Haitian boy wearing the same shirt! Within the last year, that t-shirt probably traveled about as many miles as I did, minus the trip to Europe - and who knows, maybe even including that. Bizarre.

Anyways, I hope to get more interesting stuff up soon. I'm determined not to get lazy here. It's true that I'm settling in more and more and Haiti is becoming home. But there's no lack of things to write about or photograph.

Good cop, bad cop

2007-04-06T09:31:00.000-05:00

So this last weekend I was up in the central plateau on a delegation to do a training for police officers. For two days in a conference room, we explained to these policemen, prison guards, and SWAT-team-like elite unit dudes how they were expected to go about their work without violating the human rights of Haitian citizens. It was a very interesting time. I'll try and post a video next week of one of the songs we made the cops sing to keep from getting too drowsy after lunch.

At the end there was a time for general debate and discussion, and several of these cops talked about how they were underpaid (if their paychecks were coming at all) and understaffed (roughly one officer per 1,000 Haitians in some areas). My coworkers were able to get it across to them that as difficult as these conditions are, they are never an excuse for violating human rights. Still, it was a grim reality check. The whole thing coincided nicely with a book the MCC team is reading for discussion, called "Walking with the Poor." The author points out that non-poor often play god in the lives of the poor, making them believe a "web of lies" about who they are and why they are in their place. But what's often missed by development workers and peace and justice activists is the fact that these local, oppressive non-poor are often held under the thumb of some wealthier group that spreads its own lies, and which is also a victim to some even wealthier, more powerful group. This ladder goes from local to regional to national to international. And where does it end?

It's tempting to say that it goes to the desk of the president of the United States. There's no doubt that he has the ability to make decisions that ripple around the world, and even affect people in rural Haiti. But, and this is especially true of late, it's hard to see George W. Bush as a man in control of anything. I can't help feeling sorry for him sometimes, torn as he is between so many competing interests and facing all of the consequences for the horrible decisions he has already made. He seems just as trapped in the web of lies as anyone else.

Anyway, this will be quick. I'm taking off tomorrow for an Easter weekend with my fellow MCCers in a big pine forest that rests up agains the border with the Dominican Republic. Should be wonderful. Word is that it get's cold at night there. Woo hoo! Anyway, I'll have more to share when I get back. Hope you all are having a nice Easter or Passover or whatever else.

Money is "good"

2007-03-25T20:32:00.000-05:00

The currency of Haiti is referred to as "gourdes" -- prounced like "food," but with a "g." This refers to a time in the early 19th century when actual gourds were used for buying and selling. Currently, the exchange is about 40 gourdes to the dollar. In most countries, this is all you would need to know to shop and haggle and buy things. But Haiti is not most countries.

In 1919, during the American occupation of Haiti, the Haitian gourde was pegged to the dollar at five to one, meaning that regardless of what was happening economically in either country, one dollar would always be worth five gourdes. That was the case until the gourde was unpegged from the dollar in 1991. So for 72 years, there was no fluxuation in the exchange rate, and plenty of American money circulating in Haiti. At some point, Haitians started referring to five gourdes as a "Haitian dollar." So there were physically two currencies, dollars and gourdes, and a third that didn't actually exist, but was helpful for keeping the relationship between the other two straight. Sometimes here you can find old money that was printed in the 80s that says it is guaranteed to be worth its denomination, divided by five, in American dollars. If I'm very, very bored sometime I might take one of these bills to the Haitian treasury and demand they exchange it for me at that rate. They would no doubt laugh at me.

Why? As I mentioned above, the Haitian gourde now trades at 40 to the dollar. I'm no economist, but I think that means that there has been an inflation of 800% between 1991 and now. One Haitian dollar is only worth an eighth of what it was 16 years ago. The bizarre thing is that people still count in Haitian dollars, even though they bear no relationship to American dollars anymore. It takes some getting used to. You go to the market to buy a bunch of bananas and ask how much it will cost, and the fruit lady says fifteen gourdes while holding up three fingers. All grocery stores and gas stations run on Haitian dollars. When you get your total, you have to do some quick calculating to know roughly how many gourdes to hand over. When I'm writing a check and need an exact number of gourdes, they'll calculate it for me. But I'm thinking that by the end of three years I'll be like Rain Man when it comes to multiplying and dividing by five.

And the physical money itself is another story. There's plenty of brand new crisp bills floating around, but most of them are pretty limp and dirty. Sometimes you can hardly tell how much a bill is worth, the print is so smudged and faded. I've seen some that are stapled and taped together. I've mentioned Matt and Esther and their baby Gabriela here a couple times. Gabriela, like most babies, will put anything she finds in her mouth. Matt and Esther are pretty okay with this, but they'll still jump to keep money out of her reach at all times. I know one guy who sets up teams of doctors and dentists to come to Haiti and do free clinics. He saw a sign by the door to an operating room that said no Haitian money was allowed inside the OR under any circumstances. I guess that money is fairly germ-ridden in any country, but it's positively filthy here.

Haitians themselves, however, are the opposite. I don't think I've mentioned here before about how meticulously clean most Haitians are. It's not uncommon for people to bathe two or three times every single day, often with heavily scented French soap. Many rural folks won't talk to you or look at you in the morning until they've had a chance to wash their face (or at least their eyes) and brush their teeth. For some, it's just courtesy, for others, there's a belief that you can curse someone if you don't clean up in the morning before saying hi. Apparently Haitians have shared this love of cleanliness for a long time. I read an article that was written by an emmisary of the NAACP in Haiti during the 20s. He was sent to investigate the stated reasons for occupaion and whether they were justified. Fascinating reading, actually. Parts of it could almost pass for current if you replaced "US" with "UN" and "Marines" with "MINUSTAH" (which is the name of the UN mission here). Point is, the author gives the statistic that at that time, Haiti imported more soap per capita than any other country. If you've got the history bug, give it a read here.

I don't know where these hygene habits came from, but I'm curious, just as I'd like to know why Europeans on average bathe less than North Americans. In the case of Haiti, I could theorize that it has its roots in slavery or some of the repressive governments that followed independence. It's interesting to ask yourself: if you were basically powerless, and were socially, culturally, and most of all financially limited from improving your situation in any way, what would you do? I think you would cherish the things you do have control over, one of them being how clean you are.

But I really have no idea.

Oh, and I should throw in a Gabriela update since I mentioned her: she can stand!
Check it out:

It's a video her dad took. I got my own chance to play dad last weekend. Esther and Matt were in Port, but Matt was doing a training and Esther wanted to go to the gym, so I took care of little Gabby for a couple hours. There were no exploding diapers or fits or anything. She crawled around for a bit, until she started making whiny hungry noises. So I mixed up some formula and put her on the bottle, and after that she was out cold for the rest of my babysitting time. Best. Baby. Ever.

Aristide p2

2007-03-17T22:21:00.000-05:00

I'll start this out by responding to a comment by one Brendan Bollman on my last entry regarding Aristide. I don't know Mr. Bollman personally, but a lot of the things he writes have been themes for me while reading and conversing about the Aristide phenomenon.

Forgive me if this gets esoteric.

First of all, I agree that it's well known that Group 184 -- which backed a lot of the protests against Aristide -- was funded by the International Republican Institute, an organization funded by US tax dollars. The leadership of Group 184 was somewhat split between two men, one of whom was calling for change within the democratic process, and another who once endorsed assasination in one candid moment. FRAPH, the group of mostly Haitian ex-soldiers that "invaded" Haiti from the DR, is not as clearly linked with the US government, but there's plenty of shadiness there too.

For me, it's telling that people like Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein, whose opinions I value a lot, either acknowledge Aristide did go astray, or harbor suspicion that at least some of the rumors are true. Paul Farmer has not been so critical, but his support seems carefully worded, and after all he is a personal friend of Aristide. I was struck reading one passage of Mountains Beyond Mountains: it mentioned a time when Farmer was hanging out with Aristide when he was still a priest. He said something along the lines of "hey, can you believe the crazy rumors about you running for president? As if you would ever get involved in something as corrupt as Haitian politics!" Aristide dodged the question and publicly announced his candidacy a week later. Farmer has remained a loyal friend, but maybe he was on to something even then.

The strongest support for Aristide is still, as it always was, among the poorest Haitians. But that's not to say that all poor Haitians support him. On the same token there are rich and middle class Haitians who still support him. I get the sense that there are those who know he did wrong, but still support him because they detest the double standard Mr. Bollard mentioned. And there are those who support him because they personally benefited when he was in power. Two things come to mind: Port-au-Prince's worst slum, Cite Soleil, getting electricity 24-hours a day, when the rest of the city had to make do with much less; and the time Aristide bought TV sets for every house in Cite Soleil for the World Cup. A little gimicky, no? Better than the DC lobbying industry, but still.

One last thing I'll say for now, on the question of violence. I guess there's a chance that Aristide never armed any youth gangs, and was just framed. But this is beyond the level of rumor here. And when he describes himself as a pacifist, I find that a little hard to swallow. Liberation theology walks a fine line when it warns that poor people will react violently if they don't receive justice. The fine line is crossed when violence is threatened, or even encouraged. I can think of a couple examples in Aristide's book, "In the Parish of the Poor" where such threats, though very subtle, are made. He's a master of inuendo, and his speeches often contain things that can be taken a number of ways.

At the end of the day, it's absolutely true that Aristide's downfall was caused by many factors, not least the impossible double standard that is applied only to leftist and populist leaders, especially in Latin America. But that's still no excuse. He probably did blow it.

In other news, I recently finished reading 100 Years of Solitude. Yesterday felt like a scene from the book. The MCC guesthouse in Port-au-Prince has an enormous backyard that could be turned into all kinds of things. After weeks of talking about what to do there -- garden, plantain orchard, pigsty, picnic area -- we decided to do all four. And yesterday work started. Clearing brush, picking up garbage, hacking at vines with machetes, I kept thinking of how many other MCCers or other previous tenants had put hours of work into making the yard a useful space, only to watch their work diminish and disappear with time. After a few hours of raking and shoveling, with my clothes soaked in sweat, it started to rain. At first it was nice and refreshing, then it got stronger and stronger. We called it a day and Jes and I started driving up the hill to Petion-Ville.

The streets were turned to rivers. The whole city is built on a steep hill, and even where we were starting from, which is relatively uphill, the water was already flowing with a fierce strength. People trudged up the sidewalk with the water beating against their shins. Bags of garbage floated happily down the street. Children soaped up and rinsed under gutter spouts. In front of us was a tap tap, a pickup with two benches in the back and some kind of covering. The guys in the last two seats didn't quite fit under the canopy, and sat there laughing at each other as they went from wet to couldn't-possibly-be-wetter. One handed his cellphone to a dry stranger who was a little more sheltered. The whole scene was joyful, bordering on chaotic. At one point a troop of guys came jogging by, laughing and chanting in a big splash, with huge drops pounding them relentlessly. But traffic was more hectic, more desperate, with the feeling that anything could happen. One car parked on the side of the road looked like it actually might wash away.

It all made me think of Haiti as a state of ongoing disruption. In the first world, big storms are exciting. When the power is knocked out, isn't it fun to take a break from the computer or TV or whatever and fumble around for some candles? Disruptive moments like this happen all the time in Haiti. And a lot of the time it's just as fun. Sometimes it's incredibly frustrating. Seattle has plenty of bad traffic, but I don't think I've ever been forced to simply give up on my plans and turn around and go home because there are so many jams. But that's not so uncommon here. Or when insecurity is at such a level that school is canceled for fear of children being kindapped, it's equal parts snow day and 9/11. I don't mean to be trite, I just think it's interesting how disruptions can be frustrating and even terrifying, but on some level they can also be a relief. There's a strange satisfaction in scrapping your plans because you have no choice.

Aristide

2007-03-14T18:39:00.000-05:00

So this is probably the longest lapse I've had between blog entries so far. I apologise. I really do wish I had time to write a lot more, but two thing happen most times. I sit down to write, and I get roped into a game of backgammon, or long overdue e-mails take a long time, and before I know it the inverter is out of power, the generator doesn't have any more diesel, and the city power, surprise surprise, isn't on. I was actually pretty hard on good old EDH (Electricité d'Haïti) when I wrote about it before Christmas. Back then, we had about two or three hours of city power each night. Well, turns out they were saving up their diesel (most city power comes from enormous generators) as a nice big bright Christmas present for Port-au-Prince. There was a week of almost constant energy, and through January and most of February we could count on several hours a day. The last couple weeks have been a little thinner, so that's excuse number one.

More often though, I have sat down to blog something out, and instead of focusing on some little topic, my mind keeps scattering itself all over the big, big issues. Poverty, development, race, peace, violence, God. I spend a lot of time thinking about these things, but when I try and express any of it, the subject expands exponentially. But I still want to try, so tonight I'll start with the littlest big issue in Haiti, who at 5'4" also happens to be a little big person: former President Jean Bertrand Aristide.

You may be familiar with his story, but I'll assume you know about as much as I did before I decided to come to Haiti, which was very little. Aristide was a radical Catholic priest. He speaks (I think) seven languages and is a brilliant orator. He was Haiti's most vocal spokesperson for liberation theology, and he bears no small part in bringing down the Duvalier dictatorship after decades in power, as well as the brutal military dictatorships which followed it in the 1980s. During this time there were several attempts on his life, one of which took place in the middle of mass and resulted in the deaths of several parishioners and the burning of St. Jean Bosco church in Port-au-Prince. In 1990 he ran for president of Haiti and got 67% of the vote in the first truly free and fair elections here, becoming by far the most popular polititan in the Americas. Nine months later he was pushed out by the army in a horrible coup, followed by three horrible years of military rule. This was perhaps the darkest hour for the people of Haiti, which is saying something.

During these three years, while Aristide was trying desperately to return to Haiti, he took refuge first in Venezuela, and then eventually in Washington DC. This was as interesting turn of events. The administration of George H.W. Bush had opposed the candidacy of Aristide, and there's plenty of evidence that points to some level of collusion in the coup. No big surprise there. Aristide was a fierce critic of the United States, as well as Canada and France. I would agree with him on many of those points, but that's neither here nor there. What's important to note is that it was his criticism of these rich, powerful countries that brought him such popularity in poor, powerless Haiti. So what happened? Why was Aristide suddenly welcome and/or comfortable in the belly of what he had described as a beast? Bill Clinton came to power, and his administration was highly critical of the military government in Haiti. But this story has no heroes, and that goes especially for Clinton. Under pressure from the Black Caucus and the Haitian American community, Clinton agreed to send 20,000 marines to reinstall Aristide as president in Haiti. But this was done only on the condition that Aristide agree to a raft of economic "reforms" to "liberalize" the Haitian economy. Years later Aristide would openly admit that he made this deal even though he knew it would hurt the people of Haiti, because at the time he was ready to do anything to return to power and end the military's disastrous rule. After he came back, he did what he could to obstruct and bog these liberalizing measures down, but a deal's a deal. Since that time, Haiti has been at the mercy of corporations who dump their surplus and subsidized goods on this island. As a direct result, Haiti now imports 90% of its food. It's shocking and tragic, especially considering that this is a nation of farmers which certainly has the ability to feed itself.

When he was first in power, Aristide had the support of some 90% of Haitians. Even many of the middle class and wealthy elite were behind him, despite his radical politics. But the first great wave of disenchantment seems to have come after he returned in 1994 with the help of the US Marines. In the years that followed, many said that he had changed in his time away, that he had been corrupted. Even if he made that deal because it seemed like the lesser of two evils, he had learned a harsh lesson in realpolitik. Nevertheless, he was still supported by a solid majority for the scant months that remained in his first term.

The Haitian constitution forbids any president from serving consecutive terms. So even though he was exiled for most of his presidency, he had to step aside, and his prime minister, Rene Preval (the current president) was elected. It was generally assumed that though Aristide was no longer president, he was controlling everything behind the scenes. As the years went on through the second half of the 90s, there were rumors and allegations and political entanglements too convoluted to recount here. In 2000, Aristide was again elected. From that point on a lot of the rumors gained steam. Eventually there were marches against his government. The business community, the NGO community, the missionary community, and even much of the university student community became mobilized against him. The allegations included corruption in the form of skimming money off of the nationalized telephone system, sanctioning drug trafficking, arming youth gangs, and inciting violence against those who demonstrated against the government. Eventually a rag tag group of about 300 former soldiers swept through the country taking city after city until they arrived in Port-au-Prince in late February.

On February 29th, 2004, Aristide left the capital in the custody of the US State Department. Aristide insists that he was basically kidnapped. The US government says that he asked for their help. I don't trust my government, especially considering that they seem to have tried the exact same thing in Venezuela when Hugo Chavez was ousted in a coup in 2002. However, as time goes by, and the more I ask people about it, the more doubt is cast on the kidnapping version. I should emphasize that I have no idea, nor do I know what merit there is to the stories that Aristide profited from the drug trade. It seems fairly certain that was inciting violence against his political opponents, or at the very least that he didn't try to stop his more fanatical supporters from doing so. But most of it is shrouded in mystery and nobody seems to know anything for sure. I would pay real money for the truth at this point. And although it's taken for granted by most of the upper and middle class that Aristide was indeed corrupt on some level, he probably still has the support of over half of all Haitians.

Currently, Aristide is a university professor, exiled in South Africa. He recently said that he wanted to return to Haiti, but not for politics. It's impossible to imagine that he would come back to shuffle around the campus of the University of Haiti in a tweed jacket. He casts a shadow on this island, even from the other side of the world. There are plenty of people who believe he is still in contact gang leaders and it was he who orchestrated the waves of kidnappings which have terrorized this city. Again, there's no way to know. Kidnappers do claim to support him sometimes, but I wonder if this is like the FARC in Columbia claiming socialist ideals for acts that are just plain criminal.

I don't know who I could possibly compare him to in the United States. Bush, Clinton, Reagan -- none of them come close to inspiring the kind of fanatical support - or fanatical hatred - that Aristide has. Only Castro or Chavez seem to have that kind of ability to polarize. But if anything, the story of Aristide is more dramatic and potentially tragic. He didn't set out to be a revolutionary. He was a promising young Salesian priest who stood up for the poor when nobody else would. There may be no better example of the corrupting effect of power. And yet something in me wants to believe that he's still the passionate advocate of the poor, that there's a perfectly good explanation for everything, and that idealists can be trusted with power. But it's probably a waste of time and energy to think so.

Education

2007-03-02T15:59:00.000-05:00

So I just got back from my first delegation with work. Some delegations go to do training, some go to do monitoring. Mine was the former. We drove to the southeast corner of the country and stopped at schools along the way to step in for a couple hours and educate kids on their rights. Every school I've seen so far requires uniforms. They're different for boys and girls, though coordinated, and the girls always wear ribbons and ties in their hair that match the uniform colors. I was amazed at the age of some of the students. One class had at least four in their thirties - and yet they were wearing the same uniforms as the youngest kids. The reason for this is that a lot of kids are forced to quit school when they're young to help out on the field or move to the city or whatever, and then they decide to pick it up when they settle back down, which can take over a decade, apparently. Better late than never.

The delegation included myself, two coworkers, and our driver. The driver's name is Mesguerres, pronounced "mezgeh" - a literal translation is My Wars. I'm not sure that there's a non-literal translation, but I'd love to know why someone would name their child My Wars. He's built like a bouncer and he shaves his head bald. One night at dinner he asked me how many beers I could drink. I told him that I didn't know because I'd never counted. I asked him how many he could drink. 15. Last night we went out to find an internet cafe in Les Cayes, where we stayed both nights. It was like having a bodyguard. When I got my computer, he pulled up a chair next to me and watched intently as I wrote.

I've noticed this in general, that Haitians aren't shy about looking over your shoulder if you're reading or doing something on the computer. Normally this is a pet peeve, as I'm sure it is for most every North American, but I'm getting used to a different definition of privacy. At my home, the woman who does cooking and cleaning for my landlady comes to clean my place, my dishes and my laundry twice a week. I felt really, really wierd about this at first. Well, I guess I still do, in the sense that I don't want to get too comfortable paying someone to do things that I have the time and ability to do. It's just one of those moral quandries for westerners living in poor countries everywhere. I may not like the way it looks, but I don't miss worrying about laundry, and the fact is that it would be highly resented if I chose not to employ a housekeeper.

But, the point I was going to make, is that when she cleans, she goes through absolutely everything I own. She isn't sneaky about it, she's just looking for ways to tidy up as much as possible. She'll find my jeans crumpled on a chair, and she'll take out the pocket change and leave in in nice little stacks, by denomination, on the counter. When it began to sink in to me, after the first couple of cleanings, just how much she was sifting through all of my stuff, I got nervous. Should I be hiding my important documents, just so I know that they won't get moved around? And if so, where? But that was a while back. More and more, I'm getting over the idea of having my own domain where I control everything. It's actually kind of freeing. And I've still got more space to myself than the vast majority of Haitians. So the real problem remains the moral one. Is there some way for me to let my housekeeper know, even symbolically, that I don't consider myself better than her? I always thank her when I see her, but I feel like I owe more to the person who has to empty my used toilet paper. In case that didn't make sense, I'll close with this little detail of life in Haiti, and most poor countries that have weak sewage systems. You don't flush the paper. You put it in a wastebasket by the toilet. The amazing thing is that it doesn't smell bad. But don't worry, I'll try and retrain myself before I come visit you.

Big Fat Tuesday

2007-02-25T13:46:00.000-05:00

It feels like a long seven days. A week ago I went to church with Josef, one of the employees of MCC who takes care of a lot of the driving and other errands. His church starts at 7:00am, so he met me outside of my house at 6:30 and we took a tap-tap (pickup with two benches and a cover over the bed) down the hill. They meet in the basement of a building not far from the MCC guesthouse. People were packed in like sardines, and there were ushers that would come along now and then with new arrivals, looking for a few inches of bench space where they could be squeezed in. The sermon was pretty heavy on the prosperity gospel. I thought it was interesting that the guest preacher began by asking everyone to keep the main pastor in their prayers, since he had been really sick for the last couple of weeks. Then the preacher got going into his sermon, talking about how God always blesses people who are faithful, and how your health and finances are indicative of your spiritual wellbeing. I had to wonder if it was an intentional jab at the main pastor, or if it was just assumed that he must be some exception to the "rule" that health and wealth depend on godliness.

Then, Sunday night, was the first night of Carnival. In the middle of Port-au-Prince, next to the palace, is the Champs de Mars, pronounced "shahn-mahs" -- the largest single public space in the Caribbean. For Sunday, Monday, and of course Fat Tuesday, the square is absolutely loaded with people. Monday through Wednesday are a national holiday -- most stores are closed and few people are working. From what I've heard, 500,000 is the conservative estimate of the crowd. People either watch the events from stands, where you have to pay to get in, or down in the street, where things are much more exciting and sometimes dangerous. I was only in the crowd when I was on my way to a stand with those I came with, and then again on our way back to the car. Both times we had to hang on to each other and charge through the crowd, still getting pulled apart now and then by a surge to the right or left.

Each day, the festivities begin with bands that march around the plaza Then there's the floats with people decked out in ornate costumes. Then, from probably 10pm until 3 or 4am, if not later, is the "shahs." Each of these is an enormous stand on wheels with a couple hundred people and a live band, pulled by a semi and with a huge generator in tow. Depending on who the sponsor is, they'll be throwing things out to the crowd in the street, as well as the people watching from the stands. The loot includes t-shirts, handkerchiefs, cigarettes, lip gloss, bags of rice, candy, you name it. I was only there for Sunday, but the majority of people, especially those who aren't paying for a spot in one of the stands, go for all three nights. And unlike myself, they aren't able to go get a nice long rest in between sessions. For most, it's a 72-hour party that stops only when they drop. Fortunately, there was very little violence this year compared to in years past. I don't know if it's true, but I heard there were no gunshot wounds. Most of the injuries that did take place were just the unavoidable side effects of too many people in one place. As with every year, there were a good number of people asphyxiated. In the middle of a crowd like that, it's common to get squeezed so that your feet don't even touch the ground, and any number of things can set off a stampede. It was a thrill to be there, but one night was enough.

The rest of the week felt like a nice long vacation followed by two short days in the office. Then last night I went to the Canadian Film Festival. The couple who until last year ran MCC Haiti were Canadian, so they often got invitations from the embassy for special events. We received invites to the opening of the film festival, also in Champs de Mars, so I took advantage of the opportunity, assuming that there would be some kind of fancy reception and little cakes and wine and what not. I got dressed up and went together with two other volunteers and a Haitian friend. Unfortunately, there was no reception. It was an open-air event, with the movies projected onto a large screen in the middle of the plaza. I assumed that the movies would be recent, but the first was probably from around 1989, and the second from the late 90s, I'm guessing. The first film was just 30 minutes, and not much more than a history of Haiti. But at least it made sense why it would be chosen as part of this film festival.

The second film was baffling. It was called Mambo Italiano, a Canadian film, dubbed from English into French, but French with an Italian accent. Basically, it was a gay romantic comedy set in the little Italy of Montreal. Boy meets boy. Traditional parents of boy freak out, in a very comedic and ethnic way. Eventually they come to love and accept their son and everyone is happy. This was a bizarre choice of films. I try and avoid unfair generalizations, but I'll say that most Haitians are very, very conservative on the issue of homosexuality. That's not to say it doesn't exist here, but the context is quite different from that in North America. I work at a human rights organization, and gay rights isn't even on their radar screen.

For one thing, it's complicated by the issue of AIDS. In the 80s, Haitians were listed, along with Homosexuals, Hemophiliacs, and Heroin Users, as one of the four "H" groups at high risk of HIV. There were even assertions made that HIV and AIDS originated in Haiti and spread to the US. Research done in the 90s showed that the opposite was true -- North Americans brought AIDS to Haiti. Through the 70s and 80s, Haiti was a popular place for sex tourism among Americans and Canadians. They frequented clubs in the red light district of southwest Port-au-Prince; places full of young Haitian men who, regardless of their own sexual orientation, would do anything to make a little money. Since that time, the AIDS in Haiti exploded in a way that it never did in North America. For this reason, homosexuality is seen by many Haitians as yet another example of North American extravagance and moral decay that has come to prey on poor, vulnerable Haiti. And this is in addition to the plain old cultural conservatism on the issue, which exists in most societies worldwide.

So, try to imagine sitting in the middle of, say, five hundred conservative, rural Americans, and watching Brokeback Mountain. That's about what the atmosphere was like. In fact, Brokeback Mountain would have been a more appropriate choice, because at least it acknowledges a deep social stigma attached to homosexuality. Mambo Italiano was more like a wink and a nudge to some old curmudgeon to say, hey, c'mon, get with the times. That message was completely lost on the audience, which included a lot of homeless children who came not because they got a fancy invite from the embassy, but because they were hanging out in the plaza anyway. Any displays of affection between the male characters in the movie were met with shouts of "masisi!" -- you can take a guess what that means. The Haitian friend who came with us was incensed. He said he was going to write a letter to the Canadian government in protest. For him, it was a horrible message to send to these kids; social stigma was the only thing that might keep them from falling prey to the sexual exploitation, and this movie was undermining that.

But while I recognize this, I can't help the fact that I've lived in Seattle for the last 10 years, I've had gay friends and coworkers and fellow churchgoers. While it's a very complicated issue, I just don't see it as a disorder or a sign of spiritual decay, nor in most cases as a choice. It's just how some people are, not that there's anything wrong with that. I think a lot of the North American and European volunteers who come to work in Haiti feel the same way. I wish that Haitian boys and girls who grew up knowing that they were "different" had a chance to be themselves without fear of persecution, or at least to know that there was a place in Haiti they could go and be safe.

But at the same time I'm uneasy with this tendency to look at Haiti as "not ready yet" when it comes to the question of gay rights and gay romantic comedies. It smacks of cultural imperialism, as if to say that someday, when the moment is ripe, that Haitians should be expected to have a cosmopolitan, Western attitude towards sexual orientation.

Perhaps this is the reason why some committee at the Canadian Embassy chose Mambo Italiano, of all Canadian films, to show at the premiere of the Canadian film festival. Maybe they wanted to go out of their way to show Haitians a prime example of cultural difference -- rather than follow some paternalistic notion of what parts of Canadian culture Haiti is "ready" for. Either way I think the point was totally lost. To be sure, there are places in the world where this film would have sparked riots. It wasn't like that. It was just a few hundred people who for the most part were flabbergasted by what they saw.

I'm curious how this strikes you all. Please comment if you have thoughts to share.

This and that

2007-02-18T10:29:00.000-05:00

Here's a photo I meant to publish a while back. Our team spent a day and a night in the lovely town of Ti Goave. We went to a pristine beach and ate coconuts, walked along streets that were surprisingly free of litter looking at brightly colored houses full of friendly people. And somehow this is the only photo I came back with:

I took it for Heather Riden and all the rest of you arachnophobes out there. That is one giant cobweb. On closer look, it's dense with leaves, trapped insects, and big fat spiders. On that note, here's one of a spider in my kitchen. I don't know how you define a tarantula, but this thing was hairy, and you can compare its size to that orange there. Sorry so blurry.

Here's some photos of the training seminar. First, me with Gibbs and Viles, coworkers of mine who organized the training. I'm holding a drum that was used for the song we sang as a group to welcome each trainer, and then again to thank them when they were done.

Here's another coworker, Lelene, with her son who sat in on her talk about gender equality:

'

Here's the group photo of most of the trainees. See if you can find me (hint--I'm the bald one):

I've written here before about how people who live outside of Port-au-Prince rarely smile for photos. This is a great example of that. The only people smiling in this photo are those who live in the city. Everybody else is playing it cool.

Here's the chapel, upstairs from where we had our training sessions:

Early every morning there would be a half dozen or so sisters scattered around the pews praying. Then at 7:00 they'd start singing in a transcendent, echoing acapella.

Now for something completely different. If you've got Google Earth on your computer, I've found my exact coordinates, and you can check out my pad from space: 18°30'33.59"N/72°17'18.52"W should take you to my deck, where I like to get my quota of hammock time each week. My studio is just the bottom left corner of the structure you see. A block east and you'll see the bright green roof of the Kinam Hotel across the street from St. Peter's Place, a city park. As you'll notice, I'm on the edge of the tight grid of streets that is known as Petion-Ville, one of the few areas like this in Port-au-Prince. But just west of my place, you'll see an enormous bidonville, or shantytown, called Jalousie. Unlike the squareness of Petion-Ville, Jalousie is like a blanket of houses draped over the contours of the steep hills. From above there's a sort of organic look to it, resembling a seashell. The houses are built right on top of each other, and some of them collapse each year when heavy rains erode the ground that they're leaning against. Many of them are about the size of my studio, but there might be 10 people sleeping there each night. Now, look just to the south of the Jalousie, further up the hill, at the sprawling mansions, some with swimming pools. The ultra rich and ultra poor, a stone's throw away from each other. Is it any wonder that Port-au-Prince is a tinderbox of class tension?

Well that's it for my grab bag of a posting today. Hope y'all are enjoying your Sunday.

My Haitian Valentine

2007-02-13T21:58:00.000-05:00

The title is a little misleading. Here's what I'm talking about:

I made this video with some help from the people I work with. We held a five-day training seminar for members of grassroots organizations all over Haiti. The people came to learn about the prison system, the police hierarchy, the judicial works, women's rights, children's rights, and nonviolent conflict transformation. Some of the participants appear in the video. I got the idea when I saw one participant named Hubert (pronounced "ee-bear" in Creole) wearing a Seattle Supersonics tank top. And the scary guy with the glowing tomatoes is Sayil. He's the caretaker for the MCC office/guesthouse. Kind of a gentle giant. The video I took of him was so dark he was invisible, so I tried to mess with the effects and that's how it came out.

I'll write more about the training later. I'm pretty sure that with the exception of a phone call from my folks, it was the longest I've ever gone without interacting with a native English speaker. Coming back to the office today and reading my e-mail and talking to Jessica and Bethany was like diving into a swimming pool after five days of trudging through a dusty desert. That's overstating it a little.

The setting for the training, and most of the clips you see, was a beautiful spot called Our Mother of Wisdom, or something along those lines. It's a Catholic facility with dormitories and nuns and an enormous collection of potted plants. I'll get some of those photos up too.

Anyways, best Valentine wishes to all. Like Sayil with the radioactive tomatoes said, I love you and miss you.

twa mwa

2007-02-05T17:51:00.000-05:00

...that's how long I've been here: three months. It feels like the time has flown by in some ways, and yet memories of North American life are so distant. And as much as I'm impatient to speak Creole fluently, I'm now to the point where I dream in the language and find myself saying words I don't remember learning, if that makes any sense. Things are good. Felix abides.

A new couple arrived here yesterday. Talking to them made me realize even more how much I've acclimated, even if it all continues to feel fresh to me. It's great to have other people who also feel fresh. When I arrived, everyone on the team had been here for at least 16 months already, and in some cases much longer than that.

The new couple will both work as "policy analysts." Their job is to network around Haiti and get a feel for trends in economics and immigration and things like that, and then work with MCC volunteers in DC, Ottowa and at the UN to lobby for change. One of the easiest targets, and most difficult hurdles, is rice. That is, the subsidized rice from the United States that continually floods the Haitian market. Shorthand for it here is "Miami rice," just as "Miami" is a sort of shorthand for the whole USA.

"Where do you come from?"

"Have you heard of Seattle?"

"Where's that?"

"In the United States."

"Oh! So you're from Miami."

"Well, no, but, uh, nevermind. Yes, I'm from Miami."

The other way of referring to the states, which I love, is "lot bot dlo." Say that five times fast. It means "the other side of the water."

But anyhow, back to Miami rice. The USDA spends so much in subsidies keeping American rice growers from going out of business that it can actually undersell the rice farmers here in Haiti where the average income is one dollar per day. Most of the rice that Haitians eat is grown in the states. So at the same time that Haiti is chastised for not accepting the most draconian "free market reforms" it's being economically strangled by the richest country in the world.

I want to share a story I found fascinating. Another MCCer, Esther, who does reforestation was telling a story about one night she was preparing a meal with some Haitian women. They gave her the job of cutting up the tomatoes. Once she'd diced up a few, one of the women checked in on her and demanded that she stop, saying that she had cut them up wrong. The women shook their heads and decided they would have to throw the tomatoes away, or maybe feed them to the pigs. Esther protested that they would taste exactly the same, but it hardly mattered. For these women, there was only one way to cut tomatoes, period.

What does this story mean? First of all, let me point out that I don't know if all Haitian women are so strict in their tomato cutting rules. That said, I think it's a great picture of how easy it is for miscommunication and frustration to occur between Haitians and North Americans. I feel fortunate I haven't endured too much of this frustration as of yet, but I'm three months in and 33 months to go, so it's bound to happen. But my coworker Jessica said it best. When people back in British Columbia ask her why she likes Haiti, she says, "Haitians know who they are." I don't know if that will make sense to anyone who hasn't been here, but as soon as she said it I knew exactly what she meant. There's a sense of shared culture, shared identity that is beyond anything I've experienced before. As soon as she said it, I thought to myself that the only things that can span the culture of North America like that are probably TV and movies. I keep wanting to sum up my observations about Haitian people. To say that they are a proud people, or a shamed people, or a people tortured from within and without. A beautiful people, a scarred people. But I hope I can resist the temptation. It's just wrong. From my experience thus far, it's enough to say that I'm glad to be here. Haiti is a complex place with complex people; human beings, like anywhere else. But who know themselves in a way that somehow escapes me.

Mizik Kanaval

2007-01-31T17:22:00.000-05:00

I'm sure there's a better way to do this (and if you know what it is, please clue me in) but I've found a way to share some Carnival music for those who are interested. Just click on the following links and you'll go to a webpage where you can download them. Should be simple. These are some of the greatest hits from last year:

Top Alderman

Brothers Posse

Show Off

King Posse

You'll find they're very long, and go in stages. Some words you might recognize are "election" and "blackout" and "kidnapping." You'll also hear a lot of what sound like "f-bombs." But don't be scandalized, that's just how you say "it's necessary that" -- "gotta" -- in Creole. A lot of sentences start that way. If there's other lines you're curious about, just write me and spell it out phonetically and chances are you'll be writing it just as it appears in Creole. I'll be happy to translate, my rate is.....just kidding.

It's been a nice week. Winter is definitely over. There were a couple of nights when it was possible to get a tiny chill, even under my single cotton sheet, but those days are over. On Saturday I took a fellow MCCer and next-door neighbor for a driving lesson. More precisely, for a manual transmission driving lesson. So we drove around until we found something I didn't think existed within Port-au-Prince: paved roads with very little traffic. She did really well, and we'll be back at it this weekend. But it will still probably be a long time before she's comfortable on the busy streets. Driving here is something else. It's kind of wild and chaotic, but usually not going very fast. Absolutely nobody wears a seatbelt. I think it's a sign that you don't trust your driver. But I'm not much worried about getting hit by another car. I'm watching out for pedestrians. They're all over the place and they definitely get hurt by cars much more often than other passengers.

And to encourage extra caution, there's the fact that any driver that hits a pedestrian is instantly faced with an angry mob. Your only chance is to get out of the car right away and be very clear in your intentions to get the injured party to a hospital and take care of absolutely everthing and include pain and suffering money in the "settlement." I've heard people say that if, in some tragic circumstance, you kill a pedestrian, you should just take off, because it's an eye for an eye if you don't. I'm not sure I could, would, or should do that. It's a horrible thing to consider, but it definitely keeps me on my toes.

Another feature of driving is the use of the horn. I've never been a horn-heavy driver. The streets of Seattle are practically silent compared to here. But it's not like New York where people honk to express rage. Rather, it's an essential part of driving and communicating with other drivers. A tap-tap (public transport pickups) will just drift towards you until you give him a little honk-honk. I don't want to test this theory, but I think they would just run into you if you didn't have a horn. It's a substitution for looking in the rear view mirror. I heard an MCCer say that if he had to choose between brakes and a horn, he'd make do with the horn alone. And Port-au-Prince is built on a steep hill.

Finally, I should mention the traffic cops. As far as I know, Port-au-Prince, a city of two million, has two working traffic lights. The cool part is that they're solar powered. The funny part is that nobody pays any attention to them. The only real regulation on traffic is the cops that stand in the road and motion people around. One thing is for certain: these brave men and women have absolutely no positive effect. In fact, they seem to slow things down more. Haitian drivers have their own rules, and it works pretty well without help, however lawless it may appear on first glance. But it is fun to watch these cops do their thing. Each one has a signature move in their intricate language of traffic direction. Sometimes it looks like dancing, sometimes it looks like an epileptic seizure. During our commute, Jessica and Bethany and I like to keep our eyes out for one cop we call "tickle fingers" who's always gesticulating wildly, his digits all aflutter the entire time.

Okay, one last song. This one's not carnival music. It's by an artist named Belo who's definitely the most popular artist in Haiti right now, and always played on the radio outside of carnival season. I'm a big fan. Click on his name above and let me know what you think.

Kanaval!

2007-01-25T19:02:00.000-05:00

I haven't yet been here for three months and I'm already on TV. Notice I didn't say I was on TV. I am on TV. Here's the story: as I've mentioned before, Sunday nights between now and Mardi Gras are little versions of the main event: a three day party in the central square of Port-au-Prince with a half million people, or one in sixteen Haitians.

So last Sunday, I went with friends to get an "avangou" - foretaste - up in my neighborhood of Petionville. It was wild. There were thousands of people, deafening music, and giant floats going by loaded with so many people they looked ready to fall apart. I watched from the upstairs of a pizza joint which hosts their own big party each time. There was a cameraman interviewing revelers and I got some airtime without knowing it. The footage was incorporated into an advertisement for the pizza place and played over and over on TV. I still haven't seen it - except for a soccer game I haven't seen but five minutes of Haitian TV - but I've had several people mention they saw me, all on different days at different times. There was music playing, so it's a given that I look like a doofus. I just hope the camera doesn't magnify the doofus factor even more.

But anyway, Kanaval. It was quite a sight. It reminded me a lot of a giant mosh pit. But the pit was everywhere. As far as I could see the streets were boiling with people. They had to be shoved aside by the police to make room for the floats. One minute a chunk of people would start jumping and singing. Then a human train would form and start chugging a hundred people together through the crowd. Inevitably fights would break out, sometimes just two guys, sometimes twenty. But it seemed like almost every time, after a few seconds of flying fists there would be an embrace, high fives all around, and more jumping and smiling. Bizarre, I tell you. The air was supercharged with electricity, and the powerlines were not. I know this because there were guys on the floats that would lift the thick wires by hand as the float snailed along beneath, probably going a quarter of a mile an hour.

Around 9:30 there were a couple of loud pops. Then screams, then several more of what I realized were gunshots. Everyone up in the restaurant hit the deck, and half a block away I watched the street that had just been full of people instantly clear. We still don't know what happened, though it was probably just someone firing straight up. But within 30 seconds the music was back on, the empty oval of street shrunk and disappeared, and it was as if nothing had happened.

And the music! I've really never heard anything like it. Political, raw, emotional, yet peppy. I remember my friend Jason Holstrom talking about some of the Caribbean music he had listened to and he described it in similar terms. The songs denounce insecurity and kidnapping as well as UN occupation and US, French and Canadian influence, but you'd think they were talking about soccer or beautiful women or whatever else usually shows up in happy Latin American pop.

And speaking of soccer, two nights ago Haiti won the Caribbean cup, beating Trinidad 2-1. It was yet another occasion for streets full of people and celebratory gunfire. As much as Haitians love football, they haven't had a decent team in a long time. Digicell is a Caribbean cell phone company that has ads up everywhere here. They basically bought the Haitian team and trained them and turned them into champions in a single year. The tallest building in Port-au-Prince (probably about 12 stories) is the Digicell headquarters. Their ads are in French sometimes and Creole other times. My favorite one shows three girls laughing together with a caption that says, "Friendship is sacred. And so is Digicell."

The cell phone thing is interesting here. As far as I can tell it's the only growth industry besides private security guards. It's great what they did for the football team, and all the street signs in my neighborhood are there, courtesy of Digicell. And yet, I've got to ask, is this a good thing? Cell phones are ubiquitous here, just as much as anywhere in North America. Maybe more so. It's not at all uncommon for people to carry three of them, one for each major provider, since calls are free between phones of the same company. Last year the president of Digicell, in an inspirational speech, declared that he had a dream that one day every resident of City Soleil would have a Digicell phone. City Soleil, a slum on the edge of the water in Port-au-Prince, is hands down the most wretched concentration of human suffering in the Western Hemisphere. We should all be dreaming that people there don't starve. But if the other slums of Port-au-Prince are any guide, the Digicell president may see his dream come to pass. Cell phones are becoming common to the point that even though they cost money, money that most people don't have, they're worth any sacrifice. The social pressure must be tremendous. I say this because I don't think it's possible that the convenience of a cell phone is really worth the amount people pay for them. And it's only pre-paid cards here. But I suppose every society has its own irrational "needs" that are little more than keeping up with the Joneses on a massive scale. Like I should talk. I held out until the ripe year of 2003 to get a cell phone, and within weeks it was impossible to imagine life without it.

Krazy Kreyol

2007-01-21T11:56:00.000-05:00

I'm going to indulge myself today and geek out about Creole for a bit. For me, learning Creole was one of the most exciting things about this opportunity, and I haven't been disappointed. I've been interested in linguistics for a while, and a "creole" is a fascinating example of linguistic evolution in action. "Creole" is a general linguistic term, like "pidgin." A pidgin is a sort of trade language that spontaneously evolves when two or more groups of people who don't speak the same language need a way to communicate. A pidgin is very easy to pick up, and handy when you want to order food, buy livestock, or something like that. But it's not very easy to communicate complex ideas or emotions in pidgin. So, when a generation of children is raised speaking pidgin, something magical happens: it takes on rules and syntax that allow it to be a real language, capable of expressing anything that can be expressed by other languages. A creole is a second generation pidgin.

When African slaves were brought to Haiti centuries ago, families were forcibly separated and people from different tribes were placed together to ensure that they couldn't easily communicate and plot against their masters. But eventually they did cobble together a pidgin using mostly French words, along with some Spanish and English. And yet the article structure is a remnant of some of the African languages previously spoken by these tribes.

A lot of the French words get glued together. Words that start with vowels often get the article permanently attached. "Church" in French is "eglise"; "the church" is "l'eglise." In Creole, it's "legliz." "Friend" in French is "ami"; "my friends" is "mes amis." In Creole, it's "zanmi."

The best part about Haitian Creole is that there's none of the complicated grammer or gender of French. But that complexity is expressed in other ways. The poverty of grammer is offset by a richness of expression. There are endless idioms and proverbs and certain specific ways of saying things in Creole. We have a book in the office of 999 Haitian proverbs. There are 40 of them just about dogs. I think my favorite is, "you can't neuter the same dog twice"; kind of the Haitian equivalent of "fool me once..." When I first saw this book, I thought, a lot of these must be specific to villages or areas, there's no way every Haitian is familiar with all of these. But I tried reading ones I selected randomly and asking people if they'd heard them before, and 9 times out of 10 they had indeed. There's other books of proverbs that get up in the thousands.

English and Creole have a lot in common. The French invaded the British Isles a few hundred years before they invaded Hispaniola, but they left about the same imprint. Most words that are three syllables or longer are roughly the same in English, French or Creole. People who are learning either English or Creole often say that it's easy to get the basics down for simple communication, but there's a sort of false summit that comes when you realize that fluency is a long way off.

And just as English was long considered inferior to French, even by those who spoke only English, language is a matter of status in Haiti. I've heard different figures, but the one most often cited is that only about 20% of Haitians speak French. Those that do sometimes lord it over others to show how educated they are. But every Haitian speaks Creole. Some say that they don't, but that's like people in North America who say they don't watch T.V. My landlady speaks Creole to her maid and her gardener, but she only speaks French to me. I always reply in Creole, and I can tell it's somewhat annoying to her.

I much prefer to speak Creole here for a lot of reasons. It's more fun, and at this point it's easier. And unlike with Creole, when I speak French here I'm likely to get corrected on every little mistake I make.

Well I should go, I'm hogging the computer. As they say in Creole, "a pi ta": later.

Konbit

2007-01-17T16:09:00.000-05:00

I'm in the middle of my first "konbit" with MCC Haiti. Out in the sticks, a konbit is a work crew, assembled to do a harvest or dig a ditch or something like that. Within MCC, it's a meeting we do a couple times each year where all of the Haitian and blan staff get together and plan out the coming months. It's nice to get a break for a few days from the office, though I'm really starting to get comfortable there. I've even got a couple of new nicknames, or "tinon"s. Fito, who sits next to me, calls me "direkte," but my favorite is "blalman." Blalman is the words blan (white) and Allemagne (German) smooshed together. At first I assumed that this was because of my German last name. But I was totally off. A couple of the guys in the office assign soccer teams to people according to how much they eat. Big eaters are named after countries with strong teams. Someone who eats like a bird will be called Saudi Arabia, or the United States, for that matter. Pierre, the boss, loves to heap food on employees' plates, especially mine. And since I always eat every last bit, I'm called Germany.

Speaking of work, here's a good moral dilemma to chew on, if you feel like it. Jessica, the other MCC worker in my office, told me about something that happened last year. She was in the office one day when a couple of lawyers came and said that they needed to go to a police station and help get a man out. The story: the arrested man's brother was a mechanic who did some shoddy work on a car. The car owner's dad was a cop, so he showed up at the mechanic's house. The mechanic wasn't there, but his brother was. The cop and his partner beat up the mechanic's brother and tossed him in the clink. This kind of thing is all too common here.

So these lawyers showed up in the office looking for help for this poor man whose human rights had clearly been violated. When they saw Jessica, they eagerly asked her if she was available for the afternoon. She said yes. On the way to the police station, they told her what to say, and insisted that she speak only in English, even though she speaks Creole perfectly well. Be as blan as possible, they told her. This would supposedly attest to the fact that she was connected to powerful people, organizations, or governments, so much so that she didn't have to bother learning the language. The lawyers hoped this would sufficiently scare the policemen, who otherwise would have simply waited until some family member showed up to pay a hefty bribe.

Well, it worked. The mechanic's brother was released from jail. A wrong was righted. But it grieves me that the wrong was righted only by a larger wrong. Jessica felt really conflicted about the whole thing after the fact. Was she in fact reinforcing racism? Why should a seemingly clueless white person be able to do things that even trained Haitian lawyers could not? It's a toughie. I'm sure I'd do the same thing she did. It's not like she made anything worse. But still, it doesn't leave one with a sense of satisfaction.

There's a lot of stuff I would love to write about work, though I'm not really at liberty to do so because of the sensitive nature of human rights cases we work on. The good news is that kidnappings have hit a lull. Apparently it's pretty normal for crime and political unrest to mellow out during carnival season. I'll write more about this later, but every Sunday between New Year's and Mardi Gras is a huge party in the streets of Port-au-Prince. It disrupts absolutely everything, apparently including crime. I haven't yet taken in one of these carnival nights, just been stuck in traffic waiting for a cha (pronounced "shah") to pass. A cha is a party on wheels. Most are as big as a giant yacht, loaded with speakers, a dj or live band, and maybe a hundred or so people. There will be a guy in the front with a long stick to lift up power lines as the cha slowly rolls down the thoroughfare. And the streets are full of people, some with masks or hoods on, hanging out and waiting for the music to come to them. I'm sure I'll get some good photos sometime between now and Ash Wednesday.

I'll wrap it up now. We're about to head for dinner at Chez Wu, one of the two Chinese restaurants in Port-au-Prince. From what I hear, the Haitian version of Chinese food has a lot more goat than in North America.

Video

2007-01-17T13:50:00.000-05:00

Okay, let's try this again. Voila, my apartment.

D'oh!

2007-01-11T17:42:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to put a video up on here, but the computer's giving me grief, so I'm just going to wait on that one.

But anyhow, it's Christmas in January for me. I got a box of goodies from the fam today. I asked my mom for two shirts. I got four, of course. Plus beef jerky and chocolate (which arrived a little melty, but still so good).

My friend Heather asked a question in an e-mail a couple weeks ago - do you have many opportunities to meet 'regular' hatians?

It's one of those simple questions with a complicated answer. The Haitians I work with in the office everyday are not really part of the elite, but they're certainly not poor. They're part of the middle class, which is tiny in Haiti - who knows, maybe even smaller than the upper class. The thing is, poor people can't really leave, and most of the wealthy elite must stay because Haiti is the source of their wealth, though they usually send their kids abroad to study. The middle class is that group of people that both wants to and is able to move away. But plenty do stay, like the folks I work with. Pretty fun group. I'll give a video office tour some other time.

Beyond that, it's tough. I like talking to the woman I buy grapefruit from or the barbecue master I buy chicken from on occasion. But for getting to know people my age, so far I've been restricted to meeting friends of friends. And they're great, but they're all coming from that same small sector as the people I work with. The poorest population of Port-au-Prince is kind of off-limits. One of the first things that happened in my in-country orientation was looking at a big map of the city. My supervisor pointed out a swath of land, the four inches closest to the water for the whole length of the waterfront - a huge area - and said, "this is the no-go zone."

It's true that kidnappings have been pretty bad, and it's a good idea to be careful. But there's something about the phrase "no-go zone" that's inherently frustrating. It would be hard enough to establish any kind of real friendship with someone living in the "no-go zone" for any number of difficult social reasons. But add to it the fact that these people live somewhere white people almost never, ever go without automatic weapons. I'm hopeful for change in this category. In three years' time, there's a good chance the UN will be out of here, and I feel like that will be a good thing.

That Voodoo You Do

2007-01-06T17:28:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to write about Voodoo for some time now. I don't have much to offer but the conversations I've had and things I've heard, seen, and read. I still haven't been to a Voodoo ceremony, though during my homestay, a couple times a week, I could hear those drums beating not far away.

The first thing I've observed is that everyone believes in Voodoo. Not everyone practices it, but everyone believes in it. Plenty of Haitians think it's evil and wrong and the source of all the country's problems, but nobody thinks it's untrue. So what does a Voodooist believe? To be very brief about it, Voodoo is the belief that there are spirits or gods called loas. They can possess people momentarily, and put them into a trance where they may not feel a candle held directly under the palm or even the chin, or perhaps the person would move around on the ground like a snake and even go up trees and walls in ways that don't seem quite humanly possible. Again, I haven't seen anything like that for myself here yet, but it's just a given for Haitians. Baptists missionaries believe it's devil worship in another form. But from what I gather, even though Baptist Haitians think it's evil, they're still operating from a worldview that includes the Voodoo gods and werewolves and all that.

Ah yes, werewolves, or lougawou. It's believed that some people slip out of their human skin to reveal a werewolf that can fly and shoot fire from its hind quarters. If a person who is secretly a lougawou comes to the house of a pregnant woman, he or she will ask the pregnant woman for salt. If the woman gives the lougawou salt, her child will be stillborn. Random, I know. The way to deal with a lougawou is, if you find the human skin that has been shed, put salt and pepper on it. When the lougawou returns, he'll put on the skin and start itching and eventually go crazy.

The roots of Voodoo are African animist beliefs combined with Catholicism. In fact there is a corresponding Catholic saint for every loa in the Voodoo pantheon. And practitioners, or houngans, will tell you that their spells and incantations have no effect on an unbaptized person. The memory of slavery is also a strong element of Voodoo. Old shackles are incorporated into shrines often. It was in fact Voodoo which inspired the slave revolt that led to independence in 1804.

Speaking of, here's an interesting tangent. Within twenty years of Columbus landing in Haiti, on Christmas Eve of 1492, the indiginous population was withering and on the verge of collapse from disease and abuse at the hands of the Spanish. The representative of the Roman Catholic Church was struck to the core by the disappearance of this beautiful culture. He begged the Spanish colonizers to leave the Taino and Arawak people alone -- but don't cheer yet. To placate the colonizers, this priest argued that they should bring slaves from Africa instead. The deeply ingrained racism of Europe had been directed specifically at Africa. Of course white people were superior to non-white people, reasoned Europe, but Africans weren't even considered human.

This conscientious priest helped kick off the international slave trave. And because of him, Haiti became slavery ground zero. Slavery made Spain and then France incredibly wealthy -- the single colony was more lucrative than the thirteen British colonies combined at the time of independence. Haiti was the place where the process of breaking the spirit of west Africans was fine-tuned into a science. It was a vast machine that chugged along for centuries, fueled by the blood of human beings. But under this incredible oppression the slaves would find ways to carry out their traditions the way they had in Africa. The network of people who practiced and officiated these rites allowed a level of coordination that would have been impossible otherwise. While the white God of the colonial overlords told these slaves that they deserved their lot in life, Voodoo gave an outlet for people to escape their suffering through ecstatic worship. And eventually, Voodoo allowed people to say that they deserved freedom, and would fight for it, possessed with the strength of the loas.

For these reasons, Voodoo is fundamental to the character of Haiti. It's been a force of inspiration, to be sure. But there are many problems that come along with it. There are two branches of Voodoo. Kind of a leaded and unleaded. White magic versus black magic. Many practice Voodoo to get in balance with unseen spiritual forces, to get answers to plaguing questions, no harm done. But it is also used for outright malicious ends. The acquired knowledge of Voodoo is immense. There are plenty of quacks among the bokors (witch doctors) as in any medical field -- but generally these are people with an encyclopedic knowledge of natural cures. But this goes both ways too. The knowledge also includes recipes for all sorts of poison powders and things like that, often used to exact revenge. An American woman I met here, who is very sympathetic to Voodoo, did tell me that these days Haitians go to church when they feel like being good and they go to the Voodoo priest when they feel like being bad.

Crossroads are very important in Voodoo. It's common to see Voodoo effects at a place where paths cross. Things like coins pounded into the soil. In Dezam there was a spot I walked by everyday where a path crossed a dry riverbed. One day there was a half of a coconut shell, filled with some kind of chopped plant matter. A lot of red and black (the unofficial colors of Voodoo) thread was wound around the half-shell so the plant stuff wouldn't spill out. Next to this was a wand of leafy twigs, wrapped in a sheet of notebook paper with handwriting on it, and also wrapped in red and black thread. I asked someone what it all meant and here's what he said was the most likely explanation: a person, let's say a man, went to an houngan (Voodoo priest) either because he was in love with or angry with some other person. The man brought some paper that the target person had written on, as well as some money, and told the houngan about the situation and where the target person would usually walk. The houngan then prepared these things and put them by the road so that a) this woman might fall in love with this man; or b) the enemy of this man might be struck down by illness.

There's definitely a lot of money spent in the practice of Voodoo that could be put to more practical uses; the same is true of all religions. Sometimes Voodoo is a source of solidarity; sometimes it will divide a community with vicious backstabbing or worse, where nobody gains except the houngan. Again, not radically different than any other main religion, in reality.

So what do I think? I have no idea. Haiti isn't going to get rid of Voodoo, no matter what happens. I'm a pretty skeptical person, so it's easy to brush off the idea of roaming invisible spirits. But the things I've read and stories I've heard send chills down my spine. Crazy things happen; whether or not there's a natural explanation for it is another question. I'm sure I'll continue to learn more about it, and when I do I'll write about it here. And if you have any questions, e-mail me or comment here and I'll see what I know.

Land of the Free

2007-01-02T13:25:00.000-05:00

New Year's is when Haitians traditionally celebrate their independence. What that means around here is pumpkin soup, and lots of it. More like stew, actually, with the big chunks of bone and meat, potato, taro, onions, cabbage and other good things. Experienced MCCers in Haiti can usually finagle at least three separate servings of pumkin soup between New Years and Jan. 2. My landlady showed up with an enormous bowl of the stuff yesterday, and I didn't finish it until this morning.

Also yesterday, I got together with a friend of a friend. A woman I used to go to church with, Joanne Sprunger, was excited when she found out I was coming to live in Haiti. She did a homestay here in the early 80s (if I remember right) and stayed with a family that she remains in contact with. I got in touch with Madame Madeleine Boncy a few days ago and she invited me to spend Independence Day with her family. It was my first time hanging out at home with the Haitian upper class. Madame Boncy's two sons, Pierre and Jacque, are both doctors - one is the head of neurology at the Haitian University Hospital.

As is often the case among upper class families in Haiti, there was a variety of skin tones present. I hope it won't seem crude or inappropriate to talk about skin color so openly, but I've become used to these kinds of conversations. Haitians are expert at recognizing and comparing skin tones. Walking around on the streets, most of the Haitians you see are quite dark. But if you start looking into windows of the SUVs flying past, it's a different world. That's where you're likely to see many more white people as well as Haitians with much lighter skin than those sharing the sidewalk with you. Haiti has always been stratified in this way. The country's wealth is concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite, which is largely mulatto. Oh, and "mulatto" is not an offensive word here, it's used all the time. The elite has been a target of public resentment at different points because those with wealth are obviously benefiting somehow from a situation that can only be described as miserable to most Haitians. And indeed it's true that much of the wealth in Haiti is ill-gotten.

But there are also people like the Boncy family. They used their relative wealth to send their boys to school in the states and return to Haiti as doctors. Pierre and Jacque were both very interesting men to talk to. Jacque, who studied at the University of Illinois, informed me that it was a native Haitian who founded Chicago. I looked it up, and what do you know? Both of the doctors had a Colin Powell kind of complexion. Their father, who was also a doctor, died twenty years ago. The family clearly loves Haiti and chooses to live here, though they are part of that tiny group who has the ability to leave.

Madeleine Boncy will go down in memory as one of the most elegant women I've ever met. She was incredibly gracious, funny and welcoming, and spoke with a slight Barbara Walters rasp. Agewise, I would have guessed she was in her 60s, and very well preserved. Truth is she's in her 80s and very very well preserved.

Sitting out in the leafy courtyard of the Boncy house, the conversation would flow easily from English to French to Creole and back to French. The food was phenomenal. An older woman was there, a friend of the family who lost her husband some years ago. Her skin, if this is even possible, was lighter than mine, though she clearly had some African ancestry. She was telling about a friend of hers from the states who came to visit and was shocked by the organized chaos of Port-au-Prince traffic. "You really are free here in Haiti, aren't you," the friend said. A good joke for Independence Day.

While I'm talking about race and classy women, I should also mention my landlady. Her name is Madame Assali. She is very dark and her face bursts with expression. She certainly understands Creole, but her own speech is about 90% French. Her husband is either totally or mostly French in ancestry, though he uses Creole more than she does. Her house is immaculate and she runs a little boutique out of her front room selling fancy French perfume and stuff like that. As soon as I'm done writing this I'll head home for dinner with Madame and Monsieur Assali.

Speaking of, I should probably wrap up. But first I want to answer a couple questions. It's hard for me to know what are the big holes in your picture of Haiti if you are reading this and you've never been here. If you can put them into words, e-mail me. Here's some questions I got from my friend Almarie:

Does the air there have a smell, a distinctive smell? More than the difference between Port-au-Prince and andeyo? Did you bring three backpacks full of books to read over the next three years (or three months), and are there places to buy or borrow new and used books/reading material there? If so, what's the selection like? Are men and/or women more likely to be wearing a hat, footwear, or both? Or neither? What, so far, is your favorite sound in Haiti? Is there new year celebration?

Most of the smells are like anywhere in the third world - exhaust fumes, burning garbage, rotting plant matter in the gutter. But there's also the flowers and other plants that grow in abundance and seem to deflect a lot of the badness. Overall I don't mind it a bit. I hate that I'm breathing so much particulate matter in the air, but it's a smell I've grown to love. It's a smell that says: adventure awaits. The one unique addition in Haiti is the charcoal. Sometimes it's nice and it smells like a barbecue everywhere you go. Sometimes it smells more like too-green wood being burned, which is unpleasant. I think that's more when the wood is being burned to make charcoal, and not when the charcoal itself is being used.

Ack! The time! I'll have to answer the other questions later. Happy New Year to everyone! Out with the old, in with the new!

It's a Port-au-Prince Christmas

2006-12-29T14:25:00.000-05:00

This was my first Christmas ever away from home. I didn't have very high expectations. Driving around Port-au-Prince, it's clear that Christmas here doesn't bear much in common with the North American version of the holiday. Strings of lights are rare when you have to burn gas in a generator just to keep the inside of your house lit. For the most part, the Christmas displays seemed to exist solely for the benefit of missionaries and other homesick blans (UN, embassy, and NGO workers). For example, the big plastic Christmas trees decked in lights in front of Gold's Gym. Or the life-size, mechanized Santa Claus creepily ringing his bell outside the door of a fancy French bakery. The more white people a store is visited by, the more likely you are to find inflated snowmen and reindeer and other ridiculously out-of-place items.

There is a Haitian version of a Christmas tree which is often seen in roadside markets. They usually take a tree about 4 feet tall, strip all its leaves and paint it white. Another tradition is making little houses and churches, about the size of a classroom globe. The buildings are put together with paperboard, windows and doors are cut all over the sides with patterns of colored tissue glued to cover the holes. Then a candle is placed inside. Not the safest of decorations, but very pretty.

My contribution to Christmas this year was the same as it usually is back home: almond roca. I wasn't sure I'd be able to pull it off. I had to roast skinny Haitian almonds and use raw cane sugar, but otherwise I was able to find all the same stuff. Of course once it was made, I wasn't really sure what to do with it. I was afraid the chocolate would melt in the heat, so I put it in my little fridge. The inverter batteries didn't last very long, and my fridge lost power, and as the cold almond roca went to room temperature, water condensed on its surface. I could go on, but suffice it to say that by Christmas day when I was giving away the last bit of roca it was a melty, chocolatey blob.

I spent most of Christmas Eve just hanging out with Charity, who runs the MCC office, and her friend Trish. Trish, I discovered, went to Seattle Pacific and graduated just a year before me. The most surprising thing about that was the fact that we didn't recognize each other immediately as fellow alumni. Basically she came here right after college to teach elementary school. She fell in love and got married to an Arab Haitian. Confused?

Another random fact about Haiti is that there are thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian people - mostly Christian - living in the capital. Click here for an interesting article on this phenomenon. They came in several waves for several reasons, and though they all speak Creole and call themselves Haitian first and foremost, most live in an insular community in the hills above Port-au-Prince. But the insularity is only social, Arab Haitians are completely integrated into the business scene, owning most of the supermarkets and some of the sweatshops in Port-au-Prince.

On the evening of the Eve, I went with Charity and Trish to a get-together at the house of an American missionary. There was a short service before the food came out. We sang Silent Night by candlelight, which I'm used to doing every Christmas Eve in Medford. There were probably about 25 people there - mostly Americans, mostly missionaries.

I'm a little wary of missionairies in Haiti. Well, everywhere. Many missionaries are the absolute salt of the earth, people who are giving what they have to give driven by pure compassion. But too often it seems that American missionaries confuse the military and economic superiority of the US with some kind of moral superiority. They see Voodoo as devil worship. I'll write more about the very complicated subject of Voodoo later, but right now I'll just say this: it's not devil worship.

So anyway, at this Christmas party I got to talking with the host a little bit. He's a doctor who's been providing free medical care to peasants in the southeast for 20 years. A fascinating person, definitely one of the salt-of-the-earth types. He was a conservative in the sense that he was generally pessimistic about human nature. But instead of blaming Haitians for all of the country's problems, as conservatives often do, he was keenly aware of the destruction wrought by US economic and military policy. As he gave me example after example, he waived his arms around the room at his other guests and said, "These people all think I'm nuts!" And indeed I did get the sense that other people had heard it all before. I plan to spend more time with this doctor.

So all in all it was a lovely Christmas Eve, comforting and challenging. On Christmas day, I got together with Matt and Esther (reforestation workers), Charity (country representative), and Trish and Tariq (SPU girl and Haitian husband) for pumpkin pancakes at Charity's house. Later I went hiking with Matt and Esther. Here's Matt and I, looking out from a point so high that we were in a cloud:

And here's Matt and Esther's adopted daughter Gabriela, aka most perfect baby of all time:

The day after Christmas Matthew, Esther, Gabriela and I went up to a place called Seguin. To get there you drive southeast out of Port-au-Prince for an hour until you're way up in the mountains. Then you leave your vehicle behind and walk. The landscape is stunning up there. The climate is quite different. The people selling used clothing have laid out jackets and sweaters. Instead of seeing oranges and bananas for sale everywhere, it's carrots and leeks. It seems like every square inch of farmable land is being used for something. Impassible slopes are terraced into little rows, and the road is always going up, down, or sideways along the steepest of grades. All the while you're passing villagers, mainly women in groups, walking and gossiping about whatever while balancing enormous loads on top of their heads.

And then, after four hours of this, the road levels out and you arrive in a pine forest, one of the few areas in Haiti that is, at least officially, protected from deforestation. We stayed in a lodge surrounded by flowers and grass. I was so beat from the hike that I laid down for a nap. Even in the middle of the day it was cold from the mountain wind. I tried to find a spot with filtered light so I wouldn't freeze:

But the light wasn't filtered enough. I actually burned the backs of my hands, I think for the first time in my life. And my face is peeling heavily right now.

The lodge is run by a fascinating character named Winnie. His parents were both Haitian, one black and one Arab. He lives up there in his mountain paradise, spending his days philosophizing about the problems and potential of his beloved Haiti. He's got wind and solar power, and he's always experimenting with plants and even a fish pond. Here's Winnie with Gabriela:

We all felt like we could have spent a month up there. Each day I woke up with a little shiver, put on my boots and walked out to a hill where I could see all the way to the ocean off the southern coast. Perched on a rock in the middle of one of Winnie's future bamboo forests, huddled in my fleece, listening to The Flaming Lips on my iPod, it was hard to imagine a more perfect moment.

But eventually we did have to leave. When we finally made it back to the truck, we found it had been incorporated into the market.

Dwa moun

2006-12-23T18:52:00.000-05:00

"Dwa moun" is Creole for human rights. When people here ask me what I'm doing in Haiti if I'm not a missionary and not a soldier, I say "m'ap travay sou dwa moun." - I work on human rights.

In many ways it's an office like any other. There are computers, meetings, deadlines and egos. But some distinctly Haitian aspects as well: our daily lunch together as a staff; the handyman who is grooming and adoring his fighting rooster when he's not out running errands; the boss who surivived an assassination attempt. In 1998, not even during an especially turbulent time in Haiti, he was shot twice in his car just a half block from the office. There were two MCC volunteers in the back seat at the time.

The lunches are amazing. I've been trained onto the Haitian food schedule, where lunch is by far the biggest meal each day. Breakfast is usually about the second biggest meal. And oddly enough, as far as I can tell, the most popular breakfast food in Haiti is spaghetti. As the story goes, some Italian company came here in the 80s trying to get their foot in the door of the national food market. They realized that Haitians wouldn't give up rice for lunch, and dinner is usually pretty small, so they somehow convinced people to start eating spaghetti for breakfast - probably by giving away a whole lot of free noodles. And indeed it is quite inexpensive, so it caught on quickly. When I was out in Dezam I had it about every other day. It was always prepared with a little bit of smoked fish to give it flavor, but no marinara or anything like that.

But back to lunch. There's almost always rice. To accompany it there may be fish, chicken (the best ever) or conch meat. And always there is a big pitcher of fresh squeezed juice. Most of the juices they make are incredibly sour, which is why there are always big sugar pourers on the table. And my do the Haitians love their sugar. The coffee made on the street in Dezam was sweet to the point where it must have been super saturated. Adding one more tiny spoonful of sugar would probably have caused the whole thing to crystallize. I heard once that it was made with straight juice from the cane, which I don't doubt. It would definitely explain why I couldn't find coffee anywhere that didn't already have sugar added.

My pad is up the hill from downtown Port-au-Prince in an area called Petionville. In a lot of my reading about Haiti, I saw Petionville referred to as a wealthy suburb. It's true that there are some wealthy people there, but "wealthy suburb" is a little misleading. Most "wealthy suburbs" don't have throngs of people out walking around, stands selling chicken, pork and fried plantains on the sidewalk, enormous trucks belching diesel exhaust, and an occasional barnyard animal here or there. Just a few doors down from my studio is the entrance to a sprawling shantytown with people densely packed into concrete houses and tin shacks, stacked right on top of each other against a steep slope. Across the street is a building where a big brass band practices most every night. I've got their repetoire down by heart now.

Life inside my apartment isn't much different than other places I've lived with one major exception: electricity. When I was gearing up to move here, I was told in a phone interview with MCC that there was only four hours of electricity a day. I thought to myself that this must be a worst-case scenario. "As little as four hours a day" is surely what they meant to say. Wrong-o. Four hours if you're lucky. Because of this, most houses that can afford it have an inverter, and maybe a generator. An inverter is a device that pulls power off the grid during those rare hours when it's possible - and a generator if necessary - and stores it up in big car-size batteries. I've had to learn to be very, very economical with the inverter power. All of my light bulbs are those energy-efficient coiled flourescent types. When they're not getting enough power they blink like strobe lights. The first time this happened to me was in the bathroom as I was brushing my teeth; it created a kind of horror movie atmosphere. I have a mini refrigerator which, even on it's lowest setting, takes more power than the inverter can provide in any 24 hour period. So at this point the refrigerator is another storage area. Maybe someday I will use it to cool food.

This probably sounds miserable, but it has it's charms. Most nights, after a certain point when the lights start blinking, I transition to candlelight. There's something very soothing about it. I may not be ready to give this habit up. And no refrigerator just means buying food fresher and more often. And every time I hit the streets of Petionville in search of produce or a ready-made meal, I can count on seeing, hearing, or being right in the middle of some kind of excitement. It gets the blood pumping.

Gotta run. Next time: Christmas in Haiti.

Have some log

2006-12-19T15:40:00.000-05:00

We just had a little Christmas party here in the office, complete with Kompa music and a buche de noel - which in case you don't know is a French holiday treat: a chocolate cake shaped like a log.

I was on the phone last night with my family and my mom was asking lots of basic questions about my living and working arrangements in Port-au-Prince; I realized I should probably post the same info here.

I work in an office with 14 employees. The organization is called Reseau National de Defense des Droits Humains - RNDDH. That means National Human Rights Defense Network. Of the employees, all are Haitian save myself, a Belgian named Stephanie, and another MCC volunteer named Jessica. Jessica and I live next door to each other and carpool every day along with her roommate Bethany who works for a sort of Haitian human rights coalition called POHDH with a somewhat broader focus than ours. The way MCC works is that I'm provided with room and board, plus a living stipend of $66 a month. In exchange for this, I work full time as a volunteer.

I'm still getting going here, reading old files and learning about how the organization does things. I've already started translating documents from French into English, and eventually I'll translate from Creole as well. Most of our documents are written in French, but Creole is the language of the office. I'm making steady progress with that too, though of course I still get a little frustrated every time I strain to understand something. I'd give one of my kidneys for the ability to understand French and Haitian Creole effortlessly. But there's a Haitian proverb that says: "piti piti zwazo fè nich." Which means, little by little, the bird builds its nest. The language will come.

Eventually the work gets a lot more interesting. I'll be going on delegations to prisons where we interview the inmates and find out whether they've had charges brought against them, if they've been abused, things like that. We do police trainings where we tell them exactly which human rights laws they're bound by and what could happen if they transgress those laws.

Is it effective? Hard to say. Much more often than not in Haiti, the guys in uniform have been the bad guys. In fact, why not a...

Very, Very Brief and Simplistic History of Uniformed Men in Haiti - 20th Century

The first example of this was the U.S. Marines. They occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. The reason they gave for this was "political instability." The actual reasons had a lot more to do with business interests and keeping Germany - then investing heavily in Haiti - from getting an strategic and/or economic foothold in the region. So it was money. (duh.)

The U.S. Marines reintroduced slave labor to the country. This, over a hundred years after Haiti accomplished the only successful slave revolt in history, and over fifty years after the U.S. had freed its own slaves. The Haitian people hated and fought against the occupation. The Marines eventually left, but not before gifting the Haitian people with a trained standing army. Why in the world would Haiti need a standing army you ask? Surely it was all put in the language of "maintaining order."

Well, the army maintained something, namely a state of brutality and oppression. In literature about Haiti, it is often remarked that this country is a tragicomedy. This institution that is supposed to defend the people was in fact public enemy number one. Sometimes it would chafe against the wealthy Haitian elite, sometimes they were indistinguishable, but always they have been willing to crush, with ruthless efficiency, any challenge to their power. Those challenges came from above and below. The number of coup d'etats in the last century is beyond tragic, it's in the realm of funny. And as if it weren't bad enough that the army was originally created and trained by the United States, the dark alliance continued as new generations of military thugs would go to the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, to learn how to keep the unarmed masses in their place.

The biggest break in the army's dominance came during the Duvalier dictatorship. The first Duvalier, "Papa Doc," recognized that the military was a threat to him, and so he undermined them every way he could. He disrupted the army's leadership while training and recruiting his own private militia, the Tonton Macoutes, of which I wrote in earlier posts. The name literally means "uncle knapsack" and refers to the legend of the Haitian boogeyman who would come at night and stuff naughty children into his woven bag. The macoutes were in reality much worse, but since this is a brief history, I won't dwell on the gory details. I'll just say that their uniform was denim fatigues and a red scarf and shades.

When "Baby Doc" Duvalier was forced from power in the mid 80s, the army finally regained power and, along with the old guard of macoutes, initiated several of the bloodiest years in Haiti's history. They disrupted elections, installed a president of their choosing, then got rid of him after scant months in office. The next era was that of Jean Bertrand Aristide. He was a radical priest, and a proponent of liberation theology. He got 67% percent of the vote in Haiti's first truly free and fair elections in 1990. He gained this popularity by speaking the obvious truth, that the Haitian people had been abused for much too long by the army and the wealthy elite, that the United States had too much power over their lives, and that they would continue in misery unless those structures were fundamentally changed. Eight months later he was deposed by, say it with me, the army. The CIA almost certainly helped.

One of the supposed reasons the army gave for taking him out was that he was trying to raise a militia of his own, as Papa Doc had done. In exile, Aristide fought and fought and fought to get back to Haiti. When Bill Clinton came into office, he finally got an offer: return to Haiti with an escort of 20,000 Marines and finish out your presidential term - but only if you accept a World Bank restructuring plan. It was exactly the kind of thing he railed against while he was running for president, but it was his only chance, and every day he stayed away from Haiti was a day of horror for average Haitians. So he took the offer, and when he returned, the people came out and swept the sidewalks and danced in the streets. But over time it dawned on many of them that he had changed in his time away. Perhaps it was all a lesson in just what it would take to hang on to power in Haiti. In the face of the Marine presence, most of the army abandoned their posts as they weren't able to carry out their campaign of terror any longer. But they didn't abandon most of their guns.

In response to this, Aristide declared the army officially disbanded, and to this day it doesn't exist. But the Haitian National Police, formed after the army was disbanded, contains many of the same old bad guys.

So, back to where I started. The place where I work trains police not to violate citizens' basic human rights. But the people I work with are quite aware that the police continue to be an oppressive force here. Many cases of kidnapping take place only with the assistance of the police, as has been well documented. And that's just one example.

Anyways, more on work later. And next time I'll write about my cool new bachelor pad.

More Dezam

2006-12-14T17:58:00.000-05:00

Here's a few more photos from my time living in rural Haiti. Actually, this one is of my first Creole tutor, Jacky Cherie. He wrote a book of poems in Creole that's quite nice.

These are the hills above Christan. 60 years ago they were thick with tropical rainforest. Now the trees are gone, which even affects weather patterns. Less rain falls now in Haiti than ever before.

Here's a photo from the rice harvest. What you do is cut down the stalks with a sickle, then pile them up, and this guy bats them against that stone a couple times and shakes off all the little husked grains. I took a turn at batting myself, which was, of course, hilarious to everyone.

Here's some photos of my wonderful host family. First, my host uncle Miguel, who in addition to managing a bunch of little crops, is a beekeeper. Those are bees in his right hand and a little smoker in his left which was full of smouldering wood shavings. He gave me a bottle of delicious fresh honey as a going away gift.

Here's his daughter Midgline. She would beg me to sing songs like the national anthem, the alphabet, stuff like that. Her friend with the notebook is Sandrine.

Here's Sandrine braiding Denise's hair - always a community activity.

The littlest kids just wail the whole time this is happening. It's very painful apparently, but it's the only way to manage such kinky hair without relaxing chemicals (expensive) or dreadlocks (incredibly rare in Haiti, even with Jamaica just a few miles away). This is why most boys just shave it off periodically. But here's little Bechi, my host brother, with his hair waiting to be braided. For a while he had it ultrapoofy and going straight up, and he looked like one of those troll dolls.

Here's Rosalie, my host mother, with Bechi, and grandma. Grandma scared me a little at first, the way she would sit on the porch and sleep, snoring with her eyes open. She used to be the town butcher. The last MCC homestay person went to wash clothes at the river with Rosalie. She offered to scrub some from Rosalie's load, and got handed the bloody meat dress.

Grandma again. She really grew on me.

On my last Saturday I went on a hike with Matt and Esther and little Gabriela in tow. We walked up along the side of a river for a mile or so, until steep walls of limestone rose up from the bank.

From there, we were hiking in the river, through a winding gorge and all kinds of beautiful gnarled rock formations.

On the way back I noticed this. It's a bean crop. There's a little bit of dirt down below, but these stalks are pretty much just growing up through rocks, fed by water from the river flowing on both sides.

Life Andeyo

2006-12-12T06:36:00.000-05:00

Haitians that live "andeyo" are rural folks--probably 99% of them are very poor. I just got back yesterday from my monthlong homestay in the Artibonite valley, which was definitely andeyo. I'm not sure how to begin describing the experience. Life there was a lot how I imagine life in the old American west, as in homesteaders and what not. Consider:

There's no running water or electricity.

Work barely stops, though there's a relaxed pace to it. Kids have time to play, but a lot of their day is work too.

School is a great idea on paper, but the learning is all by rote, the books are ancient, and it can sort of get in the way of survival sometimes, so it's not the highest priority.

Every night I ate and then later read by the light of a kerosene lamp.

And, people refuse to smile for photographs.

Seriously, these are some of the smiliest people I've ever met. They would be all giggly getting into position to pose for a photo, and then as soon as I start counting, everybody goes stoic on me. For example, here's what grandpa looks like:

Here's what he looks like when he's aware his photo is being taken:

For the most part, life for people out there has hardly changed in 200 years. I washed my clothes by hand. I harvested rice. I thumbed dried indian corn off the cob so it could be ground, by hand, into meal. In some ways Haiti is the least stable country in the hemisphere. In some ways it's the most stable.

But it wasn't all Little House on the Prarie the whole time. For example, two sundays ago there was a national election for magistrates. There was a polling place in Dezam, the town of a few thousand people where MCC's reforestation office is based. My homestay was in the village of Christan, about 4o minutes uphill on foot. I walked down to Dezam that morning to attend the Catholic mass with Jean-Remy, one of MCC's Haitian staff.

Actually, let me digress here a minute. It was a special sunday to honor the patron saint of Dezam, so mass began at 9:00am instead of 6:00am which is usually (!) the case. There were lots of decorations and people were taking photos with a cheesy painted beach scene outside of the sunday school building. Big special day. During the service, as the choir worked through an extra long and happy number, six women with baskets on their heads came and slowly sashayed from the back to the front.

The baskets were full of fruits, veggies and sugar cane, and two of the women even added live turkeys to the mix. The homily was nice. It stressed the people's duty to vote, to vote not for friends, or friends of friends, but for candidates who were honest and who cared about the needs of all Haitiens. At one point in the service, during a calm moment, I remember hearing some commotion outside. But soon the choir was singing again and I thought nothing of it.

Afterwards, I was invited to the priest feast. It was myself, Jean-Remy and his wife, the padres, and a couple dozen others.

Apparently, being the only "blan" in the place obliged me to pour the champagne you see there for everyone. No mishaps, fortunately, except I probably shouldn't have given any to the girl that looked about 16. Or her brother who was in his early teens (I hope). But their dad didn't seem to mind, and it was only a little.

After about an hour of feasting, I walked fat and happy back up the hill to Christan. On the way I met one of the guys from the rice harvest. He told me that the election had been disqualified in Dezam because it was violently disrupted. A truckload of guys showed up waving revolvers and a couple of shotguns and started turning over tables. They ripped up ballots and fired in the air to scare people away. One man was shot in the hand. I even heard from a couple of people later on that a man had been killed.

Two miles down the road to the Port-au-Prince was the administrative office for the election. My Creole tutor was working there as a volunteer monitor for the Lespwa (hope) party, which currently holds the presidency and is supported by a legitimate majority of Haiti's poor, which is to say a legitimate majority of Haitians. Around the time of the disturbance in Dezam, monitors from several non-Lespwa parties began tearing the office up. Weapons were brandished. Ballots were burned.

And the most scandalous, in my opinion, is the fact that in both of these situations, the armed UN soldiers -- dispatched to ensure calm and security during the election -- ran. I'm a pacifist. I'm not saying that I wish the UN soldiers had started mowing down these "vagabonds" (as villagers would always refer to the thugs). But it certainly begs the question: what in the hell is the UN doing here?

8,500 armed personnel. $500 million a year. You see them everywhere you go in Port-au-Prince. A couple of soldiers from Brazil, China, the Philippines, Senegal or wherever sitting atop a tank-like vehicle or a big jeep, chain-smoking, hands gripping a gun big enough to take down a helicopter. Just watching the cars and foot traffic go by. How does that make anyone feel safer? The posh neighborhoods uphill from PAP have a ridiculous real estate bubble inflated by all these blue helmets who need somewhere to live, and whose housing costs are covered despite already high salaries. I don't know how much the UN soldiers make, but I know that starting pay for UN policemen is $90,000 a year. It's high because there are bonuses for serving in such "dangerous" circumstances. Several reports have found that some of the worst human rights abuses in Haiti are being perpetrated by these soldiers. Should we be surprised? The commander of the Chilean contingent has been linked to some of the most heinous violence that occurred under Pinochet.

Please challenge this if I'm wrong, but as I understand it Haiti is the only country, now or ever before, to be occupied by the UN without a civil war. There's not even the threat of civil war here, not even close. Sure, there's gangs and a drug trade -- but nothing like as bad as it is in parts of Brazil, as one example. And yet Brazil gets to spearhead this mission that benefits nobody except the tiny wealthy Haitian elite that owns all the rentable real estate. That's a little simplistic. Other people benefit, but certainly not the average Haitian. I could go on, and I will, but I should save it for some future post.

So back to the election. Sounds like what happened is for some reason the secrecy of the ballot in the Dezam precinct was compromised. Some fanatical supporters of the opposition parties got word from the monitors that the election wasn't going their way, and decided to disrupt. The whole thing is really complicated, and I don't know how to resolve this kind of problem, beyond the no-brainer of ensuring that votes are kept secure and secret until after the election. But this is exactly the kind of thing I'll be working on in my job, which began today.

But while I'm on the political note, I have to mention this too. Remember grandpa from the pictures above? He's a charming, gentle, very likeable old man. His sandals are made from an innertube that was cut into strips and artfully woven into something wearable. Grandpa used to be the most feared man in Dezam. Let me explain: The Duvalier dynasty ruled Haiti with an iron fist from the 50s to the 80s. They’re responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Haitians. Most of these murders were carried out by the ‘tonton macoutes’ – Creole for boogeymen. It was an all-volunteer army, untrained, uneducated, but armed and loyal to noone but the dictator. Their only objective was to intimidate and squelch any kind of political dissent whatsoever. For this loyalty, they were given carte blanche to confiscate any property they saw fit and inflict any violence they thought necessary, with absolute impunity.

I discovered just before I arrived at my homestay that Matt and Esther, the Canadian couple that does reforestation with MCC, had recently gotten this info. We really don’t know the extent of grandpa’s activities with the Macoutes, but we know that he did beat the hell out of a lot of people in and around Dezam back in the 70s. The whole thing really got me to thinking – how could this sweet old man, who couldn’t have weighed more than 150 pounds in his prime, do such things? And moreover, how did he get away with it? Was it fear of further reprisals that kept the villagers from exacting revenge? Did poverty train them to accept it as part of life in an unfair world? Does the church bear any responsibility?

Nowadays, grandpa is beginning to succumb to dimentia. I'd like to think that this is because somewhere deep down he wants to forget the horrible things he's done. But realistically, most everyone, myself included, find it all to easy to justify their moral shortcomings.

Okay, sorry this post is so long. I've got lots more photos and thoughts, but I'll post those later. One last little bizarre tidbit for now. One day, sitting on the porch of my homestay, I observed their horse scraping it's teeth against the limestone bedrock (which due to erosion is visible over about a quarter of the front yard) looking for pieces of loose dirt, and then eating the loose dirt it could find. I was baffled. This horse wasn't in as bad of shape as a lot of the bony nags you see andeyo. Plus there were decent patches of grass just a couple of feet away. I turned to my friend Jackson and asked, "Hey Jackson, why is the horse eating dirt?"

"Oh that? That's because the horse needs minerals that are in the earth."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Yeah. Earth has lots of good minerals, which is why people eat it."

"People!? People eat dirt here?"

"Yeah. Especially pregnant women."

"What? Do you eat dirt?"

"Sure. Everyone does."

I tried to unfurrow my brow and not think too much about what I had just heard. Ten minutes later Jackson showed up with something in his hand. "Felix, do you want to try some for yourself?" He held out what looked like a couple of light grey meringues: flat on the bottom and dollop-shaped. I thought, maybe I misunderstood him earlier. These didn't look so bad. And shoot, I'll try anything once. I took a taste, and guess what? Tasted like dirt. On the salty side, sure--but still dirt. I couldn't help my grimace as I handed this earth-cookie gift back to Jackson and told him I wouldn't be having any more. Apparently my cultural sensitivity stops somewhere between tasting dirt and eating dirt.

halfway homestay

2006-11-25T08:20:00.000-05:00

So I'm back in Port-au-Prince for a little weekend break in the middle of my monthlong homestay out in the "country." So far village life has been delightful. There's tons of walking around involved, which is always nice.

So I'll start by describing Creole. Basically, you don't have to conjugate verbs for plural or for tense or anything. Instead, there's just these little tense markers. In French, to say "I jump rope," you say "je saute corde." And if you want to say "I jumped rope" or "I'm going to jump rope" or "I will jump rope" it gets complicated. In Creole: "M'sote kod"

I jumped rope: M'te sote kod
I'm going to jump rope: M'ap sote kod
I will jump rope: M'va sote kod

You get the idea. It's very simple. And the masculine and feminine stuff from French is all gone, which is great. And the spelling is totally phonetic. This is a HUGE improvement on French, where you don't pronounce the last 1-6 letters of most words. Or worse, you DO pronounce them, but only in a coy sort of hinting way. In Creole, if you spell it, you say it. And you say it just the way you spell it. When people ask me where I'm from, the answer sounds the same whether it's in French or Creole. But it's not spelled the same.

"from the United States"
in French: Aux Etats Unis
in Creole: Ozetazini

I'm not sure why, but it's really fun to write and speak a phonetic language. Maybe because you don't have to worry about being a bad speller. Because basically a bad speller is someone who spells something the way it sounds, instead of with the arcane spelling that has evolved in the language over hundreds of years. Sow wen ahy trahy too wrahyt eenglish fonetikalee, it looks lahyk ayv got abowt half az manee brayn sels.

So, written in Creole, the name of the language is Kreyol Ayisien - hence the title of this blog. But that's a little misleading too, since I don't go by Kurt here. Since I arrived in Haiti, my name has been Felix. Kurt's just a little too clunky and German and hard to pronounce for French and Creole speakers. I picked Felix because that was my name in French class in high school. And in Creole spelling, it's "Feliks." Pronounced "fay-LEEKS."

Anywho, here's a run down of most days so far during my homestay. I first wake up with the sun and the roosters at about 5:30. Get up and and out bed by 6:30. Breakfast - maybe some bread, avocado and coffee - by 8:00. In the meantime I'm either reading or playing with Bechi, the 2-year-old at my homestay who sits on the stoop to my room and sings a one-word song when he wants me to keep him company: "Feliks, Feliks. Feliks, Feliks." Then I head down to the larger town, Dezam, where MCC has their big reforestation office. I meet up with Esther, a Canadian working here with her husband Matthew, and go to visit a school. Esther wrote a really great environmental education program in Creole and is working with all of the local schools to get the materials taught, and taught well.

And not a moment too soon, either. The environmental situation in Haiti is dire. I try to be optimistic about most things, but this is a special challenge. Haiti was about 98% covered in forest when Columbus first landed here. Now, about 2% of that original forest cover remains. Two damn percent. Haiti's covered in these mountains, and they're almost all totally bare, covered only in shrubs and grasses. I wouldn't really call it ugly. The mountains are like giant versions of the rolling grassy hills around Ashland, OR, or even Pasadena, CA. They look like trees never existed there, but it breaks your heart to know that before too long ago, it was all lush tropical forest.

So what happened? A whole series of tragedies. The first was the French, who logged the hills heavily, mostly for mahogany for their furniture back home. But mostly it's the Haitiens themselves who cut down the trees. Most Haitian kitchens use charcoal to cook. For many decades people with no other source of income would go cut down trees, or at least a few big branches each day and make charcoal with them. Haiti is one of the most densely populated countries in the hemisphere, which of course exacerbates the whole cycle.

But two things specifically made it much worse, and guess what, the they were both caused by the US. First, there used to be something called the Creole pig, a tough little breed owned by almost every Haitian family. They were a sort of a "piggy bank" if you will; they could eat anything, or very little at all, and whenever a family needed some cash, they could just sell one of these. The USDA became very concerned about an outbreak of swine flu in the 80s, and so started a program where they killed every one of these Creole pigs. They replaced them with grade A American oinkers, which, though much more valuable, were much too expensive for most families to take care of. This caused many people to head to the hills and make charcoal when they needed the extra cash for whatever. The second tragedy is that when Jean Bertrand Aristide was reinstalled as President of Haiti in 94 by 20,000 US marines, he did it by agreeing to an IMF program that got rid of all gas subsidies. So the people who were using gas for cooking and heat suddenly joined the rest who were using charcoal, and as with the Creole pig scandal, this caused a rapid acceleration in deforestation.

But as bad as that all sounds, MCC actually can point to some success in this area. The village of Christan, where I'm living, used to be totally visible from up on the hill in Valereux (where I take my Creole lessons). Since MCC started working there 20 years ago, the forest cover, at least in the village, has grown to where the school is now the only visible rooftop.

Okay, where was I? So I go to a school with Esther and watch the environmental education in action. Then it's back to my homestay for lunch - probably a giant plate of rice with a bean sauce covering the whole thing, and some okra and a couple morsels of beef or goat on top. Then it's off to my Creole lesson, a nice 30-minute hike to Valereux, the next village over. These I'm taking from a guy just a couple years older than me named Watson, he's sort of the town bookworm.

After Creole, I walk back to Christan in the blazing afternoon sun. Even though I'm way out there in the sticks, I'm constanly passing people. There's just so many people everywhere you go. And they couldn't be friendlier. In the mornings they all say 'bonjour!" and afternoons are all about "bonsoir!" Sometimes people with walk with me for a bit and just shoot the breeze. Ask me questions about where I come from and how many siblings I have. "Does your father have a car?" "Does your mother have a horse?" "Does your father own a horse?" "How many animals does your family own?"

Once back in Christan, I change into my board shorts and head down to the river for my daily bath. Plenty of guys just do this nude, but there seems to be a cutoff at about age 20 where guys at least keep their skivvies on, if not some trunks, while they soap up. The women bathe and wash clothes right around the corner, and everyone can see everyone else when they're coming and going, but there's a certain code of conduct where it's understood you don't stare. Only the little kids stare, and mostly just at me, since I stick out like a sore thumb.

By 6pm it's starting to get really dark. As mama Rosalie cooks up pudding (made with flour, rice, and a lot of sugar) for dinner, I talk with here brothers Miguel and Levi about their crops, or I play games with some of the kids in the neighborhood. Once dinner is served, I go inside to eat it alone. They insist on this, and I would hate it, but Bechi always comes and sits on my lap while I eat to keep me company, so that's nice.

Then, I go back to my room and read by the light of an alcohol lamp for as long as I can, but I'm usually out cold by 8:30. Gotta go now, but stay tuned for more stories of village life, including about my senile grandpa who used to be one of the nastiest government terrorists in the area, but now is a sweet old man.

Leaving Port-au-Prince

2006-11-11T08:39:00.000-05:00

If you've read all these posts so far, you may be thinking to yourself, where's the beef? Great Kurt, so you went to Haiti, but it looks like it's been a vacation, and Haiti's supposed to be one of the most miserable places on Earth. What are you even doing there?

The answer is, at this point I'm not doing much. The last week, since returning from the retreat up north, has been my in-country orientation. I've had a few meetings to learn about how MCC policy works, dealing with money, and everything else. I've had two hours of Creole lessons every day. And I've had some cultural lessons and a tour of Port-au-Prince.

But in this short time, I've seen quite a bit. Still, I'm hesitant to write too much about it just yet. White people have a long, long history of coming to Haiti and writing lurid accounts of what they see here. These descriptions are often mere reflections of the writer's own subconscious racism. So I don't want to jump right in and make a bunch of generalizations about anything.

But here's some photos from my tour around Port-au-Prince. This is the memorial to victims of the 91' coup when Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced from power by the military.

Nearby is this memorial, constructed by Papa Doc Duvalier as a memorial of three hundred years of slavery up until the revolt for independence in 1804. If you haven't read the history of this time, trust me, you won't be disappointed.

This is one of a series of paintings in an Episcopal church downtown depicting biblical scenes in a Haitian setting. This is the wedding at Cana, where Jesus turned water into wine.

I spent a night up in the hills above Port-au-Prince with a couple named Carla and Ron who came to Haiti with MCC to do reforestation about 21 years ago. Below is Carla with Rebecca, MCC's policy analyst for Columbia and Haiti, and Ari, a man who hid in the MCC guesthouse for months during the coup of '91. He was politically active, and his life would have been in danger had he not found Carla.

Now, Ari and Carla do cultural education for people coming to work in Haiti, which is why I went to stay with them. Carla's husband, Ron, does a lot of Creole to English translations. There are a whole bunch of expatriates in Haiti, between missionairies, NGO workers and UN personnel and soldiers. But Ron and Carla are incredibly unique in that for the last 12 years they've been living here unattached to any outside organization or support of any kind. And at times, they just barely scraped by. I'm just guessing, but there can't be more than a handful of Americans in Haiti that are in the same situation.

I can say that at this point I'm happy and (surprisingly) healthy. I feel like most times when I travel, I'm the first in the group to come down with some nasty bug. But so far, with the exception of the devil chicken episode, I'm feeling great.

My lessons in Haitian Creole, or Kreyol Ayisien, have been a lot of fun. I'll write more about the language later too. There's a lot of quirks to it. One is that everywhere I go, people will refer to me as "blan," which means "white." But it's actually just a general word for foreigners. There are UN troops from Senegal here who get called "blan" all the time. And to complete the irony, I'm a "neg." Let me explain. My Creole tutor is a great guy named Jacky Cherie - a kind of renaissance man. I'll post a photo of him, and hopefully a couple of his paintings, up here in the future. We were going over some slang, and he told me that the Creole equivalent of "dude" is "neg." Neg? I asked. Yes, he said. It's literal translation in English is "nigger." Half of the color drained out of my face. Then he calmly looked across the table at me and said, "But here it is not perjorative. You can say it to any man. Kurt, you are a nigger." At this point, the other half of the color drained out of my face, and I didn't quite know how to react, until Jacky started laughing at me. "Don't be embarassed! We're all just negs together here." Funny dude.

So my in-country orientation is done now, though Jacky should be showing up any second for my final Creole lesson in Port-au-Prince. Then tomorrow I head out to the country to spend a month with a family in the Artibonite Valley, outside of a down called Dezam. There's no electricity or running water, and I'll be bathing in a stream behind the house each morning. I'm mostly there to do intensive language study, because when I return I'll go straight to work at RNDDH, where Creole is the only language spoken.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to do any e-mailing or blogging during my month in Dezam, so don't be surprised if you don't hear from me. But please do send e-mails. There's a lot more to share and I'll get right to it once I'm back.

Back to PAP

2006-11-11T08:22:00.000-05:00

Before we left, I took a second to climb this giant rubber tree.

We were in a pretty small plane on the way back. Jessica, who is working in the same office as I, got to be copilot.

Halfway to Port-au-Prince, I saw this out the window.

If you've read Mountains Beyond Mountains (and if you haven't, you probably should) you may remember that Paul Farmer built his hospital in Cange, in the Artibonite Valley. This was done in part to serve people displaced by this dam and the giant Lac Peligre it created.

Citadel

2006-11-04T23:02:00.000-05:00

On our third day of the retreat we had a field trip. Guylene, the Port-au-Prince office manager for 9 years, brought her son, Sebastian on the retreat. Here he is. I couldn't help but think of the little lobster with the same name in The Little Mermaid, and at times Sebastian bore a certain resemblance. Pretty funny kid.

We drove to a place called the Citadel, a massive fortress built by Henri Christophe, one of Haiti's first rulers. He fought in the American Revolution on principle of opposing tyranny before coming back to Haiti and helping expel Napoleon's navy. Hard to get a sense of the scope here, but trust me, it's big.

Inside, it was a giant labrynth of mossy stones and long stairwells. Cavernous rooms and endless nooks and crannies. Plus loads of giant cannons, some of which were taken from Napoleon's defeated navy warships.

Here's Franklyn, one of MCC's workers on the reforestation project in the Artibonite Valley, with his daughter:

And here's Esther, another reforestation worker, with her adopted daughter, Gabriela:

There were a bunch of off-duty Pakistani UN soldiers visiting the Citadel at the same time as us. When were up on the roof, Esther started breastfeeding Gabriela and the Pakistanis just about lost it. Suddenly these guys all had cameras out and wanted to take turns posing with Esther and the baby, and then all the other women on the team, on and on and on for about 20 minutes. The whole thing was kind of embarassing.

Tough times

2006-11-02T22:33:00.000-05:00

The first thing I did, after arriving in Haiti, was to get a ride from the international airport to the national airport. There, me and my MCC Haiti team members flew to Cap-Haitien for the annual retreat. I had no idea I was timing my arrival so well. So my first few days in Haiti looked a lot like this:

Reading in the lounge chair is Aileen, who teaches at a college in the southeast. Altogether, there were 23 of us, Haitian and North American, including a bunch of kids. I didn't really feel like I earned this retreat, with its perfect beaches, volleyball, snorkeling, and hours of backgammon, but I also didn't feel like complaining.

But there was some discomfort. The first night for dinner I ordered a spicy chicken dish called "poulet diable" which means devil chicken. Well, I woke up in the middle of the night and knew that something wasn't right. I ran to the toilet, and, down on all fours, excorcized the demon.

On our way

2006-11-01T22:13:00.000-05:00

The last couple of days in Akron were a lot of fun, though it was tough to say goodbye to the other volunteers after an intense two weeks. A few of us did get a chance to get away and go hiking through the Middle Creek Nature Preserve and see the changing fall colors. Second from the left is Toby, my roommate through orientation who is now in El Salvador doing AIDS education.

On the last day of orientation, we had a sending ceremony, which is where I snapped this one:

None of the little people here belong to the big people here. There was a nice big happy family atmosphere.

Then it was done, and I started packing. I stayed up until 2:20am, when my ride showed up to take me and another volunteer to the Philly airport. At 6:15 I flew to Miami, and a couple hours later I was on a 737 bound for Port-au-Prince.

Surprise

2006-10-23T22:13:00.000-04:00

Today was the halfway point through our two-week orientation. For the first week, those of us doing international assignments were joined by volunteers and salaried workers that were going on to positions in North America, whether doing development in Appalachia or overseeing student exchange programs in Winnipeg, that kind of stuff. Last night we saw them off. This morning, after our first session, we were told there would be a big announcement. We all looked at each other, confused, as about 50 staff members filed into the room and sat down. Then, we heard an announcement that Rob Davis, the Executive Director of MCC had resigned.

We were all pretty shocked, both the staff and the orientees. Rob was an incredibly charismatic guy who had come to speak to the orientees on a couple of occasions. MCC's a great organization and gets a lot of respect, but it's been around since the 20s, and so it doesn't change very quickly. They hired Rob about 18 months ago. He's not ethnically Mennonite (nor are most of the volunteers) and was seen as a good choice to push MCC in a more radical direction. I, for one, was pretty impressed by him. He had done a bunch of traveling in that time, and seemed to be making bold moves. For one, he hosted a meeting of American religious leaders with the president of Iran. Apparently, not even the Quakers were willing to get involved in this, but Rob felt willing to take that first step and meet with someone who is considered an enemy of the state. Read about it here if you're interested.

But there were two things he said that really got my attention. First, that the goal of MCC should be to change the North American church. Second, that he chose not to call himself a "Christian" because of all the baggage associated with that word; instead, he considered himself a follower of Christ. It's pretty badass for the director of a major Christian relief organization to say loud and clear that there's something deeply wrong with the church, so much so that it's almost worth losing the "Christian" title altogether. I couldn't agree more.

So what happened? Why did he quit? And why so suddenly? Hard to say, but it seems like he just chafed against the very established culture of MCC a little too much for comfort. From what we could all gather later on, it wasn't so much his vision, but personality differences that broke the camel's back. And as much as I liked him and hated to see him go, this was a relief. If he had been pushed out for making controversial statements, I would have to reconsider spending three years with MCC.

Sorry if this was a boring post.

Amish and proud

2006-10-20T22:55:00.000-04:00

Here's something I wrote to describe my dinner at an Amish household. The dinner happened just a few days before my mother was to teach about the Amish in her sociology class, so I wrote about my experience as follows:

We arrived at the Amish house just at dusk on a very windy day. The
mother came out to meet us in her dark blue dress, which she held in a
bunch by her knees while waving us in with the other hand. There were
about 20 of us, and as we filed in she told us "welcome to our home"
with an accent that seemed almost Irish, but only because it had a
sing-song quality to it.

Inside, we sat around their two large tables set up end to end between
the dining room and the kitchen. The house itself wasn't so different
from any other rural Pennsylvania farmhouse. The father had built it
himself in 1982, when, judging by his looks, he must have been in his
mid 20s. There were no light switches, but rather lanterns that looked
like nice ceramic lamps, hanging from hooks above the table and
hissing with the sound of burning gas. They had a sink with running
water, and even a gas-powered refrigerator.

It was a family of ten. Mom was clearly the boss of the house, and the
dad, mostly silent, looked like he could crack a walnut in his fist.
They had two boys and six girls, ranging in age from two to eighteen
years. The five oldest kids were buzzing around helping to set things
up while the three youngest girls played in an adjoining room. Every
one of these children was as blond as could be.

As soon as we all sat down the food started coming. But before we
could eat, the mother asked that we join them in a silent blessing,
which is how they prefer to pray. So we all put our heads down for
about ten seconds of silence, until she said amen. Then it was off to
the races. For starters there was warm bread, cut in thick slices,
which we slathered with the homechurned butter and fruit preserves
they had sitting out on the table. Then tray after tray of chicken in
gravy, followed by tray after tray of thick-cut ham. Then came the
corn, cut off the cob. Then the smashed potatoes, applesauce, peas,
green beans, and rice. We had no choice but to start stuffing our
faces if we wanted to make it out of there before midnight.

Amidst the feeding frenzy, I was looking around at the house. I know
that the most traditional Amish homes don't put up any decorations on
the walls, but this family had alot of the same kinds of things you
find in Christian homes all over America: Thomas Kinkade paintings;
inspirational poems; the fruits of the spirit written out in cursive,
etc.

But even if their wall hangings were a little modern, their dress was
straight up Amish. The dad and the boys all wore black pants with
simple black suspenders and no belts. Their shirts were long-sleeved
and dark blue or charcoal, buttoned right up to the neck. Mom and the
girls all had long-sleeved dresses; the youngest girls were allowed to
wear pink or purple, while the rest wore blues or greys. The reason
for this is that children are seen as naturally innocent, so they
won't use the bright colors as a mark of pride or individualism. The
idea behind the clothing is to remind them that they are part of a
community, so they don't place any value on making fashion statements
or doing their own thing, in fact they regard these as sinful. By the
time a girl is in her early teens, she's wearing the plain colors. By
her mid-teens, she will always wear a well-starched gauzy head
covering.

When they weren't talking to the guests, the family spoke to each
other using the low German dialect. This language was originally
spoken in Germany near the Swiss border. There were three German guys
in our group who were listening to the family and couldn't understand
any of what they were saying, which means that the language has
morphed quite a bit in the last 150 years or so.

After dinner we chatted with the family. I asked if they were farmers,
and the dad said that it was hard for all the Amish to farm at the
same time, so he made kitchen cabinets instead. Inevitably, the Nickel
Mines school shooting came up, though it was the mother, not us, who
mentioned it. Without getting very emotional, she said that it had
happened only about five miles away, and that they knew some of they
families who had lost children. Someone from our group told her that
people from all over the world had been amazed at the forgiveness that
the Amish community showed after the tragedy. She simply replied that
that was how they were raised, as if they wouldn't even know how to
respond in any other way.

After that, there was a dessert of cocounut cream pie, peanut butter
pie, and chocolate cake with thick frosting. It was over the top for
sure, but we didn't even want to say no.