End chapter one

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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"

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.