Sipriz

In Port-au-Prince during the summer of 2008, I sat down next to a man and his daughter for a meal. When white people encounter one another in Haiti, the first question is, “so what brings you to Haiti?” His name was Geert Van Der Kolk, a Dutch novelist, living in Washington, DC. He was in Port-au-Prince after a visit to the south to Les Cayes and the small island off the coast, Il a vache. I, having spent two previous summers in Les Cayes, and having done research on Il a vache (the tiny island where I met Dr. Chris), my interest was spiked. I assumed he was interested in humanitarian work, Pwoje Espwa, or church twining, and therefore he and I would know the same people. I was wrong.

Geert had plans of moving to Il a vache to build a sail boat entirely by hand (with the locals help) with only a hammer and a machete, made from local wood, palm trees and bamboo, in the tradition of Haitian fishermen. He intended then to sail this boat to Florida in a reenactment of sorts of the thousands and thousands of journeys of “Haitian boat people” who risk their lives to illegally migrate to the US where there is food, clean water, jobs, and health care for them and their children. This would become the topic of his next book. I remember thinking, “Wow, Haiti really does attract all kinds.” But then Geert continued, and shared that in 1999 he had been sailing with his family in the Bahamas and there was a call of distress and he was involved in trying to rescue Haitians from a capsize. Twenty Haitians died. An all too common story.

I shared my thoughts about the United States “Wet Feet Dry Feet” policy and realized in our conversation that Geert’s sailing dream was not one only of healing to honor this experience ten years ago, nor was it mere adventure, - - but one of social criticism and love of the Haitian people. I never saw Geert again after that dinner.

About a month ago, my friend Dan called me from New York. He had recently returned home after three years working in Haiti. Dan and I met in 2006. We have had hours upon hours of conversation, as well as numerous shared adventures in 2007 when I was conducting my thesis research; (I consider a boat ride home to Cayes from Il a vache to be one of those adventures.) He tells stories like no one I know. So Dan called to tell me that I needed to stop by my undergrad Alma Mater American University here in DC to see Geert’s boat. The guy really did it! And unbeknownst to me, Dan knew Geert and had been going out to Il a vache to hang out with him and the boat builders. Dan witnessed the boat from start to finish.

This afternoon I visited the boat “Sipriz” - - Haitian Kreyol for “surprise” - - as well as the beautiful exhibit at the Katzen Art Center at American University. The boat is outside on the lawn, exposed to all diplomats and policy makers who drive through Ward Circle from their million dollar homes to the halls where the destinies of Haitians are decided. I walked around the boat, touched it, and stood in awe that something so fragile could survive so much. Inside the exhibit, the beautiful bird on the sail was displayed on the wall as if it were one of those large Monet canvasses at the MET. As I watched the video a woman asked me if I knew anything about Haiti, and if it was really as poor as she heard it was. She asked me questions like “do the children pee and bathe in the same water?” We talked for a bit and I told her I had met Geert once, and that I had been to Il a vache, and I told her she should try to visit Haiti.

Haiti really attracts all kinds.

The Voyage of the Sipriz from Geert van der Kolk on Vimeo.

The Sipriz Expedition from Geert van der Kolk on Vimeo.

"beyond danger, is opportunity"

Watch CBS Videos Online

9/11/2008: The 20th anniversary of massacre at St. John Bosco

During the Duvalier regime and the turmoil after, Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide was a renegade priest, delivering homily after homily calling for the economic and political liberation of the Haitian people. Consequently, on September 11, 1988 his little church in La Saline, Port-au-Prince was burned during a massacre killing thirteen parishioners, injuring at least seventy-seven others.

Amy Wilentz’s book The Rainy Season gives an authoritative and eye-witness account of this attack. Reading the section on St. Jean Bosco requires a strong stomach; she was there during the massacre. First, the thugs shot through the wall protecting the church, while church children hurled rocks back over it, in defense. Aristide continued mass, but told people to leave if they wished. The assailants shot the lock off the gate and stormed the front of the church, shooting people and causing mayhem and screaming. Victims were being held down and stabbed to death. Machetes were used to slash the tops of heads off congregants. A pregnant woman was stabbed in the stomach. Aristide fled through the sacristy, and was soon to face down another assassination attempt. (He has survived many in his life.) As a grand finale, gasoline was poured all over the grounds of the church and it burned.

Haitian army officers stood by and watched all of this. Not one person from the police station across the street stepped in. The fix was in. According to all accounts, each thug was paid seven dollars and a bottle of three-dollar rum by the government for the attacks. Thirteen people were killed, and seventy-seven were injured. The local Catholic Bishops did not even comment on the massacre for two full weeks

For my first pilgrimage to St. Jean Bosco, my tour guide and friend was Bobby Duval, a longtime friend of Aristide’s. Bobby, held for years as a political prisoner and was released upon Jean Claude Duvalier’s departure in 1986, was intimately involved in Aristide’s work at the time of the 1988 massacre. Like many others, Bobby has lost several friends in the name of liberation theology, in the name of fighting systemic poverty and oppression.

After a visit and walk around Cité Soleil, I reminded Bobby of my desire to visit the church in La Saline. He told our driver to take us. The driver turned to him with a viscerally ill look on his face, and asked two questions in Kreyol. Bobby looked out the window with a face of grief, and said, “She wants to see it. Let’s just go.”

Bobby’s celebrity as a leader and hero for the poor allowed an easy entrance through the gate. Upon exiting the vehicle, I thought the grounds looked like an overgrown grave yard, and I was surprised by how small everything was. I suppose that is how it is sometimes, when we visit places where big things have happened. We keep them sort of frozen in our minds in the time and condition they once were at their time of historical importance.

The armed guard had a million questions for me. “You know about this place? Why do you want to come to this place? Do you know about Father Aristide?” It has probably been a while since a white American woman set foot within those walls. Needless to say, as a student researching and passionate about liberation theology and Haiti, this visit was a very powerful experience. Bobby quietly guided me along the grounds of the church. There is no roof, and the walls are covered with bullet holes, and graffiti of phrases such as “Titid Returnay,” and “Pep Ayisyen se Titid." My research of the place allowed me to point to places and ask – “This is the rectory, isn’t it?” Or to suggest, “Let’s around the back to see the courtyard.”

The remains of St. Jean Bosco serve as a monument for justice and peace. Standing on the decrepit altar, I looked around and thought of the martyrs. The parishioners came to church that day acutely aware of the danger. Many wore white to honor the new (and government ignored) Constitution that was being ignored by the violent government, and residual Duvalier thugs. The people in white were the first to be shot. The brave parishioners peacefully prayed and sang hymns, standing in resistance to the violence of political oppression. It is difficult to imagine what they must have felt as they heard the gunshots beginning to sound outside.

Around the time of the St. Bosco massacre, in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, in light of the fall of the Soviet Union and fall of the Berlin Wall, liberation theologians like Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff, and Jon Sobrino were called up on to speak for to the relevance and role of liberation theology. Jon Sobrino chose to focus on the martyrdom that was still occurring, such as the martyrdom of at St. Jean Bosco. He wrote of taking the crucified down from the cross. In a book about the Salvadoran Jesuits he wrote: “The price to be paid for all this has been very high, but inevitable. Today when we hear so much about evangelizing cultures, we should remember a deeper form of evangelization, so that society itself becomes the good news.” In this “changed world” when NAFTA was being celebrated in the United States, masked Zapatistas stormed Chiapas and declared that free trade was a death certificate for the poor in Mexico. Liberation theology still had a call and a role all through Latin America, perhaps the need was the greatest in the poorest country of all countries in the western hemisphere - Haiti.

Aristide was ultimately blamed for causing political trouble like the September 11 massacre, and later expelled from the Salesian Order. He mixed theology with politics. As if there is a difference. Aristide wrote, “The Vatican sides not with an entire people defending these values at risk of life and limb, but with the men of the old regime trained to bury them.”

exodus

I resigned from my position in Haiti, and returned to DC. I plan on spending the next week literally on the couch, recovering from what has happened to me, then I will make plans for what I will do, - about that, I am not particularly worried. Maybe I will work for Obama, if he will take me.

I absolutely can not publicly write about the events that led me to leave abruptly in the middle of the night, but know that I am ok. The essence of the story is that I will not negotiate with terrorists who live in a tribal mentality of fear, violence, and so on. But the story is much more complex than that. I will tell you - my friends, individually, about what has gone on, but I can not be eloquent when I am still so shaken up.

Now more than ever, I have a solidarity with the Haitian people, who live with violence breathing down their necks, appearing in their bedrooms, positioning itself through the government. And this last experience, has changed my life.

One of the last things I saw, before I left, was a tiny girl, just learning to walk, a patient- dancing for the waiting patients with an elderly man who was unable to really walk. Both he and the little girl were laughing. I will never forget that moment.

Please watch this video of Maria Shriver. I certainly know who my brothers are, and I might need them the most, now.

clothes

If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.








Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. - Thoreau

and on the third day

Tomorrow will be my third full day on the job.

Paulo Freire’s Method of Conscientization is about developing critical awareness of groups of people in poor communities, and it has been used by community literacy programs, health workers, and educators through out Latin America, India, and Africa. One principle in the Method of Conscientization is that group leaders must not ask questions with built-in answers, and must be prepared for totally unexpected answers and ideas to questions.

If my question as a group leader is “how to we provide care and compassion (a suffering with) with cleanliness, the answers I witness and receive minute by minute from the nurses, doctors, and staff at Vizitasyon continue to surprise me. Somethings are a bit confusing, I will admit, - - like when the grounds keeper seems to have many complaints about the parts of his job which involve, well, grounds keeping. He would prefer to fill protein bags, and hand off his broom. But then there are the nurses who bathed and shaved an incredibly destitute man - - gravely destitute - - who some of us picked up on the way back from the village. His testicles were literally the size of watermelons, and he has probably not washed in many, many months. The doctors determined that his heart is good for surgery. Treating Camile with dignity was an unexpected answer in this place, in this mountainous island in the sea, full of beauty, and death. And then there was Joselle. She is my age. She was our last patient to leave last night. I had a moment to ask about her. She had a spontaneous miscarriage at home. The nurses told me of her sadness. I saw her father walk her out, through the front door, holding her IV. I knew that my father would do the same exact thing for me.

If you were to ask me what the average day as administrator is like, thus far, I suppose I would hand you a list including: awake at 4 am to those who have traveled through the night for the 8 am opening of the klinik; plan community child deworming mobile unit in order to spend allocated money; run the generator so to fill the cistern with water; do the pay roll; hold sick babies in front of proud mothers; struggle with kreyol; tell local priest that he does not in fact run Vizitasyon- with delicacy; hunt down some Baygone for ants in office; discuss the Gift of Water project with Karen; drink finely prepared granadia juice; ask, ‘well what are they doing in Cange about X, Y, or Z?' Watch the sunset; take a bucket shower; think about the people who were sent home with medicines that require taking with food, knowing they have no food, - and day dream about our nutrition and food program available through our (God-willing) imminent PEPFAR grant and subsequent grants. - And last but not least - - let “the grounds keeper” know that he may not in fact hand his broom to children because “timoune pa travey ici! Ou comprand!?”

Below are a few photos. A photo from the back of where I live and work. A photo of the first building. The medical director Dr. JF (as I call him), and my boss Theresa, from the States who introduced me here, and held meetings, etc. And a photo of the quiet once the day is through.

“We already experience resurrection here and now, in the midst of life, when we rise up against death in life, now, against the oppressions and the hurts to which life here is subjected. In love, resurrection is not merely expected; it is already experienced. For love makes us come alive. And love never gives anyone or anything up for lost. It sees a future in which God will restore everything, and put everything to rights, and gather everything into [God’s] kingdom.” – Jurgen Moltman

with wide eyes and a hopeless stare

Patrick came into the tiled room where I was sitting, and exclaimed, “I just read the news and Barack Obama is not taking any lobbyist money for the general election! He might really be a changing force. He might be the real deal!!” Turning my eyes from the small shoeless child carrying the big plastic chairs on his head up the hill, I managed to Patrick, “I certainly hope so.”

There is a relief in returning to Haiti, although I wish the flight to Haiti from Miami was a longer one; maybe then, I could justify the vast gulf in quality of life. When it took two days to get to Dhaka, that same gulf seemed better explained. My few journeys to Haiti are eerily similar to each other. On the way to National Airport, again I had a Ghanan taxi driver. And again, my initial land-travel in Haiti allowed the first force I encountered to be a huge UN tank, this time the tank was making a u-turn in the middle of a shanty community, for several minutes. I have noticed a few welcomed changes: the airport had air conditioning; I did not have to risk getting a ride with a stranger in the high kidnapping zone because I was traveling with Theresa; rather than taking the small plane to Les Cayes, I was able to rest in Port-au-Prince for the afternoon.

I have spent several hours talking, walking, and “shopping” with Marie-Denise a single, thirty-two-year-old, woman who is obviously much wiser and more cautious than me. You know - - it is just so flattering when conversations with new Haitian friends begin with something like, “Your eyes good. Bleu.” Ahh, the flattery. “Ou travey Delmas?”
“Secretary. But now I am not working.”
She wants to be a Canadian.
I told her that I want to see the Citadel in the north because I am so interested in Henri Christophe. (Now just imagine someone telling you something like, “I SO admire, George Washington.”)
“Ou renmen Barack Obama?”
“We!! Ay, mwen pa renmen Hillary Clinton.”
“Kisa?”
“Hillary Clinton vele plus bagay. Automobiles, maisons, gourdes. Barack gan petite maison.”
“Dakore. You say she wants many things. But how can a nationality Kenyan run for President in Etase Unie?”
“Papa Kenyan. Mama American. Barack American.”

Until Tuesday, I will stay at a church-twinning guesthouse in PAP. As you can see from the photo of my room, we have electricity for about half of each day! And, the room is screened on the top, so I don't require a net. Americans stay here on their way to or from their twin parishes all over Haiti. This will be my home-away-from-home when I come to PAP one or two weekends a month to take care of business, purchase medicines, and so on. The house and fantastic gift shop is run by Sr. Mary, a graduate of Catholic University and a former academic at the University of Buffalo she came to Haiti for the first time three years ago, and for reasons just as illogical as my own. I am unclear about the whole story yet, but she said that in the 1970’s she was in Peru with Gustavo Gutierrez and was connected to the Latin American liberation theologians. Of course I am looking forward to hearing about all of that.

Theresa flew up to Port-au-Paix Friday morning to visit a parish. She invited me to come along because the arrangements for my business here in Port-au-Prince have been postponed, however I have decided to stay here and rest. I am tempted to American friends in PAP who run the Red Cross and other things here, or I may just relax for a few days.

The time passes slowly in Haiti. It can be torturous. It can be freedom.

On Thursday, I met Patrick in one of those happenstance situations in which travelers encounter one another and the world; - his flight back to Cuba was canceled. He grew up in Anchorage, went to UCLA, and now is a fourth year med student at UCSF, currently on a leave of absence. Growing antsy in Cuba, Port-au-Prince became an exciting option. Friday night he returned to San Francisco to visit his girlfriend, and then he is off to India where he will take a month long class with Jamkhed. For the next year, he will use a grant to study anti-malarials as partial HIV/AIDS treatments for pregnant women in Uganda.

Friday morning we walked to Mother Theresa’s place here in Port-au-Prince. On Thursday Patrick was in Cite Soleil at a clinic. His first three patients were the sickest people he had ever seen: 1) diagnosed with full-blown AIDS (sores all over his body), 2) gangrene from a cut washed with dirty water, (the man was brought to the clinic in a wheel barrow), 3) a woman literally dying of the hunger that all three of them experience. When he told the Sisters at Mother Theresa’s that he was able to help in some medical capacity, he was told, “No no no no!” Why the Missionaries of Charity choose chaos over the embrace of a responsible level of medical care for the sick and dying is beyond me. If Patrick showed up at Partners in Health he would also be refused, but that is because at PIH, they believe in a preferential option for the poor. Missionaries of Charity find some kind of beauty in the idea of the poor always being with us. As one doctor wrote of their shop in Calcutta, many years ago, “I could not judge the power of their spiritual approach, but I was disturbed to learn that the formula includes no strong analgesics.”

There is nothing quite like watching a one year old sick child sit straight up in her crib, hold on to a spoon, and feed herself like a robot with wide eyes and a hopeless stare. No crying, no looking at the bowl. Just feeding. I fed two sick babies with one small bowl of porage. Their arms were so skinny, and their back bones and spines where sticking out. I made friends with Fedney, no idea how old he is, but his smile was beautiful. He sat on my lap most of the morning while little girls did my hair and a boy in a dress stared with distress at me from afar, under the grapevine that canopies their playground.

I thought of Dr. Chris yesterday, and the poverty on Il a Vasche where we met, and I thought of how much I admire and respect him. I also thought of all the other Haitian doctors who are determined to provide a high quality of care to their own country. I look forward to the water, and the mountains, and the village, and my work.

Someone mailed a card. Sister Mary misplaced it. Thank you, though, to whomever it was that sent it. The private mail system via this address is pretty reliable. I will be in Port au Prince one to two weekends a month, so I can retrieve it them. Rather than frequent mass emails, I will be blogging as often as I can, so feel free to save this link and check it for my Haiti updates. I am also excited to host you when you visit Haiti!!!

Justice lies at the threshold and begs; the guest within, in the house of the pans, is Injustice, the evil one. They invite her with laughter into their palace, and for Injustice they pour the full flagon of mead. – from Stories of God, by Rilke

my covenant with you, as i head to haiti

A long time ago, Senator Kennedy made a covenant with the world: he promised to arduously dedicate his life to righting wrongs, replacing injustice with justice, and fighting-on for the voiceless; and this was all despite the dangers, with a lot of suffering along the way. - - Most notably, both of his brothers had been assassinated for some of their humanitarian and egalitarian positions on subjects such as war, race, and poverty. The news of the Senator's health condition is troubling for me as an American living in dreary times but also as a person who has had the privilege of meeting Senator Kennedy several times, as I am close with members of his immediate family as well as others in the "Kennedy clan." For them, I remain devastated. For our country, I am even more convinced of the necessity of the Obama Administration. Also, I will always remember how Senator Kennedy personally helped double the USAID food allotment for an orphanage in Haiti I am connected to. He went above and beyond for children in Haiti, and even sent the head of USAID -Latin America to the orphanage to meet with the director.

Reflecting on the life (personal and professional) commitments of Senator Kennedy, I am led to become more decisive about my own covenants with the world, god, and myself. What is my covenant? What will it be?

In about ten days, I will fly to Haiti to begin my job as a hospital administrator. As you are aware, the conditions of life in Haiti are inexcusable. I am going back to Haiti because I ordinarily carry with me an insurmountable burden from not being there. There are also plenty of material, spiritual, pedagogical, intellectual, and sociological "reasons" for this next phase. Haiti, although a close neighbor, retains the mystery of the unknown, and that can be scary. The instability of the country and its lack of resources cause great concern for those who love me, who know about my sporadic health problems, and who are aware that my risk-taking occasionally gets me into trouble.

While I continue to sort out my covenant with the world, I would like to make a covenant with you: I am going to do my best to take care of myself. Haiti is my new home; Haitians are my new neighbors; and a small hospital with a BIG vision is my new life, - - but none of this happens apart from your spiritual solidarity, or without the assurance that I have so many beautiful, and giving people to return to. I love you in the deep, deep, places in my heart. In quiet moments by the ocean, when I am alone with my thoughts from the day, of the world, and with tears, I will think of you, and of your love, for it brings me so much strength. When I am doing something like driving through a river in the back of a truck full of melons wondering how this instance of this is going to turn out, it is you who I will think of, and of the moments in which you each uniquely showed me that you loved me. Because of you, I am the luckiest woman alive.

I am going to have a great life in Haiti. Sometimes we essentialize the poor. We end up talking about the pain, and the struggles, the illness, and the strife with disregard for the other aspects of what it means to be human. I am going to live with people who give and love of themselves in the ways you do; and they will care for me too. Haitians are just as dynamic, committed, deep, giving, loving, suffering, cheering, dancing, laughing, crying, yearning, apathetic, bored, and questioning as any other group of persons I have ever encountered. For Americans - the accident of birth has caused us to live on a piece of land during a short period of time in which its inhabitants have more-or-less enjoyed extreme prosperity, and a powerful government. How this happened to us - - we will never know. But for me, I pray for the "best of both worlds." Please visit me. I promise to take very, very good care of you when you do.

Onward with affection and longing,
Kate

One of my favorite Rilke sonnets, translated from the German:

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.

Be forever dead in Eurydice - - more gladly arise
into the seamless life proclaimed in your song.
Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days,
be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.

Be-- and yet know the great void where all things begin,
the infinite source of your own most intense vibration,
so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.

To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb
creatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.

medical records for haiti

Partners in Health worked to create Open MRS, an open-source, medical record database designed specifically for the two-thirds world. This program was developed keeping in mind a preferential option for the poor for medical record keeping and medical care, but furthermore, in order to assist in providing accountability for the sake of receiving PEPFAR grants and so on; most clinics and hospitals in Africa are using Open MRS, keeping several million people in the system. So far in Haiti, Partners in Health uses it, and so does Hospital Albert Schweitzer. Being that the Gates Foundation expects its grant recipients to be run like little businesses: data matters, and Open MRS has helped to provide this sort of accountability.

In Haiti, prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS demands efficient information management, so at my hospital near Miragoane, we are using Open MRS. Today I worked with the President of our Board, Dr. Tom, to discuss ways of making it most efficacious, based upon what we need to track. I suggested that we add a field for how people arrive to the hospital. Basically, - fast donkey or slow donkey? Knowing that paper is a problem in Haiti, I told Dr. Tom that Open MRS is a necessity because we are going to be treating and saving more lives than exist in Haiti pieces of paper. He reminded me that this record keeping is something we must keep in the back of our minds, not in the forefront. When a child is dying of beri-beri in front of me because of a vitamin B deficiency, I need not be yelling at the doctors about getting on their lap tops to log this in. Charting the CD4 counts on women in our HIV / AIDS program will always be secondary to providing care.

Theresa Patterson, my boss, has been very excited about tonight because on "60 Minutes" her friend- - and the founder of Partners in Health, Paul Farmer, was featured for his work in Haiti.

the unnecessary death of carine desir

Last week, a 44 year old woman died on an American Airlines jumbo jet from Haiti to New York. Apparently, Carine Desir was having difficult time breathing. She asked for oxygen but was denied. Two oxygen tanks were later attempted to be administered, but were found to be empty. Doctors on board became involved and a defibrillator was administered, just before Carine Desir died. American Airlines is now engaging in plenty of CYOA.

I have flown on a hand-full of American Airlines flights between Haiti and the United States. The bathrooms on those planes were falling apart; there was little or no security; and often people were standing up during take-off. The case of Carine Desir is the result of either intentional negligence, or a severe lack of diligence due to distractions and diverted attention. Members of the diplomatic community in Haiti have been writing to American Airlines for several years, expressing their concerns about their use of junky planes, and lack of professionalism toward Haitians, and Haitian-Americans.

A brief survey on the relationship between Haiti and the US yields plenty of support for the claim that the use of sub-par machines with empty oxygen tanks for the Haiti flights is in fact an example of the to the lack value placed on Haitian lives by the American corporate and government powers. There is a long history of disregard and abuse of Haiti and the Haitians at the hands of US policies, and firm behaviors. The recent US overthrow of President Aristide occurred after he doubled the minimum wage to $2.00 a day, harming corporate interests in Haiti. This was just after Bush blocked a major IDB loan to Haiti which was to provide for things like clean drinking water to children. But the anthropology of the relationship between the US and Haiti goes way back to the fifteenth century. The relationship has never been a conversation with two equal partners.

With respect to the case of Carine Desir, a more compelling inquiry surrounds asking what might have been distracting for the flight crew on the flight that would cause a thorough check of the oxygen to fall to the wayside. How is it possible that before a flight, the crew might have been busy attending to things other than the check list of cleaning bathrooms and checking oxygen tanks?

This answer is less historical, and more about a mutual lack of cultural understanding between American Airlines and Haitians.

Aside from the very few in the upper class, very few Haitians fly and if they do they do not frequently fly more more than once or twice in a life time. Sitting in the airport in Port-au-Prince, there is a "night-before-Christmas" excitement in the air. Haitians are dressed to the nines, proudly carrying their passports and visas around. The security process for getting on the plane is nothing like what the TSA has administered here. There is always a lot of confusion in the boarding process. Perhaps a bag will be left unattended or left behind and an announcement goes on, but then they just let the bag on anyway, because they know it probably belongs to some Grandmoun who is finally going to Miami to visit her family after waiting years and years for a visa and has no idea what is going.

I once sat with two Grandmothers on a flight back to Port-au-Prince. Because they can not write or read, I filled out their visa forms for them. When the hawkish attendant came by to fill out their visas, certain that they are illiterate, the women proudly asserted that they were able to do it on their own. The attendant grabbed the visas from their hands and marched off.

There is a lot of suspicion about how the plane works, and one of the Grandmothers sitting beside me was obviously quite afraid. The attendants made one of their usual announcements in French (not the language of Haitians, only the elite know French), - - “ok, everybody, this is going to get very loud, and then we will be going up in the sky. It is important that you stay seated during this. Please stay sitting down.” So, during this flight, the attendant predicted correctly: the plane was loud, we were up in the sky, and then bam: one of the nearby small, luggage compartment doors popped open. The Grandmother began pointing to it and screaming as if she had seen the face of Lucifer himself. Wailing and rocking, over and over, “Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh!”

Also, children in Haiti often draw airplanes and helicopters in their artwork. There is a fascination by the notion of flight.

I am not making broad claims about Voudon, technology or science in relation to the average Haitian. Rather, I believe that a particular level of care is necessary in this sphere and the burden lies on the service provider, American Airlines. Because I believe that the attendants would like oxygen for themselves if necessary, I suspect that the problem in the case of Carine Desir is one of expended resources. If the attendants are busy filling in gaps with a metal box full of folks, half of whom have never flown before, and come from a world that is more African than Floridian, I can see how some of the material essentials could become neglected. Perhaps that is why these planes have fallen into the shape they are in, as well.

American Airlines should make immediate changes to the physical quality of the planes, as well as numbers of attendants on board. Furthermore, the cultural sensitivity of the crew on these Haiti-US routes must be addressed.

two longings

Today, I found a hand-written note inside a used book that I recently purchased. I can’t stop thinking about it:

Monday. Packing.

Dear Michael,Wow. I’ve never known a real pilgrim-missionary-journeyman before. You are doing something amazing. Something I could not do right now in my life. I am incredibly proud of you, do you know that?

Yet, I wish I were going – mainly because I will miss you SO much. I can’t imagine how I’ll survive without communicating with you for days and days. I know I’ll think of a thousand things to tell you. You whom I tell everything to – whether you are listening or not.

I wonder what God has in store for you on this pilgrimage. Why have you been chosen to go? What is your lesson? How will it change your life? It does not matter much to me I guess, as long as I am still included in that changed life. Feels like a new era in our story together somehow. Life with you is always an adventure – incredible, and fascinating.

So have fun. Enjoy the adventure that you are undertaking. Remember to journal a lot – for both of us. I know we’ll be connected in spirit as we always are. I know you will be fine and I will be fine and the kids will be fine and your Mom will survive somehow. We have lots more adventures ahead of us. I will be waiting patiently for your safe return so we can continue on together.

Thanks for being such a beautiful, caring, and complex man of service to the world. The people of Haiti will be forever enriched by your presence. I guess it is the least I can do – to share you for a few months. I piece together the paradox – to make peace with the paradox, to find a balance in some larger sense, so that a life can feel whole. I love you forever, Peg

Question: What language do they speak in Haiti?

Answer: Haitian Creole (Kreyol) is spoken in Haiti.

One minute answer. . . ready. . . set. . . go:

Creole languages have a substrate language, with an adstrate lexifier overlay. So, for Haitian Creole, the substrate is African and the lexifying language is French which provides the roots and some of the articles which are then blended with the word or put after the word which is a trait of African languages. In Creole languages, the substrate is rarely identified specifically because the language originated among slaves who were purposely in mixed groups from all over Africa. This was a “secret” language used to communicate apart from the slave masters.

Some people want to call Creoles “pidgin French.” This is not the case. A pidgin language does not have native speakers, whereas Creoles do. It is believed that Creole was created by the children of slaves. Not having a “native tongue,” they blended the African languages they heard with the French from the masters. Creoles are morphologically developed languages. Pidgins are more like the equivalent of “glass drink me,” which could mean: “I will drink out of the glass.” Or, it is more like a variation of / dialect of a given lexifying language. Jamaican English is considered a Creole, but it could be debatable that it is a pidgin.

Creoles are not merely variations of or a dummying down of the lexifier language. They are a mixed fusion of language with a specific history rooted in a slave economy. All language is fluid. Spanish is not called pidgin Latin. Nor is it called a Creole. Yet modern day Castilian Spanish is also about 30% Arabic. To flip this thinking, a scholar at MIT has deemed Creole languages to actually be romance languages.

Let’s look at the ever-changing story of English. In England there was Gaelic, and then in the 6^th or 7th century the Anglos and the Saxons showed up. By the 8^th century there was old English, and a lot has changed since then. English is a Germanic language with its closest relative being Dutch. Yet, it could be called a romance language because so many of the language’s more sophisticated words are rooted in the Latin signifiers - - “entirely,” “collaborate,” “innovate.”

Is English known as “pidgin Latin”? No. Do people ask “is English a real language”? No. Do people ask, “Why do English speakers spell the words funny?” No. This is where the history of the language comes into play. French speakers find the written Creole to be a “phonetic spelling” of the French. This is incorrect, because of the complexity of Haitian Creole. But, it is also an incorrect and insensitive thing to say based on the history of Haiti revolting from the oppressor of the French.

The island of Hispaniola was the richest and most lush place on earth. In the seventeenth century, the French controlled the western third portion of the island while the Spanish controlled the eastern two-thirds. It was a slave economy. In the late seventeen hundreds 500,000 slaves revolted on the 40,000 French masters. The first president of Haiti was an ex-slave. The Haitian Revolution is responsible for a series of events in western history, including the Louisiana Purchase. Haiti is the first black republic. The Haitians have been punished by the US, French, Canada, and the western world ever since. For a closer and more elaborate history of Haiti, the Haitian people, and the US occupation of/influence in, I strongly suggest a fantastic book by Dr. Paul Farmer called The Uses of Haiti.

“Bonjou msye dam. Ki sa m kab fe pou nou?”
(Good morning sir and madam. What can I do for you?)

“M bezwen yon kostim. Madmwazel la vle we wob abiye yo. Montre nou bel bagay, paske nou vle abiye byenn bwode.”
(I need a suit. The lady wants to see the formal dresses. Show us nice things because we want to dress up.)

To hear more Haitian Creole, check out this video of Belo, a popular singer in Haiti. I saw him in concert in 2006, and I am a huge fan!

the punishment of ayiti

Begin watching at minute 9:50 for Randall Robinson's discussion with Charlie Rose, on the continual occupation of Haiti and the United States' sympathy for the rich, and punishment of the poor.