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.

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.”

where sin has increased grace abounds (romans 5:20)

Pentecostalism, HIV/AIDS, and the burden of South African women is what my friend Katy researches. Today she lectured on a wide range of issues surrounding the devastating HIV/AIDS problem in sub-Saharan Africa in specific relation to the Church’s failure to care enough (although statistically they care more than non-Christians), turn away from traditional strategies, and zap stigma. As a Christian Ethicist, Katy offers a three pronged approach for the moral response to HIV/AIDS: A Posture of worldliness (ending the bifurcation between the spiritual and the physical); Reading and responding to the situation at hand (the emptying of the church-self to serve as opposed to blindly following moral code); Reframing guilt and innocence (i.e. Christ became guilty out of love). Theologically, Katy’s research can certainly inform my own interest in the anthropology of Haiti’s suffering.

Bonhoeffer has been on my brain a lot lately, and one of his quotes was shared in today's lecture: "I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. . . By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world – watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith . . . and that is how one becomes a human and a Christian.”

According to Bonhoeffer and divine command theory, God’s yes is bigger than God’s no, and Christians must have full engagement and a posture of worldliness. The numbers say that a third of the world is Christian, and 1.7 million of the 2.5 new HIV/AIDS cases in 2007 are in sub-Saharan Africa. So if Bonhoeffer’s theology were to be adopted by American Christians alone, how long would it take for HIV/AIDS to disappear from Africa, and from the world as a whole?

resurrection

Even though the world has failed, the healing capacity of the human experience has no limits. I can never know your pain, but I can tell you about mine. Together, we may live in communion, and change the failures of the world.

Today, in a lecture on the ethics of sex (within the context of the norm of the black church's no-talk policy), my professor discussed “sexual consent” and his own experience as a rape survivor. He read some of his new book that addresses this topic. Needless to say, I was profoundly surprised by his choice to speak so openly about something so painful and rarely discussed. He said that he has had a lot of time and therapy to get to the other side of this, to take power from it, name it, and talk with people about it. After class, I went to his office to thank him for the lecture. I said, “That room is full of rape survivors. You just know it.” We will never be able to measure the impact of Victor’s lecture today. He inspired future church leaders to speak about the sexual problems going on sometimes right in the choir chambers of the church. He also gave permission to all of us, to take back our lives; lives that have been slowly stolen from us at the hands of sexual violence, shame, and silence. There is a life after the silence.

Eight years ago, I was followed into a public restroom in Washington, DC, and my head was slammed against a mirror several times, and I was raped. People nearby could hear my frantic laughter as it was happening. I was left alone with my attacker, and then taken by him to a second location where he continued to rape me. Thank goodness, the only thing that I can remember from the second location was waking up and screaming when my head was being bashed again. The following day was probably the weirdest day of my life. During the weeks of panic attacks, issued blame, and months of anxiety, I worked closely with a therapist, as I tried to reclaim my life, and get better. My parents and friends helped me too. It was an imperfect journey, ignited by the social sin of rape, and guided by the human instinct for survival. By being honest and committing to do this work, ultimately my life was saved. Obviously this is the very abbreviated version of what happened to me, and of how it profoundly affected my life and my personhood. But at the end of the day, the details are not the story.

There is one book that I found to be tremendously helpful, and I think everyone should read it, rape survivor or not: After Silence, Rape and My Journey Back, by Nancy Venable Raine.

Before Raine published the book, close friends said things to her like, ''Let's face it, no one wants to hear about such terrible things.'' And, ''I just can't imagine how you can write about something so . . . so very personal.'' And, ''Shall we get off rape to something . . . agreeable?'' Shame presupposes wrongdoing. The things we do not talk about are the things we have done wrong, right? A DUI? A divorce? An F in a class. She writes: ''The sense that I was responsible for the rape supported a more important belief, one that I could not give up, although it had been severely damaged. It was the belief that I could control what happened to me, that my actions had a bearing on the outcome of my life.''

The vast topic of rape is something I occasionally talk to friends about. I never know what they have been through. Without it becoming my identity, I hope that my openness about this can somehow help others who have suffered with the aftermath of a rape, - -people who understand that it is the terror of the violence and the power and the robbing of one’s personhood that is the story of rape, or repeat rapes. It is about being told: "you are not human." Eight years later, I remember dealing with the anxiety, panic, depression, helplessness, and confusion, - - but I usually think of the people who do not have access to help, or who never got help in time. I on the other hand, have been given a new life.

We all need to be part of an open conversation about this social demon, in order to save the lives of those suffering in silence. Inspired by Victor’s lecture, today I am reaching out to you.

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.

ask cashier for details

Two months after I moved to Tennessee, Angela came to Nashville and the two of us went on a road trip heading south. About forty miles outside of Nashville, Angela and I stopped to get some gas. As we approached the Flying J, Angela pointed out a sign prominently placed above the door: "The terrorist threat for today is yellow. Ask cashier for details." Like a good American, I do what I am told, because I love freedom.

After all, I moved from Washington, DC our nation’s capital, and I will never forget watching the Pentagon burn for two weeks after 9/11. If they are monitoring the terrorist threat many years later in Tennessee – something must be up.

While paying with American currency for the package of Swedish fish and the bottle of French spring water, I said, "So, I am interested in getting the details. The sign outside said that I should ask you for details about the terrorist threat. Is everything ok?"

The cashier seemed caught off guard and replied, "I don't know."

I asked, “Is that sign posted for the benefit of truck drivers en route? Like, is it a heads-up?"

The truck driver in a few people in line behind me piped up. "That sign is for us all," (que National Anthem), “that sign is for anyone who walks into the Flying J."

“Ok, well I guess that’s why I am asking for the details. It says to ask for details,” I said.

"It helps us stay aware," the truck driver said, nodding with an aura of pride "it helps you stay aware."

Angela joined the line to purchase her Elvis mug, and post cards. Upon hearing the scuffle, she approached me with a nervous giggle and asked that I join her in the back of the line, curious as to what in the world I was getting myself into, I told her, "I was just asking for the details!"

Approaching the front of the line again a few minutes later, I turned to the cashier and asked, "So, how often does the sign get changed?"

Like an honest patriot she leaned over the counter as if to share a secret, "To tell you the truth, I have been here three months, and that sign- it ain't changed once."

I pressed on, "Do you think if Iran or North Korea are about to nuke us, the details - - whatever they are - - will change and the color level will also be changed to maybe orange? Or red?”

Irritated, and before wishing me farewell, the cashier pivoted toward me in a very soldier like manner and said, “Look, all I know, is--- yellow, is good. It's always been yellow here.”

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

i've only just begun

As a child, I was never scared by gory movies or by thoughts of monsters under my bed. This surprises me in retrospect because my parents never paid much attention to what I was watching on TV. In fact, now that I think about it, they encouraged me to watch things that were too sophisticated for my level of maturity. Perhaps they did this with hopes that I would develop a vocabulary and sensibility able to overcome typical childhood fears, thus, their child might require less parenting. Maybe I bored them, and they wanted more things to talk with me about. With my parents’ stamp of approval, I recall watching things like Mississippi Burning, the Golden Girls, and episodes from the Victory at Sea series all before the age of 11. This culminated into an all out private demise when on January 1, 1989, I watched The Karen Carpenter Story, a made for TV movie.

Karen Carpenter would haunt me for years.

Karen Carpenter was the famous female drummer from the group “The Carpenters.” Richard Carpenter, her controlling older brother, was the other half of the duo. (Ultimately, I place blame for Karen’s death on Richard’s quaalude addiction and his jealousy about Karen’s marriage.) The movie opened with a scene I will never forget. Karen has collapsed at home, and she is being wheeled in a hospital bed through a very bright hallway. The ghost of “alive and well Karen” - - the Karen before the fame - - is roller skating alongside the hospital bed, with pigtails in, singing. She occasionally looks at the camera and smiles a creepy smile that as an 11 year old, I never wanted to receive from a stranger.

This woman systematically starved herself to death to defy her family and her fame. I had never been exposed to something to scary. I became equally obsessed about and afraid of, Karen Carpenter. Thank God there was no internet at the time, but nonetheless I managed to find photos of her at the public library. “Ok Dad, I will be up in the children’s section.” Yea right. I was in the biography and music sections flagging books for photocopying. Her narrow, pale face contrasting the long dark hair: scared the shit out of me, but I also couldn’t get enough. I recall finding The Carpenters’ tapes, “Close to You” and “A Kind of Hush” in my Grandmother’s basement. I asked to borrow them. I brought them home with me. I played them, very quietly in my bedroom, with my ear next to the speaker, startled by just about any other noise. I can still hear the build up of the whistle in “Close to You.” It was terrifying. The next day I left those tapes on the school bus. Those tapes needed to be someone else’s problem.

This kind of thing went on for a long time.

It really was debilitating, to think about Karen Carpenter all the time. I don’t know if my parents were keyed-in, but my girlfriends knew about my obsessive/fearful relationship with Karen Carpenter. A year or two later, when I started to let go a bit of this issue, I recall being at a sleep-over at Lindsay Waterman’s house. All of my best girlfriends were there in the basement, laughing and having fun. I was trying to open a door that was jammed, to get into another part of the basement. Seizing the opportunity to get my goose, Mary Waldorf, my best friend started screaming, “Ahh!! Katie! The door won’t open because Karen Carpenter is holding on to the other side!!!” As I flew off the door and leaped on to my sleeping bag for comfort, I reciprocated screaming blood-curdling screams!

I instituted some cognitive therapy for myself and things became easier. I just didn’t seek out the information about Karen Carpenter anymore. I stopped looking for things to see and learn about her.

I starved myself of her.

Since then, once in a blue moon, someone will make a reference to her in a movie, or I will see something about her on TV. I usually do ok.

Usually. . .

Earlier this month, after many weeks of graduate school stress, I went out to celebrate the end of the semester with my friend and classmate, Jewly. She is a journalist and has also worked in the music industry for many years. Her own album, Darlin Understand will be released on January 29. Over pino grigio and vegetarian shepherd’s pie, with a bluesy voice gargling in the background, Jewly and I covered all the things women talk about over dinner: relationships, work, and the future. While talking about her debut album, she shared a funny story about the history of her drum set. Things started to get fuzzy for me. I looked at her thin and delicate facial features. I heard the words “drum set” over in my head and I kinda just went blank. Her lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear. Her head was thrown back in laughter a little bit, here and there. But the soft whistle of “Close to You” was winding up in my brain. Grasping what was going on here, I interrupted her story and I quickly asked, “So you play the drums? You’re, you are a female drummer?” She noticed that I was upset, and replied with a cautious, “yeeess?”

I said sort of in a defeated but accusatory manner, “Oh. So. You probably like Karen Carpenter, huh? You know, she was a female drummer too?” Not allowing time for a response, I continued in a riled up mode like John Cusack in High Fidelity. “Well Jewly, she scared the shit out of me! She scared the shit out of me. And that made-for-TV movie, The Karen Carpenter Story? That comes in as a close second to the worst thing about my childhood.” Jewly looked confused. She laughed nervously. Realizing what sort of an outburst I had just had, I excused myself to the bathroom. It was an all out relapse. And I realized that Jewly being a new friend, could very well have chosen to bail on her creepy new friend Kate, upon my return from the bathroom. But she was still at the table. I apologized and told her the story. I even told her about leaving the tapes on the bus. It helped to talk about it.