La Republica Dominicana

My original plan for this summer was to return to Port-au-Prince and write about the history of the Hotel Oloffson. Unfortunately, Haiti’s inclusion on the State Department travel warning list made it impossible to get funding to realize this dream. Instead of scrapping everything, I decided to use the grant to research the lives of Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic.

            To be honest, its been a frustrating week and a half. For starters, my flight was canceled due to Hurricane Irene (although I’m grateful not to be in Vermont right now, or Princeton for that matter, so perhaps I shouldn’t be complaining.) My boyfriend David and I were supposed to arrive on Sunday August 21st. We got stuck in Miami last Wednesday night before finally flying out through Copa Airlines with a layover in Panama City. Having David around the first few days was really wonderful- it helped me to feel more comfortable and oriented in an unfamiliar city, and the colonial zone of Santo Domingo with its sixteenth century cathedrals and monasteries is a pretty romantic place.

            Achieving my goals for this trip has proved difficult, however. Two weeks, truncated to one and a half by Irene, isn’t enough time to form connections, inspire trust and learn which questions to ask, especially in a language in which one is only minimally competent. (If I’ve learned anything on this trip, it’s that I need to work harder in Spanish class.) Obviously I knew that whatever knowledge I gained would be cursory, but I don’t think I anticipated exactly how cursory.

            El Beaterio, the beautiful sixteenth century convent turned guest house where I’m staying, is French-owned and employs many Haitians. The young men employed here are mostly middle-class, earning degrees in engineering or computer science or accounting at Dominican universities. Although many of them have expressed the loneliness of life abroad and a desire to return to Haiti after graduating, “because it is easier to have a career in your own country” as one man, Celestin, put it, none of them seem to have experienced egregious discrimination. Celestin complains of wage disparities between Dominicans and Haitians, but my translator, Daniel, says that he hasn’t encountered much ill treatment at UTESA, the technical institute where he teaches. “In the universities, we are all students, all equal. The more education you have, the less likely you are to think in a racist way. It’s only if you are a poor person, here illegally, with no papers, then you are no one.”

            The purpose of the research grant is to produce several pieces of short fiction. It is much harder to paint a subtle picture of a culture you don’t know or understand than it is to portray blatant racism and xenophobia. Perhaps such ugliness doesn’t truly exist here to the same extent that books I’ve read about the subject claim, or perhaps I’m not encountering it because I don’t have access to non-urban areas and interactions with different types of people. Or perhaps the picture is more nuanced than I would be capable of capturing even with several years in this country.

            I was stupid to think that it would be in any way natural to go up to random people on the sreet and survey them about their experiences and attitudes. Because it’s so easy to meet people from all walks of life and learn so much about Port-au-Prince simply from sitting on the veranda of the Hotel Oloffson, I assumed it would be that easy everywhere, taking for granted how incredibly special the Oloffson is.

            Tomorrow my translator and I are going to talk with the president of Little Haiti. (Each part of Barrio San Carlos has a president responsible for community development.) Hopefully he will help facilitate conversations with residents of his neighborhood. On Friday we’re visiting a batey, a sugarcane cutters’ barracks, through the Batey Relief Alliance. It will be a great opportunity to get outside of Santo Domingo and learn about this industry which employs (and oppresses) so many Haitians in search of a better life. I’m sure both excursions will be fruitful, but I only have two more days left here and am feeling strapped for things to write about.

            The parallels between Mexican immigration to the United States and Haitian immigration to the Dominican Republic are obvious. But the complex system of racial classification in the Dominican Republic adds a further dimension to anti-immigration sentiment on the island.

            State IDs list people’s ethnicity as blanco (white) or indio (indio claro or indio oscuro, depending on one’s shade.) As Maria Filomena Gonzalez, the Dominican scholar and head of CIEE study abroad programs in Santo Domingo, put it, “We invented a color. Indian is not a color.” Apparently many Dominicans insist that they are not descended from African slaves and Europeans, but from Tainos and Europeans. It’s pretty indisputable that the indigenous Taino people of Hispaniola were wiped out by forced labor and smallpox within the first hundred years of Spanish settlement, yet Sra. Gonzalez told me an acquaintance of hers insisted she had been to a surviving Taino village in the country’s interior, and the U.S. government once wrote to the Dominican government to tell them that their people had to stop applying for U.S. citizenship as “Native Americans.”

            Even the darkest-skinned Dominicans are classified as “indio”; only Haitians are classified as “negro.” Kimberly Simmons, a professor at the University of South Carolina, explains the differences between Dominican and North American concepts of race very clearly and succinctly in her article Racial Enculturation and Lived Experience, written about her experiences with American students studying abroad in the D.R.:

 What made the black students’ expeerience more troubling in the Dominican Republic was that they were surrounded by people who phenotypically looked like them- ranging from light to dark- but did not, in most cases, define themselves as black. One day, as I explained the Dominican racial system to the group, an African-American student from Morehouse College asked me, “What’s wrong? Don’t they know they’re black?” My first response was that they didn’t learn they were black. I asked him, “How do you know that you are black? That we are black?” He stopped and said, “But look at them.” The striking part of his question is the idea of knowing. How do we come to know, or understand, who we are in racial terms? I suggest that it is through a process I call racial enculturation. Race and racial categories, as sociocultural constructions, rooted in historical and political circumstances, can be understood in an abstract sense, but the students were not operating abstractly. They wanted to know how it was possible for someone to reject being black- to reject their history and ancestry- and not accept who they were. I explained that black, as a category, and pride in being black, is a process- that racial enculturation is a process by which we come to understand and internalize racial definitions and concepts. All of these ideas are reinforced throughout society, especially in families, schools, religious institutions and among peers.

 At the same time, “we are all black behind the ears” is a popular Dominican saying. It seems to me, even with all the fetishization of Columbus and cultural homage to Spain noticeable even on a brief visit like mine, that what is important isn’t to be “white” in the sense of phenotypically resembling Heidi Klum but to be distinct from Haitians. Scholar Maria Filomena Gonzalez told me that Dominicans are quick to deny charges of racism, insisting on pride in their mixed heritage and pointing out that there has never been segregation in their country like in the U.S. or South Africa.

            Dominican racial constructs, and the interactions between Haitians and Dominicans, are subjects for years of study, not ten days’ worth. I wish I had enough time to learn the right people to talk to and the right questions to ask them, let alone enough time for a clearer picture to emerge. So far, most of the responses I’ve gotten have been rather fuzzy, along the lines of, “Well, there are nice people and bad people everywhere.” A universal truism, but not particularly helpful when trying to come up with ideas for stories.

 

 

The power of art

Photograph by Ben Depp.

 This photograph of a Haitian artist’s work for 2011 carnival this past winter is somehow almost more shocking than images of actual earthquake victims. It really shows the power of symbolic representation, of art, to wake us up when we have become inured to the world’s suffering.

Baby

I submitted this piece for a creative writing class a few weeks ago. One of the comments was, “Where are they? I’m confused. This sounds so awful.” The fellow student reading the piece knew it was set in Haiti; he just evidently had no idea of what conditions were like, especially for women (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/world/americas/24haiti.html) in the tent cities so many people have been living in since the earthquake. He’s a very well-informed, intelligent person, so his comment especially disturbed me.

****************

“Baby”

I never gave you a name. Not because I didn’t love you, but because I learned early that what we love most is usually taken away. It was a hot day, the day you came into my life, and my back stuck to the green plastic mat. Tiny ants crept up my forearm where the IV burrowed like some blood-sucking mite. Doctors and nurses from America and Europe rushed in and out of the makeshift tent, taking notes on clipboards, measuring blood pressure. A blonde woman in her thirties smiled at me and took my hand.

            I think she could tell that I was about to cry because she crouched down beside me and stayed like that for several minutes before the head doctor called her away. She wasn’t family. My family was dead, buried in the rubble. But I was grateful to her, this woman from America who I’d never see again, grateful for her hand squeezing mine.

            The expectant mothers smelled like farm animals. Flies beckoned to the warm stink of our open legs, to the sticky blood on our unchanged pads. I didn’t want the male doctors to see my vagina but there is no place for shame when thousands of people have died days before. The thirteen year old girl on the mat across from mine screamed and the hairy purple dome of her child’s skull crested.

            There was only Ibuprofen for the pain.

            You were born blue. A tiny shriveled blue mass, and it was a miracle when you began to squirm and cough, musty, strangled coughs as if you had the lungs of a seventy-five year old. We stayed at the hospital two more days before the nurses told us there wasn’t enough room.

            I built us a house on the golf course out of cardboard and tin. The nice woman next to us gave us her tarp when she got a tent from USAID. The ground was still hard, but at least it was dry. Pots and pans I scavenged from the rubble, careful to avoid the marines sniping at looters. I picked a scrap of cloth with red flowers on it out of a dumpster and wrapped you in it so you wouldn’t be naked. At night I felt your breath against my face and it anchored me. Your tiny fingers curled around my thumb.

            You stayed with the neighbor-woman when men came, so they wouldn’t wonder how much you cost. Their penises smelled ripe as sewage. It’s incredible, the stench of unwashed flesh. I’ve heard that it can be enjoyable, what men and women do together, but I’ve only ever experienced pain. Lucrative pain. Pain enough to feed you on, pain enough to buy mud and salt biscuits for me to eat so my milk would flow.

            One night I heard a man’s voice in the tent next door, and the neighbor woman screaming. I pressed a hand over your mouth. You were a strange baby, never crying, wrinkled and wise, but I had to be sure you’d stay quiet. I held my breath. The neighbor woman stopped screaming. There was a gurgling noise, and her little daughter whimpering, and the man panting and grunting like a dog as he forced himself on the child.

            Our neighbors were found with their throats slit in the morning.

            My ribs began to show. My hair was mangy, my one dress coming unstitched at the seams. You tried to suck and nothing came out of my breasts. So I took you down to the dirty little stream at the bottom of the hill and drowned you. You seemed almost peaceful. I was holding you, one hand on your belly and the other cupping the back of your sweet head. I didn’t stop holding you until your breath expired and your soul swam out your mouth like a small silver minnow, nameless, to be born again.

Sans Maman (new short story)

Sans Maman

(revision)

I am in Mme. Guillaume’s class. She is talking about Papa Dessalines and how he tore the white out of the French flag to make our flag and cut off the heads of white people who made us slaves. I am not sure how I feel about this, but I am too afraid to raise my hand and say anything because everyone gets so excited when they talk about Papa Dessalines. Mommee always says that I am a thoughtful girl, that I see what is really there. She also tells me to keep my mouth shut and stay out of peoples’ way.           

            Then I am outside, on my knees in the dusty schoolyard, and I can’t breathe, and everyone is screaming, and I realize I am too, and I can’t see anything because the air is white like a cloud, and then my friend Blessing comes out of the cloud and her face is white like a ghost’s and blood is running down her cheek and I wonder if it is real and she falls into my arms.

            Then I am sitting on a mattress in the park with Tantine Emilie and my cousins. There are hundreds of people in the park. They are singing, praying, weeping, drinking rum. Candles waver in the night. A man attached to an IV machine stands up to take a piss. His bum shows through his hospital gown. Tantine Emilie doesn’t even notice.”Jezi,” she keeps murmuring, her head in her hands. “Jezi. Jezi.” The National Palace is missing its roof. I didn’t think that could happen.

            I don’t remember what happens in between.

Tonton Joseph is under the house with mommee. His right leg sticks out like the bad witch in the Wizard of Oz. Below his too-short pants leg you can see the little black caterpillars of his leg hair and his white socks and his good leather shoes that he always keeps polished to a high shine, dull with dust. People point and stare. White people with cameras pay men from the neighborhood to show them Tonton Joseph’s right leg so they can take pictures. What can Tonton Joseph’s right leg do for me? they are wondering.

            Tantine Emilie clutches their arms, her eyes bulging. They shrug her off. They are frightened of her.

            “I’m just a journalist,” they say. “I’m just here to write about the earthquake. I’ll try to get you help.”

            The bodies in the street are being wrapped up like mummies and carried away. They look like insects, on their backs, limbs frozen in the air. People put toothpaste under their noses or masks over their faces so they don’t breathe in the rotting-fruit smell. Two boys pass by, carting rubble in a wheelbarrow. Their father is trying to dig his wife out with his bare hands several houses away. His arms are bleeding.

            My little cousin Sandra won’t stop crying. Tantine Emilie wipes sweat from her forehead. We have been here, perched on the ruin of our house, all day. Occasionally we hear shouts of joy- someone has received a text message from Celestine, trapped under Caribbean Market! someone has heard- or thinks they have heard- their grandma moan from under the rubble!- but from mommee and Tonton Joseph there has been only silence.

            A U.N. van idles down the street by what was the grocery store. My cousin Watson runs after them. “Hey!” he yells. “Hey, we need help! My father is trapped! Hey, you! You!” The van drives off. Watson throws a rock at its rear window, but misses.

            When all the people under a house are dead, the Americans spray paint a red X. There is no X on my house, which means that Mommee has just lost consciousness. In the hospital they will put tubes in her and give her water and she will wake up.

Mommee works for the Duponts. Mesye Dupont is very handsome. He has light skin and very white teeth. He lets me come to his house and once he let me watch Wizard of Oz with his daughters until Mme. Dupont came home and he apologized, it was time for dinner, no more movies for tonight please but you are a sweet girl, he smoothed my ponytails, here is a piece of candy for you.

            I waited outside while mommee finished cleaning dishes. I saved the candy to show her. She turned red like her face was on fire. She put the candy in her pocket and told me not to play with those children, I need this job so you can eat and go to school.

            I don’t like Mme. Dupont. She has soft flowy hair like a shampoo commercial and long red fingernails. Mommee doesn’t have money for fingernail polish. Her skin is darker than mine, darker than the Duponts’. Her hair is frizzy and her hands are rough like a man’s. When I look at mommee’s hands, I feel sadness and love at the same time.

            Mme. Dupont does not approve of me playing with her daughters. This is what mommee told me. But Mesye Dupont is very kind. I ask Tantine Emilie where the Duponts are, if they are under their house. If not maybe they will help us talk to the Americans in orange vests, the ones with the red spray paint. If not maybe we won’t have to stay in the park.

            “Nobody help you,” Watson says. He stops playing games on his Digicel, stretches out on his mattress, looks at me through one eye. “Sans maman.”

            “Stop it,” says Tantine Emilie. “She’s your family.”

            Watson shrugs and goes back to his Digicel. I wish mommee would buy me a cellular phone. She says it is a waste of money.

            That night rain comes in through a hole in the tarp. Emilie gives us plastic bags to hold over our heads while she goes to ask her friends with the big white American tent if we can stay with them. Watson holds his bag over his phone. It is the one nice thing he has ever owned. Sandra stands on top of a chair.

            It smells like a toilet. Mud runs by my feet, thick with garbage, orange peel, goat skin, poop. I start to cry.

            “Baby.”

            I don’t like Watson. He’s mean.

I am not a sans maman. A sans maman is a nobody. A sans maman is dirty. They are like the dog with only one eye that wanders around the park. Part of its head is missing. There is a yellow lump there, where its head got crushed, with flies buzzing around. It whines and paws at the dirt. People throw things at it to get it away. Sometimes sans mamans are rich though. They walk around in Adidas tracksuits and when they smile your mommee grips your hand tight so you know not to look them in the eyes. I wonder how they wear such nice shoes when they have no parents to keep them clean.

            I have two pairs of shoes and one nice dress to wear to church. It is white with a pink bow. I am not allowed to wear it except on Sundays.

It is a long walk to the Duponts’ house in Petionville. I pass the iron workers and painters selling their work by the side of the road in Canape-Vert. All the houses have slid down into the ravine like an avalanche I saw on the Duponts’ TV. A man is following me. He is wearing jeans and flip-flops and sunglasses but no shirt. He looks young but he is weeping like an old beggar, or maybe laughing. I can’t tell which. I think he has lost his mind. I walk faster.

            Near Place Boyer I see a boy in his underpants holding a bucket to a burst water main. A pretty blonde woman approaches him. Her yellow hair is tied back. She is wearing a plain gray blouse and shorts the color of dirt. I don’t understand why the white people don’t dress nicely when they have so much money.

            “Where are your parents?” she asks in French.

            The boy stares at her blankly. She repeats the question.

            “At home,” he says.

            “What are you doing here?”

            “Getting water.”

            “Isn’t it dangerous for you to be wandering around the city like this?”

            The lunatic, standing a few paces behind me, starts to laugh more loudly. The pretty white woman purses her lips.

            “Your parents really should keep you under better supervision,” she says to the boy.

            “Hey blan!” the lunatic calls. She does not look at him. “Blan! Blan! Hey you, I’m talking to you. I want to tell you something.”

            Neither the lady or the boy look his direction. Instead he grabs me by the shoulder and grins, revealing a missing tooth. “It’s the end of the world,” he whispers. His breath is hot and foul in my ear.

            I take off running.

            The Duponts’ house is behind a wall of concrete. Shards of broken glass and coils of razor wire sparkle in the sun. The front gate is padlocked shut. The house isn’t damaged except for where part of the garage roof caved in. Mesye Dupont’s red convertible isn’t in the driveway.

            I yell “Mesye Dupont! Mesye! Mesye!” and shake the iron gate until my throat is raw and I realize, suddenly, that the Duponts have left. They are lot bo dlo, across the water.

            I remember Mesye Dupont looking over my math homework when no one was there to see and laughing with delight when I solved the problems quickly on my own. I remember him telling me, you are the smartest little girl I know. I remember him kissing the top of my head as if I were his own.

            The Duponts are in Florida, or Paris. The girls are watching cartoons and eating cereal. Mme. Dupont’s face is covered in green paste and her pedicure is drying. Mesye Dupont is reading the paper, perhaps absentmindedly patting Celestine or Margot’s hair.

            Watson’s voice rings in my head. Dummy. Don’t you understand anything, dummy?

Today, instead of sitting outside the house and keeping mommee company, I wait for cars to pass by the road so I can wipe their windows and maybe somebody pays me. Usually they don’t. If they are Haitian they ignore me and if they are blan they look so so sad or they yell, “JESUS CHRIST KID WHAT ARE YOU DOING OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET YOU’RE GONNA GET RUN OVER!” I shrug. Across the water, where they come from, children don’t have to work. They go to school to learn about multiplication tables and Christopher Columbus. My school fell down.

            I make a whole dollar. Watson tries to snatch it from me but Tantine Emilie sees and smacks the side of his head. We eat rice from the U.N. trucks and plaintains for dinner. Watson drinks Barbancourt from a dirty glass bottle, the Coca Cola label worn off into sticky grayness. A few leftover slivers of plaintain swim in brown oil on the edge of the pan. Tantine Emilie scoops them on to my plate and smiles.

            “You look hungry, cheri.”

            Watson exclaims, scowling. “Is she your daughter now?”

            He pours more rum down his throat, the ball in his neck bobbing. Sandra begins to cry. She raises her little arms up in the air and Emilie picks her up, humming as if she were six months old. Sandra is three. I think it is strange that she behaves like such a baby.

            “Michelle,” Tantine Emilie says. “From now on, I’m really going to need your help. I’m going to need you to go to work everyday.”

            “Blan,” Watson whines, rubbing his belly. “Blan, mwen grangou. Blan, give me money please.”

            “Hush!” Emilie looks like she is about to start crying. I have never seen Tantine Emilie cry.

            “But what about school?” I protest. “Mommee works so I can go to school.”

            “She’s dead,” Emilie says. “So is Joseph. The rescue squads pulled them out today.”

I see the same pretty blonde woman wandering around the park two days later in her ugly plain brown clothes, asking people questions. It’s dangerous for her to be wandering around without supervision, I think, but I do not tell her this. I go to stand in the road and wipe windows.

            When I get back to my family that night, the blonde woman is sitting in our chair, talking to Tantine Emilie. They see me and freeze. Tantine Emilie smiles unnaturally wide.

            “Michelle,” she says, “how would you like to go live in Washingtown?”

            “Washington,” the blonde woman says. “In America.”

            “Yes,” Tantine Emilie says. “America. Would you like that?”

            “I am from Iowa,” the woman says. “In the United States. My church helps children like you to find American families to live with, so you can have a better life.”

            Watson won’t look at me. I wonder what he is feeling. Jealousy? Or is he happy to be rid of me, happy I am being given away?

            “I made two dollars today,” I say.

            Tantine Emilie’s smile dims for a second, as if she is confused, then returns. She holds out her hand for the money.

On the bus to the Dominican Republic we sing songs and clap our hands with the missionaries. I am sitting next to Sasha, the woman from Iowa. Her shoulders are freckled and brown. I wonder why she would want to stay out in the sun when she is so pretty. Her face is milk-colored. She smells nice, like crushed flowers.

            I am tired, too tired to sing songs. A man burned red, his nose and forehead peeling, has been taking pictures of us all day. “Smile,” he says. “You’re going to America!” The little girl sitting across from me cheers, the muscles in her throat straining so they look like chicken bones. She smells like poop. The cut on her shoulder is yellow like the stray dog’s crushed head. She scares me. She is probably one of those children from Cite Soleil, the ones who lick trash out of the dumpsters for nutrition, the ones my mother told me never ever to even look at.

            I bury my head in Sasha’s shoulder. She lets me lay in her lap, running her fingers through my hair. In my dreams Sasha is married to Mesye Dupont. We go to the movies and drink Coca Cola. It is very pretty in Iowa. There are a lot of trees and no garbage anywhere.

I hear police sirens. A cop car pulls up to our house in Iowa. Mommee falls out of the backseat onto the sidewalk, screaming for help. Both her arms are bloody stumps. The police drive away.

            Sasha pushes me off her lap. “Sweetie!” she says. “Sweetie, I need you to wake up, ok?”

            A fat man boards the bus and yells at the photographer man in Spanish. I don’t know what he is saying. We are surrounded by flashing lights. I can see the Dominican policemen with their large black guns through the window. The girl next to me, the one who smells like poop, begins to cry.

            “What’s going on?” I ask Sasha.

            “I don’t know, sweetie, I don’t know.”

            The fat policeman pulls the photographer out of his seat. The photographer tries to break free and the policeman clubs him over the head, twice. He goes limp and the cop drags him out of the bus. The other policemen are hassling children and missionaries out of their seats. A little boy screams and bites a cop’s forearm, like a feral dog.

            “Everybody stay calm!” Sasha says. “Stay calm and everything will be alright!” She grabs my hand and leads me into the aisle.

            Outside, a cop asks me questions in badly-spoken French.

            “How old are you?”

            “Eleven.”

            “Do you know who these people are?”

            “They’re from a church in Iowa. They’re taking us to Washingtown.”

            “No, they’re taking you to Santo Domingo, illegally. Did they ask for any sort of paperwork when they took you?”

            “Paperwork?”

            The girl, the one who smells bad, is under the bus. Her eyes gleam like a cat’s in the dark. She puts a finger to her lips.

            “Legal documents, you know, paperwork?”

            “I am going to Washingtown, in America. The nice lady from Iowa said so. She said she would find me a family.”

            “Where is your family? In Port-au-Prince?”

            “My mother is dead. I don’t know my father.”

            The girl starts running, swerving through the dry, stunted shrubs, toward the dark shape of the tree-covered hills.

            “Do you have any other family? Anyone we can contact?” the policeman asks. He has me cornered by his car. There is no way for me to get a head start on him.

            The fat man chases the girl for a few yards, yelling, then gives up, letting his arms drop to his sides, winded by the effort. There is no point. Like me, she has nowhere to go. Her small figure is swallowed up by the forest, is gone, and I wish I could escape with her, wish I could have one person in this world to call my own.

Odds and ends

 The more time and distance I get, the more I’m able to process and write; the closer January 12th comes, the sadder I grow at my inability to be physically in Haiti and the more I push myself to be spiritually there through creating things. Short stories to come! For now, a few short bits of things I’ve written over the past few months. Thanks to people who read this blog, it means so much to me.

“January 11th”

I flew from Chicago to Miami, Miami to Port-au-Prince. At O’Hare airport I sat next to a couple with a baby boy. The father held his hands and sang while he danced obligingly, a clumsy baby cha-cha, fat round limbs tottering cutely to the beat. The mother eyed me. “Are you a missionary?” she asked. “No.” “You work for NGO?” “No.” “Writing a book about voodoo?” “No.” She seemed perplexed. I saw them again in the Miami terminal, the father holding his son tight.         

                On the plane I sat next to a priest. He wore a cassock and thin wire-rimmed glasses. His face was very kind. He asked me if I liked to sing and I said yes and he wrote down the name and address of his church. Port-au-Prince wheeled below us. It was cloudy, the harbor colored slate. I saw hills carved out of the earth itself, shanties like some metastisizing growth, some blight. “No trees,” the priest apologized. He eyed me. I tried to keep my expression neutral. “People say bad things about us. You will decide for yourself.”

                “Good luck,” he said as we stepped onto the tarmac. “I think you will like Haiti. Contact me if you need anything. Come sing in my choir!”

                There were only two baggage claim carousels at Toussaint L’ouverture International Airport. I stepped up to the dolley-rental window and attempted to speak in Creole. “‘Luggage’ tanpri?”

                The woman behind me in line laughed. She was very pretty with curly braids and laugh lines by her eyes and a denim skirt and stylish leather boots.

                “I’m sorry,” I said.

                “No, it’s wonderful that you are trying,” she said, and introduced herself as Chantelle from  Evanston, a Chicago suburb not far from where I live. She was visiting her parents. She and her brother helped me lift my bags off the carousel onto my cart.

                Two bored looking policemen pretended to rifle through our things before hurrying us along. Outside it was humid, the air pregnant, electric. The leaves of the trees were fat and waxy. The sky was yellow. “It looks like it’s about to rain,” said Chantelle.

                Hustlers descended upon us like locusts, offering to help us with our bags, but Chantelle ushered me past them. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” she said. The men’s mouths opened and closed like fish. Their eyes were desperate. I felt like I was underwater.

                The man sent from the Hotel Oloffson to pick me up introduced himself as Marco. He wore a polo shirt and khaki pants.

                “Call me if you need anything,” said Chantelle from Evanston as Marco loaded my bags into the trunk. A man in a dirty Adidas t-shirt came up to our van and put his hand over his stomach, then touched his fingers to his mouth.

                “Mwen grangou,” he said, then seeing my incomprehension, “Blan. Give me money.”

                Marco waved him away, shaking his head in disgust.

                We drove toward the Oloffson, through streets narrow and winding and hillier than San Francisco. We drove past the Champs de Mars and the National Palace. We drove past restaurants and hair salons and walls with shards of broken glass glinting on top. We drove, narrowly missing small children and intrepid goats, and I marveled at this other world I’d entered.

                That was the first time I saw Port-au-Prince. That was the last time I saw Port-au-Prince. I wonder if the priest’s church is still there. I wonder if Chantelle and her brother are alive. I wonder if the baby boy died. If so, I hope his father didn’t survive.

“October Flowers”

The first dead body I saw was a child

under a sheet.

I could only see its tiny

stiff feet

white with dust

under a white sheet

as its father made his blank-faced

progress

down Rue St. Gerard.

Some parted to let him

pass, affected

by the strange clarity

in his eyes. Those weeping,

long strings of saliva

stretching between anguished lips,

did not see him.

I stayed in the hotel

the first few days after

the earth shook, seeing

dead bodies only

on the computers of photojournalists

returned from the ruin

of Port-au-Prince.

A week later, on a walk with some friends,

I saw a second body, like an insect,

limbs in the air. I did not know

that limbs literally froze

in rigor mortis, stayed put

in the position of the moment

of their tenant’s last breath.

I did not know many things

before the earthquake.

I did not know my brain’s

own strange ability

to forget: the things here,

at home, whose extraordinariness

I’m numb to: food, water, materializing

as if by magic,

the sweet rot

of October flowers

petals matted and congealed

underfoot

bringing back

that smell,

that smell forgotten

until walking through a garden

today.

If this life be not a real fight…

Not having written in a while, and seeking some momentum, I bought a copy of ‘The Writing Life’ by Annie Dillard (a beautiful, instructive book, whether you want to write or simply want to imbue life with more meaning.) This quote headed chapter four:

If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight. (William James)

These words have helped to ground me over the past few days, which may seem strange given that they aren’t uplifting. They console me by perfectly articulating the question that’s been beating itself against the back of my brain since returning from Haiti. Why? Why do anything?

Why write books if no one will read them, or make music if no one will hear it? Or if I do become fantastically successful and impart some message, why impart a message if the people receiving it are as limited and hamstrung as I am?

Why do anything in a world that always has, and always will have, such mind-numbing discrepancies as the one between my life and life in a Haitian tent city? Why do anything when Haiti has hundreds and hundreds of NGOs operating in-country, was swimming in them before the earthquake, and seems only to be made poorer by this largesse? Why do anything when it seems that so much of what is being “done” is, to quote the This American Life episode on Haiti, holding a meeting to discuss holding a meeting to discuss holding a meeting about what is to be done?

Before coming upon the William James quote, I tried to articulate the way I’ve been feeling to my significant other. He looked slightly puzzled. “But I would think the earthquake gave you a greater sense of purpose.”

And it did, while I was in Port-au-Prince. But as soon as I returned to the land of paved roads and restaurants with fifty options on the menu, where no one thinks twice about dropping four dollars on a cup of coffee, something inside me just switched off. Not completely, not enough that I didn’t notice its loss. But enough to feel disconnected from some vital part of my own heart, as if only three chambers move blood and the fourth is stagnant, a dead thing. It gives me a lot of empathy for how soldiers must feel coming home, the unreality and attendant emotional flat-lining.

I am made all the more whiny and existential by my inability to be physically in Haiti right now. At first, the idea that I was unable to afford to go back this summer seemed odd. How could someone who enjoys the privileges I do not have the means to help people who have nothing? Unfortunately, the answer is prohibitively expensive medical bills + recession = selfishness.

And in a way this is a positive thing, because I don’t want to go back until there is something I can contribute besides just being there. The good news is, getting my shit together + finally re-enrolling at Princeton= starting a conversation about holding a conversation about what is to be done = ability to serve Haiti/ the world in some meaningful way in the long run. I know that, but it doesn’t make figuring out the why of things, finding a way to dig myself out of the existential blahs and regain purposefulness, any easier.

It seems somehow immature not to end this post with something optimistic, something that encourages perserverance. Haitians and people doing good work in Haiti have little use for such rants. I’m sure they’re beset by the feelings I’ve described, more keenly and painfully and frequently than I am, but don’t have time to indulge questions to which you have to make up your own answers. At the moment, I have too much time to think, and can only be honest about how lost I am in the wondering.

Monsanto

my dad’s very insightful and to-the-point response to regine zamor’s blog post about monsanto’s “generous” donation of hybrid seeds:

Hi Regine,

Phoebe’s dad, here… I check in at your website very frequently, having been to Haiti in January for a coupla weeks of high-tension helpin’ fly a bunch o’Kreyol speakin’ doctors, nurses and EMT’s from the states and into action.

I’m not an ag person either, but I am a bit of a “foodie,” shopping Whole Foods for organic almost exclusively. And I read widely, especially on the internet for the sort of info that you just aren’t going to find in the mainstream media.

Standard hybrids are the result of simple cross-pollination between varieties. You’ve doubtless seen the signs which serve as ads for these varieties posted alongside cornfields from coast to coast. This sort of thing could happen quite naturally. The tremendous number of different varieties of squash is a mostly all-natural phenomenon.

GM, or genetically modified, refers to the implantation of genetic material in the lab, genetic material which could not be introduced by cross-pollination. For example, so called “golden rice”: no variety of rice is naturally yellow, but “golden rice” has had genetic material — possibly from corn — placed into the genetic code of the rice plant so that it will produce beta-carotene, or pro-vitamin A, which is yellow to orange depending upon the concentration, a color you see in many fruits and vegetables from cantelope to sweet potatoes. (It’s hidden in the dark green of certain green, leafy veggies like spinach.) The idea behind this was to create a variety of rice which would provide a modicum of beta-carotene to a large percentage of the world’s population, beta-carotene from which the human body can synthesize vitamin A, so as to prevent a widespread and easily preventable cause of blindness. (“Finished” vitamin A only occurs in foods of animal origin.)

Sounds wonderfully miraculous, but I read once that the reality is that this rice provides too little beta-carotene for the purpose, and I don’t like to rely on a single source for such info.

Another example of GM tinkering is so-called “Round Up Ready” corn. Round Up is a Monsanto herbicide, and Round Up Ready corn has been modified to be essentially unaffected by it. Thus, a farmer can plant this Monsanto seed and apply this Monsanto herbicide with near abandon. Great business plan! But perhaps not so good for the environment.

Problem is, it has been reported many times over the years that pollen from Round Up Ready corn is toxic to the caterpillar of the once upbiquitous Monarch butterfly. As this news item has virtually disappeared from the news, and because there are other known contributing factors in the decline of the Monarch butterfly, I have to remain unconvinced, though I remain highly suspicious.

I’m not up on any reported ill-effects of GM crops on humans, and it’s been a while since I last did some reading on the subject. But I believe that there are some credible reports of such things, and I have to remain “nervous” about the potential dangers of this sort of drastic genetic meddling, insofar as it produces results which would not happen naturally, and because we really don’t know what other genetic changes might accompany the desired change of trait.

For example, there are many proteins which ain’t good for humans — pigs can eat acorns, but we can’t — and what if such a protein were to be produced in a plant as an unintended consequence of genetic modification?

In any event, I’m quite convinced that we don’t need any of this genetic meddling. Sound organic farming practices, and proper organization, management and distribution would be sufficient. The planet actually DOES grow enough food to feed everbody we got, yes, EVERBODY

I think “we” are playing with things we don’t understand well enough, all in the name of profit, or worse…

My principal concern regarding Monsanto’s seed research and development has to do with so-called “terminator seed” that your correspondent alludes to in your last post without mentioning its “popular” moniker.

The info in the response is inaccurate. The seed in question produces a plant that does in fact go to seed, BUT THE SEED WILL NOT GERMINATE. In other words, the plant produces a food crop, BUT THE FARMER CANNOT RESERVE ANY SEED WITH WHICH TO PLANT THE NEXT SEASON’S CROP. It won’t grow nuthin’. The farmer thus can become dependent upon Monsanto for more seed, at whatever price Monsanto can command.

Sounds purdy darn sinister to me, boy howdy!

And there have been numerous reports of apparent willingness, or outright attempts, to use both food and water as “weapons,” that is, “you either control your population, you underdeveloped (read “undesirable,” or maybe even “black” ??)country, you, or we’ll control it for you.” There are also ever-more frequent reports of attempts to privatize water availability in many places.

Now, if this sounds paranoid to you, just look around you: governments and arms manufacturers and “lending” institutions all around evidently experience no compunction when it comes to the loss of life occasioned by offensive wars. Thus, we must conclude that there are those capable of doing so who would do so. Kill people, that is.

(Education and economic prosperity have been shown to be highly effective in lowering birth rates in “overpopulated” areas entirely without the imposition of “birth control” programs, some of which have been involuntary and unbeknownst to the affected, and without jerkin’ their food supply around or killin’ ‘em outright. I mean, really! My indignation knows no bounds on this score.)

And what, finally, have been the benefits to Haiti of the agricultural policies imposed thereupon by foreign interests? A history which includes not one single positive, true benefit (not to my knowledge) leaves me highly suspicious of motives in the first place.

Moreover — not to go on too long here, but — consider the case of the Canadian farmer who wished to have nothing to do with GM crops, whose crops were contaminated by Monsanto’s extensive experimental plantings nearby. When he sued, Monsanto counter-sued, claiming patent infringement. (!!!!!) Is that not balls! Who won? Wouldja believe… Monsanto?… (I’ve run out of exclamation points.)

All that said, I certainly don’t know exactly what hybrids Monsanto saw fit to donate. But I think you catch my drift: where Monsanto is involved, BE HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS.

Cheers, and you keep on doin’ what you doin’!! Thank You,

Steve Rusch

a preferential option for the poor

(My friend Walter asked me to write a piece about my experiences at General Hospital encouraging EMTs to volunteer in Haiti)

“Everything is meaningless.” The quote on my friend Cassidy Vail’s Facebook page seems unfitting. I mean, here is a guy, an American guy, who lives in a tent on a golf course turned refugee camp in Haiti. He spends his days caring for people who have nothing. Such a life choice- a long-term life choice- indicates faith in something, not necessarily in a higher power but in the power of kindness, humanism, progress.

            Since returning from Haiti, I’ve teetered between a sense of greater purpose and a gnawing depression. Most of the friends I made in Port-au-Prince were EMTs working for the Bedford-Stuyvesant Fire Department. I have no medical background; I’m a writer. My writing is driven by the same faith I see in Cassidy, the same faith I saw in so many extraordinary doctors, nurses and occupational therapists who came to Haiti after the earthquake on their own initiative with their own money.

            That faith has now been tested. Maybe that’s something I shouldn’t say in a piece aimed at encouraging medical personnel to volunteer in Haiti. I might feel differently if I had something measurable to give, if I could say, “yes, this child may still live under a bed sheet with no access to food, water or proper sanitation, and I can’t change his situation, but because of my work and the work of my colleagues he will not die of diarrhea this month.” But I think the scale of the problem would still oppress me.

            If you go, the tent cities may not be better for it. But you will be better for it. This is not to undercut the importance of the good work being done, just to say that the fate of the so-called “Republic of NGOs” is not really in our hands at all, not really in any relief agency’s hands, and the best reason to go, or rather the sanest, is also the simplest: we all would want someone to do the same for us.

            Dr. Paul Farmer, who built a world-class hospital in the middle of rural Haiti, did so out of his belief in a preferential option for the poor, his belief that the poor deserve better than “better than nothing.” The living conditions in Haiti before the earthquake were not ones you would find acceptable for yourself or your children.

            And having briefly volunteered at General Hospital in Port-au-Prince (mostly putting Ibuprofen in plastic baggies), I can safely say you would not want to be a patient there. If your mother’s leg was severed by a giant slab of concrete, giving her an Ibuprofen for the pain would not be acceptable. If you were going into labor, you would find it unacceptable to be in a tent with twenty other expectant mothers, vaginas exposed, swatting away flies drawn by the blood, while a nurse checked your vital signs every few hours and no one held your hand.

If your son or daughter was dying, you would find it hard to accept that life-saving supplies were stuck at the airport because of blocked roads and poor coordination. “In disaster, caution means death,” says Sean Penn, who is managing the camp of over 50,000 people in which my friend Cassidy lives and works.

If your son or daughter was dying, you would not be able to accept that hospitals all over Port-au-Prince are closing while international organizations negotiate over their funding.

            The EMT administering the Tylenol and the nurse checking vitals put themselves behind making General Hospital more acceptable, more humanly acceptable, with few resources at their disposal other than the love which brought them there in the first place, the love which says such suffering is unacceptable anywhere.

            That love is the only meaning or religion I’ve found, the significance behind acts as small as sorting pills into Ziplocs or as extreme as permanently relocating to a refugee camp to provide quality care. No matter the size or ultimate impact of your sacrifice, no matter whether you donate a tent or move into one, you say something some thing very important with your actions: that the extreme poverty in which many Haitians live, and most of the world lives, is not acceptable, before or after earthquakes.

Why do you want to go THERE?

My reasons for wanting to go back to Haiti, and wanting to go in the first place, are in a way very selfish: I love it. If you say you want to travel to a “third world” country, and your intention is not to somehow “save” it, people tend to react with confusion. “You aren’t going to help?” Well, not exactly, or at least that wasn’t my plan in the beginning, before the earthquake. My plan was simply to appreciate it.

            If you say you want to travel to Italy, Spain, France, that people understand. The painting! The music! The shopping! The dancing! The food! While coffeehouses and fine dining may only be found in Petionville, Haiti has a culture and history that inspires just as much awe in me as the Sistine Chapel might in another college girl.

            Haiti’s revolutionaries created the first free black republic, a nation symbolic of the true rights of man, more a champion for liberty than either France or the United States. This history pervades everything, including art, as do the beautiful metaphors to be found in the vodou religion, a religion born not only of oppression and brutality but of the human spirit’s fight for self-determination.

painting by edouard duval carrie

huffington post

a really beautifully written new article by richard morse:

Post-Quake Haiti: Tent City Suburbs

Have you ever been to a Haitian market place in Port au Prince? Have you ever walked through the masses of humanity huddled on top of each other selling their wares; selling their spices, or their oranges, vegetables or meats? Have you ever smelled the air or the dank odors that rise up from below your feet as you try and make your way around — avoiding, if you can, stepping on someone’s merchandise, all the while swatting at flies? Bonjour Madame… Bonsoir Monsieur… Market ladies talking, laughing, quiet, arguing or simply still, lying on the used clothing for sale or rearranging for the umteenth time a pile of three eggplants that refuses to sell itself. Watching, taking it all in, planning.

It’s not healthy. It’s not right. It wouldn’t be acceptable in Europe or Canada or the United States. The health inspectors would close the market down; the fire marshals would be bought or chased out. The wooden markets have already burned down. How many people are permitted to exist per square foot in the Western world? How many toilets must you have per person in the Western World.

Since Haiti’s January earth quake, I’ve been complaining about the living conditions in the tent cities (bed-sheet-cities too) and then I started to realize that the living conditions in the tent cities aren’t that different from how Haitians were living before the quake. Sure, before the quake the homes were often made of cinder block, tin or cardboard instead of tarp or canvas, but these pre-quake homes didn’t have running water. These pre-quake homes didn’t have indoor plumbing. These homes didn’t have refrigerators or stoves. So really, how much adjustment had to be made to go live in a tent? Not Much.

The international community is rightly concerned about water and toilet facilities in quake-stricken Haiti but how come they were never concerned about the living conditions or Haiti’s urban poor before the quake? How come the UN never shouted out before the quake? How come the UN didn’t scream out before the quake about how Haitians are living? How come the UN thought it was so important to drive around in bullet proof vehicles with their weapons out but they accepted so openly the way people were trying to survive in the cities? The UN adapted to the squalor instead of putting an end to it.

Last night, while I was sitting at my desk, it suddenly occurred to me that Haiti’s new tent cities actually look like the suburbs when I compare them to the fly infested, mud strewn conditions of the Haitian market places. The economic conditions which cause people to stay, live and work in the market place environment are ironed out in the fancy restaurants of Petionville and the meeting rooms of Washington D.C. Even more disconcerting; I’m assuming that most of the people that are going to the Haiti Donor Conference are strictly going to get a piece of the 11-14 billion dollar pie that’s being recommended for Haiti’s resurrection from the rubble. The people at the donor conference are not really concerned about the inhumane living conditions for Haiti’s urban poor. If they were, they would have shown that concern before the quake. Are the market ladies going to the donor conference? Are RAM musicians who live in Tent Cities going to the donor conference? The folks going to the donor conference are probably the folks who created Haiti’s current economic condition. Should we expect change for the better from the same folks who gave us change for the worse?