Haiti #3

Pou peyi a ka vin pi bel

So the country can be beautified

Dear Everybody,



Imagine me out of breath, bent at the waist with my hands on my knees, just arrived at your door, and grinning pink-faced as I pant, “Sorry I’m late.”



Because it’s been a while since I’ve written. Things have been, in a word, good. In a few more words:



The short term gets long



Palm tree forests/ imaginary lines slash history like a knife



Gold up in the trees



Chasing kids with a machete



The high and the low (uniforms, universities heat and humidity and so on)



A shout out to foutbòl and my arch nemeses





There have been peaks and valleys along the way as I navigate the Third World landscape. And of course part of what I love about all of it is that you can never know just what awaits you beyond the next rise in the horizon.



So, know that your buddy down in Haiti is alive and thriving, and hoping this finds you feeling well. Please pray for those who are exposed to the rain and



Go watch a sunrise.



Love,



John.



…



The short term gets long



You can make a compelling argument that the long-term answer to impoverished nations’ daunting development questions has to be education. Lots of people do. Right now in Haiti, however, putting a roof over people’s heads and food in their bellies is a priority. You can’t educate a corpse.



The Haitian Project formed a construction team not long after the earthquake, offering the double-whammy of employment to young men* from the neighborhood around LCS and immediate aid to those in need. My first week here in February, I led a team of students smashing up a fallen wall and transporting the rubble to lay as part of the foundation for a new home.



Upon that foundation, a tent was pitched. A family whose mud hut had collapsed during the quake lived there while the construction crew worked on building a sturdy, well-ventilated, beautiful (a veritable chateau compared to the sad sheet metal shacks you see everywhere) house for them.



Several weeks of hard work later, the house is ready to be lived in. While it is not yet equipped with the luxuries of electricity or running water, these things are envisioned for the future. It has an admirable front curb where people can sit and talk in the douceur of Caribbean evenings.



One of our American volunteers served as foreman and accountant for this and other work projects. With her increased rebuilding responsibilities she has needed to reallocate her time from the classroom to the worksites. So, I have taken over teaching religion to her Troisième (sophomore-aged) students.



That’s another reason why I came back here. To fill holes.



Some of my best lessons so far include: explaining how the three-leafed clover can be used to teach about the Trinity, and the glorious truth that “Everybody’s Irish on St. Patty’s Day”; asking students what they would do if they knew it was their last day on earth, and reminding them that Jesus spent it eating, sharing (himself) with his friends; making them memorize the prayer of Saint Francis, because it’s a good kind of thing to have in your head, I think.



Not insignificantly, I love classroom teaching. (Grading, not so much.) Setting foot back in the classroom has reminded me that I love it. That it’s what I do. So probably my vocation will have something to do with learning. We’ll see.



* These guys are my about age: able, hungry to work and help, but otherwise bereft of a job. Remember, Haiti has an unemployment rate around 80%. Lots of people with nothing to do but sit and wait for something, anything. THP gives them tools, and they are rebuilding their country. It almost seems simple sometimes, doesn’t it?



Palm tree forests/ imaginary lines slash history like a knife



We THP volunteers spent our nine-day Easter break in the Dominican Republic. It was a total phenomenonathon (= phenomenon + marathon). The bonfire on the beach; the motorcycle taxis in the milky neon blur of the tropical night (“Señor, mas rapido, por favor!”); the cliff-jumping into the waterfall after a galloping horse ride there (I felt like a cowboy, like Lawrence of Arabia); the fearsome force of the waves during a mid-night sea swim; the sun-accented tambourine Alleluias at the early-morning Easter Mass in the neighborhood church built in the time of Columbus; fudging enough Spanish to obtain cold beer and cheeseburgers from hole-in-the-wall cafés (going without transforms things, reveals the magic in them); stumbling upon the block-party meringue dancing next to the ruins of a 16th-century monastery and dancing with the pretty girl, getting to practice my French à la française; the long walks down foreign cobblestone streets and the hammock naps and the pigeons in the Cathedral plaza.



But those are stories best told over a café con leche, or a Cuba Libre.



What I want to tell you about is the way history shapes the earth. When you take a bus from Port-au-Prince to Santo Domingo, you ride out of a city with broken buildings and through an arid countryside freckled with mismatched shacks and skinny dogs passing by the window. The bus lurches and stutters along the pothole paradise of dirt “road.” There is a big lake to the left with trash in it and no commercial fishing, no water sports. There are deforested mountains to your right. There is a lot of dust everywhere.



You come to the border post, dismount the bus to stand in line in the sweaty customs hut, buy an overpriced Coke from the lady hawking them from the Igloo cooler on her head, and then get back on the bus for the four-hour home stretch.



There is an invisible line, but it has its signs. You start to see rows of houses made of wood. You can no longer see the ribs on the livestock and street dogs. All the billboards and placards are en español. The bus rolls smoothly along paved highways past towns laid out in grids and vast farms of sugarcane and plants that I don’t recognize. And, holy shit. There are forests of palm trees. So much green that it makes me want to cry.



As you approach Santo Domingo, it gets better/worse. There are overpasses, tunnels, sidewalks, gutters, functioning power lines, garbage trucks, suspension bridges. INFRASTRUCTURE.



About traveling to the DR after working for many months in Haiti: “It’s going to be totally awesome, except for the misgivings in the depths of our souls.”



Nothing can really prepare you for the shock of the stark contrast between the two nations. That two sides of the same island could be so different is mindboggling. That one side would thrive while the other struggles, suffers, and survives (just barely) is heartbreaking.



I’m no expert. I know that part of Haiti’s problem is that they won their independence too soon. They were never accepted by the international community—the USA couldn’t recognize Haiti as a legitimate republic because it was a black republic, and enslaving Africans was still an institution in the States. A country of revolutionaries couldn’t, or wouldn’t, accept a country of revolutionaries.



And there’s the problem of how they won their independence—the slaves eviscerated the land of every trace of their oppressors, which means that with the white man so went what he’d built. Plantations were razed to the ground. The fertile fields and evil system of labor that had made Haiti the richest colony in the hemisphere were destroyed, burned up, gone.



Things went from bad to worse. Power traded hands violently in a succession of corrupt leaders. Abuse and usurpation were standard for a long time.



…Sorry. It would be easy for me to get in over my head. Everyone should read up on the history of Haiti, as it tied to our own; its darkness is also our darkness.



A concise case-in-point: both the Dominican Republic had dictators. But in the DR, if you cut down a tree, they would cut off your head. In Haiti, the kleptocratic leaders and their thugs were more interested in stealing from the poor to fill their pockets than saving trees. Now they’re almost all gone. The trees.



Same ecology, different history.



What I’m trying to say is that the Dominican Republic is a poor country, but it is on its feet. It is a beautiful place to visit, fun to travel. It is a place that anyone with a little extra money saved up and looking to escape the crazy rigors of the rat race might want to go, and take the family. It’s just so sad that Haiti isn’t. So close and yet so, so far.



…



Guess what? While I was on the Spanish-speaking part of the island, I missed Haiti. Traveling and tasting is all good, and I can’t imagine a group of people more in need of a break than my fellow volunteers. But I could never sustain that way of life. My work is here at the school, to throw my weight into rebuilding. Simply, after a week of blowing off steam and recharging my soul-batteries, I found myself missing my students.



Also, my time in the DR gave me a renewed appreciation for our fresh drinking water at LCS. We have a well, and we have a chlorine-purification system. I pull the lever, and water flows. In the Dominican Republic, the scary-vast majority of potable water is obtained from plastic bottles. National Geographic recently did a special issue on H20. We could be fighting wars over it before too long.



In the end, I was glad to have a vacation. It reminded me of what I have here in Haiti.



Gold up in the trees



It can be any time of day, but let’s say it’s after the heat has worn off, when afternoon is tipping headlong into evening. The sun’s a sinking weight. An ember sighing itself to death.



I am still sweaty from teaching in the hot classroom tents, still dirty with soot and such from burning trash out along the road during afternoon cleanup. But I’m cooling off now as guitar chords catch on the breeze. Up in the rooftop garden, a handful of diligent students are strumming away on the six-strings. Seeing them make progress is a joy. And we still get some newcomers each week who struggle to make the guitar talk right.



“Fòk ou peze di. Si w pa peze, ou fè gita pete.”



“You have to press hard,” I tell them. “If you don’t press, you make the guitar fart.”



The garden where we play sits atop the roof of the chapel, at eye-level with the canopies of the mango trees. In the uppermost branches, there is gold.



From the ground, you can harvest the gold by launching a soccer or basketball up there. But sometimes they get stuck.



After enough failed attempts, a member of the security staff might take pity on you and climb the tree, amazingly dexterously gracefully, and grab one for you.



It is a bit easier from the rooftop garden. The treetops are right there. You can take a rake and, reaching out almost too far, harvest the gold by swatting among the leaves.



The gold is usually green. If it’s dark green, it’s not good yet. But when it starts to turn lighter and with a hint of orange, it’s ready.



Adam, a Philo student, wanders up the steps into guitar club wielding a long pole. His eyes meet mine and he gives a mischievous half-smile. I nod.



The unspoken agreement is this: I let him hunt for mangoes even though he probably shouldn’t be doing that, as long as he gives me one.



After a few minutes, success. He tosses me a mango, and I set it by my guitar case for later.



Later. The dinner bell rings, and guitar club is done for the day. The sun is almost down. It’s last burnt oranges and raspberry rays are dripping from the leaves of the trees. I bite into my mango and peel away the skin, sink my teeth into its fruit.



Oh, how tropically sticky sweet,

Bleeding golden on my fingertips,

Blessing my chin and hands and cheeks,

Sunset fibers singing in my teeth.





Chasing kids with a machete



When I returned from Easter break, Zamy (roommate) had several coconuts stashed under the desk we share. “Have one any time, just ask Mathieu.”



It took me all week to seize the day. Friday morning I had a break between classes. I went to the tool depot and grabbed a machete. Mathieu, one of the old apple-cheeked smiling security guards pierced the coconut with four deft blows, carved a hole in the top through which to drink, and handed it to me.



Yum.



The last drop drunk, I handed it back. He hacked it open with two blows. Whack, whack. I then pulled my spoon out of my pocket and scooped out the tender white insides.

Happily, I tossed the remains in the compost waste bin and strode across campus to return the machete to its proper place. Along the way, I noticed some of my students who were sweeping the path, and some of the timoun who were goofing around by the basin.



Of course, I took advantage of this opportunity to chase kids around with a machete.



They fled with glee and asked me if I was a ninja.



Life is good when little kids ask you, beaming, if you’re a ninja.



The high and the low (uniforms, universities, heat and humidity and so on)



This past week was the first week since January 12th where students were required to wear their uniforms (green pants or green plaid skirts and beige short-sleeved button-down shirts). Not all of them did, though. Things got lost in the earthquake.



Along with the uniforms, we also resumed the pre-earthquake class schedule. It was good to have a return to normalcy, but also there were lots of speed bumps. Sheer confusion over who needed to be where when. Oppressive heat in tents that have been pitched on the soccer field serving as classrooms for the time being. Trying to pick up on curriculum that had been abandoned in the wake of the quake.



A good quote from another volunteer: “In Haiti, plans are always –ish.”



We made do, taking the days one hour at a time. The low points: students who lost their notebook, were too hot to think, or didn’t feel like getting back to real work after having gotten used to a summer camp-type atmosphere and so just caused trouble or did nothing; staff who do not do their jobs; fatigue. These came as a harsh reminder of the trials of teaching.



The high points, though, are just so damn good. Students hungry to learn: raising their hands as high as they can, bursting with questions/ answers. The still of campus in the evening as hundreds of kids crack open their books and study. Learning by trial and error how to manage a class, and seeing improvement in the class clown’s comportment (using his powers for good instead of evil—after all, I was that kid). Encouraging the quiet girl to speak up, and hearing her form her words with cautious pride. Seeing light bulbs light up in their heads.



It was a long week. Frustrating at times, but heartening indeed as we forge forward.



...



The universities are starting to reopen. Yes! That means that the country is starting to get going, and it gives hope to our graduating Philo students who will look to continue their education next year.



It also means that our Junior Staff—LCS graduates who work at the school and attend college classes—will be heading back to school. We are stretched thin since the earthquake, as needs expand. It will be tricky to keep momentum as my coworkers resume their studies. But we’ll do it.



A shout out to foutbòl my arch nemeses



I can recall a time before there was television in every room of every house in America through of stories my dad has told me.



Before we were numbed by TV, we were illuminated by radio. Walking across the campus of a small, catholic liberal arts school in northern Indiana, Dad could follow the play-by-play of the football games as the scratchy voices of radio sports announcers poured out the windows of the dormitories. Everyone was tuned in, electricity in the airwaves, pulling for an Irish win.



Yesterday was Saturday. Around 4 pm Haitian time, the international sports world was glued to the broadcast of Real Madrid v Barcelona. The clash of two heavyweights in the Liga, the Spanish club championship.



At the front gate of Louverture Cleary School, there is a guard hut, little bigger than a telephone booth. In that hut is a television about the size of a 1940s-era radio, I’d guess. There were fifteen men and boys peering through the hut’s open door, gathered around the tiny screen, craning for a view of the next goal.



I was up in my room watching the match with Zamy (in our humble luxury suite) when Corey, another volunteer, called up to me. Augh, it was time to leave for church.



“When I was a kid, I used to pretend to be sick so that I didn’t have to go to church. I should do that now.”



“Okay, you can,” said Zamy. “When I was a child, if I was sick, I always have to go to church. You go to church to pray you will get better.”



Good point.



In any event, I dragged myself away form the screen and we piled in the van. Corey and I tried to listen to the game on the radio as we drove along the bumpy roads, but it was just too tough to follow the fast-paced Creole commentary.



Then I noticed that the pedestrians were behaving peculiarly. The streets were more or less clear. Almost everyone had gathered into groups of various sizes, facing away from the road. The same thing was happening in Port-au-Prince that happens at Notre Dame, and all over. It seemed like everyone had found a television or a radio to gather round.



The magnetism of sport is a global phenomenon. [Especially the beautiful game.]



Go, man, go! Go mango!



…



My arch nemeses are mosquitoes. We’re getting into the rainy season now, and they’re biting with a vengeance. You have to squash them before they siphon you off. My ankles are already riddled with their trademark bumps.



Those little vampires.



Reminds me of the first song I ever wrote with Justin Edge, sitting atop some playground equipment at Riverview Park, adolescent outlaws sipping on wine as I remember it: “Dear mosquito, we hate you. Oh mosquito, won’t you go? Dear mosquito, you’re a little ***hole.”



The forces of darkness are relentless, and we must stay-ever vigilant, warding them off with songs and strategic hand-claps. Personally, I prefer the itch of a bite wound to the sting of Deet. Wish away the mosquitoes, and you wish away the rain, and maybe even the whole food chain.



Well, we take the bad with the good, right?