ezili expedition

no idea how

2011-03-22T23:47:00.005-05:00

i should go back and see when i last mentioned my friend evelyn but i think it might have been in march. i guess it's fitting that i write about her again, a year later.

so - quick recap, evelyn is a woman i met while interpreting at lopital general after the quake. her leg was badly injured and despite all the chaos of those days, we somehow, luckily, kept finding each other. we kept in touch and ended up driving all around the city for months, finding orthopedic doctors and surgeons who could provide follow-up medical care.

her leg is all healed now. when i went to visit her, i saw her walk for the first time without limping. i kinda wanted to pick her up and spin her around, like the guy in mary poppins, but i stopped myself.

after the quake, my friends r.h., k.b., and a.j. put together a fund raiser and gave me the money raised. i gave it to evelyn as she began rebuilding her life and a year later, this is where she is.

before the quake, evelyn sold ice and colas out of a "kòlman" (popular kreyol word for a cooler). she still sells ice and colas but she has definitely added to her business, non?

she and her family still live in saint anne tent city, in downtown port-au-prince. the first time i saw their cardboard and tin home, i thought it looked flimsy and dangerous and delicate. a chunk of an old billboard screwed into the right side of the tin frame served as the door. i once watched one of her kids come running out of this "door" thing and thought, "that thing's not gonna last another second!" it was wobbly and crooked and seemed to be hanging on by pure coincidence.

but a year later, evelyn and her family are still hanging on. and their flimsy, dangerous, delicate, tin and cardboard home is still wobbly but upright. that damn "door" thing is still hanging on, too.

i have no idea how. aftershocks, a very windy rainy season, tropical storms, cholera, post-election violence - evelyn, her family, and their home are standing their ground.

the extra sway in my big 'ole hips

2011-02-25T15:47:00.003-05:00

i’ve been thinking a lot about my personal and collective oral history. ayiti is a land of oral tradition. people's homes are filled with stories, not history books. sometimes i feel like that’s just what i am made of and, on some days, it causes an extra sway in my big ‘ole hips. hundreds of stories recounted that i am both verbally and nonverbally instructed to hold vigilantly for safekeeping. collective unconscious blends with conscious and, together, they fan some sort of perpetual fire.

yesterday i spent time on my land and sat at the feet of patriarchs and matriarchs, the leaders of my extended tribe. spending the entire day listening, my head was swirling when i finally laid down last night. strong bourbon and even stronger herb blended well with the serious information overload.

i was told stories about the vengeful filling of the air with poisonous zombie toxins that, when inhaled, cause you lose each of your senses, one at a time. and then of the heroic potions concocted quickly to reverse the deadly attack. (okay, talk about terrorist weapons of mass destruction, right?)

i was told about gigantic monsters in the sea that come up at different times of the year, when the moon is shining on our bothers and sisters in africa and the air is still and lifeless. huge, indestructible, brightly colorful, fish-like-but-not-quite-fish-creatures who feast on ignorant and obstinate fishermen. a neighbor and his men recently set out for the dominican republic in his boat without listening to his elder’s warnings. and this is why they have never been seen or heard from since and not a splinter of wood has washed ashore.

i was told that i was extremely lucky because while i was away, one of the coconut trees on my land was struck by lightning. this means there has been an addition of sweetness as well as magic in the divinely touched coconut milk, which is now strong enough to cure any physical ailments. i was shown the leafy plant taking over a corner of my land and told that when boiled and consumed, it cheers on erections. the spiny leafy one next to it, when crushed, cures rashes. the baby mango, avocado and lime trees growing wild made me want to lay down and spoon with them, curl around them, they are just that cute.

i was reminded that my land was not haitian land, but taino land. and that the tainos (original inhabitants of ayiti) and the maroons (escaped slaves), are to whom i must pay my respects for everything the land has to tell me and share with me. the blood of the tainos, i was told, still flows in me.

i thought about this a lot. my ancestors. after listening for more hours, i asked one of my matriarchs one of my life’s burning questions. “why don’t i know anything about my family?” i know the names of my father’s brothers and sisters, their children. i know the names of his parents. but how can i be 35 and am still being introduced to cousins? i watched her eyes begin to change and a deep sadness joined us. after a long exhale she said, “because we were scared! there is no way we could have told you anything! do you know how many of us had been killed, had disappeared?”

stories of papa doc duvalier and life under him began. ones i have heard as well as new ones, all of them making my skin crawl, my chest ache. debilitating terror plagued my aunts and uncles and people i never got to meet or know. some of them were prisoners, some were publicly executed, some were murdered in their sleep. too many of them disappeared without a trace, and my spared family members mastered the art of feeling loss and pain without flinching. i don’t know my family because most of my ancestors are ghosts.

when i was little, i used to ask my dad to tell me more about his family, but his answers were always blurry and scattered. i never understood his, what seemed to me, vague and nonchalant responses. i know now that he was protecting me. it was only in 1986 after baby doc left the country, did his responses begin to change. i hold a very vivid memory of watching my dad, uncle and cousin huddled together on the couch, telling stories they had kept hidden their entire lives. i wanted so badly to join them, but i instinctively knew i did not belong. it took years for them to invite me to learn some of their stories and years for those stories to be told in anything but a small, guarded whisper.

yesterday i was reminded of papa doc’s killing spree in jeremie, a massacre meticulously designed to terminate entire bloodlines. in those days, survivors changed their last names and buried them along with their memories and their ghosts. yesterday my matriarch told me about her grandmother, a papa doc survivor and said, “it was on february 7, 1986, when baby doc left, that i heard my grandmother’s name for the first time.” the story goes she walked proudly down the stairs, stopped midway and proclaimed defiantly to the world - “my name is...”

my dad was a survivor too, and in his 60‘s, he was finally able to whisper his oral history to me. and so, yup, that’s what i’m made of and what, on some days, causes an extra sway in my big ‘ole hips. killer zombie air and magic coconuts and sea monsters and boner-enhancing leaves and the fierceness of the maroons and taino survival secrets and dictator extinction secrets. and the ghosts of my ancestors.

i remember

2011-01-11T14:41:00.014-05:00

why are anniversaries so --- significant? like birthdays. my nephew was once this little creature and despite how badly i want him to stay little, every year in march, he gets less little. or every february 13th, the day my dad died - i feel that loss in my bones. it's fascinating that we add up days and clump them together and they grow to represent a collection of feelings you gotta take out and look through when it's time.

it's been a year since the earth quaked. and i remember last january 12th.

my phone had been off that afternoon and when i turned it back on, the first thing i saw was a text message from my sweet friend a.s., and i couldn't figure out what the hell it meant. it said, "magnitude 7.0 eq and tsunami warning? oh no!" i had no clue what kind of 007-spy-like-message she was trying to send me. but then i saw i had 15 other texts. and 18 missed calls. and 12 voicemails. what was so damn important, i wondered?

i remember the sound of my big sister's little voice and she was telling me to sit down, telling me to stay calm, telling me not to freak out, but not only had there been a really bad earthquake, but our ayiti cheri, along with everything and everyone we loved, was about to get hit by a tsunami. i seriously didn't understand what she was saying. really? an earthquake? a tsunami? what kind of futuristic, end-of-the-world-2012 bullshit was she talking about? when i finally understood what she was saying, i - instantly - knew i had to get there. pronto.

i remember that before i finally got through to my mom (officially too many long hours of unanswered phone calls) i had collected quite a few dramatic images in my mind about where she might be. in one, she was stuck under rubble in her office at work. in another, she was stuck under an entire building, in her little nissan on her way home from work. there were a few different ones that had her buried under different parts of the house that had fallen in on her. it was seriously fucked up.

i remember trying to find a way to get to haiti and quickly. my friends kept pulling me aside, trying to talk me into having more of a plan besides, "i'm just gonna fly to the dominican republic...." i did not care about a dang plan. i was ready to walk home if that's what it took.

i remember sitting in the miami airport before my flight to the d.r. with a lot of other haitians without any sort of a plan. the tears, the anticipation, the fear, the shock, the feeling of instant connection. our voices were low, almost whispers as we traded stories and rumors and just sat looking at each other. none of us knew what the hell we were doing or how the hell we were going to do it. none of us knew what we'd find when we got there and none of us knew each other before then, but it felt like we were a united force, doing the unknown together.

i remember seeing my mom the first time. she looked so extremely relieved and worried about me, like i was the one who went through something seriously traumatic. whaaat? but i guess that's just what moms do.

i remember seeing j.b. the first time, possibly one of my dearest friends of all time. a woman who's lived through sudanese war, car jackings, home invasions, guns pointed in her face, bombs, tear gas, a deathly strain of malaria, a divorce, and 3 teenagers. earthquakes, i learned, are different life experiences. i'd never seen her afraid before. and i was stuck to her like glue, afraid to let her out of my sight.

i remember the first aftershock i felt and how utterly confusing it was to have the earth move like that. that sound it makes. and being scared. really scared. like really, really scared.

i remember the first night laying on cardboard in our driveway wondering if we were all far enough away from the driveway wall because i really didn't want it to fall on us if we actually did fall asleep. months of laying in piles with a group of people i didn't know, my sweet driveway crew. it's remarkable the bond that is created among strangers in strange situations.

i remember the first dead bodies i saw, the smell, the dust in the air, the rubble.

i remember how at night, delmas, a main road, was blocked off with bigger pieces of rubble because people were sleeping in the streets.

i remember that look everyone had. stunned and confused and tired and lost and very, very sad.

i remember the first amputated leg i saw, the bone and the blood and the meat.

i remember the piles of bodies at the hospital, some alive people and some dead people, sprawled out together on the ground, in the grass. and the sounds of people screaming and moaning in pain. the sound of the bulldozers moving dead bodies in that back corner.

i remember the tent cities i visited, thinking they were a temporary solution, what, with 18 million dollars given, of course there was a plan, right?

i remember going to the mass graves, seeing what it looked like to have 300,000 or so bodies and pieces of bodies buried in piles.

i remember the way haitians helped haitians. the families who cooked rice and beans for their neighbors every night. the families who grew bigger and simply, easily loved more people. the haitian diaspora who fought to get people to the states. the badass men and women who stood up to ngo's and the united nations, most of whom lost their jobs. and one random day, sitting in traffic, i saw a man stop a woman so that he could wipe off her dusty shoes for her. i cherish that memory.

i remember what it was like to see a friend for the first time. caught between so happy to see them and so afraid to ask - who did they lose? who didn't make it in their family? where were they sleeping at night? that awkward lull in conversation before the stories began.

i remember when the rains started and the rubble ran down the roads. the tent cities became mud cities.

i remember the alcohol i drank and cigarettes i smoked with new friends and old friends. and when we all decided it was okay to laugh again. when the drums started beating again. when dancing and gyrating felt right again.

i remember learning who my true friends are. the ones who kept asking, who kept hoping, who kept loving.

and i remember the countless conversations i had with people, young and old. and all the art we created together. (the photo is a painting by mejer samedi, a 70/80-something-year-old man who just began painting after 112. entitled "unba dekom" (under the rubble)). all the quality time spent with quality people. hearing about where they were when it happened, what they saw, what they heard, who they lost, who they found, and how they felt.

i remember, i remember, i remember.

i remember when the outpouring of international "aid" shifted from shock and surprise to annoyance and anger. seeing foreigners everywhere (like, everywhere) became infuriating, with their crappy culturally-insensitive hand-outs. (barbie dolls? really??? used flip flops? really??? my all time favorite was the ziplock bag that had a dried out highlighter and 2 bic ball point pens in it. seriously?! like someone cleaned out their desk drawer and decided some haitian desperately needed their junk?) and then there were the jesus freaks who kept saying the earthquake was some sort of punishment from their invisible god because of our voodou ways. and there was the chaos of food and tent distributions, the baby buying and taking, the ngo's dirty money-making schemes, and the deafeningly silent haitian government.

deep breath.

yep, a significant anniversary. one year. a clumped-together amount of days that have grown to represent a collection of so, so, so many feelings. and here are just a few of them. this is me taking them out and looking through them.

happy new year

2010-12-15T03:42:00.007-05:00

i have missed blogging. and i didn't know how much time grad school would take. lotta reading, lotta writing, lotta more reading.

leaving haiti was quite painful for me. when i got to the states, i asked my sister to have me locked up. a padded cell seemed a perfect place to be, where i wouldn't have to see anyone, talk to anyone, where someone else told me when to eat and sleep. it was completely overwhelming lost and i wanted to curl up into myself and stay there.

luckily, it got better. seeing good friends does do a body good. doing work for school does a mind good too.

it's been hard, though. and of course it's not like when i left haiti, things slowly got better. the opposite. we had a rainy season full of strong winds and loads of rain. the united nations imported and gave us a nepalese strain of cholera, still killing thousands. we tried to have elections and were once again fucked by the u.s. and international community. haiti, haiti, haiti. my goodness, what would a fortune teller tell me is going to happen next?

i decided to listen to my good friend and go visit her in kenya for a while. she promised me i would heal. that seeing elephants and being with my "people" would make me feel good again. i must admit, i didn't believe her. but now i know she was right.

there are not words big enough or descriptive enough to relay what being in africa felt like or meant to me. everything about it just seemed right. and familiar. and comfortable. the sun felt right, the smiles looked right, my big hips swayed right, and my heart felt at home. i saw haiti a million times a day, i tasted it and smelled it.

when i was a kid my dad used to tell me that haiti was the africa of the americas, that we were on the wrong side of the ocean. that even though we were haitian, we would always be viewed as african dogs. not the most heart-warming thing to tell a kid, i know. but i didn't understand him until i was there, in the cradle of civilization. so many things made sense.

kenyans are like brothers to haitians, separated at birth. one grew up with french fathers, the other british. some of them look alike, they have some of the same mannerisms, they have the same stories but with different characters. but definitely related. i caught myself speaking kreyol to people, the swahili sounded like i should understand it. the rising and falling of the voices. my biggest compliment ever was from an older muslim man sitting by the side of the road. as my friend and i giggled passed him, he yelled out, "hey, you are my sister!" to which i replied, "i am your sister!" and he laughed like he just heard the punch line of a very funny joke.

africa made me feel love again. a great addition to my daily life. and i am working on the sadness, anger and resentment that has buried itself deep in my gut. but - i don't want to be locked up anymore, which is positive.

as this year from hell ends, i feel a huge pile of grateful on my heart and am thankful for the people in my life who have seen me through, who have been my support network. without you, i seriously don't know where i'd be. super cliche and cheesy, but true. i know some amazing human beings.

j.and p.b. gave me their frequent flyer miles so i could fly to haiti. p.a., had a prescription written for my mom's medicine to go to haiti with me in less than 2 hours and sent me home made chocolate to jacmel. c.g. let me sleep on her floor in santo domingo on my way to pap and made me coffee and a sandwich in the morning before i made the trip across the border. f.t. gave me her contacts in washington d.c. in case i needed them. c.m. let me live with him at "the green door" in jacmel. d.f. was my co-pilot when i ventured in to "red zones" after the earthquake. e.a. sent me colored pencils and chocolate and soccer balls and always let me know she was thinking about me. l.o. sat with me for hours and watched the waves, sometimes talking, sometimes not. a.w. created us our own private blog to stay connected. c.j. always reminded me how lame it would be if i went crazy in haiti. a.s. kept my q-tip supply loaded and emailed me stories about love and about "normal". s.d. sent me great music, bought me fancy underwear, and did all the other things a bff does. s.w.c. sent me art supplies to use with my peeps. c.b. sent me great reading material and organic seeds to share with farmers. j.m. was a big sister and looked out for me and my emotional state. c.s. kept me stock-piled high with wisdom and love for ayiti. c.m. kept my doggie. r.h. and a.l. threw fundraisers to raise money to help my friends in need. r.h. made me go to mexico with her and drink mojitos on the beach for a few days. j.b. made me come to africa and heal and laugh and laugh more and see elephants and laugh even more. m.c.m. taught me what it means to be in love with a country. k.b. proved to me that i don't have to do everything alone and that love is a beautiful thing.

and the emails and phone calls and text messages and letters and positive thoughts. i know my global family was thinking about me because i felt it and know it to be true.

i am thankful and i realize that not everyone has such amazing humans in their world.

i don't know what 2011 holds for haiti or for me. but i know i have love. that is such a nice thing, don't you think?

i heart haiti

2010-10-04T17:31:00.003-05:00

so, i'm all packed up but i'm so not ready to go.

this morning i tried to concentrate on every sound i heard when i woke up so i could, like, store them in some special part of my mind. the turtle doves singing, the distant cars honking and dogs barking, the clanking of dishes in the kitchen, the familiar voices of my neighbors in the yard, enid bossing the men around, the hum of the fan fighting with the buzzing of the mosquitoes.

as i drove around my hometown of petionville today, i tried to find some semblance of the place i used to know. the place i felt belonged to just me, in that young immature way.

holy cow, it was so fucking depressing.

i wanted to run into the middle of place boyer and st. pierre park and scream at the top of my lungs like an insane person. scream until there's nothing left.

the tents aren't even tents anymore. the tarps aren't even tarps anymore. when it hits my nose, the smell of shit and piss doesn't register as gross anymore. the families taking baths in dirty water on the side of the road, the babies playing in the mud from last night's rain, the big pregnant-bellied teenaged girls - none of it seems strange anymore.

i can't even remember what the parks looked like before. was there really grass on the ground? was that pile of cement a fountain? i thought for sure there were benches, but i couldn't find them. i can't remember what the buildings that are gone looked like either. what colors were they painted? how tall were the walls? was that a house or a church? the buildings that haven't been touched since 112 - are there even bones left under the pancaked cement?

now, it's the rubble that seems familiar; it blends in to the scenery like shrubbery. like it's always been there.

i really did seriously almost lose my shit.

but then i saw the pineapple lady. she's been selling pineapples on the same street, in the same spot, my whole life. "men mwen, oui cheri. ou konnen mwen toujou la a. ala bèl ou bèl jodi a. w ap achte? kijan manman ou ye?" (here i am, sweetie. you know i'm always here. how beautiful you are today. are you gonna buy? how's your mom?) thank goodness for the pineapple lady. i don't even know her name and she doesn't know mine, but it was like she was my most intimate friend. i wanted to hug her and just climb into her basket of pineapples because she made me feel home again.

my girlfriend has been to ayiti 4 times. twice before 112, she came to visit me in april, and she's here now. (she's on a mission, making sure i actually get on the plane tomorrow.) on friday, we drove through downtown and around champs mars by what used to be the palace. there are still huge tent cities in the once spotless, gorgeous parks. she broke down in tears, completely overwhelmed. "lori, it's OCTOBER! when i saw these tents in april, i thought "okay, this is temporary"...but THIS IS NOT TEMPORARY ANYMORE! this is just how it is now, isn't it?"

all i could do is nodd.

fuck. this place is such a disaster.

but fuck. it's my disaster, you know? it's the only place where i feel completely right on the inside. it's where i am my truest self. my heart has ayiti written all over it. it doesn't make sense, does it?

so, in my suitcase, i assembled a survival stash of cafe rebo, comme il fauts, and a jug of grenadia klerin. i just might make it through the next 3 months away from ayiti cheri.

my contract ended last week and i no longer work for an ngo, a.k.a. the spawn of satan. phew! what a surreal experience. working for an organization that i know only perpetuates the dirty cycle of aid in this country made me and still makes me feel sick inside. like i pimped out my brain or something. like my next job should be working for walmart or bp.

i do know that i learned a lot. most of which i honestly wish i didn't know because i have accumulated so much anger that i will someday need to seek professional help or take part in some sort of hippy cleanse orchestrated by my sister the witch. i just hope she doesn't make me sing, like the last time. :)

the fact that the thousands of ngo's here, with their million dollar budgets do nothing of value, is infuriating.

but i think the worse part about my job was the racism. honestly, i don't even know if it was racism. yes, the blans acted as though they were a superior race. but it was more than that. they treated the haitians like they weren't even human beings, like they didn't even think to notice that they were really there. is that racism? what do you call that complete lack of regard? that complete lack of connection?

how can these people come to my country under the guise of "aid" and never even attempt to learn the language? all the staff meetings were run in english and the haitian staff just had to - work it out. how do they just expect an entire staff to learn their language? how do they not pay people for months at a time? how do they spend all their time behind their lap tops instead of making real connections with their staff members? they write pages and pages of reports about haitians, but don't even know any. how do they walk into a room and only greet the other white people sitting there? how do they carelessly cut people in the lunch line, or in the coffee line? walk passed people like they're not even there, to get their lunch or their coffee first? how? no really, how?

grrr...

but the goodbye was a bit sad, too, because i fell in love with so many people. it was almost like getting off of a bus after traveling with the same group of people on an extremely long road trip. i sat with so many of them and listened to their stories. when i wrote my final report i had to add up my individual sessions - 143. that's a LOT of bus mates. i feel so humbled to have been able to be a part of people working through so much - the shock and nightmare of 112, the agony of loss, the empowerment and guilt of survival, the will to start a new life. it sounds so cliche, but i am forever changed.

so now, here i sit in my mom's living room. the rains have stopped for tonight (i hope) and i hear the hum of the city, the singing of the frogs and the crickets, the purr of the inverter, the rumbling of moto taxis in the distance. packing it into that special place in my mind.

this won't be my last post, by the way. you're stuck with me.

this definitely won't be my last time in ayiti either. it's stuck with me too.

the driver and the foreigner

2010-09-23T10:04:00.007-05:00

when i got to work, before i even got into my office, a woman asked me to speak with one of the drivers. on the way to work, she (a foreigner) asked her driver (a haitian) if he had any kids? they have shared the same ride to and from work for over 3 months now, but this was the first they rode to work alone. the man explained to her that yes, he has a daughter and that once he had 3 boys but that one of them died at the university he attended on 112. he was 24.

the woman was deeply touched by this and i could tell she had been crying. when she and i finished talking, she began to cry again.

i went and found the driver. he was sitting all alone under the banana trees, in the corner of the yard. his eyes were red from crying, his voice small and weak. when i explained to him that i just wanted to say 'hi' and that i just wanted to check on him, he began to wail.

i'm talking big man tears and big man pain.

when he could talk again, he told me everything. it came out of him like a faucet open all the way. about how crushed the university building was. about how he stayed there day and night for days, watching them dig. how loud the bulldozers were. he told me of how they found an entire classroom of freshmen. parts of their bodies still at their desks, their papers and books still in their places. how he kept calling his son's cell phone wanting so badly for him to just answer and be on the other end. how hopeful he was when they found survivors (they found 5 in all). how defeated he was when he knew his son didn't make it.

they found his son's body 10 days after the quake. well, most of it. they found only part of his legs, his upper body was crushed, and they could see the trace of blood from where his head might have been, all of it buried deep under the rubble. there was no way to reach it and the sun was setting. the digging crew was done for the day. his other son took pictures of what they found and they all went home. after uploading the images onto the computer, the family decided that yes, it was him. those were his jeans, his striped shirt.

when they returned early the next day, the bulldozers had already made their pile of bodies for the morning. the same pile had already been taken away to be dumped in the mass graves. the area of rubble that held the recognized jeans and striped shirt was completely gone.

they never had a funeral, they never really got to say goodbye.

it was seriously intense. i sat with him for almost 2 hours. most of the time he cried that inaudible cry, the one where it doesn't feel like there's any oxygen left to cry.

he told me something that i have been unable to get out of my mind. he told me the reason he began to feel so upset that morning was not because of the loss of his son. he had been dealing with it as best he could. he was upset because the woman, a foreigner, had asked him about his life and that when she heard about his pain, she had cried.

"ayisyen kon santi lapèn pou ayisyen. men, m pa janm gen eksperyans sa a. pou yon blan pran ka mwen konsa a? jamè. epi mwen abitye travay ak blan." (haitans can feel pain for haitians. but i've never had this experience. for a foreigner to take my case like this. never. and i am used to working with blans.)

man.

his shock was sincere. he could not believe that she had the reaction she had. "li kriye, oui lori. dlo te koule nan jye li oui!" (she cried, lori. water dripped from her eyes!)

oh what would the world be like if we really did "pran ka lòt moun"? if we took each other's cases? not "help" each other, that's lame. not give hand outs or hold a bake sale. not travel over land and sea to provide "aid" or like the jesus freaks around here say, "come love on the haitians." gross.

i mean what if we were to sit with each other and just simply - be present. to be saturated in each other's joy and pain. to let it permeate? human to human, big ngo boss to chauffeur, white to black, woman to man? i so badly want the world to be like this.

you may say i'm a dreamer. but i really hope i'm not the only one.

r.i.p., g.s.

2010-09-20T12:07:00.003-05:00

i lost a friend last night.

he was trying to help a neighbor who was being kidnapped.

he was shot.

and now he's gone.

i just saw him not too long ago. we talked about high school and about where all we had been since then. i remembered him as a little boy, but when i saw him he was a real grown up. he had a wife. and kids.

i hate this shit.

survive until we don't

2010-09-10T07:44:00.002-05:00

so, at lunchtime at work, we talk about sex. i love it. i love how open and honest haitians can be. sex is simply an enjoyable part of life. it's not a perverse, dirty little secret. it's not always "sexual harassment" when your ass is admired, it's the lover-ness quality coursing through haitian blood. i know it’s in mine! and why would you not appreciate a fine ass anyway? it has been super interesting listening to the men in my office talk to the women, watching them interact. their body language, the hand holding, the friendly caresses. there are kisses on the cheeks, there are linked arms. the women appreciate the men as well. but man, most of the men would be rushed to jail if they talked to or treated american women in the workplace like that!

monday, for example, we talked about the different names of klerin (haitian aphrodisiac-tic moonshine) and we shared memories of drinking too much of it. there’s kraze kaban (break the bed), zo devan (bone(r) in front), leve lamò (raise the dead), al konye (go fuck), gran bwa (large wood) and on and on. unfortunately, i don't remember any more. but that is what lunch is usually like - just plain ridiculousness, a lot of laughing. this week, however, things took a turn.

there is some american woman (who i kinda want to drop kick) who had a dream that haiti will be completely destroyed in november. being a "sweetheart", she shared this dream with a woman here at work. this woman then shared the story of the dream with others and it has created quite a stir. dreams being truth in this culture, mixed with already traumatized minds - it's been a long week in my office.

at lunch, instead of sex, we've been talking a lot about the earthquake and about the "end" of haiti.

the end of haiti, apparently, looks like this - a much stronger earthquake and a ginormous tsunami. the earthquake actually happens in jamaica, which causes the tsunami in 15 minutes. the mountains will split in two and water will spring forth from them as well. the only people that will survive are those lucky enough to get into high enough or big enough trees.

i've listened to a lot of terrified people and, once again, listening is all i can do. obviously, i cannot convince a terrified person not to be terrified. it doesn't help that there was a pretty strong earthquake on tuesday morning (i refuse to call them "aftershocks").

one woman told me she is making copies of all her important documents and putting them in ziploc bags. she will then distribute them to random friends for safekeeping.

another woman said she moved her bedroom to another part of the house because her new room has a porch. and next to her porch is a really tall coconut tree.

a man told me he is going to drink all the liquors he’s never tried before, just so that he knows he did it while he could.

i've tried to keep my own nervous system separate from theirs, because, my goodness, it's taken me 9 months to fall asleep at night in under 2 hours. i have quite a ritual, which i am too embarrassed to share, but mostly i lay there waiting for my bed to shift and the ceiling to cave in on me. dude, i know it’s crazy, i do. but anyway, i can't get caught up in more fear...it doesn't do a body good.

all this talk about “the end” has made me ask people about the opposite. about survival. the meaning of it, the importance of it, and maybe to remind them that as horrible as 112 was - they survived!? they are still here. and it makes me think of some of the many "crazy" survival stories i have heard.

on 112, a woman was going to the grocery store and her 3 kids wanted to go with her. she didn't really want to take them because they were sometimes a lot to handle. despite their tears, she told them "no", went out to the car and pulled almost all the way out of the driveway. she stopped at the gate and decided "why not? i should just take them with me." so she pulled back in and called them to her. the maid and the 3 kids walked out of the house towards the car. the earth shook and the house fell.

a young adult boy was at school and he decided to step out and smoke a cigarette. he walked out of the school and into the yard. he lit up and while enjoying his cigarette, the earth shook and the entire school building fell behind him.

a man went to buy a snack in a little boutique. he walked in and while he was pulling out his money to pay, a gourde slipped out of his hands. it rolled down the steps of the boutique and out into the road. he followed it outside, finding it strange how perfectly it rolled and bounced into the street. when he bent down to pick it up, the earth shook and the boutique fell behind him.

okay this one wins - a man, paralyzed from the neck down, is in his wheelchair in his bedroom at his home. the earthquake happens and his chair happens to be unlocked. it jumps up and down in the room along with the shifting of the earth and somehow, the earthquake propels him onto the floor. he continues getting bumped around and his entire, paralyzed body ends up under a bed. the bed happens to have a steel frame. the house begins falling around him and it ends up completely destroyed, but he survives.

he survives!?

when it’s your time, it’s your time.

is that officially truth? a fact?

even though we never like it when it happens, and even though the timing is never the right time? i don't know.

but on we go, spinning around the sun, doing what we do all day long. we place our important documents in ziplock bags, we flirt with beautiful women at work, we take smoke breaks from school, we taste all the liquor there is, we stay up terrified at night, we laugh with friends, we survive. that is, until we don't.

dominatrixes without borders

2010-09-05T10:34:00.003-05:00

so, yesterday morning my girlfriend, my roommate and i went to the jacmel meat market. bustling, crowded, lots of poop everywhere. there was a section for each animal: goats, cows, horses, and pigs. i watched their owners working hard, making sure their animals looked good, looked strong. one man said to me about his goat, "ou pa wè jan l bèl? menne l lakay ou non" (don't you see how pretty it is? take it home with you).

last night we went to an ngo party and it was pretty much the same experience. bustling, crowded. people full of poop, trying to look good and strong and pretty enough to be taken home. my girlfriend had never been to an ngo party, so i took her as a cultural experience. introductions at an ngo party go like this: "hi, i'm joe. and your name?" - "hi joe, i'm sue." - "hi sue. so, i'm with oxfam, who are you with?" - "i'm with medair" - -- small, strange silence, nodding. and on it goes.

my girlfriend- just here to hang out with me, and my roommate -just a haitian dude, got tired of explaining that they aren't here with an organization. at some point in the evening, they began telling people that they are in haiti with "dominatrixes without borders". funny. a lot of awkward smiles and confusion.

i know i go on and on about ngo's and it's got to seem repetitive. but this is my life right now. i just wish i could somehow videotape and share some of the conversations i've had with some of the "experts" who have been shipped here. mon dieu!

this is one of my reoccurring conversations- seriously -it happens all the time.

lady: "so, you're from haiti?"

me: "yes"

lady: "like, you weren't born here, were you?"

me: "yeah, i was born and raised here. i left here for college."

lady: "really?...you know, it's so nice to meet a haitian."

me: looking at her strangely. she's been here for 3 months and hasn't met any haitians? then she catches on that i'm confused.

lady: "i mean, i've met plenty of haitians at work, but - not....like....you know what i mean."

me: ---- blank.

what do they mean? is it because i'm light skinned? because i talk pretty english? my tattoos? piercing? next time this happens. i'm not gonna play along - no smiling and nodding. i'll ask and let you know, ok?

anyway...blah.

so i've been spending time with an 8 year old little girl. another "lost and found" child from 112 that was recently united with her maternal grandmother who was found here in cyvadier. she is super intelligent, vibrant, animated and again, i wish i could bring her home with me. she has asked me some pretty hard questions and i've admitted that i don't have any answers for her. this week, she told me that she continues to have bad dreams about her mother, who died on 112. she believes she is being haunted. i talked to her grandmother about this and she replied, "oui, manman l ap toujou toumante l paske yo pa t janm jwen kò li" (yes, her mother will always torment her because they never found her body). "l ap toujou konsa a, po djab li" (she'll always be like this, poor thing).

when i got back to the office, i shared this story with the child protection team and they were all in agreement. the little girl will always be "haunted" by her mother because her mother was not sent away properly. they told me of neighbors, cousins, and friends who since 112 are in the same predicament. both life and death are so dang complicated.

okay, so that's what i've been up to.

i have 3 weeks left working for this f-n ngo. it has been quite an experience, to say the least. my next stop is kenya for a few months to see a friend. being away from haiti makes me feel all panicked on the inside. i already miss it and i'm not even gone. so crazy, this love affair.

who knows?

2010-08-20T12:21:00.005-05:00

i'm at work, sweating as usual. it's so damn hot!

we are all crowded around the radio, listening, wondering - what is going to happen next? today the c.e.p. is deciding on and announcing which of the original candidates are eligible to run for president. the ngo i work for is beefing up security. the u.n. forces are out and about, ready to "protect" us. i called my mom and kindly urged her to leave work early. (my (crazy?) mom works in titanyin and drives through all of downtown, including most "red zones" every day.)

i do have to giggle about wyclef going into hiding after receiving death threats. he ran to preval and asked for protection. seriously? this is especially humorous because they say his largest fan base is the gangster population in the slums of matisan, cite soley and bel air. what do you do when your leader turns out to be such a punk ass? i'll say it again, he has absolutely NO IDEA what haitian politics are about or what he's getting into. sigh...

there's this feeling in the air that is disturbingly familiar. i call it the "gèt - gen dezod" feeling. (fuck - there's disorder). it's the feeling that things could explode at any minute. everyone keeps doing what they're supposed to, but everyone feels it. we don't talk about it but when the copy machine make a noise or if someone drops a book, everyone jumps. was that a rock? a gunshot?

for me personally, this phenomenon began in the mid-80's when the american government decided we couldn't have a dictator anymore. things got real tricky 'round here. they staged countless coups, riots, shootings and "gèt - gen dezod" became a normal part of life. my 4th grade school year was the last time i went to school every day, without any political interruptions.

this isn't a "i had a sad childhood" story. come on, what kid wants to go to school anyway? the picture above is my sister and i around the time of "new haiti order". really, the only thing "gèt gen dezod" days meant to me back then was - hell yeah, no school! i kinda felt that feeling when i woke up this morning, thinking "maybe i'll get out of work if there are riots." is that bad?

anyway, this all reminds me of my childhood friend "jill" (whose named has been changed to protect the innocent). jill's family was extremely close and her parents were the kind of parents that might have been called 'over protective'. they went on field trips with us, they hung out at parties with us. not in an annoying, clingy way, but in a "we're all in this together" way.

this also meant that if anything was happening - at all - within a 100 mile radius of our school, jill's parents would somehow be the first to know and they would come pick her up. jill getting called to the office always meant school was out for the day. always. it got so bad that the second we heard "jill, please come to the office," we all just closed our books, put away our trapper keepers and knew---- "gèt - gen dezod".

although i would've liked not having to come to work today, it has been interesting being able to be online and listen to haitian radio at the same time. as always, the americans are stirring the pot. as early as last night, they announced that wyclef couldn't run and that people were pissed off, ready to riot. the american embassy sent out their normal "go inside and hide" announcements. it's almost 3pm now and the cep has yet to even announce who they "picked".

why?

why does the american government fuck with us so damn much???? not just today, but forever and always?

this is a question i know doesn't have one, solid answer but i do know it's fascinating to ask it.

my father believed that they had nothing better to do but fuck with us free black folk, like a childish science experiment. my mom's wacko missionary friends would say it's not the american government, but god's way of punishing us for worshipping the devil with our voodou. i have friends that say it's because of our natural resources - oil, bauxite, gold, and cheap labor. others believe it's because simply our geographical placement that makes us the 7-11 pit stop of the drug trade and americans LOVE drugs. last night, i asked my new roommate why he thought the u.s. seemed to be committed to keeping us fucked up?

he compared haiti to a well built, powerful, beautiful man. some sick fuck comes along and says, "that beautiful man makes me feel uncomfortable. how can i take away these uncomfortable feelings as well as his power?" first, the sick fuck cuts off one of the beautiful man's legs and feels a bit better about himself and his sick-fuck-ed-ness. when the beautiful man begins learning how to walk without his leg, the sick fuck makes him use borrowed crutches in return for the beautiful man's home. when he begins dancing down the street despite his crutches, the sick fuck decides he will take away the crutches and make the beautiful man buy a wheelchair from him, even though yes, he is the one who originally cut off his leg. the sick fuck's desire is to confine the beautiful man to sitting and watching life pass him by and even convince him that he was never well built, never powerful, and never beautiful.

hmmm....

i like my new roommate, by the way.

WHYclef ???

2010-08-06T12:56:00.003-05:00

so - the wyclef thing.

there are many reasons why it deeply offends me as well as terrifies me to think that he could be the person who becomes president of this country.

first of all, how the hell will he speak for us? no, literally, how will he speak for us? or to us?

wyclef jean doesn't proficiently speak any of the languages necessary to run this country.

his english will have white people clutching their purses and wallets because he sounds like what he is - a rapper and rappers aren't heads of state, they're rappers. i love rappers and i even like his rapping. but his english is not appropriate for political discourse. we know this is true. there's no way in HELL barack obama would be president if he spoke rapper vernacular. (oh, that rhymes) you know it's true.

wyclef's kreyol is surface kreyol, not deep nor wide enough to truly carry on any in-depth conversations. trust me - i've heard him on radio interviews.

and - he speaks no french.

as much as i hate the division that is created here between our slave-rooted kreyol and our colony-rooted french, this is a french speaking country. every single form for every single service is written in french. so, "president" jean wouldn't be able to fill out a form to get his license, to see a doctor, to sign up for internet service, to even buy new tires for his car.

in which of these languages will he address the prime minister? the cabinet? school teachers? school children? doctors? lawyers? farmers? fishermen and women? investors? presidents of other countries?

plus, he won't understand when any of these people speak back to him. will he have a translator? the president? fuck me crispy creme, that's ridiculous!

secondly, wyclef jean, with his high school diploma, is not educated enough to be president. just because we are a poor black country with a pretty high illiteracy rate doesn’t mean it’s okay that our president is uneducated as well.

while college is definitely not the only place one can learn and although most university programs are full of shit - being president means you carry the experience of education with you. it means that you have sat with other brilliant minds and tackled many of life’s questions. you’ve taken stances on different issues and written documents to defend them. you’ve studied other country’s governments and histories. and most importantly, you’ve learned how to live on 4 hours of sleep and $20 a month.

how will wyclef sit down with other presidents and discuss economic decisions? how will he sit with doctors and discuss health care? how will he sit with school children and encourage them to try higher education?

the third issue i have with wyclef is the most important one. i can see beyond the lack of any language and the lack of education. what i cannot see past is that wyclef jean is a diaspora. a diaspora that hasn’t lived here since he was 9 years old, can in no way even begin to understand this country let alone run it.

i am a diaspora as well. i left here after high school and although i have come back to live a few times and have come to visit almost every summer and christmas holiday, i am still a diaspora. i do not have any right to even begin to say what haiti needs or what haiti doesn't need. the first chance i got, i turned my back on this country and high-tailed it outta here.

as haitians, i believe our cultural identity is so fucked up and it starts at birth. growing up, we are told that the very best thing that could ever happen to us, is if we are able to make it off the peninsula. we are in a rat race to become something other than haitian. we hide our voodou religion like a dirty secret or our parents keep it from us and we aren't even taught it. we are frowned upon for speaking our own language. our parents work hard to send us away. and once we get someplace other than haiti, we are strongly encouraged to stay there and treated like we are mentally insane when we say we want to come back.

our haitian identity problem is magnified when we live in the united states, a place obsessed with "checking the box". we are confronted with that question so often - "what are you?" and eventually we form this new identity. "i'm haitian". i think that how that identity develops for each of us depends on how we left here. i have one friend whose parents left with her as a small child and have only told her horrible things about haiti because that was their experience. she hates haiti but yet has never really even been here. she doesn't even want to come try it. i have a friend who might as well have swam to the united states, her visa situation has been so difficult. after 9 years she has her green card and has absolutely no desire to come back. what happens when you make it "lot bo dlo" (the other side of the water) and become "too educated" for your where you started? so freakin complex.

once we leave, i think we hold with us either a hatred for the place that birthed us that offers us nothing we want, or a deafening nostalgia that keeps us up at night, we miss it so much.

this is a problem.

this is a problem, especially now. the diaspora community (which is HUGE) is completely disconnected with what is happening here. another thing that scares me is when i hear diaspora talk, saying that haiti needs to change to be just like the states. you know what? HAITI ISN'T THE UNITED STATES AND IT SHOULDN'T BECOME THE UNITED STATES! if you want haiti to be just like the states, than PLEASE move to miami, to little haiti or to new york. just do it and stay there and be happy and leave the rest of us alone. this really pisses me off.

us diaspora, when we leave haiti, it's like we think that a "pause" button is placed on the entire place and that everything stays the same while we're gone. we make jokes about how "third world" it is here, about the mosquitoes biting us and about the lack of anything near "progress" happening. but this is so not true. the last 8 months here i have realized just how disconnected i am from my country.

i didn't know i could get wi-fi so easily. i didn't know how many amazing advances have been made with the electricity situation. (granted, there have been setbacks after 112). i didn't know how fancy music venues have gotten. i didn't know how many amazing, thought-provoking radio programs were on the air, not to mention amazing new musicians. i didn't know i could check a sogebank balance online. i didn't know how many impressive restaurants and bars there are, with great live music. i didn't know how hard the women have been working here for women's rights. i didn't know what a strong, intelligent, educated, revolutionary group of young people is being produced by our very own education system. this is true! i've met them! i didn't know i could browse the internet on my phone with digicel. and i wouldn't know any of this, had i not been here during this time to experience all of it.

how can wyclef jean, or any of us diaspora decide anything about our country if we haven't even wanted to build our lives here? we simply cannot speak for people who stayed behind. it's like if one brother stayed home to care for an elderly grandmother. we can't call him up and tell him what to do, as if we know what's best. we can't show on the doorstep one day and complain about the dirty bedpans. we have no right!

does wyclef know where the tap tap stations are or how much it costs to ride one? does he know the price of some great tasting fritay? does he know when mango season is? does he know which roads are blocked off and the short cuts you need to take to make it anywhere? does he know where to get a great chicken sandwich? does he know which cell phone company is better? does he know how to use the papadap phone system? does he know how to get money out of an atm here? does he know where to shop for good wine? does he know where to get a hair cut? does he know which days are holidays and celebrations for different voodou dieties? does he know how good a cup of coffee from off the street is? or carrots from seguin? or how to get haitian rice instead of the imported crap?

i will admit, i COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND his sentiment, his desire to run for president. even i wanted to run. but one of the drivers at work told me - lori, you have no political experience, how could you become president? so true! (he then invited me to one of his very radical political group meetings, which was quite an experience.)

wyclef should continue being a rapper. a very well-known rapper that reminds people that haiti exists. he's really great at that!

but intentions aside, my main question is, how can you efficiently run a place when you know nothing about it?

sigh...okay, there are my wyclef thoughts and i'm sticking to 'em.

oh, wait, and you know something else that pissed me off? since january, i have seen 1 wall painted that says "yele" and then i saw 2 water trucks once with "yele" banners on them. besides that, they have been nowhere to be seen. and i'm a girl that gets around, if you know what i mean. and GUESS what i saw on my way to jacmel yesterday? about 30 people sweeping up trash with yele t-shirts on. are you serious?!?!? man, i hate politics. glad you could join us, mr. jean and your yele clean up crew. grrrrr....

outside your window

2010-07-27T20:25:00.004-05:00

so...after much thought, i decided not to post the last blog i wrote that kind of exposed ngo insanity. mostly because i'm presently working with an ngo and - i kinda don't want to lose my job. that would suck. maybe i'll tell you all about it later, when my contract is finished.

so much has happened since my last post. i've been super spoiled with a visit from my sister and nephew and then a visit from a dear friend. both visits kept me busy and filled with much needed laughter and love, and also kept me away from my computer.

let's see - well, i went to cap ayisyen for fèt ogun/fèt st. jacques to attend a voodou ceremony that was quite interesting in a million ways. i swear i will never understand why voodou is so scary to outsiders or why missionaries have to come here in droves to "save" us from it? save us from what, exactly? it's all the same thing! a mixture of beliefs passed down through generations that help people get through another day. a group of people getting together and through a step-by-step process, call upon an outside force to visit them at which time they offer up sacrifices and hope for a better tomorrow, all the while singing and dancing to really great drum music, dances and songs they have learned from birth. AND, after it all, everyone eats. what is it that's so different? even the drinking of blood is the same. it's totally weird, but it's the same. i seriously will never understand and am constantly offended by the jesus freaks who come here. especially now. they feel even more "moved" to bring their arrogant, racist asses here to show us the way. man - stay home and make your own people listen to all that shit. you know, it wasn't until i was 19 and moved to the states, that i found out there were poor people there. my entire life i figured they had to come to haiti and mess with our poor people because obviously they had none of their own. nope! so - it goes a little something like this - tell me you believe everything i tell you and i will give you food and a tent. awful.

so, yeah, a voodou ceremony. what a beautiful way to spend an evening.

i had a fancy dinner with a presidential candidate and got to pick his brain just a little. that was also an interesting way to spend an evening. i would probably have more to tell you about it if i hadn't drank so much red wine. so - elections. in november. we never decided to have democracy and it was given to us forcefully like a bad christmas gift that you can't give back without a fight. we have yet to have a non-violent, non-fraudulent election since the u.s. government decided we had to, so we're like democracy babies. most of the people i know lost their voting cards in the earthquake and you'd think the u.n. forces in charge of elections would have voter registration offices up and running so that everyone could vote. hmm...yeah, not so much. and the candidates? wyclef fucking jean? this totally pisses me off. i asked a machan today what she thought of wyclef as our president? "sa l pral fè pou nou? montre nou ki jan pou nou fè rap? se pa yon pwofesè mizik nou bezwen non!" (what's he gonna do for us? show us how to rap? we don't need a music teacher). what a slap in the face. he doesn't even speak kreyol well. a friend and i listened to an interview he did on the radio a month ago and we died laughing. he speaks that new york kr-english which is fine for his rapper status. not okay for a fn president! we also have the prime minister running, who not too long ago the people rioted to get him out of office because of his fraudulent ways. that's just weird. and then there's sweet mickey, a compas (haitian music) musician. whaaaa? we'll see, i guess! whoever it is - man, what a job! i thought obama having to come in and clean up 8 years of bush madness was bad --- this is REALLY bad. there's a joke going around (which i told to the presidential candidate and he laughed a lot but then said it wasn't that funny...) "nan moman sa a, prezidan d'ayiti se tankou yon kotex. li nan pi bon pozisyon an, nan pi move moman an" (right now, being president of haiti is like being a maxi pad. he's in the best position, but at the worst time). strangely, most of the people i talk to are very hopeful. something's got to give. i personally wish there was a fidel castro hanging around somewhere to come be our leader. someone who's got the cojones to tell the u.s. government to kiss our asses. that would definitely be interesting!

oh - i made a lady cry last night. i'm staying in a hotel this week because of housing issues. it's me and a shit ton of "relief" people. she was "shocked" by my good english and so we struck up a conversation. (yes, she really said "shocked"). she asked me what i thought when i saw so many americans coming to help the country, to which i answered, "do you really want to know?" she assured me she really did want my honesty. (big mistake on her part)

i asked her to imagine -- her hometown was completely destroyed in a day. everything that was part of her scenery called "home" was no longer standing. plus, she lost friends and family too. and then, she was invaded by do-gooders from another country that don't speak her language nor did they take the time to learn anything about her culture, all the while being sure they know exactly what's best.

she was really quiet.

"but i'm here to play with the kids in tent cities," was her defense.

"and you assumed there aren't any haitians that know how to play with kids in tent cities and that they aren't already playing with them? who do you think will play with them when you leave after being here a week?"

i told her she was a humanitarian tourist, at which she was really offended. she wanted to be more than just that. what do these people want? a medal? an award? for coming all this way to stare at us and take pictures of us in our miserable state? like my sister says, she wishes they would just admit to being tourists. that would be fine and honest and we can work with that. but the concept that they're coming to change things, to save us...eeew gross.

so, that's when she cried. then we stopped talking and i continued to sip my rhum punch and smoke my comme il fauts. i talked to the bartender instead and told him everything i just told her and why she was upset. he laughed his ass off and couldn't believe i told her what i did. he said, "oui, yo pa renmen le nou di yo sa a" (yes, they don't like when we tell them this) "di yo kisa" (tell them what?) i asked. "verite a?" (the truth?) "oui, verite a" (yes, the truth) then he called me crazy and gave me another drink, on him.

sigh...

my staff support job is definitely changing. people are talking less and less about the earthquake and more and more about how ridiculous ngo work is. it's really hard to encourage people to keep smiling, keep shining. 6 months into ngo humanitarian aid after such a disaster and the staff is beginning to realize that ngo's don't really DO ANYTHING. they apply band-aids on some random issues, but they don't really do what needs to be done in any real way. that would mean they (and me) would all be out of jobs! but morale is low in the office and these bright, intelligent, university-educated young people are realizing this and it is painful to watch. such disillusionment. what do you say to them? no, really, what should i say? whatta mess.

but for some crazy reason i am still hopeful. have i just simply lost my mind? maybe. or maybe i just need to be hopeful so that i don't completely lose my mind? which is it?

and you know, i think a lot of people think that absolutely nothing is happening, no one is doing anything positive. i think this concept is created and believed if you don't get out and talk to people. if you stay in your comfort zone and only talk to the people you know, you don't find out what's happening outside of it. if you go into the tent cities, you will find people who are dedicated and working every day to help others. i met a young guy yesterday who is a painter and dreams of being able to paint for a living. he goes to one of the tent cities here in jacmel every day and he re-dresses wounds and washes old people's feet. no payment, not a job that he has. just because he sees the need. and people like this are everywhere. i think this is true for anywhere you live. i know in the states, you can feel like nothing is right politically or what you hear on the news may seem pretty bad. but if you talk to your neighbor, you might be surprised at all the great things going on, the great things people are about. so look outside your window today, open your blinds and see what's out there.

maybe? damn, i hope you find something good or it'll be all my fault!

angry and sad

2010-07-13T00:43:00.003-05:00

i had a mild outburst tonight and my sister did her darnedest to talk me back, away from the edge.

i am angry.

i am sad.

i am so angry there was an earthquake.

i am angry that after 6 months, i don't see anything different, only worse. i'm angry that there are STILL people trying to make a living in the mud, surrounded by rubble and trash. i am angry at the government. i am angry at the ngo's. i am angry at the religious-based jesus freaks. and i am REALLY angry, that 6 months after 112, our president held a ceremony today to honor sean penn, bill clinton and anderson cooper for all their hard work.

WHAT? a ceremony? he has time for a ceremony honoring celebrities? with medals? are you kidding me? "knights of the national order of honor and merit"...shouldn't he be so fucking busy trying to get almost 2 million of his country's people out of tents, that he doesn't have time for shit like this?

i am sad. i am sad that there was an earthquake.

i am sad that after 6 months, i am beginning to find it "normal" to drive by plas st. pierre and plas boyer and see tents instead of trees, park benches, and neighborhood football matches. that people are still bathing on the side of the road and the smell of shit and piss doesn't even bother me anymore. i am sad that the people that make it to clinics are fighting preventable diseases. i am sad that i know people who are suffering and who are loosing hope. i am sad that people are scrunching up their shoulders and shaking their heads. i am sad that people are having to rebuild their lives after loosing loved ones. i am sad because as many ideas and answers people seem to have, this is just one very fucked up situation.

i am sad because i feel like i'm running out of positive thoughts to share, i'm running out of optimism. it is painful to accept that this is just how things are now.

my sister told me that she is afraid that i will let this experience change me, change who i am. that i will become cynical and carry around anger and sadness. i hear what she said, i even watched her lips move when she said it. but i'm not really sure i know how to stop it. this experience has changed me, it has changed who i am. and i am angry and sad.

n/a

2010-07-09T11:10:00.006-05:00

well, i haven't blogged in a long while. i haven't had internet (lightning striking issues). things are going well, i've been working lots.

well, not lately - i haven't really gotten out of bed since sunday night. apparently i'm fighting some sort of infection - yet to be determined which kind. yesterday, i was stretched out on the dr.'s examining table, and i stared up at the patched-up cracks on the ceiling covered nicely with fresh paint. it's like the cracks weren't ever there. then i had to give my blood to get tested at a clinic. in front of this clinic is a sidewalk. in january, there were piles of dead bodies on this sidewalk, random limbs and blood. but now, the sidewalk's squeaky clean, like none of that was ever there. today, on my way back to the lab, there was a rubble-clearing crew working on a fallen building and there was a fire going. fires = bodies. i tried to roll up my window so i wouldn't smell that smell, but i wasn't fast enough. and i wonder - how in the world could i be sick right now fighting an infection??? funny. kinda.

so, these are some of the things that have been happening ---

1. my hero ran away from the orphanage and was found later that day. they brought her to me so that i could "talk some sense into her" --- which - how, exactly, do you "talk some sense" into someone, especially a little person, who is surrounded by senselessness? hmm. i didn't really know what to say. all she kept saying to me was, "mwen beswen jwen fanmi m" (i need to find my family). she had run away that morning to go look for her people, determined to find the place where she belongs. i tried to convince her to try really hard to remember how to be 12 again and to let the adults in her life do all the work. i hated that i couldn't make her any promises, that i couldn't magically produce the freakin' after-school special happy ending for her. damn.

2. we found a 14 year old girl whose story is a lot like my hero's...she lost her family on 112 and she made her way to jacmel with her mom's name and a cell phone. she made friends with a tap-tap driver and he brought her home and made her a part of his family. things went well for about a month, until a neighbor snuck into the house one night and raped her. this is when we found her. at the hospital getting tested for pregnancy, stds, and hiv. she is 14. damn damn damn.

3. i went to an amazing art therapy training and fell in love (again) with a group of women artists. one builds ships, one works with coconut husks, one works in papier mache, one embroiders, thee of them paint, one works with dried banana leaves. all of them phenomenal. we laughed, we cried, we ate and man did we have some interesting conversations.

we talked about child's rights. it is interesting to read the child rights charter signed by ALL nations - (oh, not the u.s. of a, by the way) and then talk to real live parents. this is where my mixed race childhood is a bit - mixed. my american mom always tried to talk to me about my bad behavior and my haitian dad just seriously beat my ass. it depended on who got to me first. "children, by their very nature, are 'dezod'" (disorderly), one woman told me. "and that is why you beat them." one of the rights is a right to security. "ha. who feels secure in this country?" asked one of the women. it was interesting.

stirred by one of my many tattoos, we also talked about voodou. they couldn't understand why i would get a veve tattoo. not because it wasn't pretty, not because the symbols weren't "symbolic", but -- they are so -- out in the open for everyone to see. (a veve is a symbol given to different lwa (dieties) in the voodou pantheon). i will never understand why voodou is so taboo. i mean, besides the centuries of cultural and religious oppression, that is. most people practice it but no one talks about it. hmm...

4. evelyn finally had her (i really, really hope) LAST surgery on her leg. she is one of the many superwomen i met at general hospital shortly after the earthquake. she had a pretty bad infection for a while, but was able to kick it. there is still one wound that doesn't seem to want to heal. she is strong, she is positive and she still has that smile and every time it rains i want to go get her and her family and bring them home with me. yes, people are still in tents. yes, it is still raining a lot. and no, nothing has changed.

5. i had dinner with two gorgeous women, my sister and my nephew. (they are visiting for a month) have i mentioned how gorgeous haitian women are? dear sweet baby jesus. and they're beautiful effortlessly. their skin is perfect, their curves are perfect, their smiles, their eyes. it's amazing to me. it felt so good to laugh, to talk shit, to hear stories, and eat really great food.

6. i went to my first ngo party. i wandered in and out of conversations with people who have traveled the world and who seem so good at this disaster stuff and enjoy it. there was a whole lotta one-upping and bragging. "oh, but in darfur..." and "well, when i was in indonesia after the tsunami..." and "you know, in iraq..." blah, blah, blah. maybe i should have been impressed, or maybe i should have sat at their feet and learned from their infinite "disasters are cool" wisdom. but really all i wanted to do was scream - "but this is haiti mother fuckers!!!" i wonder how they keep such an emotional distance from what is happening outside their air conditioned tet befs (suv's) and if they would continue to have such disance if they actually knew any of the people they write about in their countless reports. i ended up drinking lots and dancing with two very nice african men who didn't want to talk about work, but to just dance.

7. the world cup. oh, football. one of my favorite parts about it was that listening to sportscasters in haiti is like listening to two dudes talking major shit about a match, especially on the radio. there is no holding back of emotions nor opinions. the germans were simply called "blan-man-nan" which kind of means "really, really white". why blan-man-nan, i asked "because we all know germans really like being white," one guy explained to me. when players missed a goal or made a bad pass, they totally talked shit about them. "woy! pas sa a pa t bon di tou mesanmi!" (damn, that pass wasn't good at ALL my friends) or "sa l te panse li t ap fè la a?" (what the hell did he think he was doing?) and then there were the commercials, which the majority were about hygiene - wash your hands, drink clean water, typhoid, malaria, diarrhea, go see a doctor if your vagina itches. one game was broadcasted from espn, along with the american way of pointing out celebrities in the crowd. they briefly showed leonardo dicaprio and the haitian sportscasters spent quite a while talking about who that white guy was. was it that one from mission impossible? was it brad pitt? it was hilarious. when brasil won, it was like kanaval. and when they lost, it was seriously like a national day of mourning.

8. i miss you all. a LOT. some days it is a physical pain.

hero

2010-06-24T08:46:00.003-05:00

so today, i met another hero. she doesn't know her birth day, but she does know she's 12. she has deep, deep eyes, a sweet, sweet smile and a very contagious laugh.

on 112, she, her parents and her 4 brothers and sisters survived the earthquake. on friday afternoon of that week, they decided to move back into their home. early saturday morning, her mom sent her on an errand in another neighborhood. there was an aftershock. when she got back to her house, she saw people pulling out her family members, one by one, from the rubble that used to be her home. everyone in her family died but her.

she knew of a friend of her mother’s and she went to find her. the woman let her stay with her in a shelter she built in the tent city on champ mars. the woman had other children and eventually, my hero became a restavek (a “stay with” child who is pretty much a child slave). she was forced to work long hours, she was beaten, she was stuck.

two days ago, she decided to stop doing work around the house. she told the woman she wanted to leave. the woman gave her $14 and told her to get out. when i asked her what made her stop doing the work, and she told me, “manman’m pa’t janm fè-m soufri konsa-a. li pa’t janm maltrete-m. mwen te konnen se pa konsa lavi mwen te dwe ye.” (my mom never made me suffer like that. she never treated me badly. i knew that that was not how my life should be).

her dad always told her he had family in jacmel. so she took her 2 changes of clothes, her $14 and her father’s last name - and got on a bus to jacmel.

she got off the bus and walked the few miles into town. she said she didn’t know who to ask for help, but she saw this woman buying candy who looked really nice. as fate would have it (or whatever they say), the woman who looked so nice was one of my coworkers who works in “ftr” (family tracing and reunification). fabulous, non? i told her she had quite the skill of intuition!

we talked for a long time today, and her strength baffles me. her determination, her cojones, they way she took her life into her own hands. i listened to her story. i held her when she cried. i told her she was the most courageous person i’ve ever met.

i so wanted to bring her home with me. along with the other 22 lost kids at a make-shift orphanage; one was 2 years old.

we have worked on a total of 50 separated children cases that have ended up in jacmel. there are an endless amount of issues surrounding them. you ever have one of those strings that hang off your cheap cotton underwear? and you know what's gonna happen if you pull it, but you do it anyway...and it just never stops un-doing itself? it's kinda like that. when i hear about these cases, i really want the after-school special version of happy endings, but it just doesn’t work that way.

after the earthquake, the government tried to "empty" the city by providing free transportation to the countryside. "if you have family in les cayes, get on the bus," for example. many of the kids were separated from their families those first few days and assumed their parents were dead. they had heard throughout their lives that they had family in places like jacmel - so on the bus they went. and 5 months later, here they still are. 2 have been reunited with family, but have since run away, unable to adjust back into a family after roaming the streets for 4 months. one is pregnant after being raped in a tent city. one little girl’s father knew she was living in the camp here, but because he is no longer able to make a living, he left her there and refused the reunification. many, we just haven’t been able to find their families.

i sat with the case worker today and listened to her questions. “did your dad ever mention a name of any of his brothers and sisters? did he ever mention the name of a specific town? can you think of any names of his friends? any nicknames? do you remember any phone numbers?” her responses --- no, no, no. the only phone number she could remember was her mom’s. “372....men, telefon li unba dekom” (372...but her telephone is under the rubble).

i watched her frustration as she tried to remember - remember anything that might help us help her find a trace of what’s left of her family. i wonder if she wishes she would’ve paid more attention; would’ve asked more questions? but what 12 year old little girl could ever be prepared for such a heavy life situation? shit, i'm nowhere near 12 and i sure am not prepared!

it made me think about the family trees i used to have my students make, to invoke conversation with their caregivers (middle schoolers don’t usually like talking to their parents) and to encourage them to be curious about where they came from. so many cool stories came from that activity.

i have no clue what will happen to this courageous, lost little girl. how powerful is a name? will we be able to find any of the people who belong to her? the branches and leaves of her family tree?

damn i hope so. i REALLY want the after-school special happy ending for my new hero.

sad

2010-06-19T09:02:00.006-05:00

so...i went to the central plateau for a quick trip to chat with a group of staff members who had a river accident. 11 of them were trying to cross one of the many rivers into maissade and the water rose, the truck flipped and flipped and took them all down the river. they all survived, somehow they all crawled out/were pulled out of the looping, water filled land rover. amazing. terrifying.

the flight there (with a quick stop in la gonave) was breathtaking and i was reminded once again how gorgeous this land is. in just an hour of putt-putting around in a 4-seater plane, the geography is so spectacular, so divine, so diverse. the steep mountains, the caribbean sea, the plains, the artibonite river valley, the waterfalls, all of it. the blues, the greens, the browns, the reds. if you've ever been to haiti and only visited port-au-prince, you have NEVER been to haiti.

landing in both la gonave and hinche are experiences in and of themselves. both landing strips are literally just that - strips of land. the runways are also where goats and cows feed, where people learn to ride motorcycles and cars, like a huge open community center. when we were landing in hinche, we had to pull up at the last minute because of a goat-crossing.

i saw pentads running wild along the roads. i heard the rain fall on tin roofs. i tasted perfectly grilled goat at breakfast. i smelled fresh ground coffee in the middle of the afternoon. i met and listened to beautiful human beings, dealing with quite a traumatic experience. one lady said to me, "what next? i am afraid of the earth, and now water." i felt sad.

i feel very, very sad. i feel like i am loosing myself. i feel like i am a tap tap going up a steep road to nowhere in particular, filled in every open space, carrying so many stories, so many other people's raw emotions. i kinda wanna stop and get out, catch my breath, stretch, pretend i never started the trip. but what do i do with all the passengers? hmm....

back in the 4th world

2010-06-10T13:11:00.006-05:00

so...i’m back in the 4th world. i gave myself a trip to the 1st world for my birthday. when we took off on the plane and on the whole flight to miami, i felt totally afraid to be leaving haiti. what would happen while i was gone? would there be another earthquake? what would happen because of the heavy rains? it was strange. i thought i was so ready for a break, but when the day came - i didn’t want to leave.

as soon as i landed in miami, i knew i was in the first world because as i bought my $4.00 water - there it was - jennifer hudson on the cover of some magazine...”i’m a size 6 and never been happier”...i was in america for real. gross.

it took a while to get used to being indoors. luckily, my sister the witch spends most of her time outdoors. sleeping was difficult at first. i kept plotting my earthquake exit plan in my head; the plan included grabbing my 14 year old nephew with one hand and my iphone with the other. silly.

but slowly, i got used to the comfy bed, the still-standing buildings, the earth staying in it’s place...and i got really, really sick. feverish and aching and then strep throat...my body decided i would not be getting out of bed, birthday or not, and that i would sleep for hours. i made up for lost time, i guess.

i spent the rest of my trip making up for other kinds of lost time. lots of talking, lots of laughing, lots of drinking, lots of eating, lots of hugging, lots of loving - it was a fabulous time and i was reminded what kick ass, fantabulous people i have in my life.

i felt really confused several times, trying to understand how, just how, haiti and the u.s. are on the same fucking planet? a few days before leaving here, i was holding babies suffering from malnutrition, their huge extended bellies, their golden hair, they were even too hungry to cry. in the states, i stood by as women talked about which kinds of diets they were on, which food groups they are choosing not to eat. how is this possible? life seemed so super easy. at times i caught myself on the verge of being unable to relate. deep breaths, lots of deep breaths.

it was really good to be in the united states of america. i needed to reconnect to that place, with those people. i have been stockpiling quite a bit of anger and hatred based on what some of the americans here are doing and not doing. i needed to be reminded about how much i love the afternoon summer rain storms in savannah, the beauty of live oak trees covered in spanish moss, how gorgeous and inspiring the desert in new mexico can be, how nice it is to have popsicles and ice cream, how nice it is to drive on smooth roads. and, especially, how many good things are happening in the communities in which i used to live, made possible by good american folk.

last night as i did the dishes, i thought about my unique opportunity to be able to be a part of two very different worlds. in that one, the tap goes on and the water pours out, as much as i want, all day long. in this other one, i have water consumption down to almost a science. i know one drum lasts two weeks. it takes 2 and 1/2 kivet scoops for a bath, 1 for dishes, 4 for laundry, 3 to flush the toilet. and i totally appreciate both of these worlds, even though they do feel like they are light years away from one another.

so, i’m back, trying to relate to other things. on my way home, i knew i was back in the 4th world because - there it was - a leg, squished between piles of rubble. all alone, nothing but a leg, with pants still on it and even a shoe. i am in haiti for real. gross.

yesterday i sat with a brilliant young woman who wanted to know if she would ever stop living with 112, with loss, with death. on the 12th, her sociology professor was shot and killed around noon. luckily-??? she and her classmates were not in class at 4:45 when the quake hit and her university fell into piles. she lost 4 family members that day. on wednesday morning, after helping dig out her best friend from underneath the rubble, her friend died in her arms on the way to the hospital. this past saturday, her other best friend was flipped out of the back of a tap tap and ran over by a bus. deep breaths, lots of deep breaths.

but life is good. i’m so happy to be back. while i was gone, there wasn’t another earthquake, the rains have done minimal damage so far, i didn’t miss anything major. my peeps are still wonderful, the ocean is still fabulous, the sun is still shining.

the inside of it

2010-05-20T21:06:00.003-05:00

one thing i'll say about this life in this little country...it is such a roller coaster ride of emotions. the last few days, i have felt so discouraged, so frustrated, so hopeless about the direction in which things are going. (especially because it feels like things are going nowhere)

and then today, i went to visit 4 different camps, filled with over 2,000 displaced families in each. they were all in kafou, an area near the epicenter. being with the people, talking with them, talking to the doctors and nurses and psychosocial workers -

they revived something in me. a mixture of hope and love and admiration and respect.

the mobile clinics, set up in tents, were like being inside an oven turned on extra high. sweaty, sweaty, sweaty! the health care workers have been working these clinics since january 20th. they have watched their patients shift from earthquake emergencies to camp related diseases. the rain falls, the water is stagnant, the mosquitos attack, leading to a lot of malaria. the lack of food is causing malnutrition. the sexual violence and promiscuity are producing a rise in venereal diseases and infections. there are communicable skin diseases that are difficult (if not impossible) to stop. mostly because there's no real way to separate the people to combat the diseases. they use the same water, hold the same babies, share the same clothes, etc.

the "espas timoun" tents (child friendly spaces) were also like being inside an oven turned on extra high. sweaty, sweaty, sweaty! the psychosocial workers have been at these sites since january 20th as well. one tent had 274 registered kids. the kids in the camps have lost their homes, some of them have lost family members, and the only stable thing for them has been these hot, cramped tents.

the health care workers don't always have the right medicine to give, which is a frustration. but they do what they can. the psychosocial workers don't always have toys to play with or materials to use with the kids, which is a frustration. but they do what they can. and they do it/have done it every day.

the people i saw today, in such unfavorable (to say the least) conditions - there was not one bad attitude, not one debbie downer, not one hint of "poor me", not one tirade filled with complaints.

the situation - the outside of it - the big picture of it all - makes me feel super discouraged, frustrated and hopeless.

but the inside of it - the people - the eye contact - the smiles - the stories - the faces - is almost another dimension.

the people i spent time with today were kind and generous and proud and loving and hopeful and beautiful and committed and inspiring and just so damn amazing.

the clowns

2010-05-19T19:36:00.007-05:00

so...yesterday was flag day. on the 18th of may in 1803, our ancestors, led by petion and dessaline, held a meeting known as the 'congress of arcahaie' and one of the things decided on by this bad ass indigenous army was the creation of our flag. the white band that came with it the reality of ayiti being a french republic was ripped out, forever denying foreign powers from controlling the land. liberte ou la mort! (liberty or death)

we continue to celebrate this day and take it pretty seriously. haitian flags were everywhere. flung out of and waving from car windows, part of centerpieces in restaurants, painted on tree trunks, everyone was wearing red and blue. i decided to go to the little town of arcahaie, the birthplace of the flag, and join the other thousands of people to celebrate. and when i say thousands...i mean it - it was AMAZING. hot as hell, the sweat was pouring off of us all. we were cramped in the streets, on the sidewalks, everywhere. and the shows! each school and community organization practice all year for their time on stage. the kids do this - performance - a mixture of black american style fraternity stepping and haitian voodou gyrating. clapping, shouting, so much attitude - they seriously get jiggy with it. it's so awesome to watch. the bands play, each one a different version of the national anthem. and all of this takes place underneath the huge statue of jean jacques dessaline. a truly beautiful sight.

and then....i saw them.

perched above the crowd, on a stage built just for them - stood members of parliament, the ministers of blah-blah-blah, and the president even. and everything about the moment changed. it wasn't so beautiful for me anymore. it was a dose of reality. there they were. the men and women with power. the men and women who were chosen to LEAD this place. the men and women, who, since 112, have not done a thing to provide any sense of order or control. there they stood, faces to the names i have only heard.

i wanted to rush the stage and scream at the top of my lungs, "you mother fuckers! what the hell are you smiling about???"

what were we celebrating, exactly? what kind of leaders do we have on 18 may, 2010 - 206 years later? all those damn flags, waving in their faces - do they even know the story behind our flag? did they even see the people in front of them? our gorgeous future generations? - their excitement? their grace? did they see the statue of dessaline, his sword drawn, ready to beat the shit out of anyone who stood in the way of freedom? did they see the murals of other leaders who risked their lives for this land?

do they see the tent cities in the parks and on the sides of the roads? do they see the little kids and grown men and women, taking showers in the middle of the streets? do they smell the shit and the piss? do they see the new amount of beggars in the streets? do they see the piles of rubble that are just getting bigger and bigger, moved from one side of the street to another? do they hear the gunshots at night? for the families sleeping under sheets, do they ever imagine how miserable it might be when the rain gushes down on them? do they see the large number of amputees that now make up our population? do they see the amount of foreigners here, doing whatever they want, whenever they want, to whomever they want?

DO THEY FUCKING SEE???

how can they not? and the bigger question - how can they see and not do a thing about it?

am i being impatient? it's ONLY been 4 months, right? is it too much to ask? - for some leadership from our government? i'm not asking for a brand new haiti in the morning. i'm just asking for some awareness, some acknowledgement, and some fucking action.

since january, i have heard a shit ton of rumors, read a bunch of "plans" that have yet to even pretend to begin, i've had countless conversations with "experts" from around the world, i have seen the zero's behind the numbers of the final amount of money that has come our way - but the most intelligent, most well-spoken, most inspirational thing by far - has been a group of haitian clowns. like, real clowns.

in jacmel, there is a group of clowns that visit the tent cities and camps and schools, providing information through drama therapy. they talk about the importance of staying in school, earthquake safety, washing hands to prevent disease, planting trees whenever they are cut down, and respecting kids with amputated body parts. it was so well done, so funny, such great information.

a group of clowns, people! if they have figured out some important things to share with us, why can't the fucking government???

we're fucked

2010-05-14T10:02:00.004-05:00

we're so royally fucked.

monsanto, the genetically modified seeds, along with their fertilizer and pesticides are here. shit, damn, to hell with us.

monsanto's majorly proud claim to fame? "agent orange" that poisoned soldiers from the u.s. and the people of vietnam.

monsanto, whose "roundup" herbicide pollutes water as well as soil. the seeds - more than 60 tons of it, $4 million dollars worth, have been given freely and happily to the farmers in gonaives, cul-de-sac, cabaret, mirebalais, and arcahaie. wait, let me get back to the "free" part...in actuality, the haitian farmers (approximately 10,000 of them) will have to pay monsanto back with their future harvests. didn't i tell you that nothing in life is free?

and who backs it? usaid - of COURSE. 70 more tons of seeds are on their way. in the next 12 months, their goal is to bring more than 345 tons of - "hybrid" seeds is what they call them. they use "technology" to yield more "diversified" crops. eggplant, melon, onion, tomato, spinach, watermelon, corn, cabbage and carrot, all here in my sweet country.

mansanto produces 70% of the food in the u.s. - all is genetically modified. and the fuckers have fought super hard - they don't have to label any of it, so americans don't know what the hell they're eating. kelloggs, kashi, coca-cola, kraft, nabisco, mcdonalds (big shocker there, i'm sure), frito-lay, general mills, quaker oats, procter & gamble, nestle, safeway, campbell soup...and of course my favorite spawn of the devil - wal-mart.

mansanto- whose genetically modified food is harmful to not only humans, but animals too. scientists fed hamsters mansanto food. the first year, they "only" suffered severe constipation. by the third year, they were infertile. okay, so we're not hamsters you might say? humans, eating food that has been sprayed by roundup can cause oh, just disruption of your endocrine system, that's all.

mansanto, whose roundup pesticide is used in colombia by the american government to spray over crops and people - contaminating and poisoning them.

shit.

i remember when i first heard about monsanto. my sister did it. she is such an older sister that way. it was like being told that santa isn't real. the belief that when i ate a yummy ear of american corn, i was eating a yummy ear of american corn - she totally fucked me up. i went on a major "i ain't eating this shit" kick. it's really hard to find real food in america. and my rants about it - not many people gave a shit. some did, but mostly - as long as it's cheap and pretty, it's good food.

i remember my sister and i talking about, maybe even borderline boasting about, how you can't get anything more organic than haitian vegetables, haitian meat. i mean, my most favorite part about eating carrots here is that you can still taste bits of dirt. yum!

the woman in the picture is one of the many women who played a part in raising my sister and i. she lived way up in the mountains and as kids, we would spend hours playing in the red dirt of kenscoff. she knew every kid, every parent, any little thing that was happening, she knew about it. the day i kissed mano down by the school, between the eucalyptus tree and the old cow - she knew about it; i still have no idea how. she also knew about every plant, every weed, every piece of life growing in the same red dirt that i would find compacted under my fingernails. the last time we saw her was in 2008, before she died at the ripe age of 102. the day i took this picture of her, she and my sister, the herbwitch, did some major plant talk. the plants they talked about looked like straight up weeds to me. but inside those leaves held secrets, magic, power.

if you grew up in haiti i feel certain you had a woman like this (or several) in your childhood. you know this woman well. she was the one who bathed you and doused you with "bien-etre". she was the one who knew how to cure your colds, which leaves to boil and make you drink. she knew which leaves to rub all over your body when it ached. she knew to give you kowosol juice when you wouldn't stop wetting the bed, made you eat an entire garlic if you had the shits, gave you rhum and honey when you couldn't sleep. never a pill, never a drop of store bought medicine, and doctor visits? i went to the doctor twice my entire childhood. once when i ate a bottle of sleeping pills because i thought they were candy. the second trip was when i busted my eardrum, while jumping up and down on my bed singing at the top of my lungs, with q-tips in my ears. (i was amazed at how well you could hear yourself with them stuffed in there)

i am rambling, i know - but i am terrified. i am sitting here crying like a child, crying for what i feel like is the loss of so many things that i cherish about this country. and these tears aren't about the fucking earthquake.

there is this complete and utter "laissez faire"-ness of everything that is happening. what else is going to be given to us "freely" by totally unethical corporate monsters?

where is everyone else who gives a damn about this place? where are you? what are you doing? i feel so alone. am i the only one who wants to hang on to what makes haiti haiti? am i just nostalgic? old fashioned? against progress?

i just don't know.

but fuck me cripsy creme. monsanto? genetically modified food?

ahhhhhhhhhh!

120 days

2010-05-12T18:34:00.003-05:00

there was a lot of stress today in the office. rumors are incredible. someone, somewhere claimed that on may 12th of an undetermined year - there would be an even bigger earthquake than on 112. i am angry at that someone who is somewhere. my colleagues were seriously on edge. and i'm not gonna lie - i kept my randomly decided on "earthquake survival materials" on hand all day. it's super nerve-racking for sure.

all day, people felt the need to stop by for coffee and tell their survival stories and then quickly switched to the fears they carry every day. (i drank way too much coffee today.) what if what if what if??? but tonight, as i witness another gorgeous sunset (i really might not stop taking sunset pictures...) in this gorgeous country, i feel the need to hold on to the survival stories instead of the fears. so i will share with you some of the mind boggling stories i have been told. we must remember the people we lost, this is true. but we must also cherish the ones who made it out alive.

story # 1: a vibrant 21 year old male was at school. the earth shook and the building began to fall apart. trying to scramble out of the room, he was knocked down by another student. it was the biggest student in his class, of course. laying on his back, with the large student on top of him, a huge beam fell across the back of his classmate, killing him instantly. there he lay, under a huge student and a huge beam, sure that he would die right there, as his classroom continued to crumble around him. meanwhile, outside of the school, a friend of this 21 year old male just happened to be getting out of a taxi, stunned at the environment around him. he knew he was in front of his friend's school and decided to see if there was anyone inside. "is anyone in here?" he asked. "yes" came a smooshed voice from under a heavy student and heavy cement beam. the story continues as one friend digs out another for 4 hours. survival. none of the other students made it out alive that day. 120 days ago, this vibrant 21 year old male was not supposed to lose his life.

story #2: a very successful and special grocery store owner was sitting in his office when the earth shook violently. before he knew it, his office was falling apart on top of him. the next thing he knew, his son was there, grabbing him by the arm to get him out. there wasn't time. before they could escape, the entire office ceiling was on top of them, up to their necks. their feet were touching underneath it all. he doesn't know how, but he was pulled out and brought to a hospital. the entire time, he thought for sure there had been a bomb. "who is attacking haiti? and why are we at war?" he overheard that the palace was down as well. suffering a severe head injury, he spent the night wondering - why? the next day, he was flown out of haiti to a hospital in the states. this is where he learned there had been an earthquake. that he had lost everything he had worked for his entire adult life. 120 days ago, this special man was not supposed to lose his life.

story #3: a phenomenal woman (maya angelou would place her stamp of approval on this woman) just got home from work. she was sitting on her bed, talking to a friend on the phone. the connection was lost and sitting there, wondering what might have happened, her bedroom shook. she was immediately stuck between her bed and two floors of rubble as well as her very well stocked bookshelf. she laid there. and laid there. in about 3 hours, she heard a voice from outside, calling her name. it was her neighbor. "are you okay? we are going to get help. stay there!" (which later, as she was telling me, she says she thought to herself, "what the hell else was i gonna do?") soon, she heard the voice again. unfortunately, a huge hospital (which did fall later after some aftershocks) was lingering near her home and they couldn't find enough people brave enough to come dig in that location. plus, it was getting dark. "don't lose hope, my dear," said her neighbor. "i will come check on you every hour." and that is what he did. every hour, she heard her neighbor's voice. "you are doing great! it's 1 am. daylight is coming soon. hang in there.......how are you? it's 2am. daylight is coming. hang in there....." all night it was like this. "my dear, it's 5am. the sun is almost making an appearance. soon, soon, soon. we will not leave you." and they didn't leave her. as soon as there was enough light, her neighbors began to dig. 15 hours after the first block fell, she was pulled out without too many scratches. 120 days ago, my sweet, phenomenal friend was not supposed to lose her life.

story #4: a 30 year old very beautiful, very driven doctor had just gotten out of a taxi. standing there, talking to her coworkers, the ground shook. before she knew it, and with no idea why, she grabbed an electric pole and held on. "maybe a gas station blew up? maybe it was a bomb of some sort? an earthquake? it's not possible," she thought. then, her mind turned to her mother, who was at home in their apartment at the top of an 8 story building. she began to run. she ran all the way home, to find her building still standing and her mother outside. amazing. but then, rumors of a tsunami circulated. grabbing her mother, they began to walk towards higher ground. (if you know haiti, they were near champs mars and they walked to petion ville...if you don't know haiti...it's a long ass walk.) they walked, they ran, getting away from the water that never came. her mother suffers high blood pressure and is a diabetic. at one point, she pushed her mom up the canape vert road. she spent 7 hours walking and running that day. neither my 30 year old very beautiful, very driven doctor friend, nor her mother, were supposed to lose their lives 120 days ago.

story #5: a mother, her 14 year old and 6 year old daughters were in their apartment when the quake hit. they ran and the 14 year old became a superhero of some sort. as the apartment building began to crumble around them, she knew exactly what to do. going to the balcony, she somehow reached and pushed both her mother and her sister into a tree outside. "leave me here, mom, i can't make it," she said. "no, you can make it," her mother insisted. somehow she managed to climb into the tree. the building fell. they found refuge in a tree that didn't lose a single root. they stayed in the tree for hours before they were brought down by a neighbor. this mother, her children - 120 days ago, were not supposed to lose their lives.

i could go on and on. survival stories are everywhere. now you know them. now you can remember them and cherish them with me. and if you happen to know that someone, somewhere, that is spreading gossip about another, stronger earthquake - please bitch slap them for me.

a hypocritical scaredy cat

2010-05-10T10:16:00.006-05:00

okay, so i took a million pictures of the sunset last night...it was so beautiful. i kept putting my camera down saying "okay, lori, damn, that's enough, really how many sunset pictures should one person have?..." but then - i just couldn't help it. how do you capture it? i was surrounded by pinks and oranges and yellows- just breathtaking. and then eventually - pitch black dark. stars appeared, scattered the sky, candles from neighboring tents and shelters flickered on. once that sun goes down, it gets super dark.

and then, i start getting super paranoid.

i wasn't here for 112. but nonetheless, i have concocted a huge cauldron of fear that i kind of carry around all day...but at night, especially, it bubbles and spills over, and i'm stuck with nothing but this fear and the darkness.

on 112, when my best friend called to tell me there had been an earthquake and that there were tsunami warnings as well - i was a fucking disaster. i was on my way home and what should have been a 10 minute drive turned into a 35 minute one. all of a sudden, someone had rearranged the entire city of santa fe! i couldn't find my apartment, each turn seemed wrong, nothing looked familiar and the only thing i could think about was my family. my country.

the stories i made up in my mind of what might have happened to my family, my friends, what might become of haiti - was a whole other kind of 112 terror. i knew my mom was on her way home from work at the time. i had visions of her stuck on delmas, with an entire building toppled onto her little silver nissan, unable to get out. or, she was still at work, buried under piles of school books and cement. then add to that, the fact that her job is near the ocean. so not only was she stuck under hundreds of ti malice books and chunks of blocks, massive waves were on their way, straight to her.

and where the hell was jan? i knew she was heading to the airport to pick up her sister. where was sis? she was probably at her house...was it still standing? where was bea? her house was right near montana...i had visions of bits of montana (although completely impossible) being part of her living room. where was dieufet? where was kiki? on and on, i went down the list of my loved ones, of everyone i knew - each of them had their own scenario in my (possibly way too) imaginative mind. and the hours and hours following that long, confusing ride home when i couldn't find them - awful. truly awful.

i still have ingredients of that fear somewhere in the cauldron. mix that with the fact that the "foke" is still passing by every now and then, tormenting us all.

when i first got here, it was happening 3 or 4 times a day. i will never forget being at jan's house and the foke hit HARD. my dearest, most loving, most gentle, sweet friend - pushed us all out of the way to get to our previously decided "safe spot". i've known that woman for almost 20 years, and i've never seen her move that fast. ever. she doesn't even run away from gunshots. she was like a superhero that day, her feet couldn't have touched the ground. she made it from the balcony to the kitchen doorway in two seconds top.

the earth is moving less, but it is still moving.

being surrounded by the aftermath of 112 itself - the twists and turns and rips and dips and slams and holes and slants and gashes and breaks and liftings and droppings and snaps and shatters and splits and cracks and busted and gutted and freaking smithereens-ness of what's left.

all of this - sometimes simmering, sometimes boiling - in this cauldron of fear i have created.

during the day, no matter where i am, i am thinking about it to some degree. where's my closest exit? where is my cell phone? but at night??? oh my. i lay there and stare at the ceiling. what would it feel like to have all that weight on me? to be pinned between this bed and the pieces of roof? i always have my iphone near me, like it could play some major, magical role in my hypothetical survival after the hypothetical earthquake. but then - once you start that "where's my stuff" game - it's all over. okay, i've got my phone. should i put extra digicel minutes on it now? what about my id? i should at least get my passport. what about my glasses? should i sleep with them on? what about my shoes? which shoes are more practical if the ceiling starts falling in on me? what about my macbook? what about my water bottle? should i fill it just in case? what about my nikon? maybe i should take my memory card out of it and stash it with my wallet? what about my gourdes? what about my debit card? what about my sketchbook? what about, what about, what about....it's completely and totally insane.

talk about little sleep. my latest sleep technique? besides becoming quite an expert in spider solitaire, i downloaded this "zencast" podcast...the man's voice is so super mellow and monotonous, it eventually lulls me to sleep.

then i get to work and talk with earthquake survivors. as i listen to them i also listen to myself. urging them to try different relaxation techniques, to think positive thoughts. i show them research of typical reactions found universally, across all cultures, of how people respond to disasters. i give them lists of local, natural herbs they can use to help with anxiety. i give them donated "rescue relief" and essential oils from the good people of santa fe. i have no answers, but i can listen. i can encourage. i can love. i tell them that we must not let the "unknown" control us.

but i kinda feel like a hypocritical scaredy cat.

i look so forward to the day that i begin to trust the earth again, especially at night after such a gorgeous sun set.

peace or rip off their heads?

2010-05-06T08:44:00.003-05:00

so...if you read my post last night, you know how annoyed i am at the current situation of the blan invasion...i seriously hope i didn't offend anyone. if you are in my life, you know that i love you mucho and none of this ranting has to do with you. i'm pretty sure you already know this, but i wanted to make sure.

this morning, when i went out to my car...i had a friend waiting for me. hello sweet praying matis. she had such a sweet face! she rode with me the entire way to work, too. sweet!

so - a praying mantis. i know people who think the presence of animals is symbolic. so...i have looked up some info about what this might mean...?

1. "The mantis comes to us when we need peace, quiet and calm in our lives. Usually the mantis makes an appearance when our lives are flooded with so much business, activity, or chaos that we can no longer hear the still small voice within us...

The mantis never makes a move unless she is 100% positive it is the right thing for her to do. This is a message to us to contemplate and be sure our minds and souls all agree together about the choices we are making in our lives."

2. "The praying mantis is the oldest symbol of God: the African Bushman’s manifestation of God come to Earth, “the voice of the infinite in the small,” a divine messenger. When one is seen, diviners try to determine the current message. In this culture they are also associated with restoring life into the dead. “Mantis” is the Greek word for “prophet” or “seer,” a being with spiritual or mystical powers."

3. "The praying mantis shows the way. In the Arabic and Turkish cultures a mantis points pilgrims to Mecca, the holiest site in the Islamic world. In Africa it helps find lost sheep and goats. In France, it's believed that if you are lost the mantis points the way home."Follow Mantis" means putting that core aspect of yourself, your foundation of Spirit, at the helm and let it direct your intellect and ultimately your life."

this is all fine and good. maybe i do need some peace, quite and calm in my life because i am truly surrounded by chaos. or i need to have a restoration of life somehow. maybe i am a lost goat, i need to contemplate my next move so that my mind and soul is in agreement. or maybe...i just need to rip off male heads and have amazing orgasms?

4. "The female secretes a pheromone to attract and show that she is receptive to the mate. The male then approaches her with caution. The most common courtship is when the male mantis approaches the female frontally, slowing its speed down as it nears...

(Watching them in a jar), in a few minutes the female succeeds in grasping him. She first bites off his front tarsus, and consumes the tibia and femur. Next she gnaws out his left eye...it seems to be only by accident that a male ever escapes alive from the embraces of a female matis.

There is one species, however, the Mantis religiosa, in which it is necessary that the head be removed for the mating to take effect properly. Also, eating the head causes the body to ejaculate faster."

hmmm....i don't know. but i loved watching it and we looked deep in each other's eyes and it was the perfect way to start my day.

losing my mind

2010-05-05T19:37:00.004-05:00

okay, so i know i've studied psychology, sociology, i've sat through seminars about getting along with others, i taught and intervened with gang banging adolescents for years, and i even went to a christian school my entire life...but right now, i am at a LOSS as to how to deal with this invasion of blans in my country.

it's bad enough that they're here in ginormous numbers. they are everywhere. there are so many of them, they have changed our traffic patterns. and they stick out! - hello, this is an all black country. but the arrogance. the rudeness. the lack of respect. the lack of acknowledgement of a different culture...i'm at my wit's end.

i'm not someone who curses people out, who walks around wanting to hit people. i am a haitian-hippie, tree-hugging-granola-bob marley-following-lesbian for god's sake. but the anger i'm carrying around can't be good.

confrontation with blans, story number 1 - last week, i got stuck riding from leoganne to port au prince with some blans from my ngo. they were LIVID that dispatch sent us a pickup instead of a big suv. after yelling at the driver (no, no "hello, thanks for picking us up") this big white man says "what the hell are we going to do with our bags? we can't put them in the back. the haitians will steal them...you know how they are." grumble grumble. "these low life people." that's the first time i wanted to hit him. when we got into the pickup, he then went on and on, complaining about the hotel he stayed in. the kitchen had nothing he wanted to eat and he had to eat french fries. HELLO, we are not running at full capacity right now! i don't know if you've noticed, but there's been a fucking earthquake and you might just not get your choice of food!!!! thank goodness for ipods - i ended up putting on my headphones and listening to music so that i could no longer physically hear what he was saying and so that i also wouldn't curse him out and lose my job.

story number 2 - i've stayed at the same hotel here in jacmel 3 times now. there's a group of humanitarian tourists that have been here each time. the group itself changes, but there are 3 of them that have been here each time. oh - you wanna hear their ngo slogan? "this world can be yours too" what the HELL does that mean? dumbass - first of all, this world is already just as much mine as it is yours. second of all, who says we even wanted your world?

anyway - each time i have said hello to these people and each time i have been ignored. FINE.

(wait, let me interrupt myself here for a second to fully explain a humanitarian tourist. you're in your 20's/30's or in your 50's and you're wanting to "touch the world". you feel like you have some major consciousness going on and so you're not just gonna go to costa rica. oh, no, you want to "suffer" a little, you want to release your white man's burden onto someone else. so - you come to poor, poor haiti - earthquake AND poverty torn - haiti is THE place to be right now. it's cheap, it's close, it's riddled with issues. you sign up with some bogus ngo, and you get an all-inclusive "i feel better about myself" experience. at who's expense? who cares! you get to sleep in a tent like it's a fun camping trip, write in your journal, play with some poor, poor kids, go to the beach and waterfalls, and then go back to america with your pictures of poor, poor haitians and a journal filled of experiences to tell anyone who will listen. did you SEE anything? no. you don't bother to learn the language, the culture, nothing. it's all about YOU.)

okay, now we're clear about who we're dealing with 'round here...so anyway, back to the 3 blans who have completely ignored me in the last month...last night even i said hello. nothing. this morning, on my way to work, i drove past them and he (the guy who has ignored me) says "hey, are you going to town?" WHAT?!?!? you want me to give you a ride?! i'm a person now- now that i have something that can help you out? i don't want you in my country, let alone my car!

this is NOT like me. i always give people rides. everyone at my job knows that if they want a ride, they've got one. but i drove passed them this morning like i didn't hear a thing.

okay - story number 3 - tonight, i went down to the restaurant to get a beer. there they are, at their table. LOUD, so loud. talking about how HARD their day was, how hot it is. they wanted a beer as well. marie, the sweetest woman who gives me the coldest beers and i were chatting. one of them yells across the room "i wanted another beer, lady!" and she says, "oui, m'ap vini. m'ap vini" (yes, i'm coming. i'm coming.) and you know what the fucker says? "yeah, whatever, i know exactly what you're saying. i speak idiot."

OH MY GOD! i looked at marie - who lost her home and her mother 4 months ago, who sleeps in a fucking car....and i said, "ko lan get manman moun sa yo. m'ap joure yo byen joure." (may the colonel fuck these people's mothers -(the biggest curse you can say in haiti)- i'm gonna curse them out). and she says, "a, cheri, pa fe sa-a. l'ap banm plis pwoblem. kite yo. bay yo gwo vag." (oh, honey. don't do that. it'll give me more problems. leave them. ignore them.)

i could go on and on...i just needed to vent. to say that THIS IS A REAL PROBLEM FOR ME!!!

I WANT THEM GONE!!!

what do you do? how do you make it stop? WHY do racists come here? what kind of sick person needs to travel this far to make them feel good about their own lack of substance and importance? how much longer will haiti serve them, like some cheap prostitute? what will this place look like in 2 years? in 10 years? i asked the people around here what the "this world can be yours too" people do? THEY OFFER FREE ENGLISH CLASSES. yes, this is EXACTLY what we need from you. and yes, this is exactly how we may one day be lucky enough to be in your world.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

i'm losing my mind. even at my job. i see the racism all day long. the white staff gets cold cokes, the haitians, lukewarm plastic water pouches. the white people get convoys of "safe" rides home. the haitians - work it out. the white folk and people with desk jobs get lunch every day. the field workers - work it out. the white folk are all set up in the side of the building with very few cracks in it. the haitians get the other side with lots of cracks in it. the white folk eat flown in snacks from the states; boxes and boxes of them. the haitians - work it out. the white folk talk loud and don't acknowledge others. i've said hi to so many people - it's like i am not even here.

shit.

so - i feel i shouldn't have to, but i will - i am NOT saying this about ALL white people. you know this, right? okay. good.

but damn. i just don't know what's going to happen to my country. to my people. and i really don't know how much longer i can hold my tongue. how much do you "let go" of it? how many times do you say, "it's just how it is" or "that's just how they are" - i mean, when i experienced racism in the states, as paul mooney would say, getting "a nigger wake up call" (don't be offended...look it up, the man is brillant) - it was painful and confusing and i always dealt with it internally. but damn - i'm in my own fucking country! you came all the way here to treat me like this? really? i just don't know. do you?

earthquakes or guns?

2010-05-04T16:17:00.003-05:00

dude!

i'm so happy i didn't listen to my mom and the driveway crew last night. i chose to sleep inside. it took me a LONG time to fall asleep...and i was really freaked out, just waiting for the earth to split and swallow up me and my bed.

instead, at around 3am, the huge dogs next door started barking furiously. then there were gunshots. then there was no more barking. the next thing i heard was this intense banging. it was thieves trying to get into the iron entrances of the house next door. then the screaming started. "anmway! help! BANG save us! there's thieves BANG with guns! BANG help! please! do BANG something! help! i don't want to die! BANG god send an BANG earthquake! help! BANG anmway!...." it was horrifying. what the fuck do you do????

what was my (insane) mother doing? she's standing in front of the window with the light on trying to figure out her next move. "we have to help them."

huh???

what does helping someone in this situation (when other people have big ass guns and you have nothing) look like? me and my 63 year old mom climbing over the wall, crawling through the bushes with --- a kitchen knife? she does have a handful of firecrackers she's had for probably 20 years; her big "scare tactic". it's about as fancy as her earthquake plan.

we sat in the dark and listened to the shrieks and the banging and i felt so terrified and helpless and really fucking wished i was a ninja. it's not like you can call 911 here.

or can you? at some point between the banging, screaming and gunshots, it hit me - i know cops! remember the cops i gave the tents to? i called one of them and he was VERY concerned for me. (sweet!) we hung up and he called me back in about 1 minute. he sent a pickup load of cops up my mountain.

just as the sun was coming up, there was a last round of machine gun fire and then silence. that was the worst part of the entire saga. what did the gunshots mean? did they kill my neighbors? that silence was fucking awful.

so - needless to say, my fear of earthquakes went away. no earthquakes at all. the cops showed up, my neighbors lived, but the thieves got away.

damn.

never a dull moment.

foke-a (the fucker)

2010-05-04T00:17:00.005-05:00

(the earth can tremble, ayiti should stay alive)

so...at about 1 or 2 am, i felt my bed shaking. actually, it wasn't really a shake this time...it was more of a slamming down. like me and my bed dropped out of the sky and landed in my room. i woke up for real, but was unable to make sense of it - was it a dream? was it "goudougoudoup" la-a? (official haitian name for earthquakes. actually, it's either goudougoudoup or "foke-a" the fucker). on my way to work, my mom called and asked if i had felt it. it's funny - we compare our nights with each other. one of us is sure we felt something, the other isn't. we're all paranoid and unsure if trusting our own senses is a good idea. she made me proud, though, because this time she didn't scream one of her loud, terrifying screams, which is good.

when we got off the phone, neither of us could really confirm if we really felt anything or if we were both just having normal night time shaking sensations. when i got to work, though, people were talking about it which made it official. it was a 4.5.

the next one i know i felt for SURE. i was at my desk and a coworker was crouched down behind my rolling chair and i, trying to plug in his computer. the next thing i know, something was very wrong with either my eyes or my computer screen, because the words seemed to be jumping around on the screen. then i realized my desk was jumping up and down. then the window shades were slamming into the wall. then i ran over my coworker with my rolling chair as i jumped up to get the hell outta there. (i ran back and grabbed my iphone - i believe this is an official sign of an obsession of some sort) and up the stairs and out the door i went.

i was, and am, fucking scared. and just yesterday, i was thinking about kinda wanting to almost try to trust the earth again.

keitsa called tonight to check on me and in talking to her, she made me promise that my mom and i would come up with an "emergency plan". so, my mom and i really did try to come up with some sort of a plan. i'm leaving for jacmel in the morning...what if i'm in jacmel and she's here? do i try to make it to p-a-p? what if the road is damaged? where should we meet - at her house? what if it's fallen down? who should we call? what if there is no phone service like on 112? what if, what if, what if....after about 20 minutes of being really bad emergency plan planners, my mom decided that we should - and i quote - "why don't we just decide to know that each other is okay until we find each other?"

i can't seem to sleep. i find myself staring at the ceiling, imagining what it would feel like if it came slamming down on me. (i know - super morbid, but it's true.) the driveway crew tried to talk me into sleeping outside with them tonight. like the good 'ole days. but i'm here in my bed, my iphone next to me to keep it safe, and i am trying to channel my mom...i really want to decide to know that i'm okay.

a relaxing day at the beach...sorta

2010-05-02T19:24:00.006-05:00

so...i can't tell you how HOT it's been here. the rain clouds have been building for the last week and it's like you could cut the humidity in the air with a knife. i decided last night that i had to be in water today or else i might go nutso. also, i had a pretty stressful week so i wanted to just relax and kind of escape or something. when i woke up this morning, for a second, (even though i've seen the heap that used to be the montana hotel) i thought to myself "oh, i'll go swimming at the pool at montana." nope. montana's gone. how can this still happen to me? it mostly happens in the mornings. i wake up and think this is still normal haiti. but it's just not. the el rancho's gone too. i grew up swimming in these pools almost every weekend. i could have gone to what's left of the villa creole or ibo lele, but they're overrun with "safe" ngo people and, apparently, i'm a risk to their security. fuck. so after i had a moment of silence for what used to be normal, i decided to go to the beach.

it was a gorgeous day. the waves were so gentle and the water so perfectly cool. i swam a lot and read a lot. when i got back into my car, i was a new woman. all the stress from this past week was gone and i think i was even humming to myself. humming means happy in my book of life.

my ride home was - not relaxing. i really wanted to hold on to my zen beach high. but i'm in haiti post 112 and i just can't break free from this reality. being at the ocean was relaxing, but there isn't any way to escape. it's not like i can take a different route home. it's not like i can drive around it and pretend it's not there, like it's a specific neighborhood to avoid. 112 is everywhere.

when i drove by the mass graves in titanyin, there was a big round object in the middle of the road that looked like a rock. when i got close enough to have to swerve so i wouldn't hit it, i saw that it was a skull.

when i got to route 9, the heavens opened and the heavy clouds emptied themselves for real. each flash of lightening, i swear, i thought was going to blast my car away like in "back to the future". the thunder was - thunderous. the bottom of delmas was a river. literally. cars were stalling, the water was so deep. the now 4-month-old rubble that has found it's home in huge piles on the sides of the road was splayed all over the place. the force of the water once it starts coming down off of the mountains is no joke. i drove over bricks and rocks and trash and shoes and unidentifiable objects. at one point my tire got stuck on part of a chair.

people were everywhere! crowded together standing under anything that might block them from the rain. it was awful. i wanted to pile everyone up into my car and bring them home.

i am super grateful for my day at the beach, don't get me wrong. i am aware of my super luxurious situation compared to a shit ton of other people.

but, man, i fucking hate this disaster called haiti. i am so tired of rubble and skulls.

sigh...i do, however, still have sand and salt in my hair. i can still feel the cool water on my skin. this i can't complain about. this, i can say, is a bit of normal haiti.

fear

2010-04-29T13:01:00.006-05:00

the 43 seconds on 112 changed so many things. it changed obvious things - the rubble is still all over the place. big piles of it crowd the already crowded streets. talk about traffic! buildings are gone, homes are gone, whole neighborhoods are gone. the very earth now has new dips, splits, bumps and holes.

those 43 seconds changed the not so obvious as well. i feel like it changed the concept of "tomorrow".

my job requires me to sit with groups of staff members and chat. every single session begins the same way. they begin with major skepticism. "what is this lady talking about?" they look at me with such suspicion. but at some point, there is a shift. it's like the flood gates open and the people begin to share their thoughts, their questions.

"is life worth living anymore? what should i work for if it will all be taken away in another earthquake?"

"will i always be this sad? i've never cried before and now i just can't stop."

"whenever i am away from my kids, all i do is worry about them until i see them again. i don't want them out of my sight."

"how much longer am i going to feel the earth shaking?"

"will this happen again? is this the end of the world?"

"i saw so many dead bodies. it keeps replaying in my mind. will i ever forget the images i saw?"

and the question that i hear the most is "how much longer am i going to live in such terrifying fear?"

the fear is so intense. to see these strong, confident, intelligent, beautiful people - men especially - broken down like blubbering little children...it's a trip. today, a friend of mine was at school. all of a sudden, everyone freaked the fuck out. in just an instant, the kids went running, pushing, and jumping out of the building. bones were broken, kids were hurt, heads were busted open. "eske goudougoudoup pase vre?" ("goudougoudoup" is the official haitian name for aftershocks...were there aftershocks for real?) the answer? "m pa konnen" (i don't know). none of the kids could say if the earth shook for real, but it only took one person's movement to cause a major clusterfuck.

it's like those 43 seconds changed the very culture.

in one of our sessions, this idea came up and i asked the people what they were afraid of before 112? no one could really answer. one woman said her only real fear was her family's health. she didn't ever want her kids to be sick because she knew how difficult it was to get medical assistance. i am in no way a haitian culture specialist, but i do know that growing up, i was taught to enjoy each day. tomorrow was an uncertain reality, nothing was promised and today was what we had. i feel like this habit of living in the moment is gone for a lot of people.

people are afraid of being indoors. one man is still paying a kid in his neighborhood to go to the grocery store for him. he's still not able to go in for himself. some are afraid of loud noises. keitsa can tell you that this fear applies to me. i am totally freaked out by loud noises. one day while she was visiting, a helicopter kept circling around the city and the vibrations it made - it was way too much for me. i made her go outside with me until it was gone. the biggest fear of all? sleeping. people are afraid to be asleep and vulnerable if, in case, another earthquake happens. and a lot of people, if they are sleeping, are not sleeping much. they wake up and can't tell for sure if an aftershock has happened but they know their bodies were shaking. today at work, i was sure that the table i was sitting at kept moving. it's so - fucked up!

life is just different. it makes me so sad. it's a lot to carry around, being afraid of - living.

fuck your homes and your hope

2010-04-26T09:12:00.010-05:00

i am back from a little blog-cation. but i'm back now. and i'm pissed.

again.

so...i heard it through the grapevine, but i couldn't write about it until i saw it for real with my own two brown eyes. you heard it here, kids...habitat for humanity is not the same thing as habitat for haitians. and they can kiss my two brown butt cheeks.

the above picture is "prototype a" - what habitat for humanity, i mean haitians, calls "homes" that offer so much "hope". prototype b, instead of being wood framed is steel framed (same walls, roofs, and floors).

has habitat for humanity EVER built a structure like this in the states for people who have lost their homes? could you imagine seeing one of these go up in your neighborhood? with a bed-ish thing thrown on the tarp floor, a plastic wastebasket, and a chair - for displaying just how wonderful it all is? THE FUCKING DOGS in america live better than this.

WHAT THE FUCK?

haitians, obviously not part of humanity, get hope-filled homes that are 2x4's covered in tarp for walls, tin for roofs (they really splurged here), and tarp for floors. i love the cut out tarp windows. and the screened in area at the top is also sweet. i guess that's for air to get in at night?

if it was january 20th or even february 15th, i can totally see these being really great temporary shelters. but it's almost may, mother fuckers. is this really the best you could think up?

i've shown these pictures to different people and mostly i've gotten, "ah, lori - si'ou okipe moun sa-a yo, w'ap fou, oui. tansyon-ou ap monte. ou kone se konsa bagay yo ye" (oh, lori - if you pay attention to those people, you'll go crazy. your blood pressure will rise. you know that's how things are).

this PISSES ME OFF!!! and yes, my blood pressure, my poor blood pressure.

someone tell me, why? why is this okay? is it because haitians are so poor and so desperate, that, well, it's better than nothing? is it because tarp-wrapped sheets of plywood is better than a tent? fuck that shit.

if you're gonna come all this way and use donated money to help out homeless people, do it balls to the wall. don't be so fucking half-assed and disrespectful about it. these people wouldn't dare ask people in their own country to live in these things. why are haitians so much less of human beings that these are considered homes? that they are considered hopeful? if you don't have the money to build a hundred new homes here, dude, fine! don't! build 5 great ones with the cash you've got. don't build a thousand 2x4 joke-in-your-face homes.

i'm pissed.

again.

the most frustrating thing is a friend of mine just keeps laughing at me. how am i not used to this, she asks? because i've been gone too long - is her answer. she thinks my head is in the clouds. "se ayiti ou ye, met de piye-ou ate" was her advice (haiti is where you are, put both your feet on the ground).

i don't wanna. i still want to believe that things can change for the better. i have a dream that haitians will one day realize their value and beauty, that we might have a government that's worth a damn and that these damn mother fucking full of shit organizations will treat haitians like real people with real human being values and wants and ambitions and hopes to live in real homes.

i have a dream, damnit!

getting what you want

2010-04-16T15:51:00.001-05:00

you know, there is a long, long, long, long list of differences between life in the u.s. and life in haiti. some are subtle and difficult to put your finger on. some are so obvious it's crazy. one thing that has really stuck out to me lately is that here, sometimes, you just can't get what you want.

in the states, you can walk into the grocery store and buy an avocado any time of year. where it comes from and how it got there, who knows, who cares? the little sticker might say it's from mexico, or from some other far away land and you can even get a fancy organic one. it doesn't matter - you want one, you got one.

but here - it just doesn't work that way.

i wanted an avocado so badly last night, as it would have fit so perfectly into our dinner spread. but you can't just have one if you want one. you can only get one if they are in season. it's got to be the right time of year, the right weather, and the right amount of rain. you have no choice, but to go with the flow of things.

there is no gas in the country right now. they say the next shipment is weeks away. who knows? you can buy diesel at the low, low price of $11U.S. a gallon. i try to imagine this happening in the states. no gas. what would happen? if you just couldn't get what you wanted?

also, in the states, there is such a disconnect between what you get and where it comes from. you never see the consequences of the actions taken to get the "stuff". like that avocado in the store...how in the hell did it make it there? when i lived there, i never picked fruit from a tree to eat it, never got my vegetables from the ground. how i love to watch the fishermen and women bring in the nets in the afternoons and know that's where my dinner is coming from! the yams from the ground, the chadek and mangos off the trees.

staying at patekwe, i've watched the men get ready to replace the thatched roof. there was no walking into homo depot and picking out the 4x4's they needed. actually, the only thing we bought in the hardware store in jacmel -- the nails and string. the rest had to come from the source. the wood for the roof's beams? they had to cut down the trees to get the wood. then they had to carve the wood into the long beams. the roof part is dried coconut leaves/branches. they had to cut them down too, and let them sit out to dry.

talk about natural resources.

post 112, how in the hell are we literally going to rebuild haiti? as humans, we have decided we need these things called homes and businesses and palaces. but what will we use to rebuild and what affect will it have on the very earth that shook so violently? cement? we get our sand from mining our mountains or from scraping out our riverbeds. wood? we get from our trees. why did we have massive floods in 2008 when we were hit by three hurricanes? because our mountains were no longer able to deflect the winds, the erosion because of our loss of trees allowed the water to pour it's way down into the cities. what the hell are we gonna do now???

how much longer can we expect the earth give us these things we've decided we need? i feel like right now, haiti is a small representation of the rest of the world. how much longer can we live lives of such excess? the shit is inevitably gonna run out, no matter how rich our country is, no matter who we pay off to get it. here, unlike the states, there is proof that there are consequences to our actions.

the president came on the radio this week and warned the country that another earthquake is coming. this has caused a major rise in fear as well as talk that the end of the world is near. in all of the sessions i had this week, people are terrified. it is kind of scary, to tell you the truth. but maybe it's just the end of the world as we know it? maybe the earth is trying to tell us something? maybe we just can't have what we want all the time.

a visit from bosou

2010-04-16T14:35:00.001-05:00

i officially started my new job yesterday.

i went around introducing myself and telling everyone why i was here - to support them, to have someone to talk to if they need it, to have group and individual sessions about wellness.

the first woman i spoke with explained to me that telling other people your feelings is an american thing. that haitians express themselves when they need to, they don't hold it all in like the blans do. "le nou kontan, nou chante, nou danse, nou rit ansam. le nou triste, nou triste ak tout ko nou, nou kriye byen kriye. le nou fache, nou byen joure lot moun" (when we're happy, we sing, we dance, we laugh together. when we're sad, we are sad with our entire bodies, we cry good cries. when we're mad, we curse good curses at other people).

but, she said, "sa-a se yon nouvo situasyon pou nou." (this is a new situation for us). she and i both agreed that it's a possibility that 112 might change the way we do things a little when it comes to trauma and talking to others.

"mwen mem, m pa beswin pale de 12 janvye, non. mwen enfom" (me, i don't need to talk about the 12th of january, i'm fine).......

TWO HOURS LATER, i suggested we take a much needed cigarette break. she had quite a story, as does everyone.

when i left work, i drove along the southern coast, the caribbean sea stretched out seductively beside me. if i had super woman vision, i could see colombia and venezuela from here. as i walked up the hill to patekwe, i heard the beating of drums. there was an instant party on the porch. what a way to be greeted after your first day at work!

at first, i made some song requests, little ditties i've learned from here and there, melodies from my childhood. the mood was joyous and super chill. as the sun set, the candles became the light. we shared the gasoline-like klerin and the drums became a bit more intense, like they do. i watched in awe. hands on the drums - moving so quickly and with such force. bodies - jerking but smooth but wild but perfect to the beat. the songs are so, so, so, so, so old. some kreyol words and some not. the rhythms and words brought here by our ancestors, taught and re-taught over and over. i think this is what fascinates me the most. the ancient-ness of it all.

we were visited by bosou twa kon (bosou, the bull with three horns). the three horns representing strength, wildness and violence, he is known for being kind of a spiritual body guard. it is believed that he is the guardian between this world and guinen and is often invoked during times of war or battle.

he came and greeted everyone. hard slaps and shaking of both hands. when he approached me, he shook both my hands gently and patted my head. he had special words for me...he said that he sees that i am walking and walking, on a journey, searching for something. he said, too, that i shouldn't worry - i will find what i am looking for. later in the night, he lit a candle for me and he "mete pwen" on/for me. (i don't know how to explain this in english, sorry.) he said i should not be afraid, that i am protected.

nice! i can handle a little protection, a little reassuring that i will find what i am looking for on this journey. aiyibobo!

a joke for you

2010-04-09T23:07:00.004-05:00

so, i heard a joke today. i'm not too sure it's funny....

god woke up and thought that it had been a while since he granted miracles. he decided it was time to make some changes, so he told everyone he would be holding some office hours.

...a chinese man came to him. god said, "what can i do for you today?"

the chinese man said, "god, i want the best, dependable technology. fast, reliable, user-friendly networks."

"okay," said god. "go home and tomorrow, i will make it so."

...an arab man came to him. "god, i want the government to stop being so corrupt. i want people to stop fighting and for there to be peace throughout the land."

"okay, no problem," said god. "go home and tomorrow, i will make it so."

...an american man was next. "god, i want everyone to be able to have healthcare. better health in general, but if they get sick, i want them to be able to see a good doctor and also be able to afford it."

"that is a great idea," said god. "go home and i tomorrow, i will make it so."

...a swiss man was the last to appear before god. "god, i want all the architects to be able to build strong homes for everyone. i want the homes to have running water, to have spacious living areas and i want them to be able to withstand all bad weather."

"how nice of you," said god. "go home and tomorrow, i will make it so."

after all the men went home, god turned to st. peter. "okay, man, we have a lot of work to do. that's a long miracle list. what i need from you is to find out where all these men live."

"they are all in haiti, god." said st. peter. "we will need to make all the miracles happen in haiti."

"HAITI!?!?!" cried god. "are you fucking kidding me?" god was appalled. "they want all that done in haiti? there is no way miracles can happen in that place."

hmmmm....funny? not so funny.

nothing in particular...

2010-04-05T22:47:00.004-05:00

yesterday, i spent a perfect day at the beach. the sun was hot, the water was cool, the waves were gentle and the beer was ice cold.

the view was strange, as all 1,000+ ngo's and un teams had the day off for easter. a whole lotta white folk! i felt like i was somewhere else. a lotta speedo-wearing brazillians, too. i actually don't mind brazillian men in speedos; they're the only ones allowed, in my book. they are special beautiful beings. and the brazillian women in the dental floss bikinis? i definitely don't mind that either. it was strange, picking out random haitian families under the choucounes, amidst all the blans. this is the new haiti, i suppose?

i missed my friends and my sister a LOT. it didn't seem right being there without them. we always travel in a pack, we have our routine, we have our favorite spot, our most intimate conversations happen at the beach. it felt so strange not to have them with me.

i didn't know how badly i needed a day of sunshine, sand and salt. as soon as i got in the water, it felt like the same old haiti, being in that crystal clear water. it didn't matter who was under the choucounes anymore.

i had a great day today, too. went to work, learned more about the inner workings of an ngo. my biggest question...how are you a NON governmental organization when most of your funding comes from the government? hmmm..... so many fabulous ideas begun by fabulous people end up being some sort of diluted monster of the original intention. i talked with one man who explained the major effect bush's policies had on ngo programs internationally. all programs dealing with family planning had to teach abstinence. THAT makes sense.

when i got home, i realized that i have had 2 great days and i began to panic. am i allowed to have a really great day? i went to the beach, drank beer, and talked shit all day? then i had a fun day at work? is this okay? it took all evening, but yes, i decided it's okay. i gave myself permission. lavi a dwol! (life is strange!)

so many questions...

2010-04-03T17:00:00.010-05:00

i needed a break from the concrete jungle of the city and decided to head up the mountain today. some things, my friends, have NOT changed since 112. once you hit laboule, the air is still crisp, the breeze is still cool, the griot and banan (fried pork and plantains) in fermathe are still perfect, there is still the silence, the moun mon (mountain people) are still sweet and loving. i went all the way to robin, a place where time seems to stand still, the magnificent mountains surround you - nothing but tranquility. i really love red earth.

on my way back down, i went to fort jacques. our founding fathers and mothers weren't fucking around. independence or death for real! you can see all of port au prince from up there, the huge cannons strategically placed to kick some ass. we used to go there for picnics when i was little. it was very nostalgic being within those walls. well, what's left of them anyway. i used to run around and imagine what it must have been like to be ready to fire the cannons, to be ready as well, to die if the other people shot back.

the french didn't use their cannons, nor have the balls to come try to destroy fort jacques, but the earthquake sure did. it is severely damaged. as i stood there i looked at each rock that went into building it, the many layers of the thick walls. i thought of the countless hands it took to create it, the sweat, the dedication, the knowledge that they did it all for you and me!

an original copy of the haitian declaration of independence was found this past week. i LOVE it. if it fit, i would have it tattooed on my damn forehead. i have read and reread it over and over, each word so very beautiful and intensely penetrating. these are the first few lines...

"ce n'est pas assez d'avoir expulse de votre pays les barbares qui l'ont ensanglante depuis deux siecles; ce n'est pas assez d'avoir mis un frein aux factions toujours renaissantes qui se jouaient tour-a-tour du fantome de liberte que la france exposait a vos yeux; il faut par un dernier acte d'autorite nationale, assurer a jamais l'empire de la liberte dans le pays qui nous a vu naitre; il faut ravir au gouvernement inhumain qui tient depuis long-tems nos esprits dans la torpeur la plus humiliante, tout espoir de nous reasservir; il faut eufin vivre independans ou mourir.

independance, ou la mort...que ces mots sacres nous rallient, et qu'ils soient le signal des combats et de notre reunion."

(it is not enough to have expelled the barbarians who have bloodied our land for two centuries; it is not enough to have restrained those ever-evolving factions that one after another mocked the specter of liberty that france dangled before you. we must, with one last act of national authority, forever assure the empire of liberty in the country of our birth; we must take any hope of re-enslaving us away from the inhumane government that for so long kept us in the most humiliating torpor. in the end we must live independent or die.

independence or death...let these sacred words unite us and be the signal of battle and of our reunion.)

damn! it's not enough. they wanted more than just the idea of freedom, the ghost of liberty dangled before our eyes.

"et vous hommes precieux, generaux intrepides qui, insensibles a vos propres malheurs, avez resuscite la liberte en lui prodiguant tout votre sang; sachez que vous n'avez rien fait, si vous ne donnez aux nations un exemple terrible, mais juste, de la vengeance que doit exercer un peuple fier d'avoir recouvre sa liberte, et jaloux de la maintenir; effrayons tous ceux qui oseraient tenter de nous la ravir encore: commencons par les francais...qu'ils fremissent en abordant nos cotes, sinon par le souvenir des cruaules qu'ils y ont exercees, au moins par la resolution terrible que nous allons prendre de devouer a la mort, quiconque ne francais, souillerait de son pied sacrilege le territoire de la liberte."

(and you, precious men, intrepid generals, who, without concern for your own pain, have revived liberty by shedding all your blood, know that you have done nothing if you do not give the nations a terrible but just example of the vengeance that must be wrought by a people proud to have recovered its liberty and jealous to maintain it let us frighten all those who would dare try to take it from us again. let us begin with the french. let them tremble when they approach our coast, if not from the memory of those cruelties they perpetrated here, then from the terrible resolution that we will have made to put to death anyone born french whose profane foot soils the land of liberty.)

DAMN!

if you have any haitian blood in you, doesn't reading those words make it run faster? deeper? make you sit up straighter? i don't know. i thought of the spirit of these words while at fort jacques today, and i found it quite symbolic. we were so ready in 1804 to take care of this land we fought so hard to make ours and we weren't going to let anybody fuck with us if they tried to stop us. sweet baby jesus, have we lost our way, or what??? we've taken some major detours down too many of the wrong roads. our dreams for this place seem to be in shambles, like the fort.

i find it slightly symbolic, as well, that the u.n. summit deciding what to do with this same land was held the very day before this document was released to the rest of the world. heads of governments around the world trying to figure out what to do with this little patch of precious soil. when i drive around here and see the overwhelming presence of foreign armies and people, i wonder if our independence is at stake? who, really, is deciding on our future? and what do we get as a consolation prize for all the money they are going to give us to rebuild? each president has signed away bits and pieces of this country to keep their power.

and why don't we have leaders like the ones with whom we began? where are they? have they read the fucking declaration of independence lately?

"prete donc entre ses mains le serment de vivre libre et independant, et de preferer la mort a tout ce qui tendrait a te remettre sous le joug. jure enfin, de poursuivre a jamais les traitres et les ennemis de ton independance."

(therefore vow before me to live free and independent, and to prefer death to anything that will try to place you back in chains. swear, finally, to pursue forever the traitors and enemies of your independence.)

i'm just sayin'....

our founding fathers and mothers knew that our fight for independence wasn't going to be a one time thing.

is anyone else out there asking these same questions? wondering the same wonderings? and once again i'll say it - i just don't know what's going to happen with my country and it's people.

WARNING - GRAPHIC PICS

2010-04-01T18:21:00.011-05:00

i was having possibly one of the happiest mornings i've had since 112. i sang loudly and danced in the shower, my coffee was perfect, the weather was gorgeous.

driving to work, even the rubble and tent cities didn't bother me. did i even see them? i gave up trying to use the cd player in my car since all it does is skip, and i had my ipod plugged in, jammin' to some tupac. "that's just the way it is....things'll never be the same...."

my happy morning ended abruptly when i saw it --- a skull hanging on a piece of rebar that was sticking out of a fallen down home. there was a small patch of hair left on it and it still had teeth connected as well. i stopped the car and just looked at it. i felt -- completely --- frozen.

i didn't know it, but a man had been watching me. he came up to my window and asked me if i was alright. he then told me that they had just found it. they hung it there because the people who lived in that house might want it; they might still be looking for that person, so there it was, waiting to be found.

he saw that i had a camera and told me i should take a picture. did i want to? i don't know why, but i did. he then tells me "gin lot, oui! nou fek jwen lot umba la-a." (there's more, yes! we just found more down there).

WHY i decided to follow him, i don't know. i just did. so my still frozen self and my nikon followed this man down through the rubble. i saw a small crowd of people gathered around and i saw a man heave this....thing onto a white sheet. had that chunk of stuff really been a body? a person? a woman? a man? a child? the clothes had begun to disintegrate, there were bones sticking out of it. no skin left anymore, but what looked like slabs of meat. one of them had an eye left. the lumps of used-to-be-bodies were stuck in the positions the people died in. now, i really, really felt frozen.

the guy i had followed to this used-to-be-home nudged me, "pa bliye pran foto, non!" (don't forget to take pictures). so i started snapping away. thank goodness i had my camera, because somehow looking through the lens became not really seeing them. i don't know if that makes any sense, but there was an automatic distance between me and the mounds once i was taking the pictures.

when i got to work, one of my trainers asked me how i was, and i ended up a blubbering mess. all i can remember saying was "this is never gonna end, is it?"

i've seen dead bodies before. my god, i grew up in haiti - who hasn't seen dead bodies here? and i've seen them since 112 as well. but something was very different today. it's not like it's ever been easy, but today, i'm having a really hard fucking time processing it and so here i am with you, my blog, my pal.

yesterday, a friend of mine told me about a conversation she had with a photographer that has been in and out of haiti since 112. he told her that he had to consciously force himself to keep seeing the rubble. after a while, he was saying, it had begun to blend in to the background and he just didn't see it anymore; he was getting "used" to it. my friend, a therapist, told me that this is one of many coping mechanisms that we use when confronted with so much destruction around us all the time.

this morning, i don't think i really saw the rubble. it didn't effect me as much as usual. does that mean i have gotten "used" to it? i don't know.

but i DID see the bodies. will i get "used" to that too?

fuck.

this thing will never be over, will it?

making choices

2010-03-31T20:11:00.003-05:00

so...there's this man who is part of my new staff support team at my new job. i liked him the second we met. he has the biggest smile, the sweetest comportment, the quickest wit. he is the kind of guy you just want to be around. he and i shared a coffee break together today. he shared his story with me and his courage is still lingering in my mind. so i decided to share it with you.

he is a psychologist who has worked in the prisons here. (a job i really can't imagine doing.) he has always lived "en fami" with his aunts, cousins and other family members. his personal goal for 2009 was to save enough money so that he would be able to move into his own apartment. the day finally came, and he was ready to move out. instead of driving his car, he decided to walk to his new apartment building. he told me he wanted to experience the walk between the two homes, just to see what it would be like.

on the afternoon of january 12, after handing over all of his hard-earned money, and after walking ecstatically in circles in his new apartment, he was outside looking up at his new home on the 5th floor.

the earth shook.

he watched his new apartment building come crashing to the ground. when he made it to his family's house (i'll spare you the details of his walk home)...it had also fallen to pieces. the car he didn't drive that day? at the bottom, underneath all of the rubble. completely destroyed.

he lost EVERYTHING.

"mem compute mwen, mem rad mwen, mem asyet kwizin mwen. tout baggay - pedi" (even my computer, even my clothes, even my kitchen plates. everything - lost).

he is now sleeping in a tent next to what used to be his family home. it's not even his tent, but one he is sharing with his neighbors.

i c a n n o t i m a g i n e !

the most difficult part for me to grasp, is his attitude. everything he's worked for - in ruins. but the ability to rise above it? how is that possible? i told him i would never have known this about him, because his cheerful demeanor is the complete opposite of how i think i would react.

"bon," he told me. "m te tet amba, oui! men apre yon ti tan, mwen te deside fe yon shwa pou mwen gade devan olye de deye. gin de le ou beswin fe shwa sa-a paske lavi-a se konsa. mem le ou kwe ou kone s'ak pral rive - ou pa konnen vre." (i was upside down! but after a little time, i decided to make a choice to look ahead instead of behind. sometimes, you have to make this choice because life is like this. even if you think you know what's going to happen - you don't really know).

wow.

here's to having the cojones to CHOOSE to look ahead instead of behind!

2010-03-29T19:56:00.003-05:00

so...i started training for my new job today. i am super interested to see what it will be like. i will be doing staff support, planning and providing psychosocial programs for national aid workers within ngos. people who have been dishing out aid to others, but who are also just as traumatized and as effected by 112 as the people they have been helping. where do you find the courage to help people all day, all week, when you yourself have lost family, friends, your home, and your country? how do you deal with blans coming into the organization you've been working at for years, pushing you aside because they are "experts" but who have never been to haiti, don't know the culture and can't speak the language? how do you handle knowing that millions of dollars are being poured into your ngo, but you're still sleeping in a tent? hell if i know! i guess that's what i'll be finding out.

i went back and forth, deciding if i would take this job. ME - work for an ngo? i feel like such a hypocrite. i have such a deep rooted hatred for them. i hate that they are such corporations, i hate that they made millions after 112 by convincing people they should feel guilty and sorry for poor haitians, i hate the culture of dependence they create, i hate the way many of them treat their national staff, i hate their patronizing names, i hate their superiority complexes, and most of all, i hate that they really have no intentions of really DOING anything. they don't aim to eradicate any issue related to poverty but only place band-aids on them so that they can continue making money and have an excuse to be here. (the photo says "down with ngo's - theives) that's a whole lotta hate! and my dumbass said "yes, i'll work for you." damn.

but - i'm only signing up for 6 months. 6 months in which i'll be on the other end of things. on the "inside". i don't know what that will mean...will it mean i'll get sucked into the corporate world and feel okay about it? will i learn that really, they do accomplish good things? will i pimp slap people in frustration? i have no idea.

i have been meeting lots of new people and it's been fascinating finding out what brought them to haiti. again, i really can't tell you enough about the amount of people that have descended into this country. me being one of them, i have asked myself the same question. what made me pack up my life in the states and move home? what was the straw that broke this camel's back? because my country has always been poor. people have always lived in deplorable conditions. people have always been unemployed and hurt and hungry.

when the earth quaked here, something quaked in me. it was like i was violently shaken awake and brought to my senses. there was such clarity in my decision to come back. not to save haiti, not to hand out cash, not to all of a sudden feel bad for my people, not to fix anything...but it's like i realized it was time to take responsibility for my country.

i was aware of what was happening and did nothing. i watched the bidonvils (shanty towns? favelas?) begin to take over the mountainsides. i knew that they could hardly protect the people inside them from any heavy rains, let alone a freakin' earthquake. i knew that there were little to no job opportunities. i knew there were people living with no clean water, no health care and no food. i knew that our government was mostly a sham. i knew it all! and i did absolutely nothing. i just sat back, comfortable in the states, and watched it all happen.

of course i don't think that i could have done anything in the last decade to really change any of these things. and i also don't think i can do anything now. but my desire to be here right now isn't about "changing" anything. what brought me back? i just want to be a part of this place and these people, instead of being a disconnected, inactive observer.

so...here i am. typing by the light of the spectacular moon. i wonder where this journey will take me? working for a thieving ngo, reconnecting to this place and it's people. who knows?

no se ti moun yo

2010-03-27T17:27:00.008-05:00

so...i went out last night with three of my long lost pals from high school. it was awesome! for a few hours, we sat and laughed, played pool and acted stupid and for a few hours, i felt kinda like a normal person! me and the guys, hanging out at a bar.

we haven't seen each other for over 10 years, but it was like no time has passed at all. we have loved and lost, we have traveled the world, we have had triumphs and failures. but we are still the freakin' same! d. still so serious and quick witted with the most contagious laugh. w. and i still way too girl crazy, and talk so much shit but are really still afraid of them. g. still such a lover and a dreamer. we have each decided to put our lives in the states on hold and move home post 112. this new place that none of us recognize.

as the bar began to fill, i was so happy to watch people begin to have a good time. the dj played the "we are the world" haiti version and i was cynical at first. "not this again," i thought. (they play all those songs A LOT on the radio. and when i say A LOT, i mean A LOT)...but before i knew it, everyone in the bar was singing on the top of their lungs, like it had instantly become our collective anthem. as totally cheesy as it sounds, it actually gave me chills! nou se timoun yo...it was a moving few minutes. as i looked at my childhood friends, and as i held w.'s hand, i said, "yup, we are the children..."

then, of course the next song was "sexy bitch"...and everyone got back to business.

the alcohol and the music started doing their thing, and the place was rockin'! people gyrating like only haitians can. hot! hot! hot!

it was tricky, though...i kept thinking to myself, "how do you spend money on rhum punches when outside these walls and down the block, are thousands of people in a tent city on plas st. pierre?" it was like constant internal warfare, deciding how much fun i would allow myself to have. eventually, though, i convinced myself - gave myself permission - to have a good time.

it was so nice to feel normal.

today, i haven't gotten out of bed. not in a weird depressed way, but - i just don't want to see any destruction, not today. i want to look down over the city and pretend it's normal down there. so, i read, i ate chocolate, and i thought of you, my friends. i miss you so very much.

death and life and love

2010-03-24T20:38:00.008-05:00

so...the last few days, i have been a tour guide/chauffeur/interpreter for two superly duperly rad canadian guys. one, a professional photographer (i have major camera lenses envy!) and the other, an anthropologist. it's been way - difficult! i've brought several visitors to haiti over the years and have always enjoyed showing them around, pointing out various spots that hold some sort of importance to me. you know when you bring someone to your old stomping grounds? there are places that cradle sweet memories for you, even if you don't see them often. when asked if i would take them around, i didn't stop and think about what it would be like to actually take someone around this place. i kept saying to myself and to them - "THIS ISN'T HAITI!"...like i wanted so badly for them to know the real thing! i didn't want this shit to be all they knew about my once beautiful country.

but fuck me crispy creme. this IS haiti. everything i knew is past tense now. "that's where my dentist's office was"..."that used to be a school"..."that was the cutest little store"...you get the point. i've been driving around pointing to rubble and empty spaces. it was ex-haus-ting! i can't decide - a pile of rubble? or a completely empty space? which is better? which is worse? i don't know. i do know that it's been a sort of immersion therapy...i faced my greatest fear head on - the haiti i knew, my home, is officially and truly gone.

what is this new place?

i’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. when the dust settles and the smoke clears. the tears subside for a bit...what is left?

before luke and greg came to haiti, through emails, i tried to get a feel for all they wanted to see and do while here. on the list was “visit korebel (a community organization) in bel air”. when i read that, i was like - holy shit, are you kidding me? bel air? hmm...how do i explain? in 2004, the gangs there had gotten so horrific, the area was called “little baghdad”. everyone had guns, especially 10-12 year old boys. minustah (the u.n. forces) decided to take action. in most countries, the protocol is to warn residents that troops are on the way. anyone left in said area then knows they will have to face the tanks, tear gas, and machine guns. once again, haiti didn’t make the list of “most countries” and the protocol became “just shoot ‘em all”. (disclaimer - this story conveniently changes depending on who you ask.) so, on one hand, the u.n. claims that they “cleaned up bel air” but on the other, they have it listed as a “red zone”. with that status, it means all aid organizations, ngo’s and everyone else - just shouldn’t go there. but dammit if these guys wanted me to take them! everyone i told about it was like “are you kidding me? lori, don’t go there! tell them you’ll take them anywhere but there.”

against all warnings and advice, we went today. when we first got there, i kept looking over my shoulder for little boys with semi automatics. i kept waiting to get jacked up or kidnapped. i kept thinking “what the hell am i doing, bringing these white boys here? what am i gonna tell their mama’s after the shit goes down?”

but instead, i found - love. so much overwhelming, overflowing love.

we sat and talked with the community leaders and listened to their stories. how they decided to take back their neighborhood and their children. the first thing they did was build a community restaurant, which fed people even if they couldn’t pay for it. then they started a school, which had over 500 kids enrolled pre 112. i could go on and on about these beautiful beings, but i won’t. i admitted to them that i was totally afraid to come there. they laughed. “nou kone tout sa moun di de nou. se pou tet sa-a nou la-a. nou bezwin chanje sa-a.” (we know everything people say about us. this is why we are here. we have to change this).

they have such big dreams, big hearts, and big cahones - but absolutely no resources, especially now. no one has come to clear the rubble. no one has come to distribute food. bel air is an ignored, forgotten, scary red zone. and i can’t wait to go back.

they took us on a tour of what used to be their neighborhood. “under this house are 6 dead people.” “the rubble we’re walking on is actually the top of three houses.” “this pile of house has 4 of our students in it.” “this used to be an alley.” “no one came here to take away the bodies, so this is where we burned them, since the smell was so bad and we were afraid of getting sick.” “this is what’s left of our school.” death was all around me, and i had to hold back the tears.

it was - no words, really.

across the tiny street from the dead, are the living. they took us around the massive camp. i can’t call it a tent city, because there are no tents. over 800 families live in these tiny little “structures”. we toured zones a, b, e, and f. the people were astoundingly gracious. so many welcoming smiles and warm hellos. we were invited into their “homes” and invited into their lives. kids and i always seem to gravitate towards each other...and i wanted to bring each of them home with me. life was happening all around me, and i had to hold back the tears.

this is haiti. love. i keep looking for something else, but i keep finding love. i don’t know how it happens, but it flows out of me and flows back to me. there is extreme anger, there is hopelessness, there is pain, there is fear, there is helplessness, there is loss, there is suffering, there are a lot of unanswered questions, there is death and life, but damn, there is love. that's what's left.

sunday lunch

2010-03-21T21:08:00.005-05:00

so...i had lunch with some people yesterday, and one of the people at the table was a missionary woman who was born and raised in haiti. i'll say that again. she was born and raised in haiti. she now lives in the dominican republic, saving the other side of this island's savages. this is not another missionary rant, i promise. i just wanted to jot down and share some of the things she said. i did NOT bitch slap her at any moment, because i'm not violent, but damn did i want to. i bit my tongue A LOT out of respect for the other people at the table.

and, really, can you teach an old dog new tricks? can you? like can you convince a racist redneck from georgia that obama is not a muslim? or that saddam hussein and 911 were two very separate issues? is it worth the energy to even take part in these conversations?

so...this is how it went, on a beautiful sunshiney sunday afternoon.

lady: there are a lot of the poor haitians in the dominican republic. but lately, there are also some of the educated ones! it's so nice.

lady: my maid was such a big part of our family. of course here, they think being part of the family means they get a free ticket to the states. that's just not gonna happen. she'd never, ever want to come back!

lori: actually, we took the woman who works with our family to the states twice and both times, she couldn't wait to come back.

lady: oh, really? well, that must be an exception to the rule. i know a lot of them want to leave. i mean if she were to have made it to the states and come back here, then everyone would've thought she was the stupidest person ever!

lori: well, it's not always easy to be a haitian in the states.

lady: (utter disbelief and exasperation) oh! come on! that can't be true! well, anyway, even if it's hard, that sure is what all of them want.

lady: so, who were the first doctors on the ground after the earthquake?

lori: you mean besides the haitian doctors?

lady: the haitian doctors? there aren't that many here, are there? they actually did something? oh, i hadn't thought and i never read that they did anything.

(the doctors we know personally worked around the clock and only stopped to attend funerals)

lady: oh, the presidential palace in ruins. it just makes me think of the white house.

(how in the world could you grow up in a country your entire life and when seeing it's palace destroyed...you think of the white house?)

lady: but thank goodness for the ngo's.

lori: really? i think they're extremely detrimental to this country. and, i've yet to see their use of the millions they supposedly raised. i feel like there are tons of them here, but really, what are they doing?

lady: oh, i'm sure they're doing a lot of great things. and if they're not, then someone should write an article.

lori: about what?

lady: well, the good american people gave their money to them! if they knew it wasn't being used, they would be really mad!

lori: i don't think people really care. haiti's so old news. people did their part, they donated some cash after watching some tear jerking baby saving story, or a celebrity filled telethon, but now they have moved on with their lives. which is just what happens. it's not a bad thing, but i really don't think they care.

lady: well, you're not saying all ngo's are like that. there are some amazing ones!

lori: really? like who? name one.

lady: ......silence.....well, i just think it really would be hard to account for every single penny. i mean, that is just impossible!

lady: ______ is african american, right? (a girl we both know that is light skinned and i'm guessing because she speaks english with no french accent? i don't really know why she would be not "all" haitian.)

lori: no, she's haitian.

lady: oh, was she adopted, then?

lori: no, she's haitian.

lady: oh, but then which of her parents is american?

lori: neither. they're both haitian as well.

lady: and she wasn't adopted?

lori: no.

lady: well, then she didn't grow up here.

lori: no, she did grow up here.

lady: well, she just doesn't strike me as all haitian.

lady: they have quinceaneras here, right? when a girl turns 15?

lori: no

lady: are you sure? i mean the big party for when a girl...

lori: i know what it is. no, we don't have that here. that's a latino tradition.

lady: oh, i just figure it's all the same.

(we're driving down morne calvaire, where i live. there are a lot of big houses in this neighborhood. yes, people in haiti have money. sometimes, they build nice, big houses with their money. i think this happens in other countries. i'm not sure, but i think it does. anyway...there were about 20 young-ish kids walking down the road (all black kids, which i think other countries have black people too...that might not all be poor). i find out later they're going to a community music show.)

lady: oh, look at all the people! i wonder where they're going?

lori: yeah, i don't know.

lady: well, it's obvious they're not people who live here. not in this neighborhood! it must be all the hired help getting off of work.

lady: so, my daughter went off to college and all she wanted to do was come back and see her friends! i told her "you just got there!"

lori: yeah, it's tough.

lady: but i mean, she's in america now! why would she want to come here instead of be with her cousins? i almost took her passport away, she was so determined. i made her wait until spring break, and when she came back, do you know the people she wanted to see were the dominicans? not the other missionary kids? it's so strange!

so, lori, who were your friends growing up? the missionaries, the poor haitians, or the educated ones?

lori: ummm...i had a lot of different friends and still do.

lady: wow. really. when i was growing up, i knew the poor ones. and i had my missionary friends. never really had any of the educated rich ones as friends.

and...the following one, i will never forget. for me, it was the best...

lady: so, lori, do you consider yourself haitian or american?

lori: haitian.

lady: really? even after all that time spent in america?

lori: especially after all that time i spent in america.

lady: well, you did have a haitian dad. and i guess he liked being haitian, so i can see why you'd like it.

FUCK YOU, YOU IGNORANT MOTHER FUCKING RACIST ASS! is what i wanted to say. instead, i quickly stuffed an entire banan pese (fried plantain) in my mouth so that i was physically unable to speak.

i've left out the jesus talk, the "satanic" voodoo talk, the "blessings" of 112.

sigh...

i wonder, do you think i'll live to see the day when the outside world begins to see haitians as something other than just black and poor and stupid? or, when they stop trying to convince us that's all we are? no article is ever written about haiti without saying somwhere in it - "haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere"....that has officially become the sum of our parts. will racist rednecks in georgia ever be able to see anyone that is not white as having any real value? (besides basketball or football players that win their games for them?)

will haitians ever be seen as heart pumping, blood coursing, tissue connected, laughing, crying, loving, breathing beings? that have thoughts and feelings and families and dreams and legacies and stories to tell? aiyaiyai.

back where i started

2010-03-20T13:42:00.004-05:00

seeing old friends is such an interesting part of coming back home. there are movies made about it. a funeral, a wedding, a broken down car, a set of random events - people end up back where they started for all kinds of reasons. although i haven't seen a movie about someone going home because of an earthquake - it definitely could be made now. i've seen so many friends in the past week that are a lot like me. "i just couldn't stay away." "i just had to come home." "fuck that life i was living over there...this is where i am supposed to be" it's really phenomenal. few of us have real jobs, none of us know what the future holds, all of us are scared...but we are here and happy as hell.

it's funny what people remember about you and what you remember about them. little kids i used to give piggy back rides to, play soccer and marbles with, used to tutor after school, they're all grown up! they've travelled the world, hold several degrees, own businesses, run companies, they have families and babies. i can see traces of the little bumpkins they used to be. parents of friends are older, wiser, and are so happy to sit and talk about old times.

when i was in school, my closest friends were all boys. girls just made me way too nervous. i've been lucky enough to see two of my dearest buds and oh, the beautiful, remarkably strong men they have become! and oh, the trouble we used to cause! the weekend beach trips, the pranks, the parties, the memories come flooding back. they taught me how to drive, how to dance, how to talk to girls. (i'm not saying they taught me these things WELL, but they taught me them nonetheless.) we lived through so many things together. all kinds of political turmoil, coup d'etats, a disastrously evil embargo, a u.s. led invasion, close to 20 different presidents, and a lot of loss. we drove through burning tires, ran from gunshots, even went to jail once - and despite it all - we sure did figure out how to have a good time.

we did a LOT of sitting around. no malls, no bowling alleys, no freakin' electricity! but we did have each other. one of our favorite activities was "the eagle bump"...there used to be a grocery store called 'eagle market' on delmas, one of our main roads. in front of it, there was a huge dip in the road. one "good" thing about political problems...not a bit of traffic at night. we would start at the top of delmas and floor it. our goal was to get all 4 tires airborne. it was awesome.

when we went to the beach, we would take over the whole place. we'd hook up speakers to the car battery, blast our music and play beach volleyball and drink beer all day long.

when we were out of school for long periods of time, our teachers sent home "packets" - weeks worth of work that we had to complete. we set up such an elaborate cheating network! i don't remember it all, but i do remember coloring everyone's maps for social studies.

i was talking to a parent of one of my friends and she was telling me that it is hard being a parent in a country with so many problems. how so many times she and her husband thought about leaving haiti to spare the kids. they often wondered how all of it would effect us emotionally? mentally? would we grow up "normal"? i can't really say any of us are"normal" but then again, who is?

when i look back, our parents were rock stars. they gave us the freedom to roam the unsafe streets, and let us be kids even though our environment was not at all "kid-friendly". i remember during the embargo, the gas lines were miles and miles long and gas was easily $12-15u.s. a gallon. after much pestering and begging, we convinced them that we could all use a beach trip. so collectively, they waited in line for days and finally got enough gas for one beach trip. that was one kick ass beach trip, lemme tell you.

so here i am, back where i started. it sure as hell doesn't look the same, it has a whole new set of serious, complicated, countless obstacles, but it is home. seeing old friends has made me nostalgic and long for the old haiti, even as fucked up as it was. we are stuck with this one, though, and today i am feeling just a little itsy bitsy teeny weeny tiny bit of hope. maybe, just maybe, the little kids of haiti today will find solid friendships and a love for haiti in these difficult times like we did? and maybe, just maybe, some of us bumpkins have become grown ups that might be able to transform our love for this place into something great?

march 18

2010-03-18T19:57:00.005-05:00

so, i found out last night, that the orthopedic surgeon is leaving haiti tomorrow. since the next batch of doctors at this clinic won't be here until sometime in april, i decided to take evelyn to get checked out. this is evelyn, by the way. and her baby. i wish i could also upload her fantastic laugh so you could hear it. i wish i could download and somehow email you just a snippet of her strength, her patience, her determination. she is a beautiful person and i am happy to know her.

so - we were at the clinic for about 15 minutes before i realized that the group of doctors and nurses were short on interpreters. i watched them wrestle with their 5-8 kreyol words mixed with some serious charades for about another 10 minutes, and had made up my mind to just sit there and watch them struggle. not to be an asshole, but sweet baby jesus - i hate blood!!! but shit damn fuck. on went the gloves and 8 hours later, i am finally home.

i must say, though, it was a BREEZE compared to being at lopital general after the earthquake. that shit was so 3rd world/world war 2/end of the world-ish. it might possibly be the most insane experience i've ever had, actually.

today, that little, hot-as-hell clinic was like a 5 star hospital. we were indoors all day, not out in the hot sun. post op wasn't a make shift tent, but a real room! they even had one of those machines that go "beep beep beep". (those totally make me think of soap operas...you know that dramatic beeeeeeeeep that happens right at the moment when the not sick person realizes that the sick person who was their lover was also their father or some shit....?) anyway, it was so nice to have medical supplies and medicine available. and the patients were in beds, not in the grass. and there were trash cans! and clean water! but best of all - no one freakin' died.

there were lots more interesting stories about how injuries happened on 112. i got to see similar injuries i saw before, but 2 months of recovery later. all i can think to say is - our bodies can do some fucking remarkable things!

there was this one little boy (6yrs. old) whose entire right eye had to be removed. yow! it was serioulsy intense. there was a beautiful 16 year old girl who had just made it to see a doctor. her ankle and her leg were both broken. her bones had merged together and healed, but all skadiwampusly. they had to re-brake them and put them back to where they were supposed to be. i sat with her after she woke up from her surgery. at one point, she pulled me close to her and said "ou met di-m, oui, eske m'ap mouri?" (you can tell me. am i dying?) i reassured her she was not dying, that she was going to dance and play and jump around very soon. "mem-m pa santi anyin! m pa santi doule, m pa santi jam mwen...." (but i don't feel anything! i don't feel pain, i don't feel my legs)...and i realized she was responding to the mega drugs they had given her. i explained to her that it was the drugs making her feel that way and that she should totally enjoy it. there were lots and lots of healed bones, cured infections, removed casts, new casts, and one super gross butt surgery (that i'm working on blocking from my memory ASAP).

it was a good thing we went, because the holes on evelyn's leg where the screws were taken out, had started getting a slight infection. they knocked her out and cleaned her up. she's got a new cast, this one from the hip down.

it was so, so, so hard when i dropped her off, tonight's rain was starting to fall. i so wanted to pack the entire crew up into my car and bring them home with me.

my phone rang not too long ago. it was her, wanting to make sure i made it home okay in all the rain. how in the world could she be worried about me??? amazing. it was like that at lopital general as well. these people, suffering extraordinary physical, emotional pain...they were worried about ME! "ou kampe twop, vin shita. m pa we-ou bwe dlo, fok ou bwe dlo, oui! eske-ou gin tan manje jodi-a?" (you're standing too much, come sit down. i haven't seen you drink water, you have to drink water, okay? have you eaten yet today?) what is that about? to have the ability to go outside of yourself, to be concerned about someone else when you are not well...incredible. i think of the hordes of international folk who come here to "teach" haitians all these things they don't know because they are poor when, in fact, they have such an opportunity to learn from these beautiful people.

over-fucking-whelmed

2010-03-17T12:13:00.007-05:00

so, i’m completely and totally over-fucking-whelmed.

how long, exactly, can people go without eating?

how long, exactly, can people live in tents in pouring down tropical rains? or under bed sheets? or under slices of bits of tin?

how long, exactly, can people live surrounded by rubble and the smell of death? i feel like i live in a cemetery.

how long can a country go on without any sort of leadership whatsoever?

how long can the extremely well educated youth of haiti sit around and not be in school?

really how long? honestly... i just don’t think it can possibly be that much longer, can it?

whenever i go anywhere, it has become habit to grab some crackers, tangerines, some energy bars (my sister -- turned angelina jolie/charlie’s-angel/mc gyver -- jenny’s hefty supply of bars she brought when she came is dwindling, but man has it lasted!) (shout out to brighter day natural foods - wha-what!) ...because while out and about, it is inevitable that you will be asked for something, anything to eat. people on the street asking for “yon ti kishoy” (a little something) is not new. what is new, is the number of people, the serious desperation of the people asking, and most amazingly, the intensity with which they eat whatever you give them. as soon as they get it, they devour it. it’s - - - wild.

in petion-ville this morning, there was an aid distribution. they only distribute food with u.n. military forces. (a large number of u.n. forces have left haiti....you do the math......but that’s a whole other blog entry.) the heavily armed men, the tanks, the people - everywhere. they told me they started lining up at 3am. the line started at the new/closed “gold’s gym” behind leglis st. pierre. when i went by around 11, it stretched down that street, turned onto rue oge and went all the way to rue metellus. (basically almost 4/5 blocks?) when i went by again at 5:30, the line was still there. who got food, i wonder? what are the people who didn’t get food doing tonight? or until the next food distribution?

i went to visit my friend evelyn today in the tent city at plas st. anne downtown. miles and miles away from plas st. pierre in petion-ville. the super bright white cast i left her with days ago is now filthy because of the rains this weekend, but she is doing “well”.

i was surprised to see that they have started digging through the rubble in that area of town. piles of cement in one spot, piles of metal in another, piles of bones and other bodily remains in another. the smell, a mixture of dead parts, trash, piss, shit - was pungent, to say the least. and - there were my new pals, surviving, an eye-shot away from the bulldozers. their biggest concern? -- finding me a chair to sit in. sigh....

since i promised the people whose pictures i’ve taken, that i’d bring them a copy, i happily handed them out. i put them each in ziploc-ish bags so they wouldn’t get wet. dude- i felt like fucking santa claus! everyone was super happy. remember the guy who accused me of trying to make money off of poor people? when he saw me and his picture, he said, “apa ou toune vre? ret tan mwen la-a. m’al mete lot chemis mwen pou’m pi bwode fwa sa-a” (you came back for real? wait for me here. i’m gonna go put on my other shirt so i can be more handsome this time). which started a serious avalanche of “will you take my picture too? ”...needless to say, i now owe my mom a color printer cartridge. my favorite was this little boy and his kite, that he made out of paper he found in the trash. he was so proud of it. one of the little boys had never seen a picture of himself and it TOTALLY freaked him out. he cried and cried and cried! luckily, we oooh-ed and ahhh-ed over it enough, and he slowly went from being terrified of it, to carrying it around like a tiny, delicate treasure.

besides taking the pictures and checking on evelyn, i also wanted to meet with the “komite”/the community leaders of the tent city to ask about doing art with the kids there. doesn’t that sound like a fabulous idea? as i sat there and chatted with them, the more they told me how things are going down there, the more i felt like a total and complete asshole for even thinking about art.

they are hardly eating. when i asked evelyn what they find to eat, she said they drink akasan each morning. (the remaining water from ground corn). she explained to me the food system. it is supposed to work like this - the komite is given food and tickets are to be given to the people. your ticket color depends on how many people you have in your family and the amount of provisions you receive. but, the food is really going to the komite’s friends and family. the tickets aren’t given - the cheapest tickets are $50. the cheapest tents now run for $700-1000.

there is no clean water. they are getting sick because of the rain. they are skinny, their eyes are starting to have that malnutrition glaze. they are inundated with the smells, the sounds of pounding of bulldozers, they sleep in the mud, there’s the heat, the trash, the rubble, the fucking hell of it all. they have nothing and they have absolutely no where else to go.

the people i talked to today are getting desperate. they are getting angry. and i quote bob marley again - a hungry man is an angry man. and my moronic ass wants to color? fuck me crispy creme! i feel so stupid, so clueless. what was i thinking? i was thinking - i want to help these kids work through this trauma. trauma? it’s not like it’s over. like some thing that happened once. the earthquake was 43 seconds, 64 days ago, and the complete and utter misery has only gotten worse for them. i’m really at a loss. where the hell does art fit into this?

the random people walking by were looking at me differently than they have in the last 4 or 5 times i’ve been there. it felt different. when i went to slip evelyn some cash, she was like “non, non. pa ba’m li konsa-a” (no, no, don’t give it to me like that). she didn’t want people to see that i was giving her money - to “protect” us. she had come up with a plan - i ended up having to ride around a few blocks with her dad, give him the money and drop him off somewhere else. w h a t ???

i felt something vaguely familiar today...like - those of you that have lived in haiti through political misadventures know this feeling. you know when you’re driving down the street and you can feel a threatening tension in the air? like knowing there’s been a coup d’etat or there’s about to be one - without anybody telling you? or you know, at any second, there’s about to be some major rock throwing or the rat-ta-ta-ta-tat sound of guns? the heat of it? the thickness of it in the air? do you remember that feeling? it’s been a long time since i’ve felt it, but i felt it today.

after my spy-like drive around with andre (evelyn’s dad), is when i started feeling that feeling in the air. driving through deplorable champs de mars, what’s left of canape vert, and into petion-ville...how much longer will these people sit and suffer? how much can a human being endure? really? how much? does this kind of suffering cause violence? will rocks be thrown and weapons appear? will they just die? fight, flight, or freeze, right? will there even be energy left for any of those things? i know i say this over and over - but what the HELL is going to happen to my country? to my people?

i am starting to feel this panic feeling, too. like if i don’t do something, i will be personally responsible for thousands of deaths. (not extremely logical, i’m aware). but how do you sit by and watch the suffering? i sat and talked with an old pal from high school last night. there is so much anger building up amongst us as well. (and we eat every day! we have homes!) but what do you do with the anger? who do you get angry with? the drunk ass president? the government that doesn’t seem to exist? the countless ngo’s? the humanitarian tourists? the obama administration? the french? the swiss? the military? the pastors? the police? even blaming the earthquake seems pointless. it feels so far away, something that happened years ago.

he reminded me - remember when princess diana died? the insane impact that the silence of queen elizabeth had on the people of england? it’s like that here. no one in any leadership position is saying ANYTHING. and the silence is deafening.

and THEN, the other thing that happened today, was i found out a good friend of mine from high school’s dad was shot and killed. what? wait - MORE people can’t die, can they? my dumbass hadn’t even thought about the possibility of loosing more people. isn’t there some quota of loss in a given amount of time?

tonight, i’m feeling like the problems are too monumental. the anguish is too severe. over-fucking-whelmed.

warning - i'm pissed off.

2010-03-16T07:06:00.004-05:00

if i offend you by this scathing blabbering, i apologize. kinda. this morning i MISTAKENLY read some emails and blogs my mom told me about written by some present and former missionaries that have random ties to haiti. and they pissed me the hell off.

why, do missionaries all of a sudden have a deep love for haiti? 43 seconds of terror, and they are "heartbroken"? they are "at a loss"? they are "feeling so helpless"? you are such frauds! don't co-opt haiti’s pain so you can simply have something to talk about, or to make yourself feel special.

i know for a fact so many of you hated living here. you are racists and never really looked at haitians as equal human beings. it was "us, the righteous pure whites" and “them, the savage, dirty black dummies". i am so not making this up. you were separate and not equal. did you ever really even have haitian friends? close haitian friends? that you held when times were tough? laughed with when times were good? did you ever bother to learn the language? at most, you just felt sorry for haitians because they weren’t just like you. you felt satisfied, like you did good work when the drums were taken out of the churches, when the men started wearing polyester like you; the women ugly, flowery dresses. you never thought haitian culture was important enough to immerse yourself into it. you never danced compas, never gyrated to the drum beats, never drank klerin, never ate a cold fresco or spicy griot off the street. (i know, i know - drinking and dancing are mortal sins...and you'll surely die instantly if you eat food off the street). whatever.

you lived on your "compounds", neatly separated by each weirdo denomination, surrounded by other white folk like yourself, "safe" from god knows what might've been outside your guarded walls and gates. when you ventured out and left home, you went to your american school, american church, and other american compounds to see your other american friends.

don’t act like you “served” here, you “suffered” here. it’s such a sham. you had generators, you had suv’s, you had money rolling in from your churches. you had all your american shit brought in for you every week so you wouldn’t have to live without diet coke and burger meat. you celebrated your july 4th, but do you even know when haitian independence day is? (january 1st, by the way). did you ever shoot off guns or share bowls of soup joumou at midnight? you spent your time trying to recreate a little america on this soil. and you had instant tickets outta here whenever the shit hit the fan.

i know this because i was right there with you! i might have been a kid, but i was watching your every move. i was the kid with the black dad. mm..hmmm. i saw how you looked at him. i watched how you treated him. how you looked down at my mom for going outside of her race. just so you know - he was no dummy. he knew what was going on. he knew and he went along with it because that’s just the kind of guy he was. we would sit in your church and write silly notes back and forth to each other about you and your hypocritical ways. he taught me how to smile and nod and always keep my head high, no matter who i had to be around. my sister and i would go to your bible studies and we played along as well. and yes, we saw you hide the silver when we brought our scary black haitian friends with us.

this so gets under my skin, can you tell? i just don’t understand. how dare you act like you have this deep connection to a place that you never even bothered to truly get to know while you were lucky enough to be in it. haiti didn’t need your bullshit then, and it doesn’t need it now.

marigot and such

2010-03-13T17:55:00.010-05:00

last night before bed, sica told me that today, he would be going to po marigot (the port in marigot) to buy fish. marigot is a small town further down the beach from here and saturday is the major import/export day. of course, i asked him if i could tag along. my excitement kind of faded when he told me he would be coming to get me at 4am. geez!

as the sun crept up over the mountains, the boats started coming in and the people started appearing. it was like being at a very crowded outdoor walmart on a back-to-school special saturday before school starts, but haitian style. the boats, big and small, come from all over haiti, and a lot from the dominican republic. coolers, buckets, bags, and baskets full of fish, fish and more fish. (i learned how they tell if fish are spoiled are not. you leave them on the ground, and if flies assemble, the fish is good. if not, they are bad. who knew?) i watched them unload people, chickens, plantains, even a motorcycle, rice, flour, paint, anything you can possibly imagine. and loads of kennedy. (“kennedy” is the name given to used clothes donated to haiti, that are then sold in the marketplaces. rumor has it, jackie kennedy was who began these donations in the 60‘s, so they are named after her.) as we watched the bundles of clothes make their way from the boats to the tap taps, dieufet said to me “le blan bouke, ayisyen kontinye” (when blans get tired, haitians continue).

there is no dock, no fancy walkway to use when getting off the boats. just human docks. everything is hauled from the boats to the shore by these unassuming, ridiculously, stupidly strong men. piling everything on their shoulders, their heads, they unload entire boats with smiles on their faces. the gawking crowd laughed when things fell, cheered when they carried more than one person, and argued about who was stronger. truly a sight to see. such strength!

i laughed when i saw an ngo “food for the poor” boat. there were only a few people on it and they all had life vests on them. it looked so --- out of place and strange! no big load and only a few people? i asked them why they came so empty? “ou konnen...blan yo dit nou se konsa pou fe-l. yo di ampil moun nan bato pa bon. malerezman, nou bezwen fe plus vwayaj” (you know, the blan told us this is how to do it. they say a lot of people in a boat isn’t good. unfortunately, we have to do more trips). when i asked about the life vests? “ah. vye baggay sa yo. yo cho, mezanmi! min yo p’ap kite nou fe vwayaj la san yo. nou rensiyen nou” (ah. these awful things. they’re hot, my friend! but they won’t let us make the voyage without them. we resign ourselves).

i wandered around and asked different vendors if 112 had affected their sales? the peanut vendor said nope, all is well in the peanut industry. good to know. the man selling nats ---(don’t know if there’s an official english word for nat...they are mats you can sleep on that are made by woven together dried leaves from plantain trees) he looked at me like i was a big ‘ole dumb ass and said “p’at gin pye banan ki tombe, non. sel bilding” (there weren’t plantain trees that fell, no, just buildings). the women selling fish said the price has gone up a lot. it was 125 gouds a pound and now it is 140 gouds. (about $4.00us). i said, “but it was an earthquake, not an oceanquake!” with which i got another - “you’re a big ‘ole dumb ass” look. the coffee vendor said the price was the same, “men m ta oblije bese pri a pou yon bel fam tank-ou” (but i would be obliged to lower the price for a pretty woman like you). being hit on by the coffee guy sorta made up for the ‘you’re a dumb ass’ looks.

i’ve always loved going to the market. so lively, so loud, so colorful, so many smells, way so much going on at once. this morning reminded me of being little and going with my dad. he was a stay-at-home dad, as he retired when i was 6, so he often did the shopping. the market in petion ville has moved over the years, but the shell of the building is still there. it might be a quarter of the size of a football field, but as a kid it seemed so gigantic, so huge, and i thought that if i ever let go of his hand, i would be lost forever and never find my way back home. i also remember for a treat, he would buy me pure, fresh, reddish brown, sugar cane sugar, rolled in brown paper. a pixie stick, yes? or, a little can of sweet and condensed milk. yum! he had his special machans (vendors) and would only buy from them. sometimes, they would get into major cursing matches if they couldn’t agree on a price. it usually ended with both of them and everyone else around laughing and then my dad overpaying them.

we spent the rest of the afternoon lazily laying around in the sand at the beach. as i sat there, i thought about being lazy in that very same sand at christmas, just three months ago. we ate lambi (conch), drank prestige (beer), shared a really great spliff, and laughed our asses off at klo, my best friend stephanie’s aunt. good times. great memories. none of us had any way of knowing that three months later, so much would change.

there was a woman there that day, that i knew growing up. her dad and my dad were pretty good friends. my love of the mitsubishi montero was born because her dad had one. i so totally coveted my neighbor’s possessions. we whispered about her that day, as we watched her bob up and down in the water. she was OBVIOUSLY a lesbian...gaydar was going off left and right; you could see the flashing lights, hear the bells and whistles. but she had yet to realize it. or she didn’t act on it because of her catholic parents. or she was scared to try it. or she was afraid of what others might think. or she just hadn’t met that special someone. or maybe she had and was hiding it. i think that’s pretty much all of the theories we came up with. “how sad,” we said, and went on to talk about how happy and relieved we are that we came out with our queerness, no matter how difficult it has been at times.

that woman is one of the hundreds of thousands that died on 112.

as i sat and thought about it all today, i felt nostalgic, sad, missing my bff, and had that overwhelming realization you get sometimes, that “life is so fucking short!” we might stop by the store after work and and an earthquake might hit. (i warn you, because this might come out super cheezy), but i urge you all to come out of the damn closet. do what you wanna do, what you feel inside, what you might be afraid of, what your catholic parents might not approve of, what other people might judge you for. and enjoy the hell out of it!

zombies and lougawous 101

2010-03-12T19:33:00.006-05:00

so - these are some of my new lizard friends. they come hang out with me in the mornings when i drink coffee. one of them was in my sleeping bag the first night i was here. we've set some ground rules (no sneaking into my sleeping bag!) and are now happily coexisting on klo's porch, a little slice of heaven, at villa patekwe.

but after the 4+ hour conversation i had tonight, i feel like i should look at them more closely tomorrow morning. are they really lizards? or could they be lougawous???

there are a lot of things that weren't discussed in my house growing up. the mystical, magical, supernatural side of haiti was one of them, at least not in any in-depth conversations. there were people in our neighborhood who my dad would refer to as that zombie man or that zombie woman. we would drive by someone and i would ask him why they looked so -- cracked out? oh, they're a zombie. i remember driving somewhere random with him and seeing a cow, dressed in clothes, dancing. the cow wasn't walking, it wasn't running, it was dancing. i asked my dad about it and he simply said, "bon, gele se yon lougawou" (well, it must be a lougawou). and he responded to all my questions nonchalantly, like i was supposed to understand what the hell it all meant?

tonight, after talking about them, about zombies, about death and life - for hours and hours, i honestly can't tell you if know what the hell it all means. but wow, what a way to spend an evening.

i will try to relay some of these stories, swimming around in my head. especially because i don't want to forget them. (my close friends...you know my phenomenal memory...ha!)

you know, i think i mentioned a while ago...sometimes, when you talk to haitians long enough and ask enough questions, they might tell you things that go beyond the borders of what you have ever believed possible. but - that might just mean your borders need stretching? or need less defined edges? i don't know. haitian culture, with it's supernatural beliefs, is complicated, complex. there is life, there is death. and there is a shit ton in between. the best way i know how to explain what i'm trying to say might only make sense in kreyol, but - se moun ginen nou ye! ayibobo! (it's people from guinea that we are!)

so - one phenomenon between life and death is a zombie. one story about zombies went like this: a woman married a man. the man's parents did not like her. they went to see a mambo who "worked" for them and caused the woman to fall ill and then die. they returned to take her zombie. (quite an involved process, lemme tell you....) (and why do you take a zombie? well, all kinds of reasons. maybe when the person was alive, they mistreated you. well, if you take their zombie, you can mistreat them back)....anywhoo, the person who went to take her zombie and put it in a bottle knew the reasons for her death and "made it so" the in-laws could never lift the bottle to take it with them. apparently, if you are a good person, the bottle will rise in your hands with no problem and you can take it and use it as you wish. if you have negative intentions, however, no matter what you do, it will be completely impossible for you to pick up the bottle. the in-laws were never able to leave with the girl's zombie.

if you've ever been to haiti, you've seen the huge public transportation trucks that bring commerce and people and goats and chickens (etc.) in and out of port au prince. they are loaded down way more than would ever be legal in a country with any sort of transportation laws. and the drivers! they FLY on the roads. you just have to get out of their way, because they aren't stopping fo yo ass. well, did you know that if you looked closely, (especially the ones from au cap), you will not be able to see the driver, but a cat? the driver sleeps and the cat does the dirty work.

a man who drives back and forth between p-a-p and jacmel has only one rule. if you sit up front with him, you have to respect him. one day, he allowed this woman to ride with him. near mon karate (karate mountain, the steepest part of the road), the woman noticed that the driver was sleeping, and yelled to wake him up. he said he stopped the truck and made her get out. how dare she? "mwen mete maji mwen travay pou mwen! li pat gin dwa derespekte sa-a" (i put my magic to work for me! she didn't have the right to disrespect this).

and the mystical lougawou. you could be married to one right now! at night, your very own baby mama or baby daddy might truly be a lougawou. on certain nights, she/he roams the streets and eats people, preferably children. (they usually turn the people into fish to eat them, by the way). to leave you, "li endomi-ou" (she/he makes you fall into a deep, deep sleep, where you are unable to know what is happening.). then, they take off their skin, place it under the bed and fly away. female lougawou's have fire in their asses, and men, they hold it in their teeth.

one man told me of the day he realized his wife was a lougawou. he protected himself against being "endomi" and when she flew away, he took juice from hot pepper and rubbed it all over the skin. when she came back, she was unable to put it back on, as it burnt her. she later died since, duh, you can't live without skin.

so, that is how i spent my evening tonight. sitting by candlelight, sharing space with an amazing group of people, talking and learning and asking questions. i like talking and learning and asking questions. even when the answers seem difficult to wrap my brain around.

and in the morning, i might look a little closer at my lizard friends, as should you...if you happen to have any.

i is 'flicted

2010-03-11T20:37:00.009-05:00

when i taught middle school in georgia, i had a student who always said, “ms. lori, i is ‘flicted...should i try out for basketball or for track?” or “she didn’t do her homework? that girl is ‘flicted!” it is one of the many treasured middle school student words i picked up and have held on to.

as i sit here, listening to the sound of the waves crashing on the shore behind me, drinking a perfect rhum sour, and chain smoke comme il fauts, i is so ‘flicted.

(i’m back in kabik, by the way. i volunteered to “suffer” here, staying at a friend’s house while her roof is being repaired. such hard living!)

i is ‘flicted because the devastation of 112 is mind boggling, no question. the amount of aid that has found it’s way here is also mind boggling. millions and millions of dollars, thousands of pounds of rice, thousands of tents, hundreds of thousands of gallons of water, and my god, they even remade ‘we are the world’! but i know as well as you, that nothing in life is free, even humanitarian aid. my question is, how much is it going to cost haiti in the long run?

will it cost us our independence? on national one, the major road that takes you out of port au prince to the northern part of the country, there is now a GINORMOUS - i’m serious - a HUGE, u.s. army base. it has to stretch at least 3 miles long. tanks, trucks, jeeps, tents, and all other types of intimidating little-penis-man toys. in the news, i hear they say the u.s. army has pulled out of haiti. it sure doesn’t look like it from here, my friends.

what, exactly, are they doing here?

they are here to provide “aid”, yes? does the army usually level the land and build an entire base when they come to offer “aid”? that’s just how they roll, right?

i ask everyone i come in contact with, what they think the forces are doing here? terrifyingly, i’ve heard way too many people say, ”bon, yo vin pran peyi-a pou yo” (well, they came to take the country for themselves). one man told me that the americans caused the earthquake so that they would have an excuse to come here and steal our resources. a friend, who is disgusted by the state of our government, told me she didn’t care if the u.s. or any other country takes over haiti...at least someone would be in charge. one woman was very grateful for the blans, because if they didn’t come to help, many more haitians would have died due to medical issues.

i is ‘flicted! i really don’t know what to think.

not only is the army everywhere, but “humanitarian tourists” are as well. (a new term for me, but i totally dig it). i’ve never seen so many blans in haiti. ever. they are on the backs of motorcycle taxis, they are walking around, they are in big tet boeufs, (suv’s), they are piled into the backs of trucks and tap taps....EVERYWHERE! in the beginning, they were doctors and nurses. now, they are college students, wandering hippie types, people who knew a haitian once, and a shit ton-o pastors and jesus folk. all here to help the haitians and at the same time enjoy the warm weather and buy what art there is left.

speaking of jesus folk, my mom had a conversation with a woman that makes me very worried about the do-good-ers that have disembarked into haiti. in the last few years, my mom has taken on the insane task of re-writing haitian curriculum. the haitian school system is modeled after the french - a lot of memorization and regurgitation. in her “mwen kapab” (i can) curriculum, she has tried to integrate, among many other things, hands-on and small group activities. she also does teacher training, which has been quite an experience. my favorite is when she teaches teachers how to use crayons.

anyway, a woman called her the other day, because she had heard about my mom’s curriculum through the education grapevine. she is an american woman whose church sent her here with a wad of cash, with which she started an orphanage that has 25 kids ages 6 to 13. the conversation kinda went like this:

lady - “yes, mrs. martineau, i heard that you write curriculum for haitian children and i am interested in using it here in my orphanage...blah blah blah...and the material is in english, right?”

mom -“ummm....no, why would it be in english? it is in french. the official language of haiti is french.”

lady - “oh...well, since you're an american, i just figured...well, that will be a problem for me, since i don’t speak french.”

mom - “ummm....well, schools here are in french.”

lady - “oh...i hadn’t thought of that.”

mom - “well, if you educate these children in english, do you have the funds to then send them to university in the u.s.?”

lady - “oh, no, not at all.”

mom - “well, haitian schools are like american schools. at certain grade levels, the students take achievement tests that they have to pass to proceed to the next grade level. how would these children take these tests if they learn in english?”

lady - “oh, really? i didn’t know that. i...um...i just hadn’t thought of that.”

my mom, the calm diplomat that she is, didn’t scream at the lady, but she sure screamed when she got off the phone. she ended the conversation by telling the lady to call her back after she had done some actual THINKING.

i is ‘flicted!!! what will this all cost the children of haiti, who have been swept up into the many new orphanages, or worse, whisked away to other countries?

and what is the asking price for a diluted culture? the straw that broke this camel’s back was this damn sign, the picture i posted. missionaries welcome? american style bathrooms? cold coca cola? are you fucking kidding me? i draw the line when we haitians start to accommodate american asses, no matter the reason that brought them here. i will so go into osama-style rage if i hear any talk of a mc donnalds to also accommodate their stomachs. we don’t eat fast food! we don’t piss in clean american toilets! we don’t drink cold sodas!

i don’t think that foreigners coming here is all bad. i am aware of and seriously grateful for all the medical aid that found it’s way to haiti after 112. if it wasn’t for the kick ass canadian doctors i worked with at general hospital, who knows what would have happened to the hundreds of patients we saw and helped? a lot of my american friends have the desire to come here and DO something, and it deeply touches me that they would even think about it. i actually can’t wait until they do come. i also think that it is inevitable that those paying attention in this world have realized that we are intertwined in this thing called life. there is something exceptionally beautiful about one person reaching out to another.

i am scared for my country, though. if i am at my house, i am aware of who is coming in and what they want, what they have come to do, and then i decide if i want to let them in or not. unfortunately, (i wish i knew a word that conveyed unfortunately times 100...if you know one, insert it here) ________we do not have a government that is keeping watch. when the u.n. forces are picking up underaged girls for a fun night, no one is telling them it’s not okay. when the canadian army is set up at the riverbanks outside of jacmel with loads of drilling equipment, doing god knows what, no one is asking them what intentions they have with our river? when the unattractive american speedo-wearing dudes are sitting in the sand, no one is asking them to put on more decent clothes. and when haitians are building “american style bathrooms”, no one is telling them - dude - americans can pee in the bushes like the rest of us!

is it possible to have the beauty of one person reaching out to another manifest itself without strings attached? without changing a culture? so many ‘flicted questions crowd my thoughts.

all i can think is, a la bob marley - buffalo soldiers, in the heart of the caribbean, analyze the stench, get up, stand up. sun is shining, three little birds pitch by my doorstep, sayin' this is my message to you - we might need to use some natural mystic and chase some of these crazy baldheads outta town!

9 mars 2010

2010-03-09T21:08:00.005-05:00

so, i think i mentioned evelyn, a woman i met when i interpreted at general hospital? she had a metal thingy screwed into her leg since mid january that needed to come out. after looking around and bugging the hell out of people, i finally found a doctor that knew what it was and how to get it off. so i took her today.

the good news, is that the procedure went well and she now has a cast on her.

the bad news is, that she begged me not to leave her and i watched them unscrew it. can i just say ---- g-a-ross!!!

i really don't know how medical people do this whole medical thing. since 112, i've seen more of the human body than i ever, ever, EVER wanted to see. i do, however, find it quite amazing that one human being can approach another human being and know exactly what to do to fix the situation. quite a rush, i'm sure.

so - that's pretty much what i did today.

it felt really good, though. i must admit - to think that one leg in haiti is doing okay tonight, is quite a nice thought.

mass graves

2010-03-08T15:51:00.011-05:00

so today i went to visit the mass graves that hold an unknown number of people that died on 112. the bodies were taken by dump truck and dropped into huge (i mean HUGE) holes. the piles were too many to capture in one photograph.

it's been hours, but i can still smell that horribly strong decomposition smell.

it was really, really quiet.

and really, really sad.

when i told people i wanted to go visit the site, i got several "you're so damn crazy" responses. there's something in me, though, - i find it necessary to always experience things with my own senses. it's not enough for someone to just tell me about it. i was telling this to the man who took me and he said "tout moun beswin vin we sa-a pou nou pa bliye tout moun sa yo e s'ak rive peyi nou-an" (everyone needs to come see this so we don't forget all these people and what happened to our country). he had several friends and a coworker buried somewhere in the scattered mounds.

walking along, there were random bones that didn't make it into the graves. an arm, a leg. i almost stepped on a jaw.

crazy.

there were deep holes in the earth with bodies you could see. i asked my "tour guide" why they weren't covered? "bon, y'ap tan pou le yo pote plus cadav. y'ap jwen cadav toujou, se la y'ap vin mete yo. pa gin mog anko" (well, they're waiting for when they bring more corpses. they're still finding corpses and they're going to bring and put them here. there aren't morgues anymore).

while there, i was surprised because i felt a strange --- comfort? (i don't know if that's the right word) in that the last mass grave site i visited was filled with bodies of people murdered for political reasons. this felt profoundly different. there was no dictator, no president, no political party, no government official on whom to place blame. death by natural causes you could say. it's the god damn mother fucking earthquake's fault.

i don't really know what else to say. i'm gonna go have a stiff drink, though, i'll tell you that much. and your job - please don't forget haiti.