standing water

the making or breaking of a city-slicker

Life on a farm – at times picturesque, tranquil even idyllic. The ick fator, however, is real, present and occasionally a danger.
The following is dedicated to my older brother, urbanite and faithful author of sometimes political, sometimes personal blog, SPACETROPIC.
A Sunday stroll: A mare munched lazily on grass near her sleeping new born. Kids (the baby goat not the baby human) literally bounced gaily two and fro – as one might imagine they would do on a fair springtime day. One older female goat attempted to climb a tree and got stuck on the first knot near the bottom. She looked left, right and baffled – then, vexed, she bleated at her predicament. I rounded a corner and saw two piglets, covered in mystery slime, happily nosing the ground, looking for grub. They looked perturbed by my presence and would have inched closer for inspection if I hadn’t scooted away. In the not too far distance, a cow mooed – alerting me to her presence and her present activity, which… smelled. I plodded on to my destination, a natural well, overgrown with bird-filled bamboo groves and thick vegetation, perfect for snacks.
The wild kingdom doesn’t really acknowledge the imaginary boundary created by some brick, mortar, and few screens. My apartment, in the second story of a community-style house, allows me to be very close with nature on a 24-7 basis.

There is a small army of piss-ants in my clothes bureau. A little parade of the same march down the clay-brick wall next to my bed – a straggler or two ending up on my bathrobe and pillow. While in town yesterday afternoon, a stow-away crawled out from my shirt and explored my neck before I noticed it tickling... and squished it.

On Saturday, a devilish looking spider – not the large scary kind that hang out on ceilings, eat lots of mosquitoes and look as though they could be caged for pets but the small, fat, short-legged kind that look as though one tinsy bite might kill you – sat amicably on the lip of my bed spread where it jumped from its roosting perch on the window sill. Sadly, the grey thing died a swift death under the sole of my leather flip-flop.

At night – every night, dumb brown beetles careen from out of nowhere into my big head of hair, as I sit reading under a light. Their sticky legs cause them to catch in the curls. Only later, when rearranging the ‘do or throwing a massive tangle into a ponytail, do I feel something creep between my fingers. I have learned that a calm and gentle grasp is required to extract them without damage (and in order to not further gross myself out).

Several other members of the beetle family crowd the corners of my room. During daylight hours, they fight for attention with loud and lazy bumble bees and sharp, evil looking hornets that somehow appear and get lost chez-Portia only to foolishly attempt to exit through barricaded windows.

Really, I must not forget the physiological genius of the insect family: The cockroach. Word on the street is that the kinds in Madagascar and Micronesia are the size of my foot and can hiss… but I think I will settle for that boring old Haitian three-incher. Living up to their reputation for survival, the suckers survive full minutes after a blast of lethal insecticide and spastically flop around into faces, laps and lunches.

Creepy crawly fun doesn’t end there.

During a weekend farewell dinner for one of our departing volunteers, Templeton the Rat’s cute, white-bellied cousin decided to scamper over and join the festivities. He slithered out of the restaurant’s thatched roofing and onto the rafters of the metal overhang. After a brief but noted appearance, he was gone – sadly depriving us of his prolonged presence at the impromptu party.

I share these happy thoughts with you for several reasons. One: witness the metamorphosis. Before my move to Haiti, I would holler at a house-mate to come kill an intruding silver fish (which we have lots of here too) let alone to attack a terrifying, cob-web-making arachnid. Two: a retaliation. My older brother recently blogged about his undeniable inner-urban core and his distaste for ticks and hybrid wolf-dogs etc. I had promised to rebutt with some of realities of my life here, showing how my undeniable inner-urban core is slowly being tortured to death.

Pass me the corncob pipe, grandpa!

(Faint sounds of banjos playing)

Fresh rabbit stew for dinner!

a visual taste of Vache

This is the west coast of the island of Ile-a-Vache -- the bay called Abaka.
The private beaches of the private resort. We were the only ones around to enjoy the Harry Belafonte blasting from my iPod speakers and see this beautiful sunset.

A water spout formed over Les Cayes -- on our return voyage we were doused by a good tropical rain storm. The spout died when it hit land.

island of the COW

Imagine an island with tall sand-stone cliffs, enormous chandelier cacti, long white sand beaches, clear blue water, ~800 inhabitants and two secluded resorts. Go to one of these resorts and imagine yourself the only guest there, aside from your two companions. The staff-to-guest ratio is 5-1 and the food and atmosphere exquisite.

The island is Ile-a-Vache, several miles south of the Les Cayes coast. The resort mentioned is Abaka Bay, which faces west toward the mountains near Port Salut. Nick, Alex (an Ethiopian MINUSTAH guy) and I were the only guests at the water front hotel on Saturday night. The weather was perfect Caribbean Spring.

The GOOGLE IMAGES map shows the island, just to the south of Les Cayes (the patchy sign of life on the Haitian coast). Abaka Bay is the first cove on the western side of the island.
I think that the photographs rather speak for themselves so I'll let them.

Lovince

On the right is Lovince, my godson. His mother died of what was, most likely, AIDS. He and his two brothers live at Castel-Pere. He is quiet, calls me "maren" (godmother), and acts goofy only if other kids are goofing-off. His eyes are a warm brown color, piercing.

twisted palms

I saw a palm tree by the side of the road today. At first glance, it looked fallen. Then I noticed that the trunk lay parallel to the ground but then bent up at a ninety-degree angle. Sitting only a few feet off the ground were the full-grown palm leaves and clusters of healthy looking cocoanuts. The twisted palm brought to mind the laughing children, the over-stuffed prison cells in the Cayes jail, the family of seven sharing a one-room hut, the sweaty, gnarled old men dragging pull-carts behind them and the old women sitting in the dark by the roadside selling their wares. There is nothing stronger than the will to live, to produce, and to reach to the heavens and declare, “I exist!”

an online interview

A few weeks ago, the co-creator of expatinterviews.com contacted me. She had discovered my blog through perusing the internet and asked me if I would mind interviewing for their website. I agreed.

Where were you born?
Washington, D.C., USA

In which country and city are you living now?
Les Cayes, Haiti is the closest place you’ll find on a map but I am actually living several miles northwest in a place called Madame Combes/Castel-Pere. It’s farm country....

...Do you miss home and family sometimes?
I do miss my family – because they are the best in the world and I am very close to them. But then, we are close, so we keep in touch. I miss my girlfriends dreadfully because I live with a bunch of guys, the orphanage is mostly boys and my co-workers are mostly male. I miss getting a good glass of red wine with my best buddies on a Friday night. I also miss warm showers.

Every Friday night, Pwoje Espwa personnel get together for a “fête.” I think it’s modeled on the Peace Corps weekly tradition of getting together with your fellow Corps buddies to have a drink. It also helps solidify our family-ness...

...Do you have other plans for the future?
Right now, I am leaving the future a bit open-ended. I committed to 6 months to a year with Pwoje Espwa but have told them that I am flexible as well. Grad school is a possibility but then, so is finding work with an NGO. I continue to reach out and research while remaining committed to my current work here.

If you are interested in reading the full interview, first one for an expat in Haiti, check out expatinterviews.com. It's also cool to see what other "expats" are doing all over the world.

a family in misery

The little girl sloshing cloudy water out of her bucket-tub, popping a red plastic toy into her mouth and sucking out any pooling liquid through her sparse set of teeth lends a strange sense of normalcy to the whole pathetic scene. Moun se moun (people are people). The baby’s eyes, confirming this, seem to say, “If I only had a chance, who knows what I could become.”Remove the micro lens, pan out and see the reality of poverty upon which the bucket-baby scene plays out and know that there probably is no hope for this little girl – just as there is precious little for her neighbors and the majority of her contemporary countrymen.
Her neighbors are the family St. Jean. They do not own their land. They do not own their home. They rent one room in a thatched roof hut (the room with the pink curtain on the far left side). Their current rent is $700 Haitian/year, which is about $95 US/year. They haven't paid in a while so they were served notice in January and will have to vacate in the next two weeks. They do not yet know where they will go.
Seven people were living in the "home." Since we took Mackenson (7) and Claudia (5), there are now five sharing the room. One of those is a child of 2 years whose bright orange head of hair testifies to the degree of her malnourishment. The remaining four are "able bodied" adults, one of whom is working. The latter, the father of the children, works as a shoe shiner and often does not find work. The mother, her younger sister and the younger brother of the father all live in the home but do not work. When asked why no one else works they shrug and say they cannot find it.

“La misère,” my friend Bertony whispers to me as we sit deciphering Madame St. Jean’s hushed responses. Yes, it certainly is misery. The woman who bore the three children cannot be older than 22. She giggles in the back of her hand and says she cannot speak for the family when her husband is not at home.“If we could help you, how can we help you?” Blank stares.

“We need everything,” she finally answers.

“Madame, I cannot write on your behalf for ‘everything!’ So, please, give me an idea!”

“A home.”

The baby shrieks happily and splashes water onto the mud.

Easter in my homes

Yesterday while I was spending the day in the mountains with friends and marveling at the incredible difference between my childhood and theirs, it was snowing in Washington, DC.
My father told me of the ephemeral April snow melting on cherry blossoms and of the beautiful Easter vigil service he attended with my mother at my childhood parish. Another friend told me that she accompanied her Christian friend to the National Cathedral (my alma mater) on Sunday and could not believe the grandeur of the Easter-Sunday Mass. Everyone celebrates this feast day a little differently all over the Christian world -- but I do love to attend the great churches in big cities on these days.

We celebrated here. The effort was touching but the results somewhat lacking in reverence. While our service was not particularly reverential, leaving me slightly homesick for the dark, candle-lit cathedral services in the States, Easter brought me two new godsons: Chupy and Lovinse. Haiti and I will forever be connected...

yon bon lespri

Some images of the Haitian spirit.

the once and future...

At the end of T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, he describes the “candle in the wind:” the grand idea that King Arthur had to create a kingdom founded on chivalry and justice tempered by mercy. Arthur has a great epiphany before he passes this candle to a young boy named Tom, so that Tom may carry light of this idea with him and pass it on to his countrymen. The epiphany is this: that man must learn to disregard possession, that “mine” must become “ours” and boarders must be discounted as the nothing that they are. Then, and only then, will humans find lasting peace.

Granted, Arthur is supposed to come again – or perhaps he already has come, as they say, in the form of Churchill. But to read his great tale of hope (even if it is largely fictitious) and to know that he, like so many other would-be saviors in history, failed in his efforts to settle and bring prosper to a people leaves a bittersweet feeling. And perhaps living in a country like Haiti only makes that feeling stronger.One must strive to make a difference – to change the status quo or improve it. To do nothing would be a crime, as acknowledged by White in the last pages of his oeuvre. The record of failure, however, is daunting.