next post?

Next blog to be posted from the USA!
but don't worry... I'm coming back to Haiti soon...

"oh Io"

Haitian cows have just the right number of ribs showing and their shoulder blades tend to be quite pronounced. Their tales swish tirelessly as they stand in the relentless sun -- batting at tsetse flies or the Caribbean equivalent. Their horns grow up, out and back with age, curling into perfect halos.
They are quite like what my child's imagination envisioned the cows from Greek mythology to look like. Could a god, even the infamous Zeus, have found a beast like this attractive? This is my attempt at immortalizing (in "mosaic") one of the cows that hangs out beneath my window. She reminded me of Io.

some changes

On Thursday I'm heading home for a few weeks. Gotta go to a graduation and a wedding and see some friends and family. I'll be back here by mid-June though!

A volunteer and good friend, Nico, took off for a new job this afternoon. A diocese in Connecticut runs a mission house in Port-au-Prince. Nick landed the position of running this house and overseeing the mission's various projects throughout the city.The kids put on a show in his honor. Some of them sang a song they composed about how they will miss him and see him again one day. The talent show (called a spektak here) was the finest I've see yet. There was a comedy skit -- teenagers dressed up and acting like loud, angry old men. And there was a "remix" of Michael Jackson's "Thriller." Not too shabby.Nick lived in Cayes for two and a half years. He's "moving on" now but he's not moving far. We hope to and expect to see him from time to time -- because the bonds created here last a life time and, well, we'll miss him.

the little things in life

practicing flips

walking on paths with no names

In late Spring, the land sweats. The sun, in its Caribbean intensity, burns off any moisture from the earth and, as you walk, the water vapor being sucked from the dirt forms droplets on your skin. By late morning, all signs of the evening rain disappear in the cumulus clouds.
The countryside never hints at the 21st century. Neither modern structures nor sounds of industry interrupt the serene poverty. The sensation is at once as beautiful as it is tragic. Did time along with everything and everyone else just forget this corner of the world?
A woman prepares peanuts on the top of tomb of someone she most likely knew. This evening, her younger brothers will probably sit on the same tomb with a bottle of clarin (Haitian moonshine) and talk loudly into the night sky. Life goes on here, despite the lack of technological crap and electricity and cars and screened windows and tiled floors and three story houses and 7-11s, with persistence and passion.

invest in your future

"and she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead"

Person "X" worked for a funeral home in Les Cayes in the late 1990s. He served as a driver and general assistant. One day, he awoke to find his neighbor dead -- the family wailing helplessly over the body. X decided that he could aid the family by removing the dead to the funeral home for them. So, X did this.

Not long after X arrived at the funeral home with the deceased, the HNP caught wind of his criminal act. They clapped handcuffs on him and hauled him off to court. Being a poorly paid driver in a very poor country, X could not afford representation or bribe money.

The presiding judge deemed X's crime, moving a body before a judge arrived to declare it officially dead (think of the coroner's song in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy's house lands on the Wicked Witch of the East), punishable by 2 years in the Cayes prison. So X spent two years of his youth in a 20x10 foot prison cell along with 5 to 15 other guys.

life under the mango trees

The sun filters gently through the mango tree leaves. A soft, warm breeze blows from the Caribbean Sea to the south. The wind dislodges a rotten mango, which hits the ground with a splat. In between some branches, large brown spiders have created their perfectly symmetrical webs.

These kids just kept me company, sitting and hanging out after lunch. Claudia, below, goofed off for my camera. She the one who's parents we helped find a new home. She seems happy -- if not a little spastic.

...are you going to Haiti Verte? ...remember me to one who lives there...

Tuesday was May Day, the Feast of St. Joseph, the worker, and International Workers’ Day. No worked, no one went to school. At this time of year, the Les Cayes arts and agriculture community puts on “Haiti Verte,” a little festival held in a manicured park in Bergeau.

Bergeau is situated in the hills in the outskirts of Les Cayes. It has a slightly cooler climate than the city due to closer proximity to mountains and a river. It also has a slightly wealthier community. The happily situated park where Haiti Verte took place could exist in Miami, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Bermuda, Dominican Republic, Cuba… well, you get the idea. It’s tropical. It’s classy. Walking through the gate and up the verdant hills, one almost forgets the surrounding poverty.

On Monday night, Haiti Verte was alive with music, smells of cooking food, flowers and honey, sounds of children playing and people laughing. I ran into many acquaintances that had come to stroll through the park, browse the arts and crafts, eat and drink. Immediately, I thought of my childhoods in Maine when my parents took me to the Blue Hill Fair. How strange to find the equivalent social gathering in a country that seems only famous for its poverty, gang crime and corruption.

a study in silhouettes

more from Ile-a-Vache

rice paddies

what I see every evening driving back to the farm.