secrets

Haiti hides at night. The noises and the smells swell as the sense of sight fades away. In the distance, drums sound a rhythm. The almost palpable smell of nuts roasting drifts over the breeze and mixing with smells of body odor, diesel, and animal feces. Women laugh and men debate; children, hidden away for the evening, stifle giggles as they drift to sleep. Someone turns up a radio and kompa music, with its two-beat rhythm and electronic riffs, joins the mélange of sounds.

Palm trees stick out from marshy rice paddies and stand out like dark shadows against a midnight blue sky, from which stars glare boastfully down. Casiopia and Orion twist uncomfortably in the near-equatorial sky. A few dogs bark and some bitch stuck somewhere whines loudly. The percussion-al sound of roosters calling to one another commences near midnight. Magic becomes comprehensible in the velvet cloak of the Haitian night that hides all the nasty truths of the day.