an evening dance

In the evening, the boys get together to practice dancing. They work on their hip-hop skills and then relax by listening to Kompa music. Last night, several older guys who work in construction and carpentry and whatnot decided to show up. Everyone watched as Sony taught some of the 10-14-year-olds pop-lock and “couwant.”

After an hour of “repeticion,” someone put on the kompa. The kids got up and Guy Pay-ed (some new popular way of dancing that involves shuffling your feet and robotically moving your arms up and down and down and up to the beat of the music). Some of us started actually dancing kompa (an easy two-step with reeeeeeeally slow spins). The older guys, the construction etc. workers, began twisting and spinning and sort of merry-go-rounding together.

Haiti is an affectionate culture. Men hold hands with men and women with women – and then women hold men’s hands too and so forth. But generally, there is no sense of shame (as in our close-minded American culture) with this sort of display of affection. Though I have grown used to seeing this – I still could not contain laughter of sheer joy and amazement at seeing these tall and sturdy young men clasping each other’s hands and dancing with unabashed and childish happiness.