in the Caribbean world...

In the silent, moonlit, Haitian evening, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Caribbean of magical realism springs to life. A thin and shrill voice emerges in the silence – then, the sound of shrieking and metal doors rattling. Someone is having a “satanic fit.” The spirits will leave him but until then, he will pass hours in writhing agony, women will try to restrain him, douse him with water, tap him with special branches. Finally, he will heave one more tortured sigh and pass into sleep.

The conversation after a night like this turns to voodoo and the magical realism of the Caribbean. Whether people here are more in touch with a realm that we, with all our technology and electricity have forgotten, or whether a lack of education promulgates these beliefs, something supernatural here feels very real.

The people recount their tales in circular patterns – disregarding linear understanding. Chinua Achebe does this in telling the story of his people in West Africa, Things Fall Apart. This device – one used by the oral storytellers – helps him express his people’s culture in a complete way. The Haitian people, most of whom can claim West Africa as their “Pays Natal,” to borrow from Aimé César’s terminology, have clearly never lost this aspect of their culture of origin. A doctor, trying to diagnose a stomachache, asks a grown man how long he has been throwing up. He responds a day, a year, he cannot remember but it has been too long. He moans in pain. His telling is circular in his memory of the pain.

In the midst of all this, the “blan” bring aid, medicine and technology. A man from Kansas opens a birthing clinic close to the middle of nowhere, but not quite. The “Maison de Naissance” offers good pre and post-natal care. Some regular medical practices that women all over the fully “developed” world tend to enjoy are offered but regarded skeptically by the Haitian women who given birth, rest for a few hours, then pick up their babies and walk the dusty road home in the blazing sun. A kid is cursed by a purported witch and goes blind. He awakes in the morning and sees nothing. He is terrified. He goes to the best ENT hospital in Haiti. The doctor, shaking his head, declares there is nothing physically wrong with the boy. A priest gives in. He blesses the kid; he anoints him, prays over him and says that his sight will return slowly. And surely and slowly, he begins to see light, then shapes, then details. The spell is broken.

Well into the complete darkness of a Haitian night, a child screams. To ignorant ears, it sounds like a case of serious abuse. But security is already there, making sure everyone is OK. He is standing, smiling. When a doctor appears at the scene of the satanic attack, the people seem baffled. Why would he need medical attention? His affliction is not of this world. The doctor observes for a moment and shuffles back to bed. In the morning, she checks up on him and they all laugh. Of course, he is fine!
In the shadow of old and craggy mountains, Haitians are born, grow, live and die. For many, tucked away along impassable roads over mountain passes, much of the outside world will remain hidden. In song, one cries out, “when will God reveal to me my purpose; His will for my life?”