bye-bye rasta man

Jonas was walking in Camp Perrin with 4-inch, coiling dreads bouncing rhythmically about his smaller-than-average cranium. As he rounds a corner, a policeman's eye is drawn by sudden movement in the periphery of his "watch." He strides over to Jonas and grips his arm roughly. Jonas -- who carries only a sad collection of innocuous items in his worn backpack and who was doing nothing particularly attention-getting at the time of the encounter -- looks startled.

The cop drags him to the next corner, mostly wordlessly but also faintly mumbling profanities and the word "rasta," to a barber shop. The policeman plunks a miffed Jonas down in the barberchair and orders and old, boney man in the corner to chop the crop of natty coils.

As the barber goes to work with his razor, the officer leans on the wall in the corner of the shop. He wears a smirk. When the barber finishes, Jonas looks clean-shaven but decidedly less cool... even with the earring. The cop plops a few coins in the barbers hand and walks off, greeting his friends outside with a laugh.

"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.

3,2,1 Happy New Year! ------ GET DOWN!!!

What better way to bring in 2007 than with a little dancing? We all went to Eddie’s store to get some beers. The reggae played loud, we danced and chatted. After a while, we moved to this club called Marabou where we had to pay a whole $2 American to get in. You can buy drinks at the bar but you can also BYOB, which is the route we took.

The DJ played copa all night long and we danced under the clear sky, bright moon and stars. A perfect night, with new friends and old. At midnight we kissed each other on the cheeks. The music and dancing make up for the utterly disgusting state of the open-stall bathrooms, which, by the end of the night, became co-ed. If I never smell that smell again, that’ll be OK with me.

Around 1am, as I was dancing with Eddie or Yves, we were suddenly pushed toward the back of the club by the crowd. Everyone starting shouting to get down so we all crouched near a garden and dogpiled on Charlotte and Rob with Daniel and Eddie somewhere in the middle. This happened to be one dogpile instance when I would really have prefered the bottom. In a touchingly protective moment, Whistle (pronounced WHIS-LAY), who guards the Pwoje Espwa property in town and was partying with us, stood over us to provide cover. The crowd made some noise and then we heard shots.

Nobody moved. The rumor finally reached us that a drunk guy had come into the club and the police chased him in. Another rumor said that someone was sending up fireworks. It was the former.

At that moment the absolute ridiculousness of my situation occurred to me – my first hour in 007 and I’m crouched in the garden of a Haitian club with my friends and co-workers surrounding me and I’m hearing gun fire. As bizarre as it sounds, I had to laugh! There was another commotion and everyone who’d gotten up, ducked back down. Then it was over; the music continued and we danced a while longer. The party must go on? Well, it turned out that the cops shot blanks from a .38 into the air. No biggie. In DC, the incident might have been far more problematic.

Despite the night of revelree, I made it to church at 9am. Today we’ll go to the beach. Tomorrow, we’ll work. And I’ll work out my photo uploading problem. Mwen promete nou (I promise you).