Haitian girl learning to walk

Haitian girl. Ile-a-Vache, Haiti, 2007

Reality in one of the poorest corners of Haiti: if you are born with a physical disability your parents likely won't be able to care for you. Abandoned by her parents, this little girl is in the loving care of a nun (Sr. Flora) who runs an orphanage for the severely disabled. One day she may be able to walk on her own.

My reasoning to post this photograph now was quite purposeful. One of the most frequent Google searches that drives people to my blog is evidently, "Haitian girls." I don't know the motivation behind these searches but I lived long enough in Haiti not to ask. Still, one can hope, the searches are well intentioned.

the girls of Haiti

Still hope of a future...

Saved from starvation...

At serious risk of teenage pregnancy...

in a glance

The southern region of Haiti is the lushest part of the country. The children at Pwoje Espwa eat 3 meals a day and attend school free of charge. Even the streets of Cayes are not completely filled with the sorts of deformed and crippled beggars and street kids that riddle descriptions of Graham Greene's Haiti (though, admittedly, most of Haiti has not improved since the penning of the Comedians).

Nonetheless, the poverty here disturbs. A visitor to our organization cried at the realities she encountered at Mother Theresa's home in downtown Cayes. She had been expecting Mexico-like conditions and instead encountered dejection, poverty and disease rivaled only in Bangladesh, Sudan, Somalia and the like. And yet, the Cayes area cannot compare to the Artibonite region and Gonaive.
The Espwa kids come to us from this reality. Though we cannot offer them everything, we can offer thousands of children a hope they might not otherwise know. We often kid about the face that might "make" Espwa's non-existent trust fund -- we want to do more for Haiti's future. So, we talk about the "honest-to-goodness fly-in-the-eye orphan." We know these exist and that this is no joke, but what we really mean to say is that we must capture that reality and bring it to the consciousness of those who might help.

Claudia's eyes may be bug-free and she may have parents (albeit, very poor ones who have trouble staying employed and can hardly even afford a one-room house in which to shelter their extended family of 7) but her eyes still have a look that one does not see in the developed world. Even with a smile on her face, her eyes have a nearly intangible, but certainly real, sad or wise look to them. What gives these children such a curiously deep glance at such a young age? Can they truly process an understanding of the unfair hand life has dealt them before they even reach the fabled age of reason?

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.

...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.

Lovince

On the right is Lovince, my godson. His mother died of what was, most likely, AIDS. He and his two brothers live at Castel-Pere. He is quiet, calls me "maren" (godmother), and acts goofy only if other kids are goofing-off. His eyes are a warm brown color, piercing.

twisted palms

I saw a palm tree by the side of the road today. At first glance, it looked fallen. Then I noticed that the trunk lay parallel to the ground but then bent up at a ninety-degree angle. Sitting only a few feet off the ground were the full-grown palm leaves and clusters of healthy looking cocoanuts. The twisted palm brought to mind the laughing children, the over-stuffed prison cells in the Cayes jail, the family of seven sharing a one-room hut, the sweaty, gnarled old men dragging pull-carts behind them and the old women sitting in the dark by the roadside selling their wares. There is nothing stronger than the will to live, to produce, and to reach to the heavens and declare, “I exist!”

a family in misery

The little girl sloshing cloudy water out of her bucket-tub, popping a red plastic toy into her mouth and sucking out any pooling liquid through her sparse set of teeth lends a strange sense of normalcy to the whole pathetic scene. Moun se moun (people are people). The baby’s eyes, confirming this, seem to say, “If I only had a chance, who knows what I could become.”Remove the micro lens, pan out and see the reality of poverty upon which the bucket-baby scene plays out and know that there probably is no hope for this little girl – just as there is precious little for her neighbors and the majority of her contemporary countrymen.
Her neighbors are the family St. Jean. They do not own their land. They do not own their home. They rent one room in a thatched roof hut (the room with the pink curtain on the far left side). Their current rent is $700 Haitian/year, which is about $95 US/year. They haven't paid in a while so they were served notice in January and will have to vacate in the next two weeks. They do not yet know where they will go.
Seven people were living in the "home." Since we took Mackenson (7) and Claudia (5), there are now five sharing the room. One of those is a child of 2 years whose bright orange head of hair testifies to the degree of her malnourishment. The remaining four are "able bodied" adults, one of whom is working. The latter, the father of the children, works as a shoe shiner and often does not find work. The mother, her younger sister and the younger brother of the father all live in the home but do not work. When asked why no one else works they shrug and say they cannot find it.

“La misère,” my friend Bertony whispers to me as we sit deciphering Madame St. Jean’s hushed responses. Yes, it certainly is misery. The woman who bore the three children cannot be older than 22. She giggles in the back of her hand and says she cannot speak for the family when her husband is not at home.“If we could help you, how can we help you?” Blank stares.

“We need everything,” she finally answers.

“Madame, I cannot write on your behalf for ‘everything!’ So, please, give me an idea!”

“A home.”

The baby shrieks happily and splashes water onto the mud.