In my post on Wednesday, I talked about a farmer I met on one of my walks and how our random encounter had meant a lot to me. As I was writing it, I realized that I was building this man into something that he probably wasn't. I was making him into this charicature of the perfect response to hardship and suffering. And I knew that that was probably unjust given that what I knew of his life I learned in spattered Creole and facial gestures. And the last two days, I have thought about this farmer a lot. I've been reading Ecclesiastes and some Wendell Barry essays on agriculture lately, and I felt like I had a better understanding of them after hashing out some thoughts in my last blog post. And things were looking up.

But then yesterday afternoon, Wilgar walks into the room and says there is a guy asking for me outside. And outside the guest house, there sat the farmer from my walk, whom I never thought I would see again. And he and Wilgar start talking in really fast Creole and Wilgar asks me if I know this guy. And I said yes. And throughout the conversation the man kept asking me, "Don't you remember me? I'm the guy you met on the way to Mont Kabwit" and I would say yes. Most of what he said I didn't understand, and Wilgar couldn't translate much because his English isn't very good. But what I got out of Wilgar was that the farmer was saying that I had promised to help him in some way, and that if he came to OFCB I could help him. I understood him when he said, "I met you and I told you about my problems and you told me you worked at OFCB" and I said yes. My mind was racing to try to remember everything that I had told him in our conversation on Tuesday, and I remember telling him very little. He had ranted for about 10-15 minutes while I just stood there. He asked me what I was doing here and I had said I was teaching english at OFCB. And he had asked me what I was going to do to help Bayonnais, and I hadn't been able to give him an answer. But here he was saying that I had made promises.

Maybe something was lost in the language gap when I spoke to him the first time. Maybe I answered one of questions poorly and alluded to something I hadn't meant. Or maybe he had just wanted to hear something positive and helpful from me, and had heard it whether I said it or not. Either way, he believed that I had made promises to him, and that I wasn't living up to those promises, and he looked at me with pure hatred in his eyes. He looked miserable, like I had just kicked him while he was down. And then he left. I've reread everything I wrote in my last post and now all of it seems misconstrued. Since I've been here, I've wondered a lot whether I was doing any good, but at least I knew that I wasn't doing any bad. That's not the case any more. Through some miscommunication or misinterpretation of words, this man thought that I was intently making his life harder than it already is. And that makes me feel like shit.