James, in Haiti

Leaving Bayonnais

2008-08-22T17:31:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, I woke up for my last full day in Bayonnais to the sound of rain. Tropical storm Fay was passing through and there was pretty heavy wind and rain for most of the morning. So, my last full day was spent holed in OFCB, with the rest of Bayonnais holed in their own homes. Everything was pretty quiet. And on Sunday morning, I got up, ate my last plate ever of Madame Sabine’s delicious scrambled eggs, and headed over the church for my preaching appointment. I sat behind the pulpit next to Actionnel for well over an hour, through all the pre-sermon proceedings, slightly nervous at the prospect of having to stand up in front of around 250 people. But my main reason for being nervous was fear that everyone would find my sermon really boring. The services are close to three hours long, in a hot, sweaty church, so if a sermon isn’t captivating, people rest their heads on the back of the bench in front of them and take a nap. I hadn’t been able to understand a sermon since I’d been in Bayonnais due to the language barrier, but I’d sort of been able to judge how interesting a sermon was by how many people were napping.

But the time finally came for me to stand up and do my thing, and I immediately realized how lucky I was to have Actionnel translating for me. Actionnel is a very captivating speaker, and everything I said in English came out sounding much nicer in English. And a few times Actionnel added something of his own to something I said, which was perfectly fine with me. The sermon didn’t really have a single theme. It was more just me talking about what Bayonnais has meant to me spiritually, taking a lot of ideas from the book The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning, a book I read this summer which gave me a lot to think about. And I tried to focus everything on the biblical passages Luke 7:36-50 and Matthew 9:9-12.

“As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many collectors and ‘sinners’ came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’? On hearing this, Jesus said, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call for the righteous, but sinners.’”
Matthew 9:9-12

I talked about what it means to be ‘spiritually broken’, something Brennan Manning talks about a lot. Overall, I think it went fairly well. I got a fairly decent number of “Amen”s and “Mmmhmmm”s, which I figure is a good sign. And later, Amilor told me “I really understood what you were trying to say,” which was more than I could have hoped for.

And then I ate lunch, and said my goodbyes, and got in the truck (which was kind of weird as I hadn’t ridden in car since May, or even seen a paved road) and rode the four hour drive to Port-au-Prince. The drive was beautiful, and a little saddening because it reminded me how little I had travelled while I had been in Haiti (not a single beach….). I didn’t even get to see that much of Port-au-Prince, but I felt that I had seen enough to get a good impression of the city. If I could describe Port in one word it would be “unstable”. And poverty was just as present in Port as it was in Bayonnais, but it was a different kind of poverty. It was urban poverty, but not like anything I’d ever seen in Central America. I think if I had spent more time this summer in urban areas, I would have seen a completely different side of Haiti. As we approached the city, we began to see UN tanks with uniformed peace-keeping forces sitting on top holding automatic weapons. But they didn’t really stand out as shocking or obtrusive. They blended in with the environment of Port-au-Prince, and seemed to reflect the essence of the city, in a strange and sad way.

I stayed at a “guest house” in the city that lots of Americans stay at while passing through Port. There were three American couples there with 6 small, Haitian children. They were in the middle of an adoption process and this was their second visit to Haiti to visit their future kids. This time, they were moving the kids from an orphanage in Port to an orphanage in Cayes, in Southern Haiti, where they believed they would be safer. It was weird seeing the interaction between these Americans who didn’t speak any Creole and these kids who didn’t speak any English. These American couples were talking and interacting with these kids just as they would with American children, and there was an air of great cultural awkwardness, at least from my point of view. But I could tell these kids were happy, and these couples loved them even though they barely knew them, which I thought was pretty remarkable.

At the Port-au-Prince airport, I had a long conversation with a Haitian-American woman from New York and she asked me a lot about what I had done this summer. And this was the first instance of many this week that I have found it very hard to give an accurate description of Bayonnais to people that haven’t been there. And I’ve realized that I can’t, and I wouldn’t be able to fully understand something similar if someone tried to explain it to me. This woman, who has visited Haiti many times in her life, found many of the things I told her hard to believe. It has been a little frustrating knowing that I can’t really, fully describe what I experienced this summer to other Americans. It was like being asked by students at OFCB if it is true that many families in the States have more cars than family members. They couldn’t really understand it because it seemed too surreal. But that’s what Bayonnais is. It’s a completely different universe, and being back in the States makes me realize it more than ever. When I arrived in Charlotte, the first thing my brother asked me was “Do you want to go to the movies?” So, after spending 12 weeks in Haiti, I came back to the States and what was the first thing I did? I sat in a movie theater and watched the trailer for the movie Beverly Hills Chihuahua. And I realized someone in Bayonnais would not be able to fathom what I was experiencing, sitting in an air-conditioned movie theater with a giant Coke and popcorn watching a singing chihuahua on a giant screen. It wouldn’t make sense, probably because it doesn’t.

Today, I was forced by my mom and aunt to go see the movie Mamma Mia with them. Seeing Meryl Streep sing and dance to the sounds of Abba should have been reverse culture shock at the max, but I’ve experienced enough culture shock in my life for this not to shock or bother me. Being back in a place where very, very few people know what it means to experience hunger, and education and health care are the right instead of the privilege, is not shocking any more. I’m not bitter any more. But it’s not that Bayonnais has made me jaded to what I see around me. If anything it’s the opposite.

This summer has been the hardest period of my life. I’ve had to ask myself questions that I never dreamed I would have to ask myself. And if I ever go back to Bayonnais, I’d be afraid to stay as long because this summer was just too hard. And if I ever went back, I wouldn’t go alone because it was too lonely. But I don’t regret that I went. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be back at Davidson, and when I see friends that I haven’t seen in over three months, I know I will feel much happier than I would have felt if I hadn’t spent this summer in Bayonnais. Bayonnais has made me more appreciative of what I have and the people around me, more conscious of how I live and how I interact with others. And it’s all because Bayonnais is the hardest place I’ve ever lived. And it’s all because Bayonnais is the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived.

2008-08-12T11:28:00.000-07:00

Ah, the last week in Bayonnais. All the awesome things that I will miss about Bayonnais seem to have become amplified over the last few days, and so have all the things I will not miss a bit. It’s been hotter than most days, made worse by the fact that my room’s tiny ceiling fan decided to break off and fall to the ground. The food is becoming less and less bearable, since I have basically eaten the same five or six dishes on repeat since I’ve been here (It’s like chicken parm week at Davidson. That’s just too much chicken parm). And I’m missing the Olympics, which is no fun. But this week has the potential to be the best week of my time in Bayonnais. Now that my days are numbered, lots of people are asking me over to their homes to hang out and talk. So, I’m finally doing what I came here to do, which is spend time with people, and no longer have endless hours of free time. For example, on Sunday I stopped by Amilor’s house to borrow his camera on my way to someone else’s house, and I ended up talking to Amilor for well over an hour. We sat outside his house, which has a beautiful view of the mountains surrounding the valley, and talked about cell phones, and buying rice, and the war in Iraq, and electricity. It was awesome. And later that night, I played in what has become an almost nightly game of rummy at OFCB. Night games of rummy with Jonel, Yevens, Eddy and Iverner, sometimes lasting a few hours, have become very common.

(Amilor's son, Lordyone)

On Friday, I figured it would be a good idea to check how much money I had with me to make sure I had enough to travel out of Port-au-Prince when I leave. And I found my wallet empty of all cash. Sometime in the last three or four weeks, someone sneaked into my room and stole all my money (which was stowed in a box, atop a closet). A mysterious someone made off with the remaining $500 of my Bonner money (which was going to OFCB anyway to cover room and board for the summer) plus around $20 of my own money. I do not know who performed this dastardly dead, but if I had to guess, I would say: Smog. Apparently this isn’t the first time this has happened. Peter apparently lost around $300 and a friend of his lost about $100 (why nobody cared to inform me of this earlier, I have no clue). I wasn’t really upset by the news, considering I haven’t had any other problems regarding safety since I’ve been here. This barely dents my impression that Bayonnais is one of the safest places I’ve ever been. People here seem to live by an unspoken honor code that rivals that of Davidson College, which is amazing considering the conditions many people live in.

But I was surprised to see how much this news upset people around OFCB. The news got out really quickly (especially since Amilor and Demilsaint announced it at church on Sunday, and went on a mini-tirade about it). $500 is a big deal here, considering that is far more than most people in Bayonnais make in a whole year. Amilor told me “It is because of things like this that Bayonnais is the way it is,” meaning he thinks incidents like this could drive foreign visitors (the main source of funding for organizations like OFCB) away from Bayonnais. And in some ways, he might be right. There hasn’t been a single group of Americans (expect the Wisconsin engineers) visit OFCB this summer because international news of food riots in Port-au-Prince (which were apparently fairly exaggerated) scared a lot of groups off. Actionnel promised them all that things were more than safe, but they still cancelled. On the other hand, Bayonnais is far, far safer than the areas surrounding Charlotte, NC, where most of the groups come from. I mean, theft and violence is a very, very rare occurrence in Bayonnais, an area that has no police force and in which the Haitian government has practically zero influence. To me, that’s pretty amazing. Ironically, it took someone stealing all my money to make me realize how amazingly safe Bayonnais is. And the safety of Bayonnais is not a reflection on the enforcement of law, but solely on the integrity of the community.

(my last trip to the Bayonnais market....)

My sermon appointment was bumped back to this Sunday, which means I don’t know if I’m going on a road trip after all. I don’t know why I bother writing about things I plan to do, since if I’ve learned anything this summer it’s that everything is subject to change. But hopefully I will get a chance to see a little more of Haiti before I leave, and hopefully I won’t bomb on Sunday morning.

Lightning strikes and bowel movements

2008-08-05T12:18:00.000-07:00

I haven’t gotten sick since I’ve been here, but my stomach is making a last ditch effort at trying to make sure I don’t make it through an entire summer in Haiti without getting sick. I wouldn’t call myself sick at the moment, more like on the verge of sick. But last night, I laid in bed listening to the very awkward, uncomfortable churning noises my stomach was making. They were loud enough for me to hear quite easily. So, I am spending most of today in bed (and in the bathroom.....), reading Salman Rushdie and trying to write a sermon. My preaching date has been bumped up from the 17th to this Sunday, so that I won’t be so rushed leaving Bayonnais on the 17th. Instead, Vital and I are going to leave Bayonnais really early in the morning on the 17th, and drive north to Cap-Haitian where there are apparently some really spectacular beaches, and then drive back to Port-au-Prince before nightfall. I’ve kind of regretted having spent this long in Haiti without having traveled more (I haven’t ridden in a car since May), so this little road trip will hopefully give me a chance to see some more of Haiti.

Around the time I first got here, Jonel took me to meet some of his friends about a mile from OFCB. And since then, Jonel and I have gone to visit them every Sunday afternoon just to sit around and talk in English/Creole/Spanish, and the group has steadily gotten larger and I seem to have met everyone’s extended families. But this past Sunday, we didn’t make it to their house. On the way, it became very apparent that something unusual was going on, as we passed hords of people walking very rapidly in the opposite direction towards where we had come from. I had never seen this many people out and about before, and it was even more unusual considering it was starting to rain a little, which usually clears everyone out of the road. So we ended up following everyone to see where they were going (also considering we passed Madame Sabine, who verbally harangued Jonel and myself for walking in the rain and commanded me to immediately walk back to OFCB). Along the way, whenever I saw someone that I knew spoke some English, I would try to ask what was going on, but I got very confusing responses like “There was noise in the sky….” and “something attack the children….”. It turns out a little girl had nearly been struck by lightning and had been somewhat injured since it struck the ground very close to her. And hundreds of people were pouring out of Cathor to go to this little girl’s house to see how she was, and her father was sitting outside the house with her on his lap telling everyone that everything was alright. I had expected to find something a lot worse than someone nearly getting struck by lightning, considering the large numbers of people that were coming out of the woodworks, in the rain, to assess the situation. But, I guess this is just a testament to how much community is valued in Bayonnais. Hundreds and hundreds of people, some living over a mile from this girl’s house, dropped whatever they were doing and rushed over in the rain to make sure that this little girl was alright.

Besides that story, I have nothing new to tell. Nothing really new or exciting has happened in the last week or so. Everything is going as usual: morning walks, classes, reading, eating, sleeping. I am more than ready to be back in the States and back at Davidson, but those feelings aren’t as urgent as they were a couple weeks ago. I only have 13 days left, which is a far less daunting number than 82.

(I have no new photos. But upon looking through some of Aaron’s old photos, I found this wonderful photo of Limareste looking very mysterious…..)

Cookin' it up with Madame Sabine

2008-07-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of extra time on my hands, and I had too much time on my hands to begin with. I never really know if students are going to show up or not, so I usually just sit out on the OFCB steps around classtime and wait. If people show up, there's class. If they don't, I go back to doing whatever. But, I haven't felt like my time has been wasted lately. People have already commented on the last post that it is much more important "being" here than "working" here, and that is very true. And this is perhaps best represented in my recent delving into Haitian food, by helping Madame Sabine in the OFCB kitchen. Madame Sabine is often referred to as "James' mom". She cooks all the food at OFCB, always says I'm not eating enough no matter how much food I put on my plate, and frets and frowns whenever I look tired. Madame Sabine does not need me in the kitchen. I think I'm actually slowing the cooking process down by not being nearly as skilled as the master chef, but she likes to have me in the kitchen anyway. So, I fumble around cutting carrots and onions and mostly just getting in the way in the small kitchen, while at the same time getting to know Madame Sabine, getting a chance to practice my Creole, and learning how to make Haitian food.

My tasks so far have mostly involved cutting up vegetables, which I can't do very well, or squeezing lemons/oranges to make fresh juice. But however little I do, Madame Sabine always comes to my defense and tells people that I prepared most of the meal myself. Amilor walked in on Thursday and she started ranting about how much I cooked, while I caught his glance and shook my head. He pointed to a pitcher of lemonade and asked her if I had made it, and she shouted "He washed the lemons in the sink before I made it!!", as if that was the really, hard part. I did learn the proper method for making fried plantains though, which I was pretty pumped about. If I'm ever in charge of meal at the Eco-house next semester and I have some bananas on hand, I will probably blow some minds with my skills.

Today, I went back to the Fort(s). I had nothing better to do, and I figured it's not every day that I have the chance to go exploring French colonial fortress ruins in the mountains of Haiti. I also kind of wanted to see if I could get there by myself, which, looking back, could have ended badly, but luckily didn't. I sat in a little enclave in the walls of the Little Fort, overlooking the Bayonnais valley, and read "White Teeth" by Zadie Smith. It was nice. Going back down the mountains, on the other hand, was the opposite of a pleasant experience. I began to feel way more tired than I had the first time I had gone to the forts, which is saying a lot. And at one point, I got semi-lost and had to ask for directions. Luckily, there was a girl heading towards OFCB that offered to lead the way, but that didn't end so well either. She was carrying a basket of fresh mangoes on her head, and the smell of the mangoes would waft down to me, and I would imagine the warm food and the cold showers and the comfy beds at OFCB. And then I would remember that I was miles from OFCB, drenched in sweat, hungry, and feeling like death, with the mangoes taunting me. But I made it back to OFCB, about 8 hours after I left, and collapsed, reminding myself that I was an idiot.

This morning, I went to meet Pastor Delivrance (pun intended?), a local pastor that I had met on one of my walks and who had asked me to come by his church Sunday morning before the service. Apparently, he knew Peter very well and Peter had attended his services more than once, and I got the impression that it would be sort of rude for me not to stay. But I told him I would only be able to stay for about half an hour, and that I would need to get back to OFCB for church there. That didn’t really work out, and I ended up staying the entire three-hour service, and having numerous awkward moments. For one, at the beginning of the service, there were only two other people in the church. And once more people arrived, the assistant pastor reprimanded all of them for being late, shouting things like “The American arrived on time (pointing to me)! He respects priorities! You, on the other hand, apparently don’t care about spiritual matters!”, and waving his hands in the air. To make things more awkward, the pastor eventually called me up to the front and asked me to introduce myself. And I immediately forgot all the Creole I’ve learned since I’ve been here and managed to say something along the lines of “Good morning. I work at the school. I’m happy to be here.”

But it was definitely interesting getting to place OFCB in perspective of other churches in the area. OFCB is pretty much the equivalent of a mega-church in the States, just because it’s big enough to seat a couple hundred people, and because it has electricity. Pastor Delivrance’s church is about the size of a Davidson classroom, with walls made from just rocks and cement and a roof made of metal sheets. There’s a dirt floor and tiny benches made from planks of wood nailed together to sit on. But none of those things mattered to the congregation, who sang and danced and beat on drums, and showed a lot more liveliness than you can find in most churches in the States. I didn’t understand most of what was said, but from what I understood it was about comparing physical hunger to spiritual hunger. Despite the many awkward moments, it was definitely a unique experience.

The end of an era

2008-07-24T04:31:00.000-07:00

Ok, so over two weeks ago, one of the English classes was interrupted by loud Haitian-techno music. It was the start of a soccer tournament at the school that would take place every day during class time, and no one had cared to tell me about it. I was told it would last a week. It lasted two weeks. And so, this Monday, I tried to get the classes up and running again, but that has proved to be a relative failure. 5 students showed up for the beginner class (compared to the 25+ that usually show up) and 2 showed up for the intermediate class. No one showed up for the music class on Tuesday, and 5 students showed up today. I don’t really have any way of getting the word out that classes are back in action, because students come from all over the place. It’s not like I can send them all a mass email telling them classes are starting, or call them all up on their cell phones.

But things turned out a whole lot worse on Monday than I had expected. Amilor informed me that there would be another soccer tournament starting this week, and that there would be more tournaments following that one. So, I have tried to reschedule the classes for an earlier time but that has proven more difficult that I could ever imagine. For one, I have no way of getting the word out about the new times for the classes. Second, many of the students can’t come to class at an earlier time because they work in the mornings. Thirdly, Actionnel has apparently organized a couple weeks of extra, summer courses for the 9th and 10th graders that will start next week. I have no idea if students would be willing to stick around for an English class after already being in classes for 3 or 4 hours. Fourthly (!), no one at OFCB can give me details about when the soccer games will take place, or what these summer courses will be like, or advice about how to get word out to the students about class changes. Basically, I’ve asked a lot of questions and gotten very few answers.

I have 3 1/2 weeks left. Even if everything gets worked out and classes start back as normal, I’ve lost a lot of time and there isn’t that much time left. The 5 or so students that know about the changes say they’ll keep coming, so there will at least be some form of class, hopefully. But the days of packed classrooms are long gone. I have no idea how much work, if any, I will have from now until I leave. So, that’s that.

Race in Bayonnais

2008-07-20T04:29:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago, when Yvolene and Dasmine were braiding my hair by force, Yvolene told me that I looked like Jesus with my long hair. And then she said that Peter had looked like Jesus too. And that, in fact, all white people looked like Jesus. And since then I have really been questioning how race is viewed in Bayonnais, an area of Haiti that heavily depends on the influence of white Americans.

In Bayonnais, the majority of people are hungry. To eat three meals a day in Bayonnais is an absurd luxury. Most people eat once a day, or maybe once every two days. Many children do not go to school, and the majority do not go to school past the sixth grade. They work from a young age in the fields, even those who attend school. The farther you go up into the mountains, the less likely you will find electricity and running water, which are hard to find even in the heart of Bayonnais. But here come the Americans, well-educated, well-dressed, well-fed, and they stay at OFCB and are given beds and are fed three meals a day. The people of Bayonnais know what there lot in life is. It was the lot of their parents and grandparents and will probably be the lot of their children. I am not trying to say that their lot is inferior or lesser, just that it is different. What they understand as hunger, I do not understand as hunger. And what they understand as wealth, I do not understand as wealth. But seeing healthy, wealthy, white people forces them to place their lives in perspective of lives that are vastly different.

So how do they come to understand race when being black is associated with hunger and poverty and being white is associated with an abundance of wealth? And how do they come to understand race when the only white people they meet are those that provide them funds for food and education and health care? If the clearest distinction between wealth and poverty is race, does this not create an illusion that the distinction exists because of race?

Sometimes when I'm out walking, I'll see one of the students from one of my classes working out in the fields. And more than once, they have seemed ashamed that I have seen them at work. As if it is shameful for the American to see that they are not just students but are also farmers. As if working the earth is something symbolic of their lives, and not mine. For them, I am privileged, and for me to see them covered in sweat and dirt is a reminder of that. But how am I supposed to help them understand that I am not lowering or humbling myself by being here, but that this is a privilege for me? That I am learning much more from their way of life than they ever can of mine?

Yesterday was the last game of the soccer tournament. And Cathor, the area of Bayonnais I'm living in, won the tournament. And about 300 Cathorians (Cathorites? Cathorines?) rushed the little dirt field at the school where the game was played, shouting and jumping up and down. Try to imagine the excitement someone must feel after winning the Super Bowl, or Wimbledon or something, expanded to 300 Haitians celebrating a teenage soccer match. People love them some soccer here. And now that the soccer tournament is over, I can get back to classes and stop feeling useless.

Moving Boxes

2008-07-16T04:31:00.000-07:00

The soccer tournament will not be done until this Saturday. Which means that there won't be any classes for another week. But none of the OFCB people, or even the students, seem to mind that there is a two-week break in class. People just sort of take things as they come here, and aren't bothered by the unexpected. So, hopefully, class will resume next Monday and continue for four weeks before I leave. Meanwhile, I have been trying to organize the "language lab" at OFCB. Some churches from the Charlotte area sent two bus-loads of boxes of books and educational materials/equipment, but all the boxes have just been sitting in the old church building, the building which was supposed to become a "language lab". A church had also sent some really nice listening equipment and cds/books for students to learn English on cd, and the idea for the lab was to have a place where students could go and practice their English outside the classroom. So, I asked Dimilsaint and Amilor if I could take a shot at trying to organize the boxes of stuff and get the lab up and running.

Last Friday, I started going through boxes. Most of the boxes contained stacks and stacks of old elementary-school textbooks that, I assume, are outdated. Hundreds and hundreds of the same textbooks, most of which are probably useless for OFCB (not because they're outdated, but mainly because they suck). Yesterday, Amilor told me that OFCB will probably end up just giving them out to the students in the hopes that they might find them useful. On the other hand, some of the boxes contained very useful books, books that will definitely be helpful for the OFCB students. Like 20+ volumes of an Encyclopedia Brittanica. Or an entire box of French/English dictionaries. So, I spent most of Monday labelling boxes with the type of textbook and moving the boxes to one side of the room to make space for the lab. And yesterday, after having sorted and moved over a hundred boxes, I was told that the boxes would have to be moved elsewhere, as the shelves they are sitting on may not be able to support them. I was reminded of the Bonner spring break trip when one group of Bonners spent an entire day moving planks of wood from one place to another, and then back to where they started. I'm pretty sure everything I have done so far will be undone in the near future, but at least the language lab should be up and running sometime soon. I've pretty much done all I can do, which means I now have absolutely nothing to do until Monday. I am back to feeling relatively useless.

Going through the boxes was actually fun at times. Out of every 10 or so boxes, 9 would be the same, boring textbooks, but 1 would be a suprise! I opened one box to find 40 pounds of beans. Another contained about 200 miniature cribbage boards (I don't even know what cribbage is). Another contained about a million band-aids. Another contained a copy of a "Where's Waldo?" book (which Amilor thought was pretty awesome). But the best surprise of all came when I opened one of the giant boxes and found every wonderful 90's family film that I could ever imagine (on VHS). The selection includes: Matilda, Mrs. Doubtfire, Harriet the Spy, Mulan, Pocahontas, Tarzan, Toy Story 1+2, five or six Olsen twins movies, and many more. So, with these videos, and the crappy old tv laying in the computer lab, and the crappy VCR that Yevens has, my movie-less summer has just become a little more interesting (or at least, nostalgic). Starting tomorrow night (with Jumanji!), I will try to make my way through the box and introduce some people around OFCB to some of the finest cinema America has to offer.

The Fort(s)

2008-07-12T14:20:00.000-07:00

In one of my first posts I talked about "Fort Bayonnais", a fort from the French colonial era far up in the Eastern mountains of Bayonnais. I had tried to hike to it in early June, not fully conscious of how far it was, and the hike and the beating sun crushed my spirits and I didn't make it. And since then, everytime I've looked up and seen the Fort in the distance, I have felt it judging me. Mocking me for my failed attempt at reaching it. But after weeks of mental preparation for the journey, I set out today to conquer the Fort. I will now recount my epic battle against nature.

Jonel and I set out at 4:30, while it was still dark. The sun was what killed me last time, so I was going to beat it to the punch. I carried a backpack with bottles of water, some fresh Haitian bread, a container of extra creamy Haitian peanut butter, and a knife (....for spreading peanut butter). We would need sustenance for the voyage. We managed to make it to the Fort in 2 1/2 hours, which is apparently really good time. But those were 2 1/2 hours of grueling hiking. The mountains tried to discourage me, and they were successful. I would look up and see a peak in the distance and think "If only I can get to that peak, I bet it will be easy walking for a while" and that was never the case. Every peak gave way to another peak, and another. And from the base of the final mountain, all I could see was a giant cliff in front of me, with no visible path up to the Fort. But I didn't realize how tired I was because I was too distracted by everything around me. We would walk through little towns in the hillside, miles away from anything resembling what most people would call "civilization", and I would wonder what it would be like to grow up here in the mountains, totally disconnected from the world (or....totally connected......). Or we would walk through fields of corn planted around giant, black rocks potruding from the ground. And each turn of the hillside gave way to an even greater view of the valley below, and I could see more and more of the coastline over the mountains in the distance. But we eventually made it to Fort, and it was epic. The area inside of the tall, stone walls was overgrown with tall grass and bushes. We walked through a stone archway to see the full view of the valley, and the valleys beyond the Bayonnais valley, and the coast curving around the gulf in the distance, and the view was every bit as miraculous as I had expected it to be.

But the trip was far from over. I had been told yesterday that "Fort Bayonnais" was actually one of two forts in the mountains, and that if we hiked another hour past the first fort we would reach the second. We could not see the second fort from the first because a large cloud was passing through the two mountains seperating the forts (we were in the clouds). And as we walked I began to realize that Jonel didn't really know where he was going, but we still managed to make it to the second fort, and it was even more miraculous than the first. As I was walking up the stone steps at the entrance, I stepped over a large metal object half-buried in the grass, and it took me a second to realize that it was a cannon. And it was at that point that it really hit me that I was stepping over a cannon in the ruins of a fortress from the French colonial era in the mountains of Northern Haiti. Further inside the fort, we found a little room made out of stone and dirt that soldiers used to sleep in, and I climbed to the top of the stone structure and looked at the fort while Jonel took a nap on one of the cannons. And I looked at a large pit in the middle of the fort, about 20 feet deep with concrete walls, and out of this pit grew an enormous orange (as in the fruit) tree. I thought about all the battles that had been fought at this fort, and the many lives lost, and the hardship that was inflicted on slaves to build this fort during the colonial era. And all that remained was this orange tree.

We took a different way down. We hiked a path down the mountain range, but on the opposite side facing Bayonnais. And eventually there was a break in the mountains that gave way to an enormous valley with high mountains on either side that cut through the range. And we made it through, and then down into the Bayonnais valley, and eventually back to OFCB. The last two hours of the trip were the worst. My legs were so tired, and my knees were shaking, and I think I pulled a muscle in my groin. And the beautiful scenery could not distract me enough, and I walked like a zombie back to OFCB. And the first thing I did when we got back was drink a tall glass of homemade lemonade (because our water had run out a while ago) and take the most delicious shower of my life (because I've never smelled worse in my life). And then I napped.

Something I forgot to post about last week: Last Sunday, I saw Actionnel before church and he called me "Preacher James" and then asked me if I would be interested in preaching one Sunday before I left. Peter, my predecessor, apparently preached at the church more than one Sunday, and in Creole. And because I have told people that I am a religion major at Davidson, they have equated that to studying Theology. And if you go to college in Haiti to study Theology, you become a pastor. I told Actionnel I didn't know if I was capable of giving a sermon, and probably wouldn't know what to say sermon-wise, but that I'd think about it and get back to him. But in church that morning, Actionnel informed the OFCB congregation that I would be preaching on August 17th, my last Sunday in Bayonnais. Apparently, I have no choice in the matter. So, I have a little over a month to prepare a sermon.

2008-07-11T06:47:00.000-07:00

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.

Classes cancelled due to Haitian techno

2008-07-09T16:27:00.000-07:00

On Monday, about 10 minutes into the beginner English class, very loud Haitian reggae-techno started blaring from some very large speakers outside the classroom. Monday was the first day of a soccer tournament at OFCB. Different teams from the area (guys around 14-17 years old) have formed to play in the tournament which was organized by the people at OFCB. And all of the games are played on the court outside the classrooms, during the times that all my classes are scheduled, so it gets way too loud for classes. On Monday, I thought it was kind of funny that class had to be cancelled due to loud reggae-techno, but it wasn't until Tuesday that I was told that Monday's game was part of a tournament. The tournament was organized by people at OFCB, people that I see everyday, but no one thought it important to tell me that there would be a soccer tournament during class time every day for a while (I still haven't gotten any one to tell me when the tournament is over). When I asked Actionnel about what I should do about classes, he said cancelling class for a week wouldn't be a bad thing. He just said "Well, you know we love soccer." I wasn't upset about classes being cancelled, but I wish I had had time to tell the students there wouldn't be class. One of the students from the intermediate class told me today that he had walked really far down from the mountains in order to attend the class, and when I told him that class was cancelled because of the soccer tournament, he looked pretty pissed. I have told all the students that I have seen that classes will resume on Friday in the OFCB church but this will probably be pretty difficult. The church gets really, really hot during the day, plus a lot of the students will probably want to go watch the game, plus there will be reggae-techno in the background.

So, I haven't had anything to do this week. When I found out about the soccer tournament, I was much more upset about the prospect of having nothing to do all week than at classes being cancelled. My morning walks have gotten longer, and I have been reading a lot more, and have been playing my guitar a lot more, and have been taking longer naps, but none of this has cured the boredom. Hopefully, things will change later this week. I was talking to Amilor today about the "language lab", which was supposed to be a center for students to study languages with instructional audiocassetes and stuff. Some church in the States apparently donated a lot of listening equipment and books and stuff, but everything has just been sitting for months in boxes in the old church building. I've looked in the windows of the old building and everything looks like a mess inside, but a fixable mess. I am hoping Demilsaint, who is supposed to be in charge of getting the lab up and running, will let me take a crack at trying to clean the building out and set up the equipment. The lab would definitely be useful for the students at the school, plus it would give me something to do for a couple days and end the boredom.

(the OFCB team)

Yesterday was more difficult than most days. I was walking back up to Mont Kabwit and was stopped by a guy working in his field. He went on an extended rant about life in Bayonnais in very rapid Creole (I asked him to slow down a little, but that didn't work). I didn't catch most of it, but I caught enough. He said life is hard in Bayonnais. He said his family was hungry, and that many members of his family had died. He said that his land wasn't always fertile but that he prayed to God every day for lots of rain. And some seasons were plentiful enough to feed his family, and some seasons weren't. But that that's just the way things were. And then he ended his rant with a very direct question, "And what are you going to do to help us?" and stood there waiting for my answer. And I could tell that he wasn't asking for a handout or anything, he just wanted a real, genuine answer. It was like he was testing me, fully conscious of what he was doing. And I didn't really have an answer, partially because my Creole isn't good enough to give an adequate response, but mostly because I just didn't have an answer. But he could tell that I understood that I didn't have an answer, or maybe that there wasn't any answer to give, and that was enough for him. I had answered his question in some way or another.

If everyone in Bayonnais was like that farmer that I met yesterday, I think things would be a lot easier to understand. He knew things were tough, but he was content with things anyway. He was hopeful for the future despite being fully conscious that things could always get worse. He prayed to God and his prayers were rarely answered, but he didn't hold a grudge. I don't think I will fully understand his mindset while I'm here, and may never understand it given I haven't gone through what he's gone through in his lifetime. But it is somewhat easier trying to understand him than trying to understand most others in Bayonnais because you could tell he understood all the facts, or at least lived gracefully with those he didn't understand. Not everyone responds to suffering in the same way. There are a lot of very bitter people in Bayonnais (and maybe they are rightfully bitter) and there are a lot of very joyful people here. Bayonnais is like a melting pot of the human condition. All of the ups and downs are accentuated and exaggerated to ridiculous proportions (or at least they seem so from where i'm coming from). And some people are chewed up and spat out, but there are others that take the extreme in their stride. Maybe when I wonder why people respond differently to suffering in Bayonnais, I am really asking myself what I would be like if I was in their situation. More than half my time in Bayonnais is over, and I'm beginning to realize that I don't want to spend what time I have left endlessly dwelling on those that have been spat out. There are things that I can change, and things I can't. I can learn more from this farmer.

"Who can straighten
what he has made crooked?
When times are good, be happy;
but when times are bad, consider:
God has made the one
as well as the other.
Therefore, a man cannot discover
anything about his future."
Ecclesiastes 7

Goat Mountain

2008-07-05T18:56:00.000-07:00

The expedition to the Fort has been delayed. Jonel said he didn't have time to go, so we rescheduled for next Saturday. But, today, I decided to explore the area around Mont Kabwit ("Goat Mountain"). Mont Kabwit is a very steep, rocky hill before you get to the western mountains of the valley. From the side I approached, it just looked like a giant mass of huge, black rocks. But after walking around to the other side, I found a nice path up to the very top. And at the very top, I saw the most beautiful sight I've ever seen. The slope of the mountain facing the valley is so steep that you can't see it from the top. So, sitting at the top sort of feels like your sitting on a platform suspended in the sky, overlooking the valley a thousand feet below. You can see the entire valley, and the mountains surrounding the valley, and the mountains behind the mountains surrounding the valley. And if you look in the opposite direction, you can see the ocean about 25 miles in the distance. The view was panoramic, and epic, and daunting. One of the students at the school told me that people from the area go to the top of Mont Kabwit to pray and "meet God", and that made a lot of sense to me.

After descending the mountain, I decided to keep walking towards the mountains behind Mont Kabwit. I walked around a hillside and saw a bright red tree in the distance. For miles and miles, the mountainside was pure green and here was this massive, red tree in the middle of it. And I decided to try to hike to that tree, and once I had done that I decided to go further. And on the other side of that mountain were more mountains, dotted with bright orange trees. And the mountains just seemed to get bigger and bigger and more beautiful.

Two sisters, Yvolene and Damise, that go to the intermediate English class made me promise that I would let them braid my hair. And I kept delaying the inevitable by telling them that I'd let them do it sometime in the future. But last class they told me that they were going to do it Saturday, at 3:00, at their house, and left me no choice. Suprisingly, my Creole was better than their English, so we talked in Creole while they did their thing with my hair and they corrected my horrible grammar. And Jesula, who turns out is their cousin, showed up and we sat around talking for a couple hours. And besides feeling embarrased because my hair looked pretty scary, it was a very nice afternoon. This week has been the first week where I really felt part of Bayonnais, where I've had really interesting conversations with people, and gotten to know people, and felt like part of the community. After a few hours talking to Yvolene, Damise and Jesula, it was like we were old friends, despite the language barrier.

But despite everything awesome that has happened today, it has been just as hard as any other day. Every day is filled with really spectacular moments, like standing on top of Mont Kabwit or getting to practice my Creole with new friends, but every day is also filled with very harsh, prying questions and realizations. While I was sitting outside Yvolene and Damise's house, one of their younger brothers (they have 12 siblings) was laying outside on a straw mat. Their brother has epilepsy and hasn't been able to walk or talk properly in ten years. When he was six, he began having very serious seizures. Now, he just spends his days laying outside in a dreamlike state, moaning sometimes. The nearest hospital is over 20 miles away and very few people have the means to get there. And even if they could get there, there probably isn't anyone qualified to treat a condition like epilepsy (I was told recently there isn't a single pediatrician in all of Gonaives, the third largest city in Haiti). And even if there was a form of treatment available, there's no way they would be able to afford it. And I can't possibly understand what it feels like to be his sibling, or parent, and know that there is absolutely nothing I can do to help him. But for every person that I meet that is truly suffering in ways that I can not understand, I meet another person who has more ambition and passion that I can understand. There are students at OFCB that want to go to college and become doctors and agronomists and business men and women and change Bayonnais despite all the odds against them. There are people here that have the integrity and substance of the greatest people to have ever walked the planet. There is great suffering in Bayonnais and there is great rejoicing. And every night I go to bed feeling very weak, physically, emotionally and spiritually. And every day there are moments when I wish I could leave right now and never come back, and moments when I wish everywhere in the world could be as wonderful as Bayonnais. And everytime I feel I've made a major breakthrough in understanding Bayonnais, something happens that makes me realized I haven't even scratched the surface. Yeah, so, I hadn't intended to rant when I started this paragraph. I'm just going to shut up now.

Bad kungfu movies

2008-07-03T17:23:00.000-07:00

(One of the students at the school has offered to lend me a camera whenever I go somewhere worth taking pictures. So there will be new photos in the future afterall. But since I've already posted most of the really good photos I took before my camera broke, this post will consist of photos of goats. Enjoy.)

This morning, Yevens and I went to the market. Yevens is Jacque-Elie's cousin, but that doesn't really mean much since everyone in Bayonnais is related. You could probably play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (but with Jacque-Elie) and everyone in a ten-mile radius would be connected in two or three moves. I went for a walk on Monday and met three strangers, all of which were Jacque-Elie's cousins. But, back on topic, Yevens and I went to the market. This was the third time I've gone to the Bayonnais market, but the first time that I bought stuff. I wanted to get something for Sabine and Rosene, the two women that run the guest house, because they spoil me. Sabine cooks food for me (food that is beyond delicious) and Rosene washes my clothes in the river. Yevens even thinks of Sabine as practically a surrogate-mother, and refers to her as "our mom" and Sabine's daughters as "our sisters". You can buy anything at the market: fruit, vegetables, goats, donkeys, bootleg kung fu movies on video, etc. But, I bought a big basket of fruit for them. I bought 3 watermelons, 12 mangoes and 16 ginormous bananas, plus a hand-woven basket to put them all in, for a little over $3. I couldn't believe that I could buy 12 mangoes (the most delicious mangoes you can imagine) for 20 goudes (about 65 cents). I recalled the Bonner spring break trip in New Orleans when one of the freshman Bonners bought a mango for $2.50. And it wasn't half as delicious as the mangoes that I bought for like 5 cents a piece.

When we got back to OFCB, Yevens and I watched a movie. Not just any movie. We watched Rumble in the Bronx, the mid-90's Jackie Chan classic. And it was dubbed in French so I didn't understand most of what was said (although I greatly enjoyed Jackie Chan's nasally French accent). From what I understood, Jackie Chan was at war with an evil biker gang in the Bronx, but eventually teamed up with the leader of the biker gang in order to fight a mob boss who after them about some stolen diamonds. And Jackie Chan fell in love with his neighbour, Nancy, and had to help protect her little brother who was in a wheelchair. And then there was a fight scene on board a hovercraft. Or something like that. Yevens had a VCR at his house and a couple bootleg videos that he had bought at the market and we found an old tv at OFCB that no one uses since it doesn't pick up any channels. So Rumble in the Bronx was probably the first in a series of bad kungfu movies dubbed in other languages that Yevens and I will watch.

In other news, I am sleeping on one of the other bunkbeds at the guest house, because my old bed was attacked by Smog and his minions. Tuesday night, I woke up in the middle of the night and felt a nibble on the tip of one of my fingers. My hand had fallen in a little crack between the bed frame and the mattress, a good place for a rat to hide. I was half-asleep when I felt the nibble, so I wasn't sure if I had imagined it or not, and I searched my bed with a flashlight but could find no trace of a rat. But twice this week I have felt something move under the mattress. So I am playing it safe and switching beds. And I have re-fortified the windows. Smog may have won this battle, but the war is far from over.

I will write a longer post this weekend. There may be an expedition to the Fort on Saturday....

Working for the weekend

2008-06-29T05:24:00.000-07:00

It’s Saturday, which means I don’t have any classes, and I don’t have to prepare any lesson plans, and I don’t have any obligations whatsoever. This morning, I woke up to the sounds of the Saturday morning choir practice at the church. I am getting pretty good at sleeping through the choir (they practiced every day last week, usually starting around 5:00 am). But I got up around 6:30 and set out on my walk. Morning walks are becoming almost a daily ritual. I walked by the river for about an hour until I found a spot that I had discovered a couple days ago, a really isolated spot with tall trees all around and a natural pool. And I was going to take a bath (more on that later), but someone else had found my little spot, and decided to stick around to see what the strange, white guy was up to. So, I sat down on a rock and pulled out East of Eden and read, while he sat down about twenty feet away and just stared at me. This has become a fairly normal occurrence. I’ll find a place along the river or in the mountains to sit and read, but a stranger will see me and come by and sit near me and stare. They seem confused as to why there is a white guy sitting by their river reading a book, and decide to watch me, as if they can figure it out by staring long enough. And it can get pretty awkward having a group of strangers all trying to have staring contests with you, so I usually move along and find a different spot. But not today! I had found a perfect Haitian oasis and was not going to be moved, and I was also curious to find out how long this guy would sit there, not moving, just staring. Two hours later, he went along his way and I took a river bath, and then went on my way.

While on the topic, I have begun bathing in the river (in swimshorts, not in the nude). I felt a little out of place taking showers at the guest house given everyone in Bayonnais either bathes in the river or out of a bucket of water. And I figured, the showers at the guest house are ice-cold anyway, why not go to the river? Bathing in the river is probably not the safest thing in the world. Actually, it’s probably relatively stupid given waterborne diseases. But I am well-vaccinated, and there are many upsides. For one, most of the people at OFCB seem fairly proud of me for it. I think I might be the first American to visit OFCB and bathe in the river, which makes me a little less like that one, white, American guy in a twenty-mile radius and a little more like a Haitian. And two, a river oasis under the shade of mango trees is a lot cooler than a concrete shower. So, every day or so, I head out to the river and find somewhere secluded and do my thing.

On Tuesday, it began to rain during the music theory class. And by rain, I mean pour. Trying to teach in a classroom with aluminum sheets for a roof, during the rain, is a lost cause. So, we waited out the rain. Some of the students took naps on the wooden benches and some just sat there. There was no point in trying to continue the class because the sound of the rain on the roof drowned out everything. But the rain died down after almost an hour and the class resumed. I was reminded that these students have to put up with this everyday. Classes are cancelled all of the time because of the rain (and it may rain every other day). And classes that are conducted outside under the mango trees (because there aren't enough classrooms) haven't got a chance. But the students were more than happy to sit out the rain and have a longer lesson than normal, because they were eager to learn, despite the forces of nature against them. I was reminded of a day last semester when the power went off on the Davidson campus (that time the squirrel got stuck in the generator). One of my classes was cancelled because the professor couldn't use the digital projector. In Bayonnais, classes have only the following requirements: teacher, students, chalkboard, chalk, mango tree. Anything else is a luxury. And it takes a whole lot more than a power-out to dissuade the students from learning.

Aaron left yesterday, and no more outsiders will be visiting Bayonnais until after I leave. A few work teams from the States were scheduled to come in this summer but were scared off when news of food riots in Port-au-Prince came out. Bayonnais is practically the safest place in the world, and from what I understand, the situation in Port-au-Prince isn’t nearly as bad as the international news media have portrayed it (in terms of violence). But, that’s the way it is. It is beginning to set in that the next seven weeks are not going to be easy, considering that talking to people is difficult. Conversations are often in an English/Creole/French/Spanish blend that makes things very difficult. But I have picked up a fair amount of Creole, and will hopefully be able to speak coherently by the time I leave.

Our rat problem solved itself. We had not been able to open the closet in our room, the closet that R. Kelly was trapped in. Whenever we would hear him trying to gnaw his way out at night, we would just throw something at the closet and go back to sleep. But we eventually stopped hearing him. We finally obtained the key to the closet today and opened it to find dead R. Kelly, and some of Peter’s ties eaten. We have not had any more encounters with Smog, the dragon-rat, and the fortifications in our room seem to be standing strong. But, I’m sure Smog and his minions will find a way in sooner or later….

My camera is not fixable, at least not in Haiti. So, there will be no new photos on my blog. But I will try to space out some old ones, and some that I got from Aaron.

Rodents of unusual size

2008-06-24T09:35:00.000-07:00

One night last week, I awoke to some mysterious sounds. And I laid in bed for a long time trying to figure out what the sounds were. And then I remembered my phone conversation with Peter before I left the States, in which he told me that he had often found mice in his room. And I realized that I was hearing the sounds of a mouse chewing on wood. And the sounds were coming from a locked closet in the corner of the room where Peter had left a lot of his stuff. So, I woke Aaron up and told him there was a mouse in the room. But he didn’t seem very concerned and went back to sleep. I put on my headphones and tried to go back to sleep but I could still here the sound of the mouse trying to get out of the closet, making it very difficult to sleep. The next day, we decided we would name the mouse R. Kelly. Because he’s trapped in the closet.

The following night, I was reading in bed and I looked towards the window in our room, and saw a mouse staring back at me. Aaron and I approached with great caution. And it began crawling on the outside screen of the window. And this was no mouse. This was the largest, fastest rat I have ever seen. And it wasn’t afraid of us. This was a fierce, mutant Haitian rat. A rat that has been naturally selected to survive brutal Haitian conditions. We realized that the duck tape on the inside screen of the window represented previous rat entry-points. So we have begun fortifying our room, re-duct-taping the window, pushing one of the bunk beds against the loose window frame, and placing a giant rat trap by the door. And Aaron keeps a pocket knife beside his bed just in case of a night attack. We still hear R. Kelly every night trying to get out of the closet, but haven’t had any more encounters with Smog, the dragon-rat that lives outside our window.

(when we showed this photo to one of the ladies that works at the guest-house, she screamed)

Our beginner English class is multiplying with each lesson. First it was 18 students. Now it is 38 students, packed into a concrete classroom less than 1/3 the size of an average Davidson classroom. A classroom with a roof made of aluminum sheets that gets more and more hot as the lesson goes on. Our advanced class, on the other hand, has sort of fallen apart. Of the six students that showed up for the last class, only two of them were from the original group of students, making teaching very confusing. But hopefully this week everything will get sorted out.

Something that has been on my mind a lot lately is the Haitian response to issues of hunger. Whenever I go out walking, I always meet people that ask for food. Some are genuinely suffering, and you can tell that they haven’t eaten in a while. But others treat hunger with an odd sense of humor. They playfully ask for food, practically doing impersonations of others that ask Americans for food. Many Haitians in Bayonnais only know three phrases in English: "Good morning", "What is your name?" and "I am hungry", and they say them in that order when they meet you. I have met so many people who have asked me for food, and motioned to their stomach to show that they were hungry, but had a big smile on their face. They seem greatly amused at the idea of asking an American for food, and don’t seem disappointed when you don’t give them anything. It’s almost as if hunger is such a common and understood part of their existence that they can treat it with a sense of humor. I am not trying to understate the problem of hunger in Haiti, but am just trying to say I am very confused by the cultural impact of a longstanding state of hunger.

One day last week, while we were standing outside of the classroom before one of the lessons, we saw a funeral procession pass by on the main road. People were dancing and singing what sounded like a fairly joyful song. And a group of men in the middle were carrying a very, very tiny casket made of plywood. I asked some of the students about it and they said a two-year child had died nearby. I asked how he had died and they said they didn’t know, but that it could be a number of things. They reminded me that the nearest source of medical care is 20 miles away and most people in Bayonnais do not have the means to get there. The students were kind of smiling when they said this, reminding me of those people who playfully asked me for food despite genuinely being hunger. The unexpected death of this child did not produce a great sense of mourning in these students, because this was not an uncommon event. A child can come down with malaria or some other illness and die unexpectedly. This is just a fact of life in Bayonnais. And because it is not uncommon, it seems to loose its element of tragedy. But there was nothing morbid in the smiles of these students. A part of me wants to pity the people in Bayonnais who are so accustomed to hunger and death that they must find other ways of coping besides mourning. But a part of me is amazed by their resilience in the face of suffering, and the great comfort they find in family, friends and hard work. They understand more than anyone that life is impermanent, but they have a greater appreciation for what life gives than others.

Camera update: The rice has sucked all the water out of my camera. The screen works perfectly, but I can't take any new photos because I think there is something wrong with the lense. So, Demilsaint has taken it to Port-au-Prince to hopefully find someone who can fix it. Hopefully the rest of the summer will not be photo-less.

My foolishness, and my broken camera

2008-06-18T05:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning, I went for a walk. I decided to hike past the place Aaron and I had watched the sunset two nights before and see what lay beyond. It is kind of exciting hiking over a hill and not knowing what is on the other side. Eventually the hills began to curve around the valley and I got to a point where I could see the entire valley. And, instead of walking back to OFCB along the path I had just come, I decided I would find a new path, straight down into the valley. Now, I am not exactly the most experienced outdoorsmen in the world. And I’m sure anyone with any trace of logic would know that it is probably unwise to stray off the hiking trail, "to make your own trail." But I did it anyway, out of foolishness. I got lost, so I decided to follow the river back to OFCB (which seemed like a good idea). The slopes along the river bank began getting steeper and the current faster. My only options were to keep going downstream or go back upstream and try to find another path. But I kept going downstream, and after a lot of wading in the river, and a lot of rock scaling, I found my way back onto a path that I recognized. I got back to OFCB three hours after I had left, drenched in sweat and feeling fairly stupid.

At one point going downriver, I slipped into a section of the river that was deeper than I thought, and got wet up to my waist. And my camera was in my pocket. So my camera got wet. And since then, it has not functioned properly. I can still look at pictures that I have taken but can not take any new pictures because I think there is something wrong with the lens. My camera is currently buried in a bowl of rice because Aaron said that the rice would absorb any water inside the camera. Hopefully, that will work. But for now, I am camera-less.

(one of the last pictures i took....)

After failing miserably in our first beginner and intermediate English classes, Aaron and I came back strong in lesson two. Our beginner class now understands subject pronouns (and has an extensive vocabulary including the days of the week, the months of the year, colors and numbers!) while our intermediate class is making headway on the different tenses. I was very glad that Aaron did most of the talking for the intermediate class. I still don’t think I understand what "future perfect continuous" tense is, and the like. Before the class started, I talked for a while with Gregois, our oldest student at 48 years old. He asked me to explain the difference between the words "like" and "love," which proved to be a very difficult task given the language barrier. Aaron just watched and laughed as I tried to explain the meaning of love.

Today was the first music theory class at OFCB. About fifteen students turned out to hear me explain the difference between major and minor tones and explain basic musical notation. There was no translator in the class but, luckily, a few of the students knew a lot of musical terms in Creole (major, minor, sharp, flat, etc). So, I taught the class in English/Creole/Spanish, and they somehow understood. Amilor heard me playing some basic scales and asked me if I could play piano for church on Sundays. I said I might be able to do it if I had a hymnal, and he said he would try to find me one. So, all those years of piano lessons may have been useful for something after all.

I walked back to my reading rock today, only to find that it is not as perfect as I thought it was. I discovered that it is only in the shade until about 8:00 am, and is only useful for early-morning reading. But, I journeyed farther up the river in search of another reading rock, and found it. And it is even better than the first one. After reading for about 20 minutes, I looked up to see four kids standing in front of me, just looking at me and smiling. They were soon joined by more of their friends, and eventually there were about fifteen kids staring at me and smiling. Not saying a word. It was kind of creepy. I received multiple requests for a photo of the first rock, but will now present photos of rock #2, with and without a multitude of kids.

(before)

(after)

I have woken up the last two mornings at 4:30 to the sounds of choir practice from the church. And the church is about 20 feet away from my room, so it is hard to ignore the sound and go back to sleep. I asked Amilor about it and he said, very casually, "Oh yeah. Sometimes we have choir practice and prayer meetings in the mornings." I have never heard the choir sing on Sunday mornings, and I don’t understand why they practice at 4:30 in the morning. But, apparently that’s how things go in Bayonnais.

Creole sentence of the day:You ought to use your ax. A man broke his leg yesterday becauuse he did what you are doing. - Ou dwe sevi ak rach ou. Yon nomn te kase janm li ye paske li te fe sa w'ap fe a.

2008-06-14T18:53:00.001-07:00

Classes have begun. On Thursday, we had our first “advanced English” class for seven or eight of the best English-speaking students at OFCB. The class will be mostly conversational, as most of the students just need an opportunity to practice their English and get tips on pronunciation and learn more advanced vocabulary. I had been a little worried before the class because I wasn’t really sure if people would open up for conversation, but everything flowed smoothly.

Whereas the advanced English class went well, Aaron and I sort of bombed in our first beginner and intermediate classes on Friday. We started the beginner class with subject pronouns, because we figured that was a logical place to start. Not only did this prove too difficult a starting point, but most of what I said had to be translated from English into Creole, which made everything very difficult. We decided to use the same lesson plan for the intermediate class, but the opposite occurred. Everyone found it too easy, and they seemed kind of bored. But we promised the beginner class that we would slow it down, and promised the intermediate class that we would step it up. So, hopefully all will go well next week.

(this is not my class)

About an hour ago, I got back from watching my first Haitian sunset. It had been raining all afternoon, but we waited for a break in the rain to begin trudging up the mountains in the mud. We walked up to a dam in the mountains that we had gone to with the Wisconsin engineers, but ended up walking a lot farther up to get a good view of the entire valley. The sunset was probably not very spectacular by Bayonnais standards, but it was still one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. On the way back down, walking in the dark, Aaron began telling me things he had been reading in a book about Haitian voodoo. About how voodoo groups typically travel at night. It was not comforting.

In other news, I DJ’d my first Haitian dance party. Vital had moved some speakers outside the guest house and asked me to play some music from my ipod. And there was a crowd, and there was dancing (at least for a short period of time). Highlights included “Jimmy” by M.I.A. and “Could You Be Loved” by Bob Marley.

Creole sentence of the day;
I am cutting down this tree with my machete - M'ap koupe pye bwa sa a ak machet mwen.

(I wrote this last night)

2008-06-12T05:03:00.000-07:00

Things are heating up. Yesterday, Amilar came up to me, around 5:20, and said, “So, I’ve asked all the students that are interested in taking an English class to come for a meeting today at 5:30.” So, 10 minutes later, I sat down with about 20 students and asked them questions about what they wanted out of a class. And today, Aaron and I talked to about 50 students to try their judge their English abilities and separate them into different classes. And, tomorrow, we will begin our first English class, a purely conversational class for a few of the more advanced students. And Friday we will begin beginner and intermediate English classes. And the weekend will be spent planning music classes that will hopefully start next week……I had been worried that I wouldn’t have enough work to do this summer, and now I am worried that I have bitten off more than I can chew.

Some of the students are practically absolute beginners in English. We did brief question and answer sessions with each student today, asking basic questions like “What is your name?”, “How old are you?”, “How many siblings do you have?”, to try to judge their English levels. Some of their answers were pretty hilarious, and Amilar and I would try not to laugh. Examples:

Me: Why are you interested in taking an English class?
Student A: No.

Me: What day is it today?
Student B: January.

Today, I followed the river upstream. And I eventually found an absolutely amazing rock. And I sat on that giant rock overlooking the river, and the mountains in the distance, and I read a book. I have claimed this rock as my own. I predict many books will be read on this rock.

Something I forgot to write about last post: Last week, I realized that I needed to start checking the news regularly because Bayonnais is very disconnected from the world. People don’t know what’s going on in the rest of the world, or even what is going on in Haiti. The daily newspaper, if there is one, does not make it out to Bayonnais. So, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the rest of the world was still alive and well, and that Obama is now the presumptive Democratic nominee. Jacque-Elie was telling me a little about the current state of Haitian politics, and I told him a little about the importance of the 2008 US election. I have found that people here are very excited about the idea of a black US president.

Creole sentence of the day:
Famn nan bay timoun sou chwal la a panye a. – The woman gives the child on the horse the basket.

The river children that followed me on my river voyage:

Visitors from Afar: Wisconsin

2008-06-06T17:03:00.000-07:00

For the next few weeks, I will not be the only American in Bayonnais. A group of four students from the University of Wisconsin are here for a week on behalf of "Engineers Without Borders". They will be conducting some surveys of the land that will eventually hold the Bayonnais Health Center and will be teaching some cost-efficient forms of building. Apparently, they have been conducting experiments back in Wisconsin to find the most cost-efficient ways to use concrete and rebar. They hope that they can help reduce building costs by 1/3 for OFCB, a lot considering the present classrooms are already very basic in design. Also, Aaron Price, a student at Appalachian State, will be here until late June. He came to Bayonnais with a group from his church in Huntersville, NC last year and wanted to come back for a few weeks and work with OFCB.

Today is my tenth day in Bayonnais, and I still haven’t started teaching classes. I keep trying to schedule a meeting with Demilsaint, the current head of OFCB while Actionnel is away with a broken ankle, to go over what kind of courses OFCB would like me to teach during the summer and how I go about starting them, but the usual response is “We’ll do it tomorrow night.” Everyone is really relaxed here, and no one seems to mind that I haven’t started what I came here to do. Sometimes, I feel like I’m mooching off of OFCB. They provide me with a bed and three meals a day (of delicious Haitian cuisine) and a chance to roam the beautiful Haitian countryside and a chance to learn another language, and so much more, but I am not doing what I was brought here to do. But, everyday, I go walking and I say hey to the same people and they always seem pleased to see me. Kids shout “Blanc! Blanc!” and when I turn and wave, they freak out and laugh.

I had a long conversation with Jacques-Elie about this and he thought the idea of mooching was funny (I didn’t use the term mooching). He told me that I am providing a great service to Bayonnais just by being here. From his standpoint, I am giving many OFCB students an opportunity to practice and improve their English (and maybe their Spanish) in conversation, which is reason enough for being here, no matter what else I do while I’m here. The people of Bayonnais have a different outlook on life. Despite living in dire physical and economic circumstances, the people of Bayonnais are some of the most compassionate, caring, hospitable people I have ever met. They live hard lives, but sometimes they seem more fulfilled and joyful than people in the States.

Whenever I set out to take a walk by myself, I am usually chased down by one of the students and asked to follow them somewhere. On Wednesday, Limares, Jean Juneul’s brother, asked me if I wanted to go with him to get papayas from his “garden” (I love that people call their fields “gardens”). We exchanged the Creole and English words for different types of fruit and different animals while walking through fields of corn and sorghum. When we got to the “garden,” he cut off a long piece of raw sugar cane and gave me some to eat. So, I learned how to bite off chunks of sugar cane, suck out all the sugar juice, and spit out the leftover cane. Later on, he cut two coconuts out of a tree and cut out drinking holes with a machete, and we shared a drink (fresh coconut juice = heaven). This place is surreal.

Aaron was kind enough to bring me an instructional book called “Creole Made Easy” and a Creole-English dictionary. So, this morning I began my Creole lessons. I can now say things like “John waits for him in the little house” (Jan tann li nan ti kay la!) and “Yes, I can give her a lot of soap” (Wi, mwen kapab ba li anpil savon!).

to the Fort!

2008-06-03T17:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning, Jean Juneul asked me if I would like to hike to the Fort, and I said yes. There is an old, French fort from the colonial period high up in the mountains and everyone calls it “Fort Bayonnais”. It is about 200 years old, and is pretty massive. Vital and Demilsaint had said it was a pretty long, hard hike and that it might take a couple of hours to get there. But everyone in Bayonnais has been up there at least once, so I figured it couldn’t be that hard a hike. Long story short, I don’t make it to the Fort. After an hour of hiking up very, very steep, rocky slopes, I looked up to see how far we were from the Fort and saw that it had not moved in the distance. I estimated that we were probably ¼ of the way to the Fort, and that if I didn’t turn back, I was about to experience the most physically trying experience of my life. And the trip back down was just as hard as the trip up. There were numerous moments when I pictured myself slipping and falling to my death on the jagged rocks below me. Only after I got back to OFCB did the others care to inform me that the hike to the Fort is the hike from hell. The Fort may have won this battle, but I will win the war. Sometime this summer, I will make it to the Fort. It will be my grail, my Everest! (In the picture above, the Fort is at the top of the far mountain in the distance. And I am zooming in, a lot.)

On the way up, at about the point when I think that I am going to collapse, I see an older woman walking down the path carrying a large basket on her head that must have weighed 30-40 pounds. She walks past me very slowly, taking very careful steps so not to slip and fall on the mountainside. I had been told that some people walk for miles, down from the mountains, to sell food at the Bayonnais market. Kids may walk 4-5 miles downhill to go to school in the morning, and walk back up at night in the dark (and by dark, I mean no electricity for miles). I had walked about a mile up these slopes, and I was about ready to die, while little kids hike these slopes for miles everyday. And I think, the average Davidson student pays about $40,000 a year (far more than most Haitians will make in a lifetime) so that they can have a 3-minute walk to class, and so people can do their laundry for them. These kids walk across MOUNTAINS (ones that resemble the ones that Frodo crossed in Mordor, only prettier) so that they can get a basic education. That is the cost of their education.

Once Jean Juneul and I are back on the ground, and I can breathe again, we decide to take the long way back to OFCB. He takes me through his “garden” where his family is growing corn and carrots. There is a giant mango tree overshadowing a brook by one of the fields, and he throws rocks up into the branches to knock some mangoes down. He washes a mango in the brook and gives it to me. And it is the most delicious mango in the history of delicious mangoes. Never again will there be a mango as delicious as this mango.

Last night, I sat in on a meeting between David Nichols and some of the head people of OFCB. David is basically the head honcho for OFCB back in the US, and has been in Bayonnais this week with his wife Judy and his brother Eric. The topic of conversation was the future health center in Bayonnais. Most people in Bayonnais do not have the resources to go to Gonaives, the nearest mayor city, to get medical care. There is no convenient, neighborhood CVS or Rite Aid in Bayonnais. There is nothing. The task of constructing a functional health center in Bayonnais is far more complicated then I could have ever imagined. Questions that arose included: If a farmer and his family travel for 20 miles to come to the health center, where will they be housed and how will they be fed? If they travel with a donkey, where will the donkey be housed/fed? How will the center be staffed in the first few year or so, with only one OFCB “home-grown” doctor graduated from college? What is more important, a maternity ward or a pharmacy, granted that one will have to be constructed before the other?

So, today I met my roommate: Jacques-Elie Saint-Louis. He was also Morgan’s (Before me, there was Peter. Before Peter, there was Morgan.) roommate last year. He is 23 years old, and has just finished his first year of college. Jacques-Elie is very calm, and very pensive, and I’m pretty sure that he can read my mind. He is a very deep guy, and it will be great to get to know him over the next few months. In return for practicing his English with me, he plans on teaching me a lot of Creole.

Jacques-Elie, posing:

Our room:

In the Mountains

2008-06-01T17:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I took a walk. I asked Vital (the brother of Actionnel, the head of OFCB and main pastor of the church) where Peter used to go walking in the mountains. I had been told that Peter would go off into the mountains for long periods of time and read, and do art work, and other things, and so I asked Vital to point me in the direction that Peter used to go. I think the idea of me walking aimlessly through the Bayonnais countryside kind of freaked Vital out, given that I don't speak Creole and I've only been here a couple of days, so he told me that he would walk with me. We followed the irrigation system towards the mountains. We reached a ledge on the waterway that overlooked the valley and mountains in the distance and sat for a while. Vital was tired, and sore from the long, bumpy ride to Limbe the day before, and I said he could go back and I would keep going.

It's amazing how much can be communicated with only a few phrases in Creole ("Hello", "How are you?", "I don't speak Creole," "I'm walking", "Nice to meet you"). I passed by people outside of their houses and would say hey, and wave. Usually people just smile and wave, or they may ask a few questions, most of which I don't understand. Everyone notices me, given that they probably haven't seen a white person in a while. I met two guys along the way that I talked to a little. I told them that I spoke Spanish, and they told me they knew someone who spoke Spanish and motioned for me to follow them. So, I met a guy named Eddie, who works at a dicotec in the Dominican Republic. We talked for a long time while he was shelling peanuts (pistache!) to sell at market the next week. He asked me if I was scared to be walking alone, and I said no, and asked if I should be. He said no, but said that there were probably people much, much farther out in the mountains that had never seen a white person, and might freak out and think I was an evil spirit.

Today, I went out walking again in the same direction, hoping to make it to the mountains. I hadn't walked far when I passed by the house of Jean Juneul (I have no clue if I am spelling things/names right), Actionnel's nephew. He caught up with me a few minutes later and said he would walk with me. I haven't really figured out whether people feel the need to walk with me for safety reasons, or just because. The farther away from the school, the farther apart the houses and fields. Jean speaks a little English, so we talked while we walked. He would teach me Creole names for things (cabuit = goat, etc), and I would teach him English names for things. We made it pretty far up a hill, far up enough that you could see the entire valley. Words can not describe how beautiful the valley is. It's unlike anything I have ever seen.

We came back a different way we had gone. At one point, a man walked out of his house and staggered onto the path. He was probably in his late-fifties, just skin-and-bones, and drunk. He held out his hand, asking for money, and I kind of shrugged, as if to say I didn't have anything to give. He started to get kind of angry, and starting ranting in Creole, waving an empty bottle of some type of alcohol in his hand. You could tell he was genuinely hungry, maybe hadn't eaten in a while. This is my first real experience with hunger in Haiti. Everything we hear on the news about food shortages and rising food prices is very real.

I sort of started guitar lessons today. Jean Juneul asked me to teach him a little after we got back from the walk, so I taught him a few basic lessons on my guitar and he practiced for a while. I've been meaning to talk to Demilsaint, Actionnel's brother, who is currently in charge (Actionnel has a broken ankle, and hasn't been in Bayonnais since February, but should be back this month), about starting up some type of music class after exams are over in a few weeks. A couple of students at the school have told me that they would be interested in taking a class. Miselet, who I see a lot, told me that he was "thirsty for playing guitar'.

I ate goat today. I didn't know it until after I ate it because it was goat soup, with carrots, potatoes and onions. It was delicious. There are adorable, baby goats everywhere in Bayonnais, but I will probably look at them differently now.

I have changed the settings on the blog so that anybody can post a comment. You don't have to have an account on this site or anything. So you have no excuse not to.

Bayonnais, Haiti

2008-05-30T19:00:00.000-07:00

This morning, at 5:00, I left Bayonnais on a long drive towards Cap-Haitian, where I attended the college graduation of the first OFCB students ever to go to college. 12 hours later, I made it back to Bayonnais and had a delicious dinner of beef, “mushroom rice” and pineapple. And now I will sit down to write the first post of my blog. I have never had a blog before, so forgive me if I have no clue what I am doing.

So, I am in Bayonnais, Haiti. Until mid-August, I will be working with OFCB Ministries (Organization of the Christian Force of Bayonnais) in Bayonnais, about 20 miles from the 3rd largest city in Haiti, Gonaives. Bayonnais has a population of about 80,000 people, most of who live by subsistence farming. In 1993, the five founders of OFCB started a school in Bayonnais with the intention of providing for the physical, economic and spiritual needs of the people of Bayonnais. Since then, the school has grown to 1,600 students, from elementary school up to 13th grade. There is also a church on the campus and, in the next few years, there will be a health center.

OFCB has been kind enough to provide me with a place to stay and food to eat and, in return, I will attempt to make my stay here worthwhile for OFCB. The current plan is that I will offer summer courses in English and music, but all may and probably will change. Peter Daniels, a Davidson graduate who has worked with OFCB since last October and is currently back in the States, came to Bayonnais with the understanding he would be teaching English and Art, and ended up teaching a variety of courses including basic computer skills and even art history. So, I have no idea what will happen in the next 11+ weeks. No clue. But I can already tell that my time in Haiti will very impactful on the way I think and the way I live. I’ve been here 2 ½ days, and already OFCB has given me more than I could ever hope to give in return.

So, this blog will hopefully allow me to rant endlessly about what is going on in Bayonnais and what is going on in my life while I’m here.

Today, in Cap-Haitian, Amilar and Jesula graduated for North Haiti Christian University (I think that’s the translation), and have returned to Bayonnais as the first two “home-grown professionals”. OFCB works to put their graduates through college with the agreement that they will return to Bayonnais to work 10-15 years after college graduation and help further the development of the local community. Amilar has graduated with a theology degree and will become the associate pastor at the OFCB church. Jesula has graduated with a degree in business administration and will help with the development of local businesses. More graduates are to follow in the next few years, including a few agronomists and a few doctors, who will start the first health center in Bayonnais’ history.

The graduation ceremony was about 2 ½ hours long, and in French. I don’t speak French, or Creole. The language barrier is difficult, but a lot of students at the school are very helpful. Many have agreed to teach me Creole in exchange for me helping them with their English. My goal is to be able to have conversations with people in Creole by the end of the summer. Hopefully, I will learn pretty quickly since I am immersed in the language.

A lot has happened over the last 2 ½ days and I haven’t fully processed most of it. I hope that things will become clearer over time, but things are very muddled at the moment. It’s hard to know where to begin to process the culture of Haiti, or even it’s sheer natural beauty. But, I have 11 weeks to try.

If you have made it this far, and choose not to leave a comment, I will be very hurt.