The Fort(s)

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.

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

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

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

(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

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

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.