The week after my conversation with Annabelle was a good one. I felt settled in my new digs at Tabarre and I was making progress at work, preparing an application for emergency hurricane relief. If it’s approved, 30 families will get money to buy food for their children and reassemble their homes. That felt like a good enough reason to be in Haiti that week.
I was in my stride, I was quoting Ban Ki-moon, it was all coming together! I was elated, Gena was frustrated. I knew why; you can create all the pretty statistics you like but you can’t tabulate human suffering. I looked at her and said, ‘This is a marriage made in heaven! You hate all this stuff. I live and breathe it’. Twenty years of local government training were coming into their own. Red tape? I have a black belt in it.
On Wednesday, I had this conversation with my friend Kim on Viber and I didn’t absolutely lose it, like I would have on day one. I just got on with it and accepted the things I cannot change, like the climate, the ecosystem and native gecko behaviour.
Me: I just saw a little lizard in my room but now I can’t find him. My housemate says he’s not aggressive … yay.
Kim: How little are we talking?
Me: Small but swift.
Kim: Apparently, they keep insects in check and are harmless, unlike mosquitoes (just googled).
Me: That’s grand but I don’t want to wake up with a lizard on my face.
Kim: Googles if lizards like faces …
Me: Is afraid to google lizards and faces …
Buoyed up by feeling useful and reconciling myself to reptiles, I agreed to go to Kenscoff for the weekend. Kenscoff is the NPH residential home high in the mountains above Port-au-Prince. It houses over 300 children, some of whom are orphans, some of whom are abandoned, many of whom have special needs. Third move in two weeks, you say? Why, certainly! In fact, my bag is already packed. I live out of a suitcase now, you see! Cheerfully!
The Friday-evening drive took two hours on dusty roads and through crowded markets, where people sold crumpled clothes, fat-backed tellies and second-hand blenders. Every consumer item ever created in the first world must end its short life cycle here. There was rubbish and rubble everywhere; mountains of refuse, rivers of rocks.
The mini-bus driver bought twelve dozen eggs and handed them to me to mind. I balanced them on my knees and was afraid all the way that they would scramble in the heat or crack from their Haitian massage. That’s a euphemism for having the shite shaken out of you on roads that are more pothole than any other discernible thing.
Kenscoff’s setting is stunning; the mountains and tall trees make it look like the Swiss Alps. There were challenges of course; what would a new day in Haiti be without them? The drinking water was not safe, the rainwater had to be collected to flush the toilet and there was no Internet connection. I went to bed on Friday night thinking, ‘I can do this. If I can live with a lizard, I can do this’.
On Saturday morning, I walked the grounds with some of the children, who proudly pointed out their own individual houses and every facility on site; a school, a library, a bakery, a clinic, a little hut where boys go to get their hair cut. Then they taught me the Creole word for every animal under the sun at a mural of Noah’s Ark. And everywhere I went, big eyes stared at me like I was one of the exotic animals in that mural and little hands made their way into mine. On Saturday afternoon, I read a whole book in one sitting thinking, ‘This is amazing. I never read any more’.
On Sunday morning, my new beginning tripped and fell. I had a very sick stomach, probably from the water, even though we boiled everything we drank. That’s another euphemism and it means the same thing as the first one. I was upset about the water and the sickness and the Internet and I wanted to go straight back to Tabarre. But Monday was a national holiday, so we wouldn’t be leaving any time soon. The rage was in me, this time with God.
I came to Haiti because of my faith. I felt drawn here in a way that I couldn’t explain or resist. But since I arrived, my conviction has wavered and the connection to God has collapsed, like the power lines that Hurricane Matthew flattened. It was like a Viber call that had gone from ‘excellent signal’ to ‘poor signal’ all of a sudden and for no obvious reason. Only there would be no Viber calls for the next few days, would there now, God? Only physical discomfort and social isolation and spiritual torment. It’s a good job God is used to me. Somewhere over Kenscoff, he may have rolled his eyes.
I went to Mass to distract myself and there, for the first time in two weeks, a brief, flickering signal was restored. The children had gone all out for the occasion; there were party dresses and smart shirts, there were dangly earrings and colourful beads. In my casual t-shirt and jeans, I was scarlet for myself. And they sang the sweetest songs and I nearly cried because I saw a young girl, who is non-verbal, who can’t make words with her mouth, add her voice to the chorus, her face all lit up with passion and pride. Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can – I use that motto all the time but I never saw it put into practice so movingly in front of me. I made a little video to remember the singing by; I watched myself mouth the word ‘happy’ in it because, in that instant, I truly was.
So, another week of highs and lows, all myriad and magnified. I don’t know if one is enough to sustain the other just yet but the fact is, I’m still here. I’m still here with the honest intention of learning some church music, so that maybe I won’t miss my gospel choir at home so much. I’m still here with the honest intention of getting through another week. And this week’s honest intention is better than last week’s wobbly hope.
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