When people ask me, ‘What’s it like in Haiti?’ I can’t find words that are wide enough. Here’s what it was like last week. That’s as much as I can tell you. There will be cusses. Watch out.
Monday
The Italians are coming! A group of experts from the University of Genoa are on their way to deliver two weeks of therapy training. It’s my job to buy stationery and get course notes printed.
Sourcing stationery means jumping into a minibus with Max the accountant and driving to a shop that’s 45 minutes away. Three times. Once to order the goods, again to collect them and finally to settle the bill.
The printing almost breaks me. I try to support a local printer by asking for a quote. Two site visits, five e-mails and countless phone calls later, I give up. Their administrator e-mails to say, ‘Sorry for the late. I’m a kind of busy and frequently I’m out’.
I switch to their international competitor and get a telephone quote. The price doubles when I walk through the door with a foreign face. A rate is struck but the delivery date is uncertain. Their administrator e-mails to say, ‘I apologise for not getting back to you. It so happened that a lot was going on and the machines were having issues’.
I photocopy the notes myself; 2,000 pages over two days. I’m feeling wrecked and resentful on the way home when we pass a local taxi with the word ‘Patience’ written on the side of it. ‘Have patience with the Haitians’. My niece Isabelle made that rhyme up before I even got here. That child was out before.
Tuesday
I hear from a contact in ESPWA, an Irish charity that ships containers of essential supplies to Haiti. He’s at Kildare County Council collecting items that they’ve assembled for the orphanage at Kenscoff; school jumpers, leather shoes and hand-knitted teddies – hundreds of each.
My Council colleagues have set up a group called Kildare Friends of Haiti. They’ve raised over €2,000 and coaxed massive donations out of knitwear and shoe companies. ESPWA will ship those donations to Haiti at their own cost.
I feel overwhelmed by the news and the familiar faces in the photos I receive, live from Level 7. I’m part of an accidental network, powered by positive people from my new life in Haiti and the other, old one in Ireland (sisters be reading into that thinking, ‘She’s never coming home’). How lucky am I to meet the people I meet? They put school shoes on boy and girl feet.
Wednesday
I spend the day reviewing child protection documents. My role is expanding because things keep coming up; volunteer co-ordination and needs assessments and training surveys in fecking French. None of this feels like work. I love it. I’m borderline obsessed.
The only downside is that it leaves very little room in my burnt-out brain for the acquisition of new language; my Creole is still poor but I’m working on it. I bought some children’s books and am doing a painstaking translation. One of them is called ‘The Mango for Grandpa’. The illustrations are beautiful but the final one is of a funeral so I know it doesn’t end well for Grandpa. I’m learning colourful phrases but they’re very mango-centric. It’s a truly Haitian dilemma.
Thursday
My boss Gena forwards a warning message to US visitors to Haiti. It says, ‘Rates of kidnapping, murder, armed robbery and violent assault have risen. Kidnapping for ransom can affect anyone in Haiti. Protests including tire burning and road blockages are frequent. Haitian authorities’ ability to respond to emergencies is limited and in some areas non-existent. Have your own plans for quickly exiting the country if necessary’.
The last time I got a message like that, I happened to be home for Christmas. I cried, held a case conference with my sisters and considered not coming back at all. This time my only response is an emoji with a fed-up face. It’s not that I’ve become complacent. I’m still careful but I’ve been safe here for eight months now and, as Sr. Judy from the hospital says, ‘You have to think of all the people who don’t want to hurt you’.
We go out that night, transported door to door by a friend’s driver. We drink cocktails in the Hotel Oloffson and listen to a song I’ve never heard before called ‘Here Comes the Night Time’ by Arcade Fire. The house band comes on. They’re called RAM and they play a type of music called vodou rock and roots. The traditional rhythms are HYPNOTIC. I feel ECSTATIC and dance all night. We all live for moments like these.
Friday
My colleague Norma calls to my office. ‘Do you have time to come to the training room? The Italians are doing a wonderful treatment’. I pick up my phone to take photos and follow her.
A ten-month old baby boy with cerebral palsy is having his little limbs manipulated by expert hands. Expert hands attached to a gentle voice that is singing to him to ease his distress. His Mammy lies on the floor alongside him and the baby boy is calm while he has physical contact with her. I lift the phone to make a short video but the video comes out wobbly, doesn’t it? because I’m crying, amn’t I?
I’ve never seen anything like it; the therapist is God’s instrument, the baby boy is a pure soul and the bond between him and his Mammy is the definition of divine. I would photocopy 20,000 pages to see what I’m seeing now; the direct transfer of love from a kind expert to a young mother with a hard road ahead of her. The child between them is a lightning rod. He conducts the love like a current.
Saturday
A pool day at our friends’ apartment complex. A fecking pool day. In the Caribbean. With nice treats from the Caribbean (that’s a fancy supermarket). It’s a great way to unwind after a busy week but I feel guilty when I have nice experiences here because of the acute need all around me, all of the time. I think about a boy up in Kenscoff who made a kite from a plastic bag that came from the supermarket I just spent a relative fortune in. I don’t know how to resolve that conflict yet. I know what I need though. And sometimes, it’s a day as sunny and simple as this.
Sunday
We hike in the mountains of Kenscoff. I love being up there in the countryside, saying hello to local people and their livestock, ‘Bonjou Monsieur! Bonjou Monsieur Bèf!’ There are hundreds of people on the mountains making their way to and from Mass, the women in their ‘best poor dress’, as our national director Fr. Rick once said. I admire their substance and their style.
We make our way home and I google the Arcade Fire song I heard in the Hotel Oloffson. I am kind of stunned to read that the band has spent time in Haiti and that musicians from RAM play on the track. I don’t know why I’m so surprised; it just seems like nobody ever comes to Haiti.
I’m even more stunned to read the song’s lyrics and the singer’s summary of them because they articulate something that I have felt but haven’t properly acknowledged – ‘Just the absurdity that you can go to a place like Haiti and teach people something about God. The opposite really seems to be true. I’ve never been to a place with more belief and more knowledge of God’.
I go to bed all conflicted but not too conflicted to sleep through the usual cacophony of cats making kittens and mangoes making noise. The cats sing the song of the night and the mangoes punctuate it with random percussion when they hurl themselves at my tin roof. The cock tells them the song is over at 4 a.m. by crowing in a voice that’s loud and coarse. That creature has zero manners. Minus manners, if you ask me.
So, what’s it like in Haiti? It’s like falling for the wrong man, the dangerous, unsuitable and totally compelling kind. You’re thinking, ‘Not him. Anyone but him’. But you know your own heart and what you feel can’t be resisted. It’s beautiful and terrible and mesmerising and intense, in varying, addictive proportions.
You can only ever say what it’s like today or this week though; anything else is a reckless form of folly. I look for a way to sum up the current position and can’t find a better one than that of my printing nemesis. These days? In Haiti? I’m a kind of busy and frequently I’m out.
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