This article was first published in the St.Catharines Standard in late
February 2005. Finally, we can share it with all of you too!
Matt and Esther
WalMart and the Meaning of Life in Haiti
Haiti has been our home for nearly five months now. We are beginning to
have a sense of this place we now call home. We are developing
relationships, even friendships. We have just moved into a more humble home
that resembles the homes of most of our neighbours. We get compliments on
our abilities in Creole and don¹t shy away when people even say we speak
better Creole than some Haitians! We¹ve also caught on to Haitian kindness
and hospitality to foreigners. We know which restaurants to visit on which
days to get our favourite Haitian dishes. We know the two directions: up
and down in this mountainous country and we know many of the roads, paths
and little villages that surround our valley home. More importantly, we know
how to ask for directions. We¹ve had a chance to do some traveling to see
different parts of this beautiful country. Our work is starting to take
shape and when we have nothing planned, we know someone will come by with
a plan to invite us into. All this to say that we are starting to feel
settled.
Feeling settled gives us a chance to think of what we left behindŠwhat we
might be missing. Recently, a friend working in Nigeria wrote to us,
reflecting on what she was missing from home in Virginia. We were quite
surprised to read that the things she missed most were some of the things we
were quite happy to be living without right now. She mentioned, among other
things, WalMart, microwaves and snack foods. After we read her letter, we
realized that one of the reasons we don¹t miss those things is because we
actually have most of them here in Dezam.
Our ³WalMart² appears twice a week in our town Tuesdays and Fridays. It
appears in the form of a huge market. Truckloads full of people and their
wares, overloaded horse and donkey carts, and peasant women walking with
huge bags on their heads fill the roads at sun-up and sun-down. Buyers and
sellers come from all over the region to exchange their precious goods. From
what we¹ve heard, you can get almost anything you want at WalMart. The same
is true for the Dezam market and more! You can find any kind of animal you
could possibly want, most of them even living. We have goats, chickens,
turkeys, cows, horses, and rabbits. There are also cows tongues, goats
heads, and pig intestines. You can find all sorts of other food products
rice, flour, spices, fresh baked goods, even Corn Flakes and cookies
imported from the Dominican Republic. Fresh fruit and vegetables abound.
Carrots, cabbages, eggplants, and onions sit alongside pineapples, bananas,
mangoes, papaya and the more exotic fruits like knips, bread fruit and jack
fruit. Cleaning products, school supplies, farm tools, ice, lottery tickets,
shoes, and used and imported clothing (I even saw a Toronto Maple Leafs
t-shirt!) fill the dusty aisles of the jam-packed market. The sights,
sounds and smells in the Dezam market are exhilarating. Sometimes we go
just to walk around, see our neighbours at work, and check up on the latest
town gossip.
So we don¹t miss WalMart or many of the other conveniences that we enjoyed
while living in Canada. That¹s not to say that using and enjoying modern
conveniences is necessarily a bad thing. Surely, however, we could be more
responsible with our consumptive habits and the values that under-gird them.
And this is also not to say that we miss nothing. Reading our friend¹s
letter about what she missed did make us realize that what we do miss are
the intangibles. We miss family of course. They¹ve been very supportive of
us making the move to Haiti so we definitely still feel close to them. I
miss talking to my best friend on the phone everyday. We were sad to miss
the change from summer to fall and the first snowfall. We really miss the
things that only come along once in a lifetime, like our baby nephew¹s first
steps or my Oma¹s 89th birthday. And of course, we missed celebrating
Christmas and the New Year with those we love.
We are anticipating that living and working in Haiti for these three years
is going to be an incredible opportunity to expand our minds, develop new
skills, learn a new language and build new relationships. This experience
will also help us to realize that it¹s not the ³stuff² that¹s important,
it¹s the people, the relationships, the experiences, the memories, the
values we adhere to all the things that are the glue that keeps our lives
together, and in the end, that make us better off.
Matt Van Geest is a long-time Niagara resident. He and his wife, Esther
deGroot are working with the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in Dezam,
Haiti, three hours north of the capital city, Port-au-Prince. Their work is
focused on environmental education and reforestation in rural Haiti. This is
the second in a series of periodic columns that will appear over the next
three years. They will share about their lives and experiences in Haiti
from a Niagara perspective. Matt and Esther can be contacted at
greatspirit@fastmail.fm
