Bos Stefan came over to build a shelf. You see his assistant in the photo and bos Niko. They are sawing and fitting and nailing but everyone is saying to me "So you're building a shelf?" meanwhile I'm lounging on a chair (albeit with the feverish Gabriela draped over me). This comment used to drive me cRRRazy especially when cooks would say to me: "You're making Haitian chicken and pikliz?" and then I'd give them money and they would take a bath, put on fancy clothes, go to the market, bargain for everything, carry it home including the live chicken, wash and chop and grate everything into identical pieces without a cutting board, kill, pluck, and boil the chicken, stand for hours tending several bubbling pots, wash the dishes and set them out, arrange the food in serving bowls...wash the dishes, go home, make more food, wash more dishes. This is the Haitian chicken that I !!!! was making. On the other hand, we all know that the chicken like the rice that will steam beside it, is not just mine, never was and never will be. Here in Haiti, where work is done outside, often on the street if not viewable from it, it's more obvious to everyone where things come from and where they go. The chickens are part of the daily symphony called dawn and later walk threw the neighborhoods in generous baskets on the top of market ladies heads. I buy rice directly from farmers that i know and whose fields i've visited. Anyone who has been to Haiti knows that the Haitian cook can not help cooking for a crowd, a hungry crowd!, and that there will be parts of the savory free-range chicken that no one in my little family will want to eat, like some organs, and if we're nice we'll give these out in foresight with the extra rice. The chicken bones will get sucked and any last meaty morsels will feed someone's dog.
My shelf is being built in my front yard by bosses who will go home with a days salary. My shelf will help me get organized during our four month stay and then will get passed on or sold cheaply to a friend or neighbor. The system in a Haitian neighbourhood is set up for community awareness and advantage...where everyone sees you come in and expects you to share what you've got whether you share voluntarily or not. The imported wood connects me especially to another place where in my experience sharing is a littler more voluntary and a little less risky and where wood is a little straighter and also cheaper. The bosses haven't told me how much they are charging for their 24-hour shelf building service.