Matt and I share this daydream of starting a juice factory in Haiti. Our recent trip to Haiti from Winnipeg (where asparagus was the only thing in season) reminded us of how delicious Haitian fruit really is. The fact that Haiti doesn’t yet bottle and market their own juice may be a way of saying it’s just that good . . . it can’t be bottled. Starting a business in Haiti feels like a really fun adventure and also an administrative nightmare. Staring a business in Haiti involves a multitude of unnecessary bureaucratic steps and many months of fumbling through the Haitian government system, almost as many as an adoption, which took us and many others at least two years to complete. Lack of consistent electricity, poor road infrastructure, lack of access to the necessary equipment, etc - all these factors together keep our daydream a dream at least these days . . . all these factors we, development workers and economists etc., usually refer to as “lack of infrastructure."
I just spent 10 days back in Port au Prince. While there I walked around camps and hung out with friends who were sleeping in these tents, friends who had lost their houses with everything in it and friends who just didn’t trust their houses enough to spend 8 hours inside them in the dark with their eyes closed. These friends and other familiar people, like the women who sell us bananas and mangoes and my cohort of mototaxi drivers, were thrilled to see us. We haven’t seen you in so long! they exclaimed, How is your family? How are your Mom and Dad? They didn’t just want to know how my baby was, they wanted to know what he’s doing now . . . Does he sit by himself yet, how many teeth? when will you bring him by? I honestly had to compete to ask them how they were, how they are.
One of the cooks at MCC office in Port au Prince lost her whole house with everything in it. Her children were in the house when it fell down but thankfully under the only part that didn’t collapse. And there she was, huge warm smile scooping out passion fruit to make fresh juice . . . insisting on filling my tupperware with fresh mashed potatoes and sauce when I had to leave before lunch was officially served (to go home to nurse Niko). Was there anything left underneath the rubble? I asked. There were some clothes but they are all ripped.
Why don’t I think I’d be at work if my house went up in dust just a few months earlier?
Why don’t I think I’d be smiling?
Why do I think I’d be drowning in insurance papers?
There are thousands of people sleeping in camps in Pétionville. Once when I walked by one of these camps, I saw a woman in a short skirt and a nice light pink top. Her hair was tightly and smartly braided. She didn’t look like she slept in a tent but neither does the MCC cook, Marie. It’s almost like a way of saying . . . we’re so together, it doesn't even matter if my house falls down or not.
Three months after the earthquake when we were in Canada, we discovered Gabriela and her new friend, Sofia, playing "earthquake" in the backyard under a play tent. Back in Haiti, Gabriela was so happy to play again with Tad, our landlady’s nephew. Tad is too scared to sleep in his own house so between his parents and aunts and cousin, they bring him to his aunt’s house to spend the night and every morning his dad comes and picks him up to bring him to school.
Shouldn’t this kid be getting therapy?
Pre-earthquake, Tad lived with his parents. post-earthquake his parents and extended family spend an extra hour and a half a day towing Tad to and from his aunt’s house and his parents house and school often sharing morning coffee or an evening plate of rice. And Tad sleeps peacefully with his two aunts, two cousins, and his grandmother who moved back up to her daughter’s place after the quake. Tad is as healthy and energetic as Gabriela, if that’s any measure (and impressed us with his ability to stand up to her).
It’s true that Haiti lacks physical infrastructure. Apparently, according to some structural engineers that we talked to, the physical difference between a house that stayed standing and a house that fell down is about $50 in building supplies, rebar etc. I am all about safe, healthy houses but I want there to be a way to talk about this that is more than physical infrastructure. Haitians are often referred to as resilient. As much as we can generalize, I agree that Haitians have high resilience but resilience is usually saved up for adversity and I think there is in Haitian culture a social infrastructure which both resists change and is stronger than any house (9 million strong) that money can buy.
Ten years and 12 days before the earthquake in Haiti, I sat on a beach on the West Coast of Africa waiting for the sun to rise on the new millennium. At that point, we’d been living in Senegal just 4 short months but enough time for me to feel that there was something there, something stronger than rebar. It's similar to what I feel in Haiti.
I don’t know what the solution is to the problem of poor infrastructure: physical, social, emotional in one place or another. Maybe being out of balance in one way or the other is part of the definition of every culture. As for me, I spent my last few days in Haiti dropping off as much money into the hands of regular Haitians as I could: the tailor, artists, banana-sellers. That’s the only thing I could think of doing. That and watching folks dote on Niko. That and daring to rest one moment at a time within the strong social network that has been woven around me and my family.
