My Haitian Grandmas

One of my two grandmas left today.   I don't actually know her name for 4 months now, we've been growing close so that in the past few weeks I've been calling her "Gran" along with Gabriela and Niko.    
On Saturday, in the all too typical style of grown-Haitian children living in North America, they called her and told her that her plane ticket was for the plane on Sunday giving her just a week to collect herself and her things and make her way to Port au Prince.   She spent the week grilling and pounding coffee, drying and sifting cassava flour, & making cocoa to take along with her to Florida where her daughter and 3 granddaughters await her.   She is excited to see her grandchildren but doesn't like being "stuck inside" or "not having any way to make some money" and "not having anything to eat".   She is 75.  

My other grandma is leaving next Tuesday.   She is Marilyn, semi-retired tour guide who was raised on the east coast of the US but has lived 40 years in Europe mostly and currently still Geneva.   She came to Haiti to volunteer for a month because "I wanted to see Haiti" and related because her friend's daughter died here in the UN headquarters during the earthquake (Jan 2012).    She is a grandma to one granddaughter who lives in Singapore and a grandson in London.  Marilyn and I have been chatting about once a day to check in and report on the cultural clashes of the day.    She is a seasoned traveler and street-wise, the kind of visitor to Haiti that doesn't jump to conclusions or solutions : )   Marilyn leaves on Tuesday and I will miss her.  

Haiti is a place where, in many cases, several generations can be found sleeping in the same lakou (yard).   I don't know any of my foreign friends who desire to live with their parents and I wouldn't want to live with mine or Marilyn for that matter.   But when the Gran told me she was leaving, my immediate thoughts were: how can you leave me? who is going to look after us? who is going to send food over once in a while and bring Gabriela and Matt coffee on Saturday mornings? who is going to tell me not to lift buckets while holding a baby? who is going to greet my kids with joy?  who is going to instill order in the household without a word?  
Having a Haitian grandma around was really nice and I hope now that I am the matriarch of the house, I can keep her spirit of stable presence and traditional values alive.  


  

Dear Wisdom

Travay se liberte. Work is freedom.

Near the iron market, entire streets were lined with beautiful Haitian paintings for sale, the vendors waiting patiently for the tourists that had stopped coming 30 years before. (from Haiti by Philippe Girard)

Art, in my experience, is organic. It's creation is organic. It's creation can be spontaneous and tedious and independent of time. For the artist, creating art doesn't usually feel like “work”. You'll know what work you've been designed to do because you'll can't help but do it...it will be feel like freedom. It will be your “work”.

I love the Haitian expression: Travay se liberte. Work is freedom. Coming out of physical slavery in the 1800's and descending into economic slavery, Haitians, in my experience, tackle the work they choose to do with enviable enthusiasm even when I question whether or not they have earned a profit at the end of the day.

While I have encountered many many Haitians who are unemployed, I haven't met but a couple who don't know how to work. Even young people who, like the teenagers I've observed in Canada in recent years, seem to spend their days looking into their cell phones, will jump to their feet and climb up a coconut tree, harvest, and skin the fruit on request.

I've spent a big part (but not all as some of my ventures have led to contract involving money) working but not getting paid for it. Sometimes my work was obvious: wash diapers. Other times it was more indeterminate: go to the Iron Market, like I did several times in the first half of 2012, to buy gifts and play kitchen pots (and yes I saw many lovely paintings and no I didn't see any tourists). I can not pretend to understand the economic insecurity that the majority of Haitians live with daily but I do commiserate with unemployed Haitians because working is good for people. Work is freedom.

I dream of working. And, I get it why Haitians flee to other countries when they can find work there.

I want to work (and one of the biggest reasons why we are leaving Haiti again this year, at least physically leaving). I crave the freedom of structure and deadlines. And, I just want to give of myself to the world at large. Extroverted ENERGY. I want to give because when I give out, I get a lot back. Travay se liberte.

Wangari's Wise Mama

My mother told me that leopards would lurk in vegetation, their long tails draped across a narrow path in the forest...'If you are walking on the path and you see the leopard's tail', my mother said, 'be careful not to step on it. Instead, as you keep on walking, tell the leopard, You and I are both leopards so why would we disagree?' (from Unbound, a memoir by Wangari Maathai. “Wangari” translates as the possessive form of the leopard). I would love to teach you as wisely as Wangari's mother whose daughter became a leading environmental and political activist and the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her contributions to sustainable development. But no doubt my advice will not come packaged up in the slow and lovely English of anglophone Africa and extinctions are, these days (or hours : }, much more common than the likelihood of walking over a leopard's tail even in Kenya's central highlands. Last night after my after-dinner-siesta on the mahogany couch, I went upstairs to the roof. The sky was, unlike the previous night, dark and cloudy with a shifty half-moon. I searched the grey clouds for stars and found one. I kept looking because I know this little trick...if you keep looking for stars even when it looks like it might be too cloudy to see them, you will find them. I did find 3, 5, 6, 7...10 stars last night just by looking into the same sky that had at first look only hosted one. The same is true for finding other amazing things (beings) like frogs, beauty, angles from which to look at an issue, hope. If you look intentionally, you can find anything that you are truly looking for.

Dear Wisdom,

The moon, who I normally love, looms over these mountain and me these days.  This week, I’ve been cautiously checking over my shoulder to see where it’s at: from less than half to half to more than half to nearly full. . . tonight.   I am too keenly aware that this waxing and waning is a 30 day process and that this is the 8^th full moon I’m seeing with you still inside.   I am already thrilled to meet you fas à fas but we happy to count the days  o n e  by  o n e, sunrise to moonrise, until you just can’t help it but arrive.   

Pointy Belly

 The word on the street is that you're a boy.    Folks (many women but also men) are so convinced that the other day a woman exclaimed "Kile w ap fe gason sa a?"  (When are you going to have that boy?)   Others say to each other: she's having a boy, she's having a boy.   Others ask: Are you having a boy?  And others just say: GASON.  Blan yo (white people) have lots of ways of telling the sex of a baby still inside (watermelon, basketballs, footballs, and swinging gold chains with wedding rings on them, morning sickness) but when boy Niko was inside and we were walking around Port au Prince, no one ever said anything but BOY.  And they were right.   Some, as I stroll around our neighbourhood here outside Cap, say girl but it seems to be related to related to seeing boy Niko with me.  And, every Haitian I've met aspires to the nuclear family including one boy and one girl.  We already have a girl, I remind them, and they say oh yeah but that's another important subject altogether.    I adore Gabriela and I love little boys.
Boys, I've learned from Haitians this time around when I'm walking slower, come in POINTY BELLIES.


  

fear

Dear Wisdom,

Things are great: a day in sand and salt (the ocean), good relations with our housemates, an upcoming workshop on soapmaking with Haitian coconut oil that we make ourselves, with SOIL staff and friends, teaching YOGA !!!! at Breda, new blan in the neighbourhood if not new friendships at least deflecting just a little attention from us (me and you not to mention blondy and our sassy big sister), OMA coming in less than a month...

As for planning for your arrival things are also good. We've been putting some old furniture back together like a mahogany day bed and we've ordered our first ever table and chair set; today I ordered a sheepskin rug for you as we're expecting the rainy season to come shortly after you.

With all things exciting (like your arrival ate) there are also fears. In an effort to keep these fears at a reasonable level, I am writing them down, in random order...that:

• you will fall out when I'm in the outhouse (I get nervous now every trip I take). (Fortunately we also have a pee bucket for night-time and for nervous pee-ers like I'm becoming.)
• you will decide to be born on a the boat that is taking us to Mole St. Nicholas and the boat breaks down
• you will not survive your own birth and I'll have to make this journal into your memoir
• you will not survive and it's presumed that you would have survived had we decided not to stay in Haiti and it will be all my fault for deciding to stay
• you will get meningitis or something equally scary and we won't notice early enough or take it seriously enough to get you appropriate care
• you will have some unexpected condition or defect that Haiti can't handle
• you will have Down Syndrome which I've heard once we get used to the idea is more a blessing than anything else.
• you will be a girl
   
• tomorrow I will get hit by a Mac truck one day b/f our international medical insurance takes effect.
• I will fall while carrying you because the floor gets wet from night rains in places we're not used to because it's the beginning of the rainy season that we haven't experienced in this house yet
• everything will happen beautifully and more or less perfectly and I'll just feel so incredibly blessed that I'll live in fear that something awful is bound to happen to us. We have already been so blessed, maybe that's why I'm fearless & fearful already
• both Gabriela and Niko will re-turn into babies and I'll be holding on to you will trying to keep them from clawing everyone else including you
• the sheepskin we just ordered for you really is related to SIDS
• Matt dying
• someone stealing our new solar panel...the one that makes my sewing machine work :

Writing these fears is different that what I have heard myself saying: that things just happen as they were planning on happening e.g. the earthquake in Haiti. So I'm a little surprised.

But we can handle these fears.  We ARE handling these fears...

with prayer, meditation, breath, and silkscreening (why not!)

AND

committing to living life fearing God (not that fearing God prevents challenges)

AND

fearlessly living out our passions

AND

learning

Stay safe in there my wise one.

After two days and nights of rain or threats of rain, the sky is clear in all directions, calm, and absolutely glorious.   But you my dear have been reminding me all day of the earthquake.   When the earthquake reached our little house in Pètionville it was a low rumble that reverberated through the earth until it reached the floor under our feet.   For less than 30 seconds we watched the earthquake make everything around us tremble. 

You are deep within me

moving

in water

beating

in good rhythm

your bony elbows and knees jutting up against my skin

like the jagged mountains that characterize this island  

allowing us to see you from the outside

Today I am in awe of your presence within me.  Several times today I just had to stop doing anything to let you move.  I am also and suddenly reaching this point where I’m wondering how are you going to get out of here.    I am hoping for little earthquakes and a few medium-sized ones too.   I don’t mean real earthquakes and I don’t mean to make light about the January 2010 earthquake that was fatal for hundreds of thousands.   I just mean contractions.   I mean life force.   Feeling life force. 

Dear WISDOM,

incredible clear nights where the stars just entice us up the stairs to the roof where we can stare and hyperextend our necks in amazement

garbage the stuff that was already here...the garbage Carnaval crowds dropped here

cools mornings where we play tug-o-war with our duvets and shiver in our underwear

a woman holding a cell phone away from a guy tying to get it from her

the best papaya ever ever

discussing money in Haiti with Haitians

when mountains are the backdrop for stars

when we find out TiCoco, Pushlene, and their brother's dad died last year

feeling you kick inside me several dozen times a day, darling

walking by the exposed body of the dog beside the road

boiled breadfruit with the right amount of salt. rock salt from around here

reading about and remembering the earthquake...pretending it's a story

solar lighting

microwaves, TV that are always on, every man to his own car

ying yang and day night and 11 AM

imperfectly beautiful

wisdom and force

After two days and nights of rain or threats of rain, the sky is clear in all directions, calm, and absolutely glorious.   But you my dear have been reminding me all day of the earthquake.   When the earthquake reached our little house in Pètionville it was a low rumble that reverberated through the earth until it reached the floor under our feet.   For less than 30 seconds we watched the earthquake make everything around us tremble. 

You are deep within me

moving

in water

beating

in good rhythm

your bony elbows and knees jutting up against my skin

like the jagged mountains that characterize this island  

allowing us to see you from the outside

Today I am in awe of your presence within me.  Several times today I just had to stop doing anything to let you move.  I am also and suddenly reaching this point where I’m wondering how are you going to get out of here.    I am hoping for little earthquakes and a few medium-sized ones too.   I don’t mean real earthquakes and I don’t mean to make light about the January 2010 earthquake that was fatal for hundreds of thousands.   I just mean contractions.   I mean life force.   Feeling life force. 

Carnival in Cap Haitien !

No shortage of things to look at...Carnival 2013, Cap Haitien

Dear Wisdom

 

Where are you from?  

When you were just a twinkle in our eyes (aka a ravenous grasshopper in my belly), we took an outrageous trip from Winnipeg to Boissevain on bicycles.   I planned the trip as I plan trips...planning to do more planning en route, except that the whole family came and because it was summer and because it was gorgeous and because we sent some of our stuff ahead when we got to the first Canada Post office (outside of the big city) to make our paniers lighter, it worked.    The trip was more than 300 km of which we did at least 270 as far as I remember. 

 

You were conceived in this incredibly vast prairie land of golden wheat, endless blue skies, green green grass.    But you’ve done the visible kind of growing on avocados, breadfruit, oranges, dust, and diesel fumes between two mountain ranges.  

 

What do you see from inside there?...morning?  

What do you hear?...market women enticing us to buy eggs and pumpkins? blaring music in the back of a taptap? soap suds rubbed between hands and clothes? blan blan blan? aluminum cups falling on our newly ceramic-ed floor? me swearing at the fridge?

 

NINE months to get used to each other is blissfully long.  

I usually give myself TWO weeks to try out a new job, new neighbourhood, new schedule etc.    

But if you change everything at once, TWO months, I’ve learned again this time is the bare minimum.    The last day of 2 months and 3 months I was still jumpy for airplanes.  Five months has me wondering how I will leave.   

 

Why wisdom matters (part I)

Dear WISDOME

 

At the MamaBaby clinic yesterday, the Haitian midwife who saw me found my lina negra.   I couldn’t find it because it’s more like a lina blanca.   So I made a joke that my lina is white because I am having a white baby.   “Would you want to have a brown baby?” she asked.   “Of course” I said “I would LOVE to have a brown baby!”   She looked surprised and so I told her how white babies and white people are more sensitive to sun than brown babies in particular if they are bald (like Niko was for 2 years).    That’s just one reason that I’d LOVE to have a brown baby.   The other reasons is because I know intuitively that your skin colour can take you different places and that to me is fascinating.   What I didn’t tell the midwife is that Matt and I have been praying and pondering the decision of whether to have a brown baby or a ti blan for a good two years, two years which we’re abruptly interrupted by the surprising news on a little white stick with two faint lines.  Here’s the issue.   We don’t want race to matter.    And yet, race does matter.   Skin colour (not to be confused with race).   I LOVE colour and variation.   I think different colours whether skin or hair, boo boo or halter top, or the underwings of a bird, are essential to living a full life.   But I’m white and at least once a week whether in Haiti or in Canada, I benefit in apparent ways from white privilege.    In my nuclear family, everyone looks more or less like me.    I am not black in a family that is piling on white people.   I don’t have a visceral clue of what it might be like to be a visible minority in ones own family.  

The wisest way to make hot chocolate

 Wisdome,

We live in 3 rooms of a house with ARCHILLE Milien and his Mom but I don’t know her name.   I don’t remember if I/we ever learned her name.   She is a mother of 3 and grandmother of 5.  Two of the grandchildren live in Turks and Cacos the other 3 in Fort Myers, Florida.   Once a year her daughter calls her, like many Haitian diaspora daughters & sons do, to tell her when she can get on a plane to come visit.   She’s been a few times.  

At first I didn’t talk much to her, intentionally really, in the interest of establishing good boundaries b/t our families.  Then I called her Madame ARCHILLE when I realized that the son we were calling ARCHILLE was called Milien by everyone else b/c that’s his name and ARCHILLE is the family name, said first as is Haitian practice.   So in Haiti I introduce myself as DEGROOT, Esther.   

But Gabriela and Niko call her ”Gran” and they love to go sit outside her house with her while she prepares delicious food or treats like “dous”.   So yesterday I started calling her Gran too.  

Today, after we madly cleaned the house b/f Papa got home, I went to sit out with the Gran.   We talked about C-sections, breastfeeding, peanut butter, and chocolate.  Get this...she makes her own chocolate.   No I don’t mean that she melts down chocolate circles and drops it onto wax paper.  

She harvests cacao off her trees in Limbe.  

She hulls the cacao seeds.

She washes and dries the seeds.  

Drying takes a while. 

She roasts them.  

Then she pounds them into powder. 

She adds cinnamon.  

She forms a cylinder of chocolate with the pounded chocolate flour. 

She shows me a stick of chocolate that she’s made herself.  

I am in awe.  

We smell it.  

She tells me it’s full of vitamins. 

It’s divine. 

The other morning when it was only 25 degrees, she grated some of the chocolate stick into boiling water and added some sugar.   Milien brought it to Papa and Niko who were home.   Hot chocolate.   Chocolate. 

Returning home : }

Dear Wisdom

I bought two bus tickets for my trip home from Port au Prince.   When I got to the door of the bus and handed the tickets to the woman, she asked “Kote lòt moun?”  (Where is the other person?)  I pointed at my belly.   ”Wow” she said which is also a word in Creole and on the bus I went.   My long legs appreciated the extra foot space.     

I am always amazed when I arrive somewhere in this country especially when traveling solo, solo as in with all the other people traveling.   It’s not that it’s so scary or dangerous although sometimes there is that element.   Traveling on public is already a privilege.   Traveling on public within another culture is like two trips in one.   Two adventures.   One is the physical journey, through the traffic and haze of Port au Prince, past the cactus trees of Gonaives, up and  a r o u n d  the mountain roads and down the other side.   The other trip is being included (with or without questioning) in a small crowd traveling together through time.