Busy days.

The bosses re-unite!

Bos Niko and the Bos who made the bed Niko was born on, working together to upcycle a table into a counter with shelves below.

In the background

That really is a fountain in the background at Place St Pierre! I'm so thrilled that they've found a use for all this water (rain) not been absorbed by the non-existent soil higher up.

Niko and Jean Simon, one of the many friends Niko has made here. Very friendly boy must have been the year in Manitoba! Jean Simon says I live Niko, he's my poltik. This sounds like a cool word I have to look up.

Dezam

Sand piles, people paths, tree-ripened fruit, not to mention hundreds of old friends to see and help Gabou and Niko remember Creole.

kitchen table

play kitchen

More sharing

It was another of sharing, fevers, and tenderness. Marie France, Gabriela's biological Mama, called this morning to say that she was coming up for a visit. When she arrived we went to a hotel pool also with a neighbour family and Gabriela's friend Tad who is also 5. At the pool, i needed to know who was watching Tad since he is adventurous and has little experience at the pool. Luckily everyone was watching him! After a relaxing afternoon, we went up to see the memorial garden that the hotel had created in memorandum of those who died in the January 12th earthquake. Everyday (since we've arrived) I hear Haitians talk about the earthquake. They mention it without explanation. None is needed. The earthquake was not like a robbery in one neighbourhood, it was a national catastrophe. It was an international emergency. People share memories of the earthquake and after...like remember that? That was crazy...we're just lucky to be alive.
I remember just a day or two after the earthquake, I called a friend to ask her about adoption. I had heard that, under post-earthquake conditions, if we had already completed a Haitian adoption, we could complete another adoption overnight. That was the same day that UNICEF shut down all adoptions. When the other day, I mentioned to Jonna, the woman who used to hold Niko while I taught yoga classes, that I want to adopt again, she offered me her little son. Okay, I said, in my mind! "No, he needs you", I said out loud. This kind of selfless generosity which here extends from food to clothes to shoes etc. is too crazy for me. I need to know which shoes and which kids are MINE. I need to know who I'm responsible for and who will call me when I'm old and need the phone to ring. I need to know how many times you've shared with me so I can share with you that same amount and if I donate to your organization, will I get tax receipt? I need you to tell me that you can't live without my help like I can't live without yours. I need someone to tell me why I can't give up my favorite shirt but you can offer me your child!?? This kind of lacidazical attitude around what belongs to who, is ludicrous, not to mention enviable. Once I took Gabriela to a department store with tall shelves aisle after aisle. When it was time to leave, she couldn't. She just stood there and cried saying "I can't help it, I just want everything!"

Niko had a baby!

Niko's nanny Jonna showed up this afternoon with the gorgeous Givens who was born (at home with a nurse) November 26th. He's been nursing (exclusively) ever since!!!

Speaking of Haitian chicken : )

Gabriela was horrified watching the chickens thrash about after we slit their throats (and assured us that she wouldn't be consuming any). Niko thought it was fantastic.

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.

buying paint for our craft table

Weaving and Unweaving

Last week, Gabriela opted for a hair cut over new braids. We love looking at her gorgeous face. And we're seeing more Haitians here styling their hair o'natural (yes and fyi, wearing black hair naturally still requires lots of time, often more time, styling). There also lots of Haitian women getting weaves (hair or simulated hair) sewn onto their own hair, a style that was invented in Eygptians culture in 3400 BC. Caring for hair and doing each other's hair is a very important part of Haitian culture and the weekly schedule of Haitian life. I want to value the ritual and the comradery of doing hair. But it's not just the hair products, expensive and strong smelling that make me feel baffled about how to assist Gabriela with her hair. It's that many of the products help the hair to be straighter, more like...well more like the black people's hair you see on tv or in magazines (fashion or other)...more like white people hair (or at least the ideal of it). What would it take for my hair to be very very tightly curly and black? What would it be like if hotels had bottles of oils instead of shampoo and conditioner that are most often drying to most hair and especially black hair? What would it be like if most fashion models had lovely black skin, nappy hair, and shapely figures?

Niko says Niko...at long last.

x-rated peanut butter

This wasn't staged.

Wedded

Gabriela decided that this is where she wants to get married! While we wait for that event she'll settle for having her 6th birthday here. As for me, i am forever wedded to the idea that it's possible to sew together the rich and the poor (materially rich, materially poor). So it drives me crazy to hang out places like this except that they have these beautiful lounge chair and the view of upper and lower Port au Prince is so fabulous. Gabriela wants to get married here and why shouldn't every girl get what she wants!?? This sentiment is prominent enough in my first culture that even me (who often gets made fun of for my cluelessness about popculture) knows about it. By being me and raising Gabriela, I'm most likely raising her with this sentiment as if it's the only way. The truth is I don't know if this sentiment exists in Haitian culture or any other culture. Haitian culture might teach that girls should always have something to wish for, that the most important thing about your wedding is what you feed your guests or that if your relative works at a fancy hotel then he or she should obviously get you a deal to get married there. Seriously 5 years later and I still am only momentarily able to imagine thinking outside of my shoes and into someone else's, into Haitian culture. However I'm raising a daughter and now also a son who have less patience, less acceptance, lesser ability to share, greater pickiness, greater ability to use electronics, lesser chance of dehydration, lesser respect for authority, lesser tolerance for boredom and not being the center of attention, greater sense of entitlement, lesser resilience, less tolerance for disorder and decreased ability to make something out of nothing than the average kid around here.
Hmmmm. I'm wedded to the idea of sewing together the rich and the poor. I might not be engaged to the know how yet.

I bought 3 lightbulbs at a store in Petionville. The people at the store sent me a couple blocks lower to get a key cut for our household help (which is a fancy phrase meaning the woman who folds our clothes, many for the first time they've been folded). The key cutting place what would a back alley except there were just more houses directly behind the front houses. The key cutter had 45cm square of the table to put his key-making machine and a clamping device. The rest of his table was being used to make cherry juice to go with the rice, beans, and chicken that was being prepared in front of a adjacent table and assembled on it. That was fun to watch while waiting for my key to be cut. This is handy if a restaurant springs up in your front or back yard and you need a job! But it also made me think what good training this was for people McDonald's workers and that made me feel sad. So even more interesting was a pivot away watching the key guy operate his key-cutting machine using only his hands.
Watching him made me wonder what corners we could cut in North America to save electricity (and maybe even gain some muscles and improve our dexterity and feed our ingenuity at the same time). While you are thinking about that, I'll be sleeping but I'll write more on this tomorrow. e
E

Wawa's House

Wawa's house (tent) has cable tv!

Seeking Security

Yesterday I went here.

It's the Marche Fer (Iron Market) a huge historic market and architectural landmark in lower Port au Prince. Built in 1891, it's been restored twice most recently January 2011 with $12 million from Digicel. It IS as beautiful as it looks on the picture.
I saw many regular market things there but also turtles (swimming in a eastern) Haitian grown cinnamon, and play pots which is what I went to the market to get for Gabriela's play kitchen which so far is a clean and flat place to play in the yard : )
On the way home we went lower down to buy some bicycles for the kids (mine and the friends who come over). Niko and I have been scoping out bikes for two weeks mostly in the large supermarkets. Basic bike with training wheels for just over $100. I can walk to one supermarket but instead I took a Moto almost to the port of Port au Prince to choose from the lovely display of bicycles that I'm convinced are stolen from Miami and loaded on to boats headed here. When i asked the sellers if they think they are stolen they showed no offense but merely started asking each other if they thought the bikes are stolen. While they did that, I tried to assess the environmental impact of buying a potentially stolen bike on the street vs buying a new one in a fancy store. I'm not convinced I'm making the best environmental choice here however I do LOVE buying from regular folks. And today my higher need and desire was to seek security. When we got to the Iron Market, my Mototaxi driver said. Don't get off here which I was already feeling. For me, it seems there are two ways to find security here 1. Be black 2. Get to know people and places across all social classes although the economic poorer ones are most likely to rescue you when you need it as they seem to have more time for that sort of thing. Despite being told not to get off the Moto, I felt at least emotionally safer at the Marche Fer than when I used to have meetings with the mayor or when I shop at the big stores. I asked Maxo, my mototaxi driver if he would come into the market with me and he did!

Luckily the bicycle sellers saved me from overthinking everything by offering me free marejuana, which is the word these sellers used to describe the skill and art of tying things up or onto something, in this case, the bikes onto the back of Maxo's moto. This made me laugh for a hour because hanging with these sellers for while I honestly just think they are into marejuana and not it's smokable cousin. Besides anyone would be hopeless at marejuana if they were good at marijuana. Even I know that.
Niko was thrilled with the Radioflyer tricycle that I came home with. His new mantra is: "me mototaxi driver" a welcome change from "play hockey Haiti!!!! Mama?!!!"

Sent from my iPhone

Mare-juana

"Mare" is the Creole word for "to tie".

bel frez

Seeking beauty
I loved my life in Haiti.  Three sunny years in the Artibonite learning Creole, eating local rice and planting trees often simultaneously with climbing mountains.  Then two years in Port au Prince teaching everything I learned from the countryside and my friends there, swimming with Gabriela, learning Haitian folklore dance, climbing every mountain I could get to, and eating copious amounts of watercress.  It did not take me five years to find the most beautiful places and people in Haiti.  And then I continued to visit them and bring beautiful things home to adorn my house and/or make our mouths water. 
I have friends who live in concrete houses in the suburbs of Port au Prince.  I know people who drive their cars everywhere including spending hours in traffic.  I know people who write reports and lead evaluations.  
I worked at a school in Carrefour (which is where gravity and rain beaches the garbage of Port au Prince that doesn't make it into a dumpster) for several months.  I have been to and through Cite Soleil.  I have waited more then an hour in the back of a taptap...I've even fallen out of a taptap!    But this afternoon picking these strawberries made me wonder if It's okay well if it's good enough to go around seeking beauty.  I am a little jealous of people who can work in ugly environments and even get there by car.  Will I learn this someday?  I am between wanting everyone to seek beauty like I do and wanting to be more functional in environments that lack or appear to lack the elements of beauty that I seek.  In the meantime I've decided that it is good enough to seek beauty- as long as it's on foot no, no as long as I'm supporting local businesses- okay okay seriously I think it is is good enough to seek beauty for itself period.   Seeking beauty means that you have hope of finding it and that you are up for the challenge of defining it.  Seeking beauty.

Sent from my iPhone

Carnival holiday- an afternoon in Wynne forest

Collecting a few things from the forest floor for playing kitchen.

Wawa's house (tent) has cable tv.

Wapunzel

Hi from Haiti. Early last week, we moved into the cutest little cabin in Port au Prince proper. Our cabin is in a group of cabins above a totally forested ravin nestled up behind the Prime Minister's office (with a post earthquake camp in it's front yard). Once we moved in here, Gabriela opted for staying home in the cabin, often watching Tangled on the iPad rather than galavant around with Niko and I on essential errands and visiting friends. This morning when Niko and I went out (to buy a toilet seat) Gabou wanted to paint the walls while singing. This idea was too cute for me to resist.

The Rapunzel bit also reflects our desires to participate fully in Haitian life and while also wanting/needing to design personal space within this beautiful landscape.

??? Moulin sou Mer beach, Haiti

Painting

Patience, of the Popcrate Variety!

I used to hate making my kids wait...until i realized that I'm supposed to be teaching them stuff not just doing everything I can to avoid screaming and whining.   Now I like making them wait...wait just long enough to test their patience but not invoke high pitches. 

The son Niko learned to poop on the toilet when he was 8 months old.  More recently he learned how to talk.  So now after I help him sit on the toilet, he says "Tay Mama, tay!" (Stay Mama, stay?).    See I thought staying was washing dishes, making Gabriela's lunch, and renewing the library books while frequently yelling, "hey Niko, how's it going?".   Niko tells me it's something different.  He takes the black popcrate that we use as a stool for getting up the bathroom sink, from under his feet at the front of the toilet and slides it over to the wall so that one side of the popcrate is against the wall and other other is inches from the toilet and him.  " it der" (Sit there) he says to me and so I sit down and then get up, sit down again lean my head against the wall, stand up, pace around until he tells me to sit down, I about start whining but turn to him instead and ask "Are you done yet?" and then sit down.  Anyways this morning was my second on the popcrate learning patience and that's where I came up with this blog's (new) title: Patience my love.

Winter Camping !!!!

January 7th- Winter Camping in Pinery Provincial Park, Ontario, CANADA

6 degrees C    !!!!!

 even the kids are disconcerted

WILD animals : ) 

Hello to all! We were honoured this year to be in Ontario for Christmas!
Niko (2 yrs) and Gabriela (5 yrs) had so much fun acting out the nativity with our creches under our Christmas tree that we decided to make a live nativity.  Alas, Niko has been walking around the house all week saying:  "me....heep!"  which means: "I get to be a sheep in the nativity! Yipppeeee!  (thus our greeting: heep and good will)

We thank our darling cousins/nephews Eily (horse) and Gabe (Jesus) and our friends Emma (angel), Charlotte (star), Eben (sheep), Rhea (angel) for sharing in the live nativity.    

And, we thank the Good Lord for perfect nativity weather (the sun was shining upon us) and another exciting and year of milestones and challenges in Canada. 

Esther, Matt, Gabriela, Niko

here a few more of the stars: 

 

Dear friends and family, it all started when the temperature dipped to a mild -12 and we realized that we were really going to spend our first winter (in 6 years!!!!) here in Winterpeg so we’d better equip ourselves for the occasion.  I bought this face mask for Niko and couldn’t help remarking how much he looks like the Virgin Mary in it (the Caucasian version).  And so he is.

It was pretty obvious who would be the angel.  And Jesus (our nephew Matoli).   Finally Joseph (Matoli’s big brother Zavi).   

Peace and Wonderment to you this Christmas 

love, from the Angel Gabriela, the Virgin Mary/Niko, Matt, and Esther  

May you also find the spiritual in the ordinary and practical at Christmas and everywhere in between.  Si Bondye vle. 

Niko's DEDICATION at Hope Mennonite Church, Winnipeg, MB

Had the Lynell the pastor at Hope not asked us a month ago if we wanted to dedicate Niko, we may have well forgotten in all our transitioning.  We were SO happy and blessed to DEDICATE Niko this morning at Hope Mennonite Church.  As we stood at the front with Niko and Gabriela, we saw a community that has been supporting us.   Thank you! And we were so HONOURED that NIKO and cousin MATOLI could share this their dedication day.   Congrats Jennifer, Will, Zavi, and Matoli also on getting named.  Congrats to Grandmas and Granpas & OPA and OMA! See you soon! 

Gabriela's 4th Birthday Party

The party started at 4:30 which is exactly when the thunderstorm started.
But the sun (and the fun) weren't far behind. 

This was Gabriela's second 4th birthday party... the first party was a couple weeks ago in Haiti with our friends there including Marie France, Gabriela's birth Mama.  How cool was that!!!!!!! For the Winnipeg version...most friends came from the neighbourhood, Zavi came from across the river, but  Brian and Robin came ALL THE WAY from Haiti.  Thanks everyone for coming to the parties.   There was painting, planting, pinata, and cake. Yep! Matt/Papa made a fresh strawberry shortcake and it was beautiful 

and as good as Epi d'Or : )   

We are slowly adjusting to Canadian food. . . now that it's finally getting fresher!!!! It was physically and socially harder to grow much of our own food in Haiti,  although most Haitians do it just as seemlessly and consistently as brushing one's teeth.   Our front yard garden here in Winnipeg reminds me of a Haitian garden which always reminded me of a little ecosystem: small, with lots of different kinds of crops, insects, beautiful to look at.  For 5 years we thrived off the harvest of Haitians farmers.  God bless Haitian farmers, young and old.

INFRASTRUCTURE- unfinished reflections on Post-Earthquake Haiti

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.

Poukisa means "Why" in Creole

These days have been filled with WHY’s (and princesses).  Why is Canada cold? Why did God give us sleep? Why is that lady carrying that dog? 

And then one day at dinner, this. . .

Gabriela- Mama, why does your skin burn in the sun and mine doesn’t?

Mama- Because God gave you beautiful skin that doesn’t burn in the sun.

G- Why did God give you skin that burns in the sun? 

Mama- Because I was born in a cold country. 

G- Why did God give Papa skin that burns in the sun? 

Mama- Because Papa was born in a cold country.  I said this ignoring the bright white and bald Haiti-born Niko bopping up and down on Matt’s lap...feeling my argument about to bust apart. 

G- And Niko was born in Haiti, why Mama?

I paused.  I paused in this enormous and tender moment, my heart filled with excitement about bringing Gabriela’s biological Mama to her. . . to this little girl and her big heart. 

G- Why Mama? WHY MAMA?  Gabriela exclaimed louder and louder.

Tell her, Matt said, go ahead.

Mama- Gabou, I started, you have two Mamas, one Mama who has skin just like yours and one Mama who is me.

Do you want to see a photo of your other Mama?      Her name is Marie France.

 

And so begins the journey of questions, more questions, more thinking about this complex relationship we have with Gabriela, with her Haitian mama, and with Haiti.

PS. These photos of Gabriela and her two Mamas were taken as we left Haiti a week after the earthquake.  Marie France and her family and friends were fine, but the neighbour's house had collapsed on their house so they, like many, were living in a nearby camp.  Haiti is, for us, a place of miracles . . . the miracle of raising a Haitian child in Haiti, the miracle of finding her birth mother and finding her again and alive after the earthquake.  Those are miracles.  When we met Marie France outside of the camp she was staying, she asked please please could she come with us to the Domincan Republic.   My heart broke in half (the part that was still left) and I couldn't say anything.  We HAVE to do something about this inequality!!!!!!!!!!!!  Young and intelligent women like Marie France have so much to offer their beautiful country and our world.    These women need to be leading, not begging to get out.   We've got to believe it and cut out the BS of giving and receiving with strings attached. 

God help us.  

PSS. Marie France is just like Gabriela . . . confident and lively with sparkles of excitement and intelligence in her eyes.   You won't see all that here on the photos.  Haitians don't actually smile for photos...they look serious on purpose. 

during breakfast, i stepped momentarily into the kitchen to make tea, when i looked back this is what i saw

so much for BABY Niko! Even Gabriela noticed that his hair is growing.
Some hair at the back is like 5 cm!!! at this rate every cm counts :  )