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