Sri Lankan Delights

Posted on 08/28/2012 by paulefallon

When Jean Bertrand Aristide fled to exile in 2004, Haiti fell into armed chaos.  The UN stepped in with emergency troops to restore order and later established permanent peace keeping forces, which are still here today.  Haiti is an insular independent country occupied by the rest of the world.  Nineteen countries maintain a military presence here, and fifty provide police support.  Brazil is the kingpin, they are responsible for Port au Prince, and the Commander of Brazilian forces commands the entire endeavor.  Grand Goave is under the jurisdiction of Sri Lanka, which maintains nine facilities in five communities, headquartered in Leogone.

Sri Lankan forces change out every six months; there have been fifteen units during the course of the mission.  The sixteenth group has just arrived to transition, and the current Commander, Colonel Srilanth, sent an embossed invitation to Lex and his family for dinner to celebrate their time together and meet the new Commander, Colonel Kithsiri. Lex invited me to join them, and once I got past the dilemma of having nothing appropriate to wear to a military dinner from my cache of microfiber work pants and wrinkled shirts, I looked forward to the event.

When the guard opens the gate of the Sri Lankan compound in Leogone, a soldier marches at a steady cadence in front of our car, guiding us to their chosen parking spot.  We disembark and walk along narrow sidewalks between prefabricated buildings with occasional shrines along the way; a Christmas tree lit Madonna, a glowing Buddha.  I learn that Sri Lankans are primarily Buddhist, but also Roman Catholic, Christian, and Hindi.  The camp has altars for all Sri Lankan faiths.

Dinner is set up in a large community room with high ceilings, sumptuous leather chairs, a billiard table and a long table with formal place settings.  We shake hands through a receiving line.  Most of the hosts speak English, no one speaks Creole.  We sit in the deep sofa for guava juice served in stemware and the most delicious cashews, delicately toasted.  I am careful to remember the protocol I learned, slipping the nuts into my mouth with my right hand rather than my left.

I am sitting next to the Colonel Srilanth, who is delighted to answer all my questions about his country.  He shares a video about Sri Lankan history, geography and tourism, as well as one about their humanitarian and peacekeeping efforts in Haiti.  Between the Colonel’s love of his country and the promotional materials, I come away with a solid social studies understanding of Sri Lanka, 20 million people on an island 472 kilometers long by 250 kilometers wide with a treasure trove of gem stones, all kinds of monkeys, gorgeous beaches, a World Heritage rain forest and incredible ancient ruins.  I would love to visit this beautiful country, but the three days it takes to fly from Haiti to Sri Lanka (through the US and Dubai and many customs officials) and two days to return is daunting.

Dinner is a buffet feast of Chicken Kuruma, pork curry, spicy eggplant, syrupy Vegetable Chopey, savory vegetable salad, rice, noodles, and poppadum chips with sweet cream ice cream for dessert.  I sit opposite a civilian who has been in Haiti for two and half years and has lived through most of the reconstruction from the earthquake’s epicenter.

According to Renee, the UN’s occupation of Haiti is both less severe and less generous than a single occupier might be.  Haitians may fear US Marines, famous for shooting first and asking questions later, more than they fear the UN, but Haitians are also accustomed to occupiers who provide ‘stuff’, and the UN does little of that.  Each region has a unique relationship with their assigned force; The Leogone area is fortunate that the Sri Lankans are motivated to provide humanitarian service as well as maintain military order.  But they can’t do as much as they used to, since 2004 budgets have been cut everywhere.

Our hosts display a formal yet genuine hospitality; they would never yawn or even shift in their seats to imply it is time to go.  After nine o’clock Lex announces we must leave; we have to run a clinic and pour concrete tomorrow. We shake hands through another receiving line and an escort shows us to our car.  Sri Lankans halfway around the globe from their home are lovely people.  Someday I would like to spend time with them in their own country.

Banquet at Sri Lankan Headquarters of UN Peacekeeping Mission in Leogone, Haiti.

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Raging River

Posted on 08/25/2012 by paulefallon

The Grand Goave River is almost a quarter mile wide.  Often it is a trickle and we walk across it.  Sometimes it meanders with enough volume to force us to walk or drive around it.  I have heard stories of the river raging full width as well as the tales from the storm that wiped out the concrete bridge and tumbled it to the sea.

Today Tropical Storm Isaac delivered my wish with fury.  The storm was polite enough to hold back until we completed pouring concrete on MoHI’s main stairs and railings, though it was very late by the time I got to Mirlitone.  At midnight the sea churned and the wind blew so hard the rain skittered off the metal roof instead of pounding directly overhead.  By morning the wind died down but the rain increased.  Early this afternoon Lex decided to evacuate Mirlitone, so we piled into cars and trekked up to the school, driving through several sections of three foot deep muddy water where the drainage channel overflowed its banks along the way.

When we reached the bridge, a crowd in colorful slickers and huge umbrellas watched the water roil to the sea.  The rapids were huge, ten foot in some sections, littered with limbs and roots as the mountains erode into the sea. By the end of the storm the river bed will be wider than ever.

 

The Bay of Gonave from Mirlitone.  The dark section that appears to be a sand bar is a swirling mix of roots and limbs.

 

The Grand Goave River

 

Monster rapid

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Summertime, and the Living is Easy

Posted on 08/24/2012 by paulefallon

George Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ is the most covered song in recording history.  I would have never guessed that, but it is a factoid that makes sense.  We all love summer, though our reasons are as varied as the artists who have etched the tune in vinyl or tape or electronic digits.  Personally I consider Janis Joplin’s version definitive, and she was hardly what you’d call a summery kind of girl.  Even in Haiti, where seasons vary no more than fifteen degrees throughout the year, summer has a languid ease that sets it apart from the rest of the year.

My flight to PAP is uneventful.  I sit next to a polite business man who is trim enough not to hang over our shared armrest.  Neither project wants anything hauled in, so instead of picking up bags I collect the airport’s newest attractions, flyers!  One young women hands out advertisements extolling a local restaurant, another modular homes complete with air conditioning. True, her flyer also boasts of building pre-fabricated orphanages and even includes a plan to house 40 children.  That is an odd product to sell, and I overlook it.  A third lady shoves Magic Haiti magazine in my face, a glossy number with articles on art, culture, resorts and food designed to attract tourists.  The pictures are delectable, like no place in Haiti I have ever seen. This is a new form of hucksterism, much more sophisticated than panhandling, and although this type of commerce usually annoys me, I gather all the offerings like an anthropologist discovering a fascinating variation of his subject culture.

I breeze through customs.  There are no beggars along the gauntlet to the pick-up lot.  When I reach the end of the secure walkway, for the first time, no one is waiting to pick me up.  I step across security’s threshold and enter the crowd on the far side without a flicker of anxiety.  I am the only blan but no one in the Port au Prince crowd much notices.  They look different than people from Grand Goave, they have rounder bellies but deeper scars.  Everyone’s face carries the residue of trauma, evidence of Port au Prince’s reputation as one tough town.  They look battered by not frightening in the least.

Ricardo strolls along with Alexis at his side.  I flag them down and trail over the dusty parking lot to our car.  Alexis is dressed to the outer limits of what her mother Renee will allow. The girl is remarkably beautiful, and at sixteen is beginning to understand what that means; her hip tight jeans and bodice griping top are calculated to catch city guys’ eyes.  Raymond, Lex’s older brother, is in the car along with his son Tanyo, and another girl, Fabi, who has alluring blue extensions woven into her tiny braids.

We exit the airport and turn the wrong way, motor over to the National Convenience Store for a snack, which turns into a full lunch.  Ricardo and Fabi flirt.  Midway through lunch Lex calls Ricardo.  When Lex finds out we are still at the airport he gets me on the line and tells me to hustle.  I have no control and tell him so. I don’t mention I am in no particular rush to get to Grand Goave. This is first time Port au Prince has seemed like anything other than an ordeal to be persevered.

Ricardo takes a very circuitous route through the city, higher into the hills than I have ever been, though still far from the exclusivity of Petionville.  We ride along streets that might be considered middle class, houses with small courtyards; a few even sport a tree.  It is dense but ordered.  We descend back into the center of things.  The azure sea fills the voids where the cathedral’s rose window shattered, but the remains appear more sculpture than ruin. As we scoot around the palace, still toppled, I am amazed that all the tent cities are gone, the landscape is raked, the trees in leaf.  Where rows of port-a-potties stood two months ago there is now a shady corner with an open air bookstore, Bibliotec Universal, Parisian in ambiance as well as in name.

I am not sure how much Port au Prince is improving versus how much I am just not in the mood to dwell upon the metal roof shacks and piles of garbage and pigs in sewer trenches.  We are on a joy ride, and all I take in is the joy.  We stop at a roadside stand and Tanyo exits.  We pick up sodas and sugar cane from a sidewalk vendor.  Everyone in the car chatters in Creole, which sounds like birds warbling to me.  The Bay of Gonave has that sparkling aqua tint I associate with Bermuda; gorgeous and refreshing to behold.

We turn off in Leogone to deposit Raymond, wave at all of Alexis’ cousins and finally pull into Mission of Hope about 4:30 pm.  It was a long leisurely drive. All the tasks that need attention wait for us upon arrival.  None of them are critical.  After all, it’s summertime.

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Safety vs. Security – Canadian Style

Posted on 08/18/2012 by paulefallon

Somewhere towards the end of my first 24 hours in Nova Scotia, about the time I hopped a fence in the cemetery I was walking through when there was no gate where I expected, I looked around to make sure there were no guards or police on the lookout.  No one was watching me, despite being obviously out of bounds in my oxford shirt and business tie with a portfolio case, cutting through a cemetery in search of shade on a hot August day.

 

Back on the city side of the fence I realized that no had been watching me the entire time I was in Halifax – I had not seen one police car on the streets or one security guard in the three hospitals I visited.  Although I know a white man in a tie can access many places without question in this world, the amount of security I encountered up north was beyond lax. It was non-existent.

 

Canada’s reputation for being safer than United States is borne out by statistics.  The rate of property crime in Canada is three times less than here (943 vs. 3,036 per 100,000) as is their homicide rate (1.62 versus 5.0 per 100,000).  Maybe this is due to culture or stricter gun control laws; it is certainly not due to more police.  In the United States we equate safety with security; we like having guards and police to protect us from the bad guys.  Canada feels safe without security; there just are not as many bad guys up there.

 

This feeling safe without a security presence rang particularly true the next morning as I navigated Halifax airport.  Anyone who has flown in the past ten years knows the drill.  We stand in a line, an officer with a gun at a podium checks our ID and boarding pass. We move to the next line.  An officer with a loud voice calls out about liquids and gels and removing our belts and shoes.  We scurry to the shortest line and toss all our stuff into grey bins, but the rollies don’t fit so they go on the belt alone.  In some cities they want the shoes in the bins, while in others they don’t, in some airports the laptops require a separate bin and in others they don’t.  There are many rules and they change just often enough that we never quite know them.  Our stuff rolls through x-ray while we get diverted to be scanned. If we get pulled aside for more security, our stuff lingers at the end of the belt, like the sad orphan child of a delinquent parent.  Dozens of people in TSA uniforms linger about, many more than have clear tasks, and when they are through with us, we collect our stuff and reassemble ourselves as best we can.

 

The process is very loud.  Our bodies and our possessions follow disjointed paths.  The sheer volume of uniforms and guns bespeak security, yet the process does not make us feel safe.  We are exposed, we are anxious.  American airport security is an accusatory system based on the supposition that any one of us could be the bad guy.  Security is rampant, safety is tenuous and everyone feels violated.

 

The security process in Halifax starts the same as in the US, with a guard at a podium checking my documents.  Of course she looks me in the eye and suggests the best place to catch breakfast in the terminal, but I am used to Canadian’s genuine friendliness and figure she might have heard my stomach growling.  In the second line I notice the change.  It is quiet.  Very quiet.  There are fewer guards and they are not clustered in the hinterland beyond the scanner; they are close to travelers.  As I approach the conveyor a guard stands in front of a monitor.  She asks for my documents, scans them again, and in a quiet voice reminds me about gels and belts.  She hands me wide shallow trays that holds all my belongings.  She makes sure they are on the conveyor square and then she places a dividing bin between me and the next person. My belongings are grouped together and identified with me.  I get scanned in sync with my stuff, and on the other side, the scanning guard asks me a few questions about the contents of my bag from the x-ray view.  I use my bicycle panniers as carry-ons and they have a few odd metal hooks.  Satisfied with my answers she releases my belongings and I rearrange myself.

 

Canada follows all the same security steps we do in the US, but they do it in two fundamentally different ways.  First, they address each person as an individual, no one screams directions at a group.  Second, their interactions are not rooted in looking for evil. The atmosphere is one of ‘we’re all good folk here but let’s just check everything to keep it tidy’.  I did not feel the usual anxiety that me and my stuff were at odds with each other, I never felt targeted.  I felt respected.

 

Canadian airport security mirrors the country as a whole.  It does not provide the same volume of security, but it fosters a deeper sense of safety.  They don’t sweat the oddball things, like guys in dress shirts hopping cemetery fences, which would surely draw a siren in the US.  They operate from the premise that our actions are benign, rather than sinister, and that makes all the difference.

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Hollow Reed Swaying in a Swamp

Posted on 08/13/2012 by paulefallon

Every so often I remind myself that I started this blog in response to my experience in yoga, yet I have not posted a piece about yoga in months.  Yes, I still go to class every day when I am in Cambridge.  Yes, I still sweat and stretch and wonder half way through why I do it.  Yes, I still believe yoga is elemental to my well-being and so the next day I return.

 

Being away from yoga for two week stretches during work travel takes a toll on my practice.  My return to class is often a comedy of stiff joints and heat exhaustion, but yoga is like riding a bicycle and within a day or two I acclimate anew and return to my full posture range.

 

My practice evolves more slowly now, change occurs at a subtle pace that hardly seems blog worthy, yet change it is.  My stretches grow deeper, my breathing is never labored, and though I have fewer moments of revelation, I have longer periods of psychic calm.

 

An uninvited guest came to stay with me about six weeks ago, a parasite that I have not been able to shuck.  As I trial through remedies, none of which has worked so far, I stick to a bland diet, watch my bathroom scale dial descend, and listen to my intestinal chambers whistle like organ pipes.  Although this is not as an enviable condition, it has one advantage; a hollow reed can create supple yoga.  My half-moon arcs have never been so broad, my eagle pose has never been so deep, and my standing bow is elegantly tall.

 

Yesterday was the dampest dog day of August.  Outside it was ninety degrees with humidity to match.  Inside the hot room I had the misfortune of standing where I could not avoid the reflection of the temperature and humidity monitor in the mirror. Although the teacher kept the temperature in the Bikram cool range, about 107, the humidity started around 60% and climbed so high by the end of the class it hit 99% before abandoning a number to a series of dashes, as if we were cardiac patients who flat lined.  I expected rain to shower on me any moment.  Instead I bent like a crenelated straw, my outer shell lubricated slick, my innards released from anything that could bind me.

 

While my individual practice varies from day to day, my ongoing trend is always towards more depth and more flexibility.  When the weather cools and the humidity in the hot room eases down and my parasite decides to go live somewhere else and I begin to bulk up again, will I maintain this breezy agility?  I hope so, though I will gladly sacrifice some of my limber if I must in order to enjoy salads and ice cream and hot sauce again.

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Driving into Dawn

Posted on 08/04/2012 by paulefallon

Pastor Akim, one of MoHI’s regular drivers, must like to get up early. He tells me we will leave at 5 am for my ten o’clock flight out of PAP.  I ask him to knock on my door in the morning, I have already returned my Haitian phone to Gama and do not have an alarm, but I’m not sure he understands me.  No matter.  I hear the car horn blast in the pitch dark and hustle out of bed to meet him.

 

I have a huge heavy bag on my return; I am bringing concrete samples from the BLB roof pour for SGH to test in their lab.  I will get a physical inspection at every security point; the massive cylinder in my bag looks ever so much like a bomb to an x-ray detector.  I lug the bag down the stairs and into the car.  We pull out of Mirlitone in the clear dark night with a breathtaking full moon lingering in the west.

 

I am really hungry.  Last I ate was yesterday lunch, when our hope of pouring concrete for MoHI’s main stairs seemed impossible.  But Lex found some cement and the crews found their flow and by ten o’clock last night we created a pair of impressive stairs that will last for decades, though in all the excitement I forgot to eat.  I have a sack with some bread, offer some to Pastor Akim and gnaw on a few pieces myself. When we hit paved Route Two I recline my passenger seat and shut my eyes.

 

Sleep and Haitian driving are not compatible.  Gravel swatches have been cut across the road at irregular intervals; we slow down to ford these patches and I can’t help but rouse to sneak a peek at the arcane delights of nighttime travel.  There is the nearly empty tap-tap with its sole passenger sitting astride the center bench, staring down the road like a king surveying his kingdom as it slips away.  The empty dump truck hugs the center of the road, its back wheels so wobbly they might come off any minute.  There must not be a Creole word for ‘alignment’.  As Pastor Akim passes the lumbering truck at our peril, a bicyclist pedals along the left shoulder with a huge bundle of sugar cane staked on his handlebars.  No light, no helmet, no way he can see where he’s going in the dark with our headlights glaring him down.

 

I must sleep some because the giant metal hulk of a former mill comes upon us much sooner than I expect; I always consider this ruin to be the portal into greater Port au Prince.  The sky is no longer dark.  Driving east, a pink band highlights the horizon’s silhouette; the flat line of the sea on my left rises gently across the highway, extends through the settlements on my right and into the distant mountains, like a graph of positive trending indicators. I pull my seat upright to watch the city grow before my eyes.  Traffic is still light, though steady.  The tap taps are full; people wait on the side of the road in the clean khakis of city workers. The new divided boulevard in Carrefour is impressive in the feeble light.  The tiny palm trees planted down the median are only a few feet high, but the shiny new light standards with their integral solar panels extend graceful double arms to welcome the new day.  Haiti is getting full of snazzy stuff.

 

We reach Port au Prince proper before the dust rises and coats the world in grit and grey.  The tap taps are shiny clean; a painting of Jesus with thorns on his head and blood glistening from his side is too graphic for my queasy stomach.   Driving in the city is more difficult; Pastor Akim passes on the right, the left, the right again.  MoHI drivers are as aggressive as any of their city cousins. We pass many, few pass us.  The sun makes its first appearance as a blistering white ball hovering above the metal roofs of the main market.  It is going to be a hot one.  The market is already packed, rows and rows of women crouch before bundles of greens.  How early do these mountain women rise in order to come and squat in this squalor all day?

 

Billboards are sprouting up in Port au Prince like dandelions, thick steel tubular bases telescoping above shacks and tents, capped by rectangles five times the size of the dwellings they cast in shadow.  Some of the ads are peculiarly Haitian. One billboard has two cheesy sketches; the first of two young children burdened by carrying water in buckets on their head, the second with the same children upright and proud because of the new black water tank drawn on top of their concrete house. Another is a beautiful woman smiling in front of a wall of rice sacks.  But closer to the airport, and the money, the billboards are more sophisticated; insurance companies, Air France, brokerage firms.  All this aid is making someone rich.

 

Pastor Akim drops me off at the airport. There is no line. I am through the first security check, ticketing, immigration, the second security check, the third security check and am in the waiting lounge before 7:30 am, two and a half hours before flight time.  Although I might have enjoyed sleeping later, I can understand why Pastor Akim likes to leave so early. The quicker he gets me into Port au Prince, the quicker he gets out.  He will be back in Grand Goave before I am even on the jetway.

 

 

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Haiti is for Lovers

Posted on 08/01/2012 by paulefallon

By and large the people who carve out a piece of their life to work in Haiti are interesting folk.  There are new missionaries every time I return to Mirlitone and, aside from the over-zealous, I enjoy them.  Occasionally someone’s spark is so bright I hope we can continue our connection beyond Haiti.  This trip, a delightful pair of young graduate students, David and Cassandra, has enhanced my time here while contributing to our construction at MoHI.

 

David and Cassandra each came to Mission of Hope after the earthquake.  Cassandra, from Alberta, Canada, came with a special contingent of World Racers doing emergency service, while David was a member of one of the many groups from Akron. At our first night’s dinner I get the impression that serendipity aligned their schedules for this trip, but as I observe them around the work site and in subsequent evenings it seems even to my clueless eyes that their rendezvous here is not pure chance.

 

One day we walk home together.  David is a PhD candidate at Duke, developing a fluorescence sensor that can detect changing levels of metals in living cells, research that could impact how we diagnose or treat Alzheimer’s, since many patients with the disease have disproportionately high levels of copper and iron in their brains. The geek in me is fascinated by how and why metals move among cells in our body; the humanist in me considers this a very odd conversation to have walking along Highway 2 on market day, where the flies buzzing around the dead fish pose a much more imminent health hazard than degenerative brain disease.

 

By the time we duck off the main road and into the jungly drainage channel, Cassandra talks about her graduate studies in social work, which leads us all to share our amazement at the Gengal’s unique and generous mode of expressing grief.  I learn that Cassandra studies at University of North Carolina, so I piece together that they travel in several overlapping circles.  Along our walk we discuss the relative merits of Obamacare, Canada’s single payer system, globalization, and the satisfaction of pure research versus focused application. Worthy dinner party conversation back in Cambridge, with the added perk that when we arrive at Mirlitone we all take a cool swim in the Bay of Gonave, which is much more soothing than any dip in the Charles River.  I eat dinner late, and as I watch the sun set a pair of silhouettes merges on the sand bar where the river meets the sea.

 

Today I want to know the scoop, so of course I ask Renee who explains that David and Cassandra are dating and that she chose UNC, in part, to be near him.  The news warms me; they are such a nice couple; yet it also makes me realize how properly evangelicals court.  David and Cassandra are so chaste in their romance only the auroreal glow raging beyond their control announces to the world these two are in love.

 

Tonight is their last dinner here, and as I come to the chaconne, last again, I hear shrieks of delight.  David proposed to Cassandra, on his knee, along the beach in front of Mirlitone, where they first met.

 

I wish the couple years of health and happiness, a hearty family and long and satisfying contributions to our world.  Anyone who ever doubts that good things can come out of Haiti need only meet these two lovely souls who came together over thousands of miles because they cared about faraway earthquake victims.  Haiti did a shake, rattle and roll, and so did their hearts.

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Building Stairs

Posted on 07/30/2012 by paulefallon

Yesterday we began building the main stairs at Mission of Hope, our first permanent concrete stairs.  Like all ‘first days’ of a new phase in the work, it goes very slow and the miscommunication is rampant.  It takes us about three hours to determine where the stairs will start and stop, which we determine by measuring along the beam at the first floor slab and then dangling a straight 2×4 to the transit mark at the ground floor slab.  Haitians seem to have a predisposition for taking measurements and suspending building elements, just as they determined the initial square of the building by floating a framing square.  It seems sturdier to me to measure things from ground up.  Perhaps they do not trust the solidity of the ground, or they like the challenge of establishing equilibrium and plumb in space, or maybe they just don’t like to crouch down.  In this case the method, however precarious, yields a result I consider exact enough.  We determine the total height of the stairs to be 10’-3 ¾”, only a quarter inch off our ‘drawn’ dimension of 10’-4”.

 

There are two factors that determine the comfort level of climbing a set of stairs.  The first is the relationship between the vertical face of each step, the riser, and the horizontal plane where we place our foot, the tread.  These must lie within a proportional range; the steeper the rise, the narrower the tread.  Monumental stairs have long treads, as much as 14”, but very shallow risers, as little as 4-1/2”.  Steep service stairs can have risers as tall as eight or nine inches, but the treads must be correspondingly narrow for any comfort.  The rule of thumb architects use is rise times tread equals 72+/-.

 

Seven in eleven are the most common stair dimensions in the United States.  I want to use 11” treads on the main stair at MoHI, narrower treads are not advisable for exterior stairs and we don’t have enough space to make them more grand.  Since I have to cover over ten feet of vertical distance, I could make 17 risers at a hair over 7-1/4” each or I could make 18 at 6-7/8” each.  The shorter rise will be both more comfortable and more appropriate for a school full of children.

 

The second factor in stair comfort is that all the risers be exactly the same height. The human gait can differentiate changes in riser height as little as 1/8”.  Uneven stairs force us to look down and concentrate on our feet, rather than allowing us to ascend stairs with grace and certainty. Stairs in Haiti are notoriously erratic, and if Renee has made one firm demand this project, it is that she wants perfect stairs.

 

I explain to the carpenters how I want us to create the ‘reverse’ formwork on the inside face of the stairs, where they meet the vertical wall.  This goes over easier than I expect and within a few minutes they have tacked bits of 11” x 6-7/8” plywood cascading diagonally along the block wall.  Now I have a problem.  There is nothing wrong with that they are doing, but the opportunity for small mistakes is great.  If each plywood rectangle is only 1/16” inch off, I will have a one inch discrepancy by the time I lay out the entire stair.  I fetch Renee, whom I rely on for the most subtle translations.  I tell the workers that what they have done is not wrong, but is more prone to cumulative error than cutting multiple stair teeth out of large pieces of plywood.  Words like ‘cumulative’ do not exist in Creole.  Finally we say that what they have done is good, but if we use larger pieces we will be ‘plus exactement.’  They seem to buy that idea.

 

Now I get a full sheet four foot by eight foot plywood sheet and score it in 6-7/8” increments along one line, not by measuring 6-7/8” over and over again, but by measuring from the same datum 6-7/8” and 1’-1-3/4”, then 1’ 8-5/8”, etc. and repeating with 11”, 22”, 33”… in the opposite direction.  Datum dimensions are more accurate in total than sequential dimensions.  I am not sure if the workers go along because they understand the benefit of what I explain or because they are humoring me, but we lay out the first stair with only four separate sections of saw-toothed plywood.  The second stair is even more accurate; we use only three pieces.  When both sets of opposing risers are outlined against the walls we verify level across the future landing between them.  Everything is quite square.  Other work goes on in the meantime, but these two lengths of formwork are the major accomplishment of six men over the better part of two days.  We may be getting better at our work; but we are not getting any faster.

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Short on Olympians, Long on Olympic Spirit

Posted on 07/28/2012 by paulefallon

Five athletes represent Haiti in the London 2012 Olympics, four are Haitian-American track and field athletes from the United States; Linous Desravine, judoka, is the sole Haitian native to compete in London.  The country has only five competitive tracks, three of which are still being used as tent cities.  The Olympic committee has a budget of $400,000, a tad shy of the United States $170 million.  Only one Haitian has ever won an individual medal.  Silvio Cator silvered the men’s long jump in Amsterdam in 1928, and the national stadium in Port au Prince is named for him as a result of his achievement.

 

But the fact that Haiti does not have an illustrative Olympic history does not diminish the sports zeal in this country. Like in most poor countries, football (soccer to Americans) is the games of choice. Young boys as little as three chase any size ball they can find all day long.  A flat field is rare in this hilly, rocky land, but they are very nimble working the ball up and around tough terrain.  There is a large open plain on the edge of the sea just beyond Mirlitone where young men play soccer every night.  It appears to be a rudimentary pick-up game where guys side off into ‘shirts’ versus ‘skins’ but the rosters are always full and there are many spectators.  Judging from the enthusiasm of the players and the cheers of the crowd, the play is exciting and the rooting intense.

 

Today I walked home from work and came upon the first official looking game I ever saw here.  Middle school boys blocked off a street, set up a pair of goals with sticks and a wire across the top, and a uniformed referee used his whistle liberally.  The constant stops the referee triggered made the game less graceful than the guys at the beach, but lent the proceedings more gravity.  Each team spent as much time lobbying the ref as they did maneuvering their players.  There was a large crowd and partisan opinion swelled with every play.

 

I doubt we will hear the Haitian anthem and watch its flag rise over London; that has never happened in Olympic history and would be remarkable during these games.  But if the spirit of the Olympics is to get people all over the world to appreciate and participate in sport, to play hard but to play fair, Haiti can hold its head with any other country parading into the stadium.

Football on a street in Grand Goave

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The Limits of Civilization

Posted on 07/22/2012 by paulefallon

I am on vacation in Colorado; the mountains are gorgeous, the cycling invigorating, the hot tub soothing, the family company comforting.  This is the sort of week that induces the awkward poser to post a bit of puff, about Colorado’s commitment to physical fitness or the ingenuity of the early mountaineers.  But despite the bucolic veneer of our vacation, the moment any one turns on the television the placid façade cracks.  The movie theater tragedy is everywhere.  Another seminal event, another Dallas, another Columbine, another cause to wring our hands and say ‘How can this happen?’

 

I have no better answer to how this happens than the next guy, I only know that it does, and with enough regularity and intensity that if we don’t accept these tragedies as fixtures of modern life, we are fools for deluding ourselves.  The death count, number injured, and venue choice for the Aurora, Colorado massacre of movie-goers at a midnight premier of Batman: The Dark Knight Rises are all tragic, but what elevates this bit of madness in my mind is the invasion-level amount of planning and armament involved.  The killer was meticulous in massacre.

 

As we sort through our grief, ponder the arbitrary nature of tragedy, tighten up security in yet another aspect of our daily lives and argue around the peripheral issues such as how easy it is to get ammunition on the Internet, we will likely not ask the harder question of whether we should have limits to gun ownership, and I doubt we will even entertain the more basic question.  Is man inherently violent, and if so, can that need ever be sated vicariously?

 

Violent behavior is a human trademark.  Steven Pinker argues in The Better Angels of our Natures: Why Violence Has Declined that we are living in the least violent times ever, yet we seem unable to get to that point where violence is erased from our everyday lives.  We still go to war, though in America we make sure our wars are far away and affect our daily consumption as little as possible.  We still live in fear of crime, despite the fact that it actually occurs less often; we couldn’t worry about crimes we never knew existed until they invaded our home on the six o’clock news.  We still resort to violence in our daily lives as a means for solving disputes; thus people still hit their spouses and their children. And we still suffer arbitrary, aberrant violence such as James Holmes perpetrated at that midnight screening.

 

“Batman stories almost always center on violence, madness, and single-minded discipline”, Douglas Wolk wrote prophetically in this week’s Time magazine, before the midnight movie massacre.  Batman is the twenty-first century anecdote for violence in a civilized society.  Like the gladiators of ancient Rome, the jousting matches of the Middle Ages, or the cock fights of Latin America, Batman is a surrogate for our violent tendencies, a two hour, $250 million relief valve to dissuade us from acting out our primal tendencies.  Sitting in the dark theater, each of us is the Dark Knight, we possess cunning and strength and grace, we battle evil and regardless how dire our straights, we emerge victorious.

We will never know why James Holmes could not have simply bought a ticket, sat in the audience, and assuaged his violent impulses watching Batman.  That cinemagraphic surrogate satisfies most of us, but James Holmes was compelled to act his violence out.  We cannot understand this because our reality is circumscribed by what we call ‘civilization’.  We use terms like ‘crazy’ and ‘delusional’ to describe the killer, but really ‘uncivilized’ does the trick.  He acted so far beyond the limits of anything we can tolerate; we have to disbar him from the most rudimentary definition of humanity.  The most civilized thing we can do now is band together, tend each other’s wounds, and guard against the next time; for as long as there are limits to what is acceptable in civilized society, there will always be someone who transgresses them in a free society.

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