Hoola for Happiness

Posted on 06/01/2012 by paulefallon

With seven billion people in the world I should have guessed that one would be a hula fairy, but who knew I would be fortunate enough to fall under her spell beneath the thatched chaconne at Mirlitone?

Any adjective short of a superlative fails to describe Carissa Caricato.  She is tall, blonde, gregarious, charming, effervescent, frivolous, fabulous, utterly useless, and utterly lovely.  Every moment in her presence is electrified by the alternating current that she adds no measurable value to the world and yet she makes the world an immeasurably better place.

Carissa runs a non-profit called Hoola for Happiness, a group that makes hula hoops and distributes them to third world outposts like Haiti, Nicaragua and India, to spread joy and a bit of Gospel.  The hoops come in five attachable pieces for easy transport, each an Olympic color.  Carissa’s web site hawks them for $30 a pop, and she travels the world distributing them to poor children.  When Carissa fixes you in her gaze and describes hula hoops as the communication bridge between cultures you weigh the possibility.  She gets me to try one; I am all bones and no swagger.   But when she steps into a hoop and gently sways to and fro, when she sends an Olympic swirl around her waist and hips, adds another around her neck and arms, and a third along an outstretched leg, you become convinced of her enlightened form of communication.  The hoops shiver up and down her body, unburdened by gravity.  She is innocent as Sesame Street, enticing as Salome.

Carissa arrives at the MoHI construction site mid-morning with a gaggle of hula hoops over her arm.  She knows that what a tight construction site with 50 laborers and piles of aggregate and sharp rebar cutters and a concrete mixer all running full gear needs even more than 300 school children (which we already have) is to have those children gyrating in hula hoops.  Within moments of arriving the site is a jumble of lithe black bodies in tan school uniforms enraptured in hula frenzy.  The girls are good, the boys are amazing.  I discover a new force field in the world, about thirty inches off the ground, where hula hoops find equilibrium; the children can spin them forever.

Carissa departs as quickly as she arrives and the hoops vanish.  One or two break and the occasional segment of green or red gets kicked into a corner of the site.  Carissa does not bring anything as rudimentary are food or clothing, or buildings to Haiti.  She brings shards of colorful plastic and she brings joy.  She brings joy in such abundance that even after she is gone it lingers on the breeze.  The children return to their studies, the crew returns to our construction, each of us better for the fairy who anointed us with her circles and her spirit.

MoHI Students take a break to hula hoop.

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Squeegee Guys

Posted on 05/31/2012 by paulefallon

Remember the squeegee guys?  Down on their luck fellows, mostly immigrants, who assaulted cars coming off New York City’s bridges and tunnels with soap, sponges and squeegees, spiffing up your car in the hopes of a tip.  Innocent enough until some got belligerent to drivers and added another level of anxiety to city living.  Mayor Giuliani and New York Police Chief Bratton made their careers off these guys, taking a rigid stand against the petty annoyances of life they represented and in the process turned the city around.  New York is safer and more hospitable, if less colorful, without the squeegee guys and the other hucksters who preyed upon citizens in the distant seventies and eighties.

Ever since then, the bottom up theory of public safety prevails.  Get rid of the squeegee guys and the murder rate will fall.  So you can imagine how happy I am to arrive in Port au Prince today and find a morsel of squeegee tightening in this haphazard place.

When you come out of customs at the PAP airport you are in a large shed with one conveyor of bags.  If you don’t grab yours on the first pass a Haitian yanks it off on the back side and tosses it on a pile.  There are little carts for loading bags, but they are in a jumble in one corner with a small army of mean looking men hovering around them.  Being a beta male, I prefer to shoulder my bags and huff my way through the gauntlet of guys grabbing at me rather than try to figure out how to get a cart.  Everyone in the place looks untrustworthy; I keep a firm grip on my goods.

But today, the world is a more joyous place.  Instead of a jumble of carts, there are neat rows.  And even though there is still a battalion of bouncers, a friendly woman stands at a small podium and takes two dollars in exchange for a ticket, which one of Mike Tyson’s cousin’s accepts in exchange for a cart.  With four wheels, I can manage 100 pounds of hockey bag supplies plus my backpack better, and I can pretend I am a bumper car to any of the supposed porters try to handle my stuff (I believe some are real, though I have no idea which ones).

Getting out of the airport with such ease lifts my spirits, puts me in a better frame to greet dirty and oppressive Port au Prince.  If the airport can organize their carts, anything is possible, right?  Twenty minutes later, stuck in PAP traffic behind a garish tap-tap with my driver Ricardo, a squeegee guy pops out of nowhere, sprays our windshield and then curses us for not rolling down a window and handing over some bills. Civility evolves slowly, one step at a time.

 

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Memorial Day

Posted on 05/27/2012 by paulefallon

Memorial Day has always struck me as a holiday in desperate need of a root cause analysis.  We honor our war dead, who deserve to be honored, but we fail to ask the deeper question, “Why are there so many of them, and why do we continue to have more?”

I have an idealist viewpoint on war – I am against it without exception.  If we suggest that this war is just or that war is necessary, we capitulate to the fantasy that war can accomplish some good.  War occurs when all else fails, but as long as war is an option, we excuse ourselves from the work required to achieve peace.  As long as war is an option we can talk of justice but insist our point of view prevails.  As long as war is an option we can talk of respect but consider our own country superior.  As long as war is an option we can talk of communicating but we won’t have to take the difficult walk in another man’s shoes to understand his point of view.

We love war, even more than we love to say we are for peace.  We are violent creatures, our capacity to destroy is incredible, fascinating really.  We do not weigh war’s outcome realistically because we believe the virtue of our cause will tilt the outcome in our favor.  Whether we are the rebel or the establishment, each side finds precedent to support his cause.  War can smile on the light-footed and inspired, as it did when the Minutemen beat the Hessians in 1775 or the Vietnamese whooped us back nearly two hundred years later.  Other times simple might makes right prevails.  After we pummeled Dresden with thousands of bombs, and Hiroshima with just one, we brought our enemies to heel.

We also love war at a personal level.  War is the ultimate adolescent activity, raging action, reckless and liberating.  No one ever thinks they are going to die in a war; if they did they would not go.  We always think we are invincible, the other guy will die.  But sometimes the other guy kills us, and though it is tragic, we die heroes, our deaths count for something, we exit this earth at the height or our virtue, and are honored forever.  We make an early exit but it is glorious.

As a child Memorial Day included a ceremony at the high school stadium with a military procession, a twenty-one gun salute, and tri-folded flags.  It did not stir me.  For years I did not celebrate in any way, pretending Memorial Day was nothing more than a calendar glitch for a long weekend.  Then a few years ago the City of Boston began a simple, stunning Memorial Day that stirs me deeply.  On a rise in the Common, volunteers plant small American flags.  There are 33,000 this year, representing every Massachusetts soldier killed since the Civil War.

I am discouraged that the number of flags keeps growing.  But I also find hope in the sea of dense packed red, white and blue flags. The individual colors merge, like pointillist dots of an Impressionist painting. The flags lose their unique identity, their their national symbolism evaporates and the hill becomes a graceful sea of purple.

I doubt the day will come when the people of this earth understand that our commonalties are more important than our differences, that nations and ethnicities and religions do more to separate us than to unite us, and that our best future is the one that makes a seat at the table for everyone.  In the meantime I choose interpret Boston’s inspiring tribute to dead soldiers not as a collection of individuals lost to us in war’s folly, but as a beacon of what the world might look like when we lay down our arms and move forward together.

Boston Common on Memorial Day

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Slow Go

Posted on 05/20/2012 by paulefallon

I like maxim’s to live by.  They provide structure and form, if not meaning, to our everyday tasks.  I have a new one that has been boiling up for a year or so now.  Slow Go.

Slow Go means wherever I have to go, I get there the slowest practical way.  I have never been enamored of speed; fast planes, fast cars, fast women, they all leave me bewildered.  But I never really appreciated the virtues of going slow until last summer, when I took seven weeks to travel 3,000 miles by bicycle that could have been traversed in an afternoon’s flight or a couple of days of automotive comfort.  I started the journey because I wanted to do something different.  Then I realized that going slow was not just different, it was often better, and by the end of my trip, I realized that going slow is almost always better.  When I reentered my regular life I decided to test the notion of traveling slow, and I have decided Slow Go is for me.

I have five basic modes of transport.  I fly in airplanes, I drive a car, I take the bus (or subway), I ride my bicycle, and I walk.  There is the occasional cab ride and recreational run, but those five get me from point A to point B most all the time.  My preference in terms of enjoyment is inversely proportional to their speed.  I like to walk, love to bicycle, abide the bus, dislike the car and abhor flying.

Flying is just terrible these days.  The planes are packed, the schedules tight, the security noxious.  Actually, the planes are noxious as well; everyone catches colds on planes.  Planes are a rapacious use of resources by any measure.  I thought I was a responsible energy user until I took a carbon footprint measurement test.  I was well below average in every category, but since I fly 20-30 times a year, my carbon footprint is the size of the Lochness Monster.  Still, when I have to get from, say, Boston to Port au Prince in a day, it is the only option and so I hatchet my consciousness, hold my breath, and climb aboard.

As long as I can stay on the ground, my travel habits are much better.  I own a car, though I do not know why.  If I drive 100 miles a month that is a lot, except for business trips when I rack up 55 cents a mile and it turns into a profit center.  My economical, paid off, not-so-old-it-needs-a-lot-of-service car operates for a lot less than that.  Still, I do not like to drive.  The vagaries of traffic violate my sense of control; I don’t like wrapping my anonymity in metal and glass, and the moment I step behind the wheel I suffer acute road rage.  I consider it a community service that I rarely drive; I don’t like being on the road and neither does anyone else.

When the weather is bad and I need cover during travel I take the bus.  Even though it takes twice as long as driving I like it much better. The bus breeds virtue; I am comrades with the common man, sharing our burdens while competing for a seat.  Studies show that public transportation uses just as much energy as private cars per passenger mile.  But that is because no one uses public transportation. Where there are buses, as in my neighborhood, the marginal energy difference between me riding the bus and driving my car is real. The bus is making the trip whether I am on it or not.  If I tag along, I contribute less total energy burn to the system.

Bicycling is my most beloved form of transport, and I have expanded the scope of acceptable cycling conditions to encompass nearly all my travel.  I don’t bicycle if I wake to downpours or snow or temperatures below ten degrees.  But I might pedal to work in a drizzle, and I never let grey skies or a bad forecast push me to the bus.  The bicycle is the default mode for any trip under twenty miles, It usually takes three times longer than driving, but the benefits are worth the time.  Bicycling is good for my health and great for the planet, I feel in control of my destiny and parking in the city is a breeze. I love the way the world looks at ten miles per hour, a speed that is fast enough to give the big picture yet slow enough to highlight the details in our built environment.  I have learned that cycling to a business meeting has multiple benefits.  No one expects you to look all polished, which I can never quite pull off anyway, and I arrive with fresh energy even in midafternoon. I make time to wash up really well, but that is all factored into the trip.  Realistically, my time is not all that valuable and if most of us made a critical assessment, we all waste more time in frivolity than I spend on my bike.  Besides, have you seen my legs?  I am the Betty Grable of middle aged men; I have terrific legs.

Walking is wonderful, but unrealistically slow except for the most leisurely adventures.  There are places I prefer to walk.  The grocery store is four blocks away; I almost always walk.  Ditto the library and the park.  On a late summer afternoon there is nothing finer than strolling down Brattle Street to eat in Harvard Square.  When I walk the world is nothing but detail.  I completely lose the scale of the forest; I get to savor every flower.

So the next time you have to go somewhere, ask yourself if there is a slower option.  The time you spend may restore your sanity.

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Nursing Our Children into Debt

Posted on 05/16/2012 by paulefallon

After two weeks of no TV or radio, my favorite pastime upon reentering the United States is to divine what ‘big story’ captivates the nation.  Will it be something inspiring like Occupy Wall Street or tedious, like Mitt Romney’s bully past, or trivial like Howard Stern’s spin on national TV?  It is fascinating to land in the middle of these media extravaganzas, because regardless the details, all the big news bear common traits.  They reflect a society that foments conflict and anxiety, that would rather point fingers than take responsibility, and that above all, trumpets entertainment over serious discourse.

This week I was fascinated, and ultimately dispirited, by two major trending stories.

Dr. Bill Sears, pediatrician and author of The Baby Book is a well-respected advocate of attachment parenting.  When Time magazine chose to do a feature on him, does his photo grace the cover?  No, we get model and mom Jamie Lynn Grumet standing in a sultry pose while her three year old (who is very well nourished) stands on a stool and sucks at her breast under the headline ‘Are you Mom Enough?’  Kinky?  Maybe.  Sexualized? Definitely.   In an interview with the article’s author, Kate Pickert, disavows penning the headline, but acknowledges that it addresses the fundamental question of every American parent, ‘Am I doing a good enough job?’  Since the vast majority of us do not subscribe to attachment parenting (which may be nurturing and supportive but can also be seen as self-indulgent and elitist), and most moms don’t look like Jamie Lynn Grumet, the answer to ‘Are You Mom Enough?’ is a resounding, ‘No.”  And thus, Time taps into two great American preoccupations.  It simultaneously titillates us and renders us insufficient.

Time knows what will sell, and we buy it.  Shame on us.

The second big news item is both more substantial and more disturbing.  Sunday’s New York Times featured a terrific page one story about the increasing dilemma of college debt. It covers all the usual parameters of the problem – college costs rising faster than inflation, colleges shuffling the real costs by focusing on ‘the package’ while soft pedaling the reckoning that graduation brings, the naivety of students who choose expensive colleges over more economical options, and the increasing cost of public colleges, who labor under ever decreasing amount of public support.  The article contains the requisite heartbreak stories of earnest young men and women who are starting out life mired in debt, and I came away convinced that this is not entirely their fault.  There are also compelling graphics demonstrating the unsustainable economics of a college education.  The subtext of all this bad news is that, maybe education isn’t worth the price.

Tucked into the graphics is a chart that illustrates how people pay for college today compared to twenty years ago.  Although it is not referenced specifically in the article, it suggests a giant omission in the text.  Twenty years ago between 30 and 50 percent of families paid for their children’s college education, varying by public, private and for-profit institutions.  Today that percentage is less than 10% for any type of college. Regardless where we fall in the economic spectrum, we all know intuitively that more than ten percent of American families can afford to send their children to college.  How families have gotten off the hook for providing their children a college education is a perfect example of the twisted logic of our entitlement society, and an indictment of what is wrong with America.

Seventy-five years ago college was the province of the rich.  After World War II the GI Bill made college available to a huge cross-section of our population.  Our educational standards rose, our economy boomed, by the 1960’s our higher education was the envy of the world; Americans were the best educated people on earth. Middle class people saved money and sent their children to college, which was not cheap but within reach.  With noble intention schools started to provide financial aid to help students from poor families attend college.  The government got in the act, providing direct student loans.  The eligibility requirements for the loans became looser over time, because if that kid can get it, why can’t mine,  until we got to the point that assistance was not only provided to those in need, it was available to everyone.

In the process college became just another product that we buy now and pay for later.  Like all things easy to come by, it lost its luster.  We are no longer the best educated nation on earth, or even in the top ten.  No one worried if the cost outstripped inflation; with money so easy to borrow, the actual cost became less important.  The perceived cost was deeply discounted by earnings in a rosy future.  Families stopped saving for college; it is always easier to borrow than to save. Private lenders got involved, private colleges developed predatory practices.  Colleges got very expensive, and now the bills coming due are astronomical while a college education’s assurance of economic advancement is not so rosy.

I am a champion of college education.  I do not subscribe to the argument that college is only relevant if it increases one’s economic standing.  College is relevant because it increases our exposure to the world; it grows our minds in ways we cannot anticipate. That is why college is exciting, that is why students are often radical; that is why the powers-that-be would prefer college to be more job-focused.  The status quo is well served by students who graduate so tied to debt they cannot raise their eyes to change the world.  After all, powers-that-be usually like the world just the way it is.

College transformed my life.  As a student from a barely middle class family I received generous aid, including loans; not so much aid that college life was luxurious but not so many loans that that they cramped my future.  For all I appreciated the government’s help in pulling me up through the middle class, I did not expect it to do the same for my own children. We had enough means to send them to college. No aid, no debt.  And until I read the NY Times article I did not realize how unusual our family is in that respect.  But I am glad that we did it that way, because we could; and I am equally glad there is help for those who need it, because I know how beneficial it can be.

But I am an outlier in this arrangement, for the college debt debacle is another example of the entitlement society run amuck.  Instead of people going to college in order to explore themselves, and society investing in our effort to reach optimal potential, we have created a system that layers anxiety and worry over the student’s college life. There are so many people to point fingers at – lenders, colleges, students, the economy – that no one has to bear full responsibility for anything.  And even in a well-tempered publication like the NY Times, the propensity to highlight the individual’s plight and enhance conflict among parties supersedes a deeper analysis and thoughtful suggestions about how to get out of the mess.

For in the end, the question about college education is the same as the question about healthcare, as it is about social security, as it is about sanitary housing and good nourishment.  Are Americans entitled to these things because they are Americans, or do we have to ‘earn’ them?  We cry ‘socialism’ against any system that is available to all, yet we are unwilling to deny people just because they cannot pay.  So we cobble together patchwork programs of public housing and food stamps and Medicaid and student loans, we give people a taste of what of they want but make them pay some price because we are convinced the best pie is the one with the thumb of capitalism jammed into its crust.

Forty years ago the United States lent me money to go to college.  In exchange for that generosity I have earned multiples more than I would have without a college education and have happily paid all of the taxes those earnings require.  The United States invested in me and we both enjoyed excellent returns.  A student today owes ten times what I did, often to a private company.  The student graduates with dimmer prospects and the returns go not back to our nation, but to some deep pockets.

And where are the parents in all of this? Off at our second house or second car or on vacation; willing to put a burden on our children that we did not have to bear ourselves.  Shame on us.

This week’s top stories cause a conflicting flurry.  One is about how we extend infancy, and whether it delays our children’s ability to develop.  The other is about how we force our children to grow up too soon by burdening them with debt that hampers their best possible start as adults. Problems that we create ourselves; only in America.

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Airplane Nightmare Averted

Posted on 05/12/2012 by paulefallon

One of the many arcane rules of American Airlines is that when you change your ticket in Haiti, they will not assign you a seat on your new flight.  Since I extended my recent stay by a week, I was rebooked but had no idea where I would sit.

I am pretty charming when I approach the ticket counter with no seat assignment. I mention casually that if they have an exit row window available, I’ll take it.  About half the time it works.  But not today.  The agent nodded at me without a word and gave me a boarding pass from Miami to Boston with seat 34 B – the middle seat at the back of the plane.

So in Miami I attempt my customary Plan B for improving my seat – being the last man on.  Since I do not carry a rollie, there is no need for me to rush onto planes for the overhead space.  I loiter at the gate to be the last person down the jet way.  A good portion of the time an exit row is available and I snag it, or I just plop into any empty seat more desirable than my assignment. I have never been caught out yet. But today, no luck. This plane is standing room only.

I have no choice but to hunker down to row 34 and squeeze myself between whatever awaits me there.  I have a middle aged woman at the window, and – oh no – a man with an infant in the aisle seat.  I slither into my slot and resign myself to three dreadful hours.

The plane pulls away from the gate and twenty feet later, everything goes black.  The captain comes on the overhead with a story so lame I can tell he has already filtered through Plans A, B, and C and his playbook is running dry.  He tells us that the ‘start-up’ engine failed to trigger, but that is normal.  This I doubt.  He tells us we will get towed back to the gate and kick started again.  This, I not only doubt; I wonder whether I really want to fly to Boston in a ‘kick-started’ plane.

The story is so ludicrous a buzz ripples over the assembled.  ‘Well, this plane’s going out of service.’  ‘I never heard of that before.’  ‘Is there a guy with a crank at the nose of the plane, like on a Tin Lizzy?’  The captain’s voice returns and suggests that if we close our shades the plane will stay cooler.  Shades flap down faster than a hummingbird’s wings.  As for being cool, our silver metal tube sitting on the tarmac in Miami packed with sweaty people stopped being cool less than a minute after the lights went black.

At this point the baby next to me starts to fuss, the dad leans forward and presses his forehead against his son’s noggin and whispers the infant into complacency.  Even in my disgruntled state I have to admit, it is one of the most effective parenting moves I’ve ever seen.  I look over and realize that, in the opposite aisle seat is a woman with an identical baby, and next to her a toddler girl. There comes a point when things slip so bad that you have to stop being upset and just laugh it off.  In the dark, stalled at our gate, with all kinds of babies around me, I feel the weight of displeasure lift.  At that moment the nook falls out the closest baby’s mouth. I just cannot pretend these people away any longer.  “Excuse me, let me help.” I reach into the father’s elbow nook and retrieve the pacifier.

From there everything trends positive. The plane actually jump starts and we only get to Boston 30 minutes late.  Better than that, the family next to me turns out to be fascinating. The dad is an environmental consultant in St. Croix, he spent his Peace Corps years in Costa Rica, he is interested in our work in Haiti, and both parents have a firm but caring style that help the children navigate the flight with little fuss.  As a guy who rarely offers more than a cursory hello to my seatmates when the attendants pass out the drinks, spending time with this family is both uncharacteristic and rewarding.

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When I Grow Old I Want to be Like Pastor Beauvais

Posted on 05/07/2012 by paulefallon

Pastor Beauvais is a twig of a man.  Five feet tall and one hundred pounds, maybe; a 36’ belt would surely ring his waist twice.  In a country where the average life expectancy at birth is just over 62 (Index Mundi, 2011, the shortest lifespan in the Western Hemisphere), Pastor Beauvais has beaten the odds and then some.  He is a very old, very spry man.

I first met Pastor Beauvais in 2009 when Andy and I built him a house behind his original one, damaged by the earthquake. Pastor Beauvais was not content to have workers arrive and build him a new house; he had to be in, under, and over every bit of the place.  He held joists true and stretched his tarp walls and when the house was complete he huddled everyone together and whooped out some really loud praise.

A year later he accompanied Len and Bernie Gengal and me up the hill for our first look at the site of Brit’s orphanage. He stood on the wide meadow and opened his arms, a little guy with a Napoleon complex channeling Rio’s Christ the Redeemer statue.  He blessed the site in every direction.  He bowed, he exalted; he made great noise but no sense.

I chalked up my lack of comprehension to feeble Creole.  But now, after seeing Pastor Beauvais for years, developing some ear for the language, and talking with others about his mangled vocabulary, I realize that no one really understands him.  When he preaches, his energy has tornado force, but his message is anyone’s guess.  I am sure that many understand more than I can unscramble, but I don’t think anyone fully grasps everything what rattles around this guy’s head.  What is clear, despite the garbled syntax, is that Pastor Beauvais has a passionate, unified vision of the world; one that has sustained him through a long life in a difficult place and continues to nourish him.  If he is only one with the full picture, so be it.

Born during the American invasion, persevering Doc and Baby Doc, the excitement of Aristide, the terror of the Tontons macoutes, enduring the UN’s attempt to bring order to Haiti’s chaos, surviving hurricanes and earthquakes and floods and droughts, Pastor Beauvais has lived through it all.  He appears to have been untouched by the tragedies yet energized by the successes.  He is relentlessly cheerful despite that fact that to most of us, he hasn’t much to be cheerful about.

I believe Pastor Beauvais’ vitality comes from a solid sense of self and contentment in his world.  The zealots would say his spirit comes through Christ, but I see just as many unsatisfied and frustrated Christians down here as folks of other stripes.  Pastor Beauvais would be equally as indomitable if he identified as a Buddhist, a Jew, or an agnostic.  He is an upbeat guy and if Christianity is his chosen vehicle to express his joie de vie. I’m glad it works for him. Appreciating his character does not make me feel the need to be Christian.  What draws me is his authenticity; the vagaries of popular culture or passing fashion don’t make a dent on this guy.

I should be so fortunate to grow old with such a strong, particular identity.  I can’t think of anything better than being lively and energetic beyond my years, full of joy, with a mind brimming from a life so well lived that I can’t quite verbalize it coherently.  It’s always a good idea for geezers to keep the youngsters guessing.

 Pastor Beauvais

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Four Guys from La Gonave

Posted on 05/05/2012 by paulefallon

There’s a group of laborers that have taken to having English / Creole conversations with me.  We talk at lunch, but sometimes also at the end of the work day.  We use my Phrasebook as a starting point; pick a page, and start reading.  They read the English words, I help their pronunciation, and then we flip roles and I attempt Creole.  Some pages are worthless; being able to ask if your flight is delayed is meaningless to someone who has never been on a plane. The most relevant pages stick to the basics of time, weather, work, and family.  I learn that Emmanuel has a wife and four children, two boys and two girls; Drivle is single, not even a girlfriend; we all laugh that he is ‘lib’ though I applaud his honesty since every other Haitian man I know boasts of his girlfriend, even as I suspect many are fabricated.  Webert is single as well, but offers the conventional description of a girlfriend ‘at home’. Quiet Fanil allows that he has seven children, by several women, none of whom is his wife.  I search for the Creole word for ‘stud’ but cannot find it. It figures that a dictionary that defines single as ‘silibate’ would omit sexually charged slang.

 

When I ask where they live, all four say La Gonave, the island visible in the bay. I ask how they get there, and they tell me there is a ‘taptap bato-a’, a water taxi.  I picture the hydroplane that ferries commuters from Hingham into Boston, though the reality is sure to be more rudimentary.  I ask how long it takes to get home, and after some discussion they settle on forty-five minutes, which proves to be an awkward period of time to translate.  I ask them if they go home every night; in the States a forty five minute water commute would be considered light.  They laugh and say no, only weekends.

 

I ask where they live, and again they reply La Gonave.  Finally, I realize I have to ask where they sleep, and they point to one of the lean-tos at MoHI, where, apparently, they bunk every night, four of them, maybe more, in a space no more than ten feet square.  Suddenly the parameters of our work days shift for me.  I understand how the workers get here so early and never mind working so late.  They never leave.  Work is surely the most stimulating part of their day; once everyone leaves the émigrés from La Gonave have only themselves for amusement until the sun rises again.

 

On Saturday I ask if they are going to La Gonave.  They look at me odd and say no.  Then when are you going, I inquire.  In July, they reply, which is two months hence.  The more I know about them, the less I understand.

 

Among the four I know Emmanuel the best.  He has worn the same grey tee shirt and loose checkered pants since I first met him in December.  I am sure they were pajamas in a past life.  He has a light heart and a ready smile. The thought crosses my mind that he may have no other possessions.  He lives in a place that he visits only a few times a year, he sends money home to a wife and children when he has some in his pocket and can find someone to ferry it to the island.  When the weather is fine and the resources flow, he is a day laborer at BLB or MoHI.  If neither site wants him, he is on his own, in which case I can find him chatting along the path as I navigate between the two constructions.  He is as buoyant off site as when he is working.  Emmanuel can read; his English is quite good.  He is an adult, a married man in his thirties with a wife and children to support.  He is carries buckets of concrete for a living, when he can. That meager opportunity takes him far from his family, for a forty-five minute ferry ride is dear to a man of such limited income.  Yet he seems completely at ease with his lot in life.

 

I reflect on my own habits.  I never go anywhere without carrying a book, a magazine, or my computer.  I always have something ‘on hand’; to occupy my time if I hit a lull in my day.  The only time I am without accoutrement is when I do yoga, which is highly regulated in its own way.  I do not waste time.  I don’t consider myself particularly anxious, but as a motivated American, the thought of roaming the town all day in my only pair of clothes without so much as a pencil if no one wants me to carry their concrete is terrifying.

 

These guys are not dullards. They are literate and funny; their minds are quick.  Yet they spend large periods of time in a sort of physical and mental limbo.   Is that integral to the Haitian psyche, or is it an acquired skill?  Are they frustrated?  Do they rage against the dichotomy between their ability and their station?  By all appearances they have a calm acceptance of life; they appreciate what comes their way and are untrammeled by grievances and disappointments.  One could make the argument that such placidity sets Haiti back in her struggle to compete in the wider world.  On the other hand, I could benefit from some of that serenity myself.  I wonder if they translate it for me.

 

 

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Photo! Photo!

Posted on 05/03/2012 by paulefallon

As soon as I start down the hill after work a woman approaches in a bold black and white full length skirt, a patterned green blouse and a small tree with the root ball firm on her head.  She gives me a grand smile.  I itch to whip out my camera and take her photo; she is worthy of a National Geographic cover.  I ask the obvious question, ‘what kind of tree is on your head’, to which she replies ‘mango’.  Her lips are already moist in anticipation of her future fruit.  She has another sapling in her hand and a small boy in tow.  I am tempted to ask if I may take her picture, but I refrain.  I will be content with the memory.

I keep my camera clipped to my belt, ever ready, but I only take three kinds of pictures in Haiti. Anything goes at the construction sites, where the workers are photographed and videotaped constantly for all manner of publicity.  I take still life’s and landscapes.  And I take pictures of people who ask me, mostly children.  There is a gaggle of them who live along the hill to BLB, and every time I hike by they run out screaming, ‘photo, photo’.  I stop and take their picture; they never cease to marvel at the tiny image of themselves I displayed in the view frame.

I do not take photographs of people without their permission and I do not ask for permission. I feel it is an invasion. I am living in the Haitians’ world.  That I would like to preserve an image of a woman carrying a tree, or a bucket, or a bushel of bananas on her head makes her an object of curiosity, when she is simply doing her daily business.  Strangers don’t take photos of me at my computer, and it would be odd if they did.  I would love to document fisherman spooling their nets and women bleaching laundry on rocks and street vendors sitting in front of their paltry wares. But there is a fine line between generous wonder and prurient fascination, as the most compelling images are often the most desperate.

As I continue home I see all kinds of people carrying plants.  It turns out that May Day is a holiday in Haiti, celebrated with a tradition of planting trees.  Since Haiti can use all the trees it can get, I am a big fan of the idea.  You will just have to take my word for it.

The children on the hill in their daily photo.

 

 

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Holding Hands

Posted on 05/01/2012 by paulefallon

As a politically correct American, the only place I ever touch someone in public is their right hand to my right hand.  There are rare exceptions. I might give my friends or my children a hug if we meet at a restaurant, and I have been known to press the shoulder of long time clients when our professional relationship has become personal as well.  But I would never put my hand on a colleague’s shoulder or give him a pat on the back. The United States is a spacious, litigious society.  We claim a broad personal space and we guard it well.

The line in Haiti is more closely drawn, if it exists at all. Haitians jostle one another in the marketplace as a matter of course.  They live in small spaces, often many people in one room; sometimes multiple people in one bed.  Holding hands is common across genders and activities; every day I see construction workers stroll the site with their hands clasped to one another.

When I first came here I would wave to people as I greeted them. Then I started shaking hands.  Now I make a point to greet the workers personally each morning.  I shake their hand and place my left over it; I give them a good morning look in the eye.  This contact dances on the edge of my comfort zone, but I can tell they appreciate it.  A few of the guys, as I take their hand, throw their left arm around my shoulder, which I accept as a gesture of camaraderie.

Walking home after work, I run into a laborer along the main road.  Gascon bounces up to me, grabs my hand and embraces my shoulder.  We chat and I move on..  A few steps later I run into Clebert, a mason’s assistant. Clebert is a small, spry guy with a gregarious nature and a constant smile.  Mister Paul, he calls out, thrilled to discover me off the construction site.  We greet and I continue on, out of town and over the river; along the highway to the turnoff where my path dips into the jungle.  As I descend into the cool evening I hear footsteps behind me.  At a clearing I slow and step aside, to let the person coming upon me pass.  It is Clebert, at a good clip.  Ah, Mister Paul, he exclaims as if it were years, rather than minutes, since we last saw each other.  He reaches out and takes my right forearm in his left, lets his hand slide down into mine and grasps my fingers.

I am surprised, but I do not pull away. I suck in a breath and force myself to acknowledge that it is rather nice to have a warm, friendly hand in mine.  We walk and in hand.  I ask the small retinue of questions I have at my disposal when one on one with a person who speaks no English.  Clebert was born in Grand Goave, has lived here his whole like, and has a wife and four children; a resume virtually identical to all the other workers.  After a decent interval I point out a flowering tree, which allows me to free my hand.  I do not return it to the same place.  I have had plenty of hand holding with a near stranger on my first foray into such close personal space.  We continue along with a more comfortable distance between us, at least for me, until he gives me a hearty m’ale and turns off towards his house.

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