A few weeks before I left Haiti to come back to Brooklyn, I was offered a job at a technology company in the Bay Area. I’d lived and worked there before, so I decided to take it and move out, putting the MP into action: pay off my former grad school loan debt (it’s massive), apply to MPH programs, and, a few years down the line, sweep myself into a whole new life.

Easier said than done.

I work a lot, and putting money into savings, let alone a graduate student loan debt account that hasn’t been touched for, oh, four-ish years, is turning out to be more of a challenge than I thought. (Maybe I should curb my alcohol budget, said the Good Angel. What the?, said the Bad Angel.)

On the bright side, it’s given me some head space and time to iron out the options. I was recently accepted into several schools of public health. Being the good stalker journalist that I am, I conducted much research and interviewed everyone from admissions folks to current and former students, and found out that:

1. Columbia, while my alma mater, nearly did me in once; they’re too expensive for me to die before I even get the chance to start servicing another whopping Access Group loan…

2. UCLA is not that cheap, and my impression was that as a student there, at least in an MPH program, I’d have to fight tooth and nail for everything, including RA/TAships (not good, since that’s one of the major benefits of doing an MPH, imho)…

3. Tulane’s got some amazing programs, seems to have a truly receptive faculty, and what can I say? A new student orientation (didn’t go, but should have) that centers around a crawfish broil and pub-crawl? Um, I’m in. Plus — the main selling point, I think — new students can defer for up to two years…

4. CUNY employs many Columbia profs; is, like, a 100th of the cost of Columbia and NYU; and well, is in my fair city not by the Bay. Unfortunately, I think me and about 2 million others are thinking the same thing, so actually getting to enroll might not be as easy as I think…

Loan debt sucks. Having more time to decide doesn’t. The question of just how many years before I can, let’s say, buy anything that doesn’t cost more than 500 extra bucks a month, weighs on my mind. Going on 60 and moving into a loft in SOMA? Not so much.

The bigger question is, could I expect to walk out of an MPH and even afford to pay off any student loan debt while working for an international CBO (community-based org) or NGO, which is my goal? There are options for helping public health folks lose their debt, but you have to make a lot of loan payments first (like, a decade’s worth) before taking advantage of these.

Alternately, I could find a job in the field, see if I like it, and use my employer’s benefits to cover the tuition. Or, I could pay off my journalism graduate school loans and high-tail it to wherever I’m dreaming of going, making it up as I go along. I haven’t ruled out those options either.

On an aside, I’ve been thinking a lot about my semi-nomadic existence lately, wondering whether it’s ultimately going to hurt or help me. And, what about this writing thing? Do I really want to ditch journalism and switch careers? I mean, I still longingly eye that gleaming cover of National Geographic every time I saunter past it on the newsstand and wonder, when?

Just some thoughts. Anyone else out there debating doing another master’s degree, despite having little savings and pre-existing (yes, it is like a pre-existing disease condition) grad school debt?

However, yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the earthquake, and I wanted to point to a few newscasts that I think have done this day justice. First, there’s Democracy Now, which interviews among others Haitian activist Patrick Elie and Haitian-Canadian writer Jean Saint-Vil. The broadcast starts here, but it’s broken up into segments, so make sure you listen to the whole piece.

The gist of the report is that recovery and reconstruction haven’t really begun yet, and in order for the process to impart lasting change, Haitians need to rebuild Haiti, not foreigners and the “international community.” I totally agree. From what I saw of All Hands’ efforts in Leogane, they can’t move fast enough to transferring a lot of the actual dirty work (literally) over to Haitians. Haitians can and will lead their country into the future, they just need to stop being treated as dangerous and start being treated as assets (another awesome quote from the DN report). Amy Goodman is my hero.

The NYT and PBS’s Frontline had walloping doomsday pieces, but unfortunately, a lot of the grief, violence, and status quo they cover is fact.

I also commemorated Flo’s passing yesterday. And after turning the events of last January 12 over and over in my mind for the past 365 days, feeling what I needed to feel, confronting (as much as possible) what I felt I needed to confront, I have to believe that while the quake took, it also gave. I think the most important thing we can do for ourselves, the living, is seek to find what we have gained from this disaster.

Waka waka through the streets of Leogane, Haiti

here’s what happened:

during the final weeks of my two months in leogane (so, the middle of june), i came back to base one afternoon after having gone up the street to a vendor who sold cokes for 25 gourdes (not the cheapest, but typically the coldest) — that’s about 50 cents, or one-third of what we’d pony up for a plastic 20-ouncer here at home. i walked past the big, blue outdoor tent that was recently erected for all the volunteers to eat lunch under and was shocked: most of the local volunteers were crying, and there were a handful to a significant number of international vols (us, les blans, or “white people”) doing the same. they were hugging each other, bawling their eyes out on each others’ shoulders, and generally acting like someone had died. i actually thought that marc, the project director, had been hurt or killed, and started to feel ill.

thank god, it wasn’t that serious. however, over the course of the next 48 hours, i lost a certain amount of respect for HODR, in general, and specifically the organization’s staff.

someone wrote an anonymous letter and signed it on behalf of all the locals; basically, it said that if jacob, our supercool and supersmart haitian translator, didn’t resign, and if all the locals didn’t start getting paid like jacob, harm would come to him and others. jacob volunteered in gonaives and was well-respected among staff and vols alike. HODR worked in leogane in 2008 doing mud removal after the hurricane season, and in much the same way, jacob offered his services as a translator. now, the letter said, he better watch out. not only was he not from leogane, he was getting paid whereas none of the other volunteers were. (i think, once again, someone missed the definition of “volunteer,” but whatever. see my last post.)

the letter was left on tuesday. we, as vols, didn’t find out till thursday night’s all-hands meeting. that pissed a lot of people off, including myself. haiti is a dangerous place, if only because there is such desperation, exacerbated thousand-fold by the earthquake. for HODR staff — and all staff of about 10 people knew about the letter — to withhold that information was irresponsible, imho. we could have been in harm’s way. i mean, here we are, going out to rubble sites every day, being seen all over town — our lives could have been in danger and even more with a lack of knowledge about our surroundings and what we should expect.

at thursday’s meeting, they told us what happened and that stef and marc, the top two HODR staff, and david, the founder and exec director, were discussing it and would get back with a decision as to what they would do tomorrow. none was present: david only came once a month for a few days, and marc and stef were both on vacation.

the meeting went on and on. people were crying. many were pissed off, mainly because noone had told us what was going on. so much for a “volunteer-run” program.

the next morning, we had a meeting instead of going to work. stef wrote an email back saying that she was going to cancel the entire local volunteer program altogether, based on discussions with said locals who were all like, we didn’t write the letter and we don’t know who did. stef had reason to doubt them, and decided to cancel the whole affair. the tears and melodrama came when the locals took that to mean that we, somehow, were denying them the right or opportunity to not just dig out, but “help their country.”

in response to that news, most of the international vols decided to “strike” until staff came back with a turnaround to their decision. leave the local vol program in place, or we don’t work, they said. most felt that it was unfair to punish the entire group for something that one person — who wasn’t even part of that group — did. others thought it was unfair that staff was one, making decisions for us and two, doing so when they weren’t even here to know what had happened.

so, most people didn’t work that day. and there was a lot of back and forth among locals and internationals about solidarity, yada, yada, yada. i’m all for solidarity but to be perfectly frank, this was my take:

1. quite a few local and international vols alike just liked to hear themselves talk; give them an important topic to chew on, and watch the egos fly
2. there was a lot of pent-up anger and hostility (another post), and this was one way to express it; and thank god, because it did ease the tension on the base considerably
3. socialization came into play: in all social groups, people eventually come forward, it seems, and play the role that they feel is theirs, or fits them, or that they’ve always played. at HODR, it was no different. for instance, there was one guy, angry dave, who had been a union organizer in the real world; here, he was able to vent some of his anger in a usual way but in an unusual setting

it was my birthday that day, and i decided that as a gift to myself, i would work. the thought of staying on base and watching people make asses of themselves didn’t seem at all appealing, so i went and put up donated, ten-man tents on what had been an IDP (internally displaced persons) camp. only one other team went out, and their reasoning was, well, we’re here to work and haitian families are depending on us to clear their foundations. i totally agreed. (btw, i had one of the best birthdays ever. one of the greatest parts about being down there working with HODR was the structure, and in a way, extreme simplicity of life that the project offered. you knew what you had to do and were busy doing it the whole day. i wrote for an hour each day, and most of all, i barely drank. it was great. i felt in control. i felt wise. i felt calm, strong, purposeful.) anyway, when i got back, people had been lounging around all day and i was glad to have missed the drama.

the next day, stef wrote another email saying that the program would not be cancelled, but that it would be reduced to 10 people, and that with “mentoring” and “encouragement,” locals would learn the “tricks of the HODR trade” soon enough to allow the program to grow back up to current levels, possibly with locals taking on positions of leadership. the international vols weren’t having it. all or nothing, they said. until you allow all the current local haitians to work, we’re not working. don’t punish all for the mistake of one, who, btw, was probably one of the assholes that had already been asked by HODR staff to leave.

finally, one local, big junior, stepped up. this was sunday, i think. he told everyone that he knew who wrote the letter, and indeed, it was one of the shitty locals who was one, young, two, immature, and three, held some vendetta against HODR for telling him to fuck off after he probably (i don’t know, i wasn’t there then) acted like a fool or refused to work hard on the rubble sites. HODR was at least good about that: telling people to leave rather than fuck around was a common MO among the team leaders.

on monday, the local volunteer program was fully “re-instated.” HODR staff admitted to making mistakes and came up with a way to save some amount of face by dreaming up a “mentoring” program for locals, which they would have to follow if they wanted to “advance” to “positions of leadership” at HODR. cough, cough.

tc, who ran the local vol program, had already pulled his ‘chute, though. out of principle, he put in his resignation and took off that sunday, i think. sunday, i chose to go to the beach later in the day (which was the first time i stood on a bed of multicolored coral!), and so missed his going away. or, maybe that was saturday. anyway, i guess we all have to do what we have to do, but let me tell you, everything was sort of back to normal on monday, as if nothing had happened.

the biggest change on base that i noticed was this: more solidarity among the internationals and the locals. prior, there was a lot of bad feelings among the locals toward HODR, and for good reason. like in gonaives, staff ruled that locals couldn’t come inside our base. so, while we could eat inside, they had to eat outside, under the tent that was only recently put up for them. um, slavery days much? it’s such an obvious diss that i have to wonder, WTF is HODR thinking when they make decisions like this? after the locals saw how much the internationals were willing to stand up for them, i think — i hope — their trust in us improved.

let’s revisit that NYT article i mentioned in my last post, about the difficulties of moving rubble:

Further, rubble removal, a $500 million problem facing the recovery effort, has proved especially difficult in Fort National. International experts say it would take three to five years to remove all the debris from Haiti if 1,000 or more trucks worked daily; fewer than 300 trucks are hauling rubble now. But those trucks cannot penetrate much of Fort National, which has only one main road and lots of steep alleys. In some places, even wheelbarrows cannot be used. Rubble has to be carried out pail by pail, which at least provides jobs.

unemployment is, basically, a way of life for haitians. it’s hard to imagine, but rates range from 60 to 80 percent, according to various sources from a quick google search. (actually, from my three trips down and some of the reading i’ve done, i think it’s definitely closer to 80 than 60.) to us, that sounds horrifying. i mean, most people that i know have never contemplated what they’d do with their time if they didn’t have to work. a lot of people use work as a way to avoid figuring out who they are, what their true callings are. others would rather just stay busy. some, like me, are workaholics and addicted to achievement. whatever. in haiti, there is no work, so i imagine there are a lot of people who have had much time to ponder life, their place in the universe, and what passing time actually means.

that said, most haitians would pounce on the chance to work. in leogane, haitians watched us as we worked. they watched and watched, used to seeing blans (blan in creole, from the french word for white, blanc, which is a semi-affectionate term for “white person”) riding in fat SUVs with the windows rolled up, their eyes wary and fingers knucklewhite gripping the steering wheel for dear life. they would pass and laugh, smirk, or shake their heads. sometimes they’d stop and ask if we had work. “do you have a job for me?” no, but you can go to HODR’s office and put your name on the waitlist. “we’re volunteers,” we’d say, with a mix of self-indulgant pride and subconscious arrogance (or maybe it was just me). “you mean, you don’t get paid?” the question fell like a dead cat tumbling from a three-story building. half the time they’d say, ok, i’ll work for free, i just want to work. the other quarter, hellz to the no, i’m not working for free. the final quarter would start in on the questions:

random haitian person: why are you working in my country?
me: i’m a volunteer, working with a nonprofit (zoinks! the dreaded word that most haitians associate with the stealing of their jobs).
RHP: can you get me a job?
me: like i said, we’re not paid. so, no, i can’t. but, you can volunteer with us!
RHP: so, who pays you?
me: well, like i said, we’re not paid. we’re a privately funded org. like, americans with money dump said money into a bank account in the US and buy us things so we can work, eat, and sleep down here, in your country.
RHP: so, why are you working here, in our country, and we’re not?

and that begs the question, why is *anyone* who is not haitian working in haiti — paid or not — when haitians are not? i thought about that a lot after the first few weeks, especially after one particularly heated man confronted me outside HODR’s base one morning. we were helping to build the first of many (we’ll see) compost toilets, the brainchild of a vol named ben. i fielded the entire convo, being the only one that spoke french, while the other vols happily — and rather innocently, i might add, since they didn’t understand what we were saying — mixed concrete and rendered cement blocks that would serve as the foundation of this strange newfangled shitter. (yeah, i just felt like using that word; it was my grandpa’s, and i always thought it was a hilarious way of referring to the toilet.)

he asked me the usual litany of questions. why are you working and we’re not? why are we, as vols, coming on our own dime to work *for free* in a country with an unemployment rate of 8 out of 10 people? why shouldn’t all the orgs like HODR be replaced by orgs like CHF, which pays locals to do the same work we’re doing? to be fair, this is an unusual situation in that these so-called jobs are “disaster relief,” so it’s not as if we’re planting ourselves as a vendor on the side of a dirt road or taking one of their factory jobs. it seemed almost ludicrous to me that many haitians would say fuck it, and walk away if someone didn’t offer them pay for clearing away the rubble of their neighbors’ collapsed home, but that’s haiti. in their mind, it seems, foreigners can afford to come — and can leave whenever they want — and end up taking potentially paying jobs from haitians and doing them for free. as slaves, they were screwed over. as a burgeoning country, they were screwed over (by the french). under the docs, they were more than screwed over. and now, under the NGO “scheme of things,” they’re tired of not having work and of seeing foreigners come down and take the only jobs there seem to be. and, to get damn well paid for them, too. they’re not stupid, they’re not blind, and they’re living in extremely miserable conditions. who wouldn’t want to get theirs?

of course, there’s the whole issue of the fact that haiti has no real economy to provide locals with even volunteer employment, let alone paid. unfortunately, in a sense, it’s outsiders who have stepped up and brought in basic services. why is this? and when is it going to change? these are questions that a lot of people have.

we did have quite a few local volunteers. HODR ran a local volunteer program that, albeit with a few major problems (again, a new blog post), ran quite smoothly. most of the locals were young boys in their teens or early 20s. many had a deep commitment to helping dig out — they had lost family members or had been struck by the devastation on a personal level. most just wanted to help their country, and HODR, not their local government, was providing them with the chance to do so.

back home, several people asked me why haiti needed foreigners to dig them out. can’t they do it themselves? well, yes, if they had shovels, picks, sledges, and wheelbarrows. most do not and can’t afford to buy these things. wouldn’t they want to do it themselves? well, yes, if they had the tools — and the moral support of their community. i can imagine that living your entire life in a place where expectations, self-worth, and morale are challenged on a daily basis can make you feel like saying, why bother? so when orgs like HODR, with no agenda except for the purpose of digging haiti out, come down and offer volunteer jobs, there are quite a few people who,if they don’t jump at the chance, will consider it, even if unpaid.

haiti. it’s complicated.

it was my morning mantra, and i usually had to repeat it about 14 times before i peeled my aching — and already sweating, i might add — body off my sleeping mat. by 6 am the sun had already come up, fellow vols were stirring in the bunks around me, and i was hopelessly committed, even in a half-awake daze, to the prospect of rubbling that day. my friend nina said i was addicted. not really. there weren’t that many other jobs to do and anyway, signing up for the next day’s work at the all-hands meeting the night before usually required either a blowtorch, a knife, or the tendency to be an asshole — pushing and shoving were common among the 100-plus vols among us. plus, i just didn’t care that much. “fuck it, i’ll rubble.” rubbling was satisfying, too. there was some level of fist-pumping that one could reach after a hard day of playing with rocks. measurable output, as my dad likes to say.

basically, we dug rubble. big rocks that consisted of a blend of cement, cinder blocks, and the occasional car trapped under the building before it went down. and no, no body parts. (morbid, but many people have asked me that.) so, yeah. digging. in the very hot sun. again, the words searing and blaring come to mind. it was hardass work, and after two months, i was glad to come home and recupe. not to mention, i fell ill four times, lost some weight, and was exhausted of the lackluster food, which was *not* haitian food but *HODR* food. there is a difference, and i’ll get to that in a later post. needless to say, i’ve been eating my way through New York City, San Francisco, and all the airports between there and here since i got back last month. but, i digress.

the rubble work was the primary concern for HODR, being that they are a disaster relief org (at least the last time i checked). HODR landed in leogane in late january, during which they conducted initial structural assessments of homes in and around the town of leogane. in effect, project coordinators went to various collapsed or damaged homes (if yoleine had left hers standing, she might have been on the list) and “assessed” them in terms of the feasibility of using (volunteer-staffed, of course) demolition teams to bring the damaged buildings down safely. after demo, the house would, fingers crossed, become a nice, big pile of pretty rocks; wubble, as the haitians with their accents would say. sometimes, this wasn’t the case. in the quake, some buildings simply gave out under the weight of shoddy construction and almost paper-thin rebar (reinforced bar, which gave the house shape and “structure”). at many of the sites i went to, entire ceilings sat on top of slabs, having gone from penthouse suite to ground floor in one fell swoop.

our job, as rubble teams, was to clear the rubble off the cement foundation slab and cart it to, well, another place not on the foundation slab. to do this, we used shovels, pickaxes, sledgehammers, and wheelbarrows — i guess that would put us in the iron age category, eh? anyway, that “another place” meant anywhere there was space, whether an alley alongside the house, a ditch, or the side of the road. being that this is haiti and FUBAR is the name of the game, there were piles of rocks everywhere, and as far as we, the vols at HODR, knew, there was no systematic process for taking the rubble away. every team leader kind of made it up as he or she went along. one vol, tim, came from sydney and spent over two months on project. as aussie tim liked to say, “guys, we’re gonna move this pile of shit over to that pile of shit.” at first, i thought that was a rather jaded view; it didn’t take me long to realize that nope, we were, in fact, moving the rocks from one pile to another. and we did this manually; since everything by way of resource has a hard time of finding its way into the country, there’s not much heavy machinery. (actually, there were quite a few mack trucks floating around, and they were taking the piles somewhere, as far as i could see.) some sites took days, others weeks.

for the most part i felt good. i mean, i’m in shape, but there were a few days when i think i actually overheated. during my first few weeks, the heat index was about 110 degrees F. most of the foundations that we cleared were utterly shadeless with no trees in sight and the ground, a screaming white reflecting pool of heat below. the whole point of this exercise in clearing rubble was so that the family who had been living there before the quake could either one, put their tent on the slab, or two, rebuild their house on the slab. imho, both scenarios are and will continue to be unlikely in the near future (we’re talking, couple years new future). it’s too damn hot to put a tent on most of the slabs, and there’s no infrastructure to bring in materials to rebuild homes. not to mention, who the hell has and will have money to pay people to do the work?

i would occasionally become discouraged. are we wasting our time? then, i’d take a look around and notice that the streets were improving: there were fewer tents in the road and the piles of rocks seemed to be disappearing. a surge of pride would rise up. i did that! for instance (and this is where a pic would come in handy, but the wine-on-mac situation has yet to be resolved considering the money-not-in-bank situation that persists), on the road that lead from our base at belval plaza to the grande rue (main street), i could see the difference in eight weeks time: a street that was literally cramped with tents was now almost free of them, there were fewer piles of rubble, and new businesses had opened. as we rode our morning taptap ride to the rubble site we were working on that day, glances left and right proved satisfying; wherever i turned my head, i could spot a bare foundation. holes, really, but safe holes. places where people could physically let go of the past and start over. leogane changed when i was there, and i helped change it. measurable output.

as to what to do with all that rubble? unfortunately, there wasn’t evidence that HODR was working with the locals to move it outside of town or use it for something productive. i heard whispers from vols who actually went to a town meeting and met some of the civic leaders, and they said that yes, they were discussing ways to move the rocks to a small coastal town west of leogane and start crushing it into gravel. it’ll be interesting to see if orgs like HODR or CHF open up to partnering not with supposed government officials, but with civic leaders. it is, after all, their town.

there’s a good article in the NYT by deborah sontag on the complexities involved in removing rubble. it also, to me, points to a problem: the media always tends to cast haiti as despairing, and haitians as people who “really need our help.” sigh. read on:

Further, rubble removal, a $500 million problem facing the recovery effort, has proved especially difficult in Fort National. International experts say it would take three to five years to remove all the debris from Haiti if 1,000 or more trucks worked daily; fewer than 300 trucks are hauling rubble now. But those trucks cannot penetrate much of Fort National, which has only one main road and lots of steep alleys. In some places, even wheelbarrows cannot be used. Rubble has to be carried out pail by pail, which at least provides jobs.

Tortue Larose, 27, who earns $5 a day cleaning up Fort National, stood at the partly cleared summit of the neighborhood recently, pointing at a speck of green plastic in the dirt: “See that green?” he said. “That’s where my house was. That’s where I was born. That’s where I intend to die.”

Where to dump the rubble that fills Mr. Larose’s buckets presents another problem. There is no debris plan for Fort National just as there is no master plan for rubble removal, said Eric Overvest, the United Nations Development Program’s country director. Normally, he said, a rubble plan is developed within a month of a major disaster. Port-au-Prince, the capital, did not have a pre-earthquake land use plan, complicating matters.

Still, in almost six months the government has identified only one rubble site, the municipal dump called Truitier. More sites are needed — as are decisions on whether rubble will be recycled and how.

Additionally, debris contains personal effects, and sometimes bodies; it also has a potential monetary value if it is to be reused. “It’s not just the rubble, it’s the question of rubble ownership,” Mr. Scales said. Most in Fort National are renters but the rubble technically belongs to the property owners. And sorting out who owns what land, and getting their permission to excavate has proved difficult, Mr. Scales said.

“It isn’t a case of going straight onto land with an excavator,” he said.

where to begin? first, an apology. hopefully, noone was waiting with bated breath to catch a glimpse of photos of post-quake leogane. i took a lot, and yes, should have posted sooner. the good news is that the town is improving, in terms of physical rubble in the streets and tents piled on top of each other outside homes that still stand. the bad news is that multiple tent cities pretty much cover the town — there’s one in the center; one near ‘mon petit village,’ which yoleine helped set up by donating her land; there are many lining the “suburbs” that surround the town — and that yoleine’s house, along with most of the buildings on her street, have been totally razed. gone. disappeared.

second, to let you know that pics are coming. long story short: in the two weeks i had to pack up my life of five years in NYC and put it into storage before flying out to SF to take a contract gig for a genomics outfit (which i may or may not tell y’all about later), i had some stressful moments. which, obviously, required red wine. unfortunately, love turned to hate in this affair when i tipsily tipped a full glass over onto the keyboard of my macbook, thoroughly frying the logic board = buh-bye mac. thank jesus my hard drive was intact and is now safely enclosed in an external drive. however, in order to read said drive, the thing must be plugged into a working mac. yours truly, in the process of storing, shipping, and downpaymenting for a new apartment in SF, has maxed out her credit, leaving her presently unable to afford to charge another macbook or macbook pro, the starting price for which is 1G.

sigh. it’s complicated.

anyway, one of the first things i did when i got to leogane was check out rue st. catherine, where i stayed in yoleine’s house during the last week of december and the first week of january this year, working for her small nonprofit called neges foundation. it was lunchtime, during which we got a two-hour break from digging rubble under the 110-degree sun (‘blaring’ or ‘searing’ come to mind), on a thursday or something during my first week. i was hot and tired and feeling nauseous, but i really needed to take the tour. a few steps down the road from HODR’s base i ran into a haitian man with a gold tooth, who would later turn out to be reginal, former “security detail” for president preval (i think; maybe it was a different president. reginal was my age or younger, so i’m *sure* it couldn’t have been aristide?) and soon-to-be HODR volunteer. “where are you going?” he asked in french. “for a walk.” “alone?” “uh, yeah.” he decided that he should come with me, and i’m glad he did, if only because when i was in leogane in january, i didn’t walk around that much on my own to know where i was. when i recognized rue st. catherine and saw the intersection with rue la croix, i knew we had arrived.

as i walked up the street, i noticed the holes — where homes used to be. there was a blue and yellow building, i remembered, that faced yoleine’s house on the opposite side of the street. it used to be the town’s electricity company’s building and yoleine purchased it years ago and installed a now-defunct coffeeshop below. in january, mackendy, my unofficial “tour guide,” nephew of yoleine, and all-around (faux) bling-wearing “badass,” showed me his bedroom on the second floor as well as the rooms next to his door, which served as a school.

i looked up at the blue and yellow building, and then behind me. i did this a few times, and reginal just stared at me, oddly amused, i’m sure. the blue and yellow building was only slightly damaged, but there was evidence of a crack severe enough to have shaken its structure loose; it was leaning to one side toward the top, certainly no longer safe to live in. it looked like the damage had occurred near mackendy’s bedroom.

i turned back, now sure of where yoleine’s house should have stood. there was nothing but a huge hole in the ground where the two-story wonder used to be. all that stone and cement, the wrought ironwork that encased the entire front porch — that place was such a quiet haven, guarded from the busy street — all of it was gone. i guessed that yoleine, instead of clearing the foundation slab, had her “people” (or maybe just CHF workers, who were being paid $5 a day to do the same work that HODR volunteers were doing) raze it. in any case, there was nothing left, and i was astounded. it wasn’t until that moment that the severity of the earthquake hit me.

on an aside, i just ordered a new sleeping mat (i gave mine to a haitian friend before i left the first time i went down in 2008) and a tent for the upcoming HODR trip! woot! while i’m looking forward to the physical labor and meeting some cool peeps, i’m also hoping to do some follow-up research and pitch stories to anyone who will print them. for instance, what’s going on in leogane now? how are the grande rue artists faring? what about jacmel and the artisans? i’d like to package stuff in a then-and-now format, but we’ll see. i’ve never done any official general reporting on my own, as a freelancer, but there’s always the first time, right?

enjoy the pictures!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jnene2

FORUM ON HAITI

Let’s discuss how the progressive community can express solidarity with the
Haitian people.

Photos by Tequila Minsky. Talks by Dr. Luther Castillo, Honduran graduate of
the Latin America Medical School in Havana who is in the coordination of the
Cuban medical team in Haiti, David Wilson of NicaNet, Bazelais Jean Baptiste of Seeds for Haiti and Mouvman Peyisan Papay and Marie Yoleine Gateau of NEGES, a community project to rebuild Leogane, the epicenter of the earthquake.

6:30 to 9:30 PM on Thursday, April 15th
Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, 53 Prospect Park West at 2nd Street in Park Slope
#2 or #3 train to Grand Army Plaza
Organized by the Latin America Committee of Brooklyn For Peace
Contributions appreciated

i’ll be 36 this year. is this the time one starts to consider one’s mortality as well, actually real? cuz if so, i am definitely on schedule. before, of course, i considered death — it’s possible, you know? — and like everyone else, wondered what happened when the lights went out. do they go back on? do we float away, like a gravity-defying marshmallow pinwheel (you know you love ‘em, too)? does everything just go black, but we’re no longer aware so we couldn’t give a rat’s ass anyway? OR, my worst fear, are we relegated to stay in our beds, alone at night, but the night is endless and the walls of the room are slowly, surely shrinking in on us, and we’re thoughtful, or at least, conscious of our thoughts, or lack thereof; there is nothing to look forward to and no day will ever come again and with it, no breakfast, no walk, no book, no tree swaying with new buds in the wind, no person, no distraction? it’d be like, floating in the outermost exteriors of space, forever. scary scary. that feeling of being forced to keep thinking, breathing through an eternity of dark loneliness — that sounds more like hell than any version of a benign afterlife, so maybe i’m just prepping for the worst?

now that i’ve got your attention, haiti! ahh, the smell of burning garbage, the searing heat, the funny fluttering of haitian creole floating around the air, the dirt streets, the smiles and jokes. i fear being emotional (emotionally overcome?) when i get there, seeing the streets and buildings and people, all broken. i can’t imagine it, and i don’t want to. experiencing it, i know, is the only thing that’s going to make it sink in. (i plan to go for about 4-6 weeks, leaving somewhere between april 18 and may 3. i simply cannot wait.)

and what about flo? do we just let her go, as the vodou priestess told us to at the ceremony in boston almost a month ago? let the dead go so that they can move full-speed ahead into the afterlife/world of the ancestors/who knows maybe that big black nothingness that is worse than hanging out in the dark matter?

why do i have such a fearful, negative view of death, i thought to myself last night? i looked at my hand, cupped against my pillow, and saw the faint glow of the orange nail polish on its fingertips. hmm. i turned it left and right and for some reason my hand looked bright white and glowing, too. i remember once upon a time believing in the “energy” within all things, and that it is basically very, very good — you know it, and you don’t know why, but it reassures you even if you think that maybe it’s just your irrational mind overturning the rational, doubting half’s decision that won’t let you fall asleep. maybe it’s the after-effect of staring in a sleepless daze out my windows, which were slightly lit by the lamps outside, i thought. still, it glowed, and the glow was a line, a cord, going up through the thumb, then the center, then the whole hand. fluorescent white, and turning slowly, as if half-liquified in a blender.

huh, i thought. ahh, i felt. the ahh overtook the huh, for once, and i lay back and sighed, calm again.

suddently i was tired. this is good, i thought. my mind turned to those who have already gone there: flo, others. there has to be somewhere that flo is, my mind churned; she can’t just have dissolved! a few days after my grandpa died, i had a very vivid dream of him; my mom and uncle saw overhead lights move, doors blew open and closed in the sudden breeze that passed through their houses. years later, we don’t dream or see lights or doors move. so, is it simply that our energy is only potent, a tight swirl of electricity, for a short time after we die and then dissolves to the point of disappearing? is that the point that “memory fades” and we, the living, forget? i hope not. i have never forgotten my grandpa, and i think of him when i get, well, stuck in nights like this. what should i do, i murmur, half to myself, half to him? usually, i feel his presence. but, is it really him? how much of “him” is my memory of him and how much is it my own mind willing itself to believe that he’s here, that it’s him?

i did not let go at the vodou ceremony (which, i’m sorry, i’m only blogging about now and — very poorly i might add — almost a month later!). bad, bad jeanene. i couldn’t. i guess it’s cultural differences, or personal arrogance. but, she’s still here, flo. and so are all the men and women who collapsed under the rubble. i will bring you gifts when i come, and if my thinking of you is what keeps you alive in spirit or what deludes me into thinking that you’re still alive, i don’t care. it’s all the same to a mind that — and this is the only thing i am certain of these days — has a lot yet more to learn.