sexy Girl Market/Church...
While out for my walk through the neighborhood this morning (Sunday) I started to think just how “unlike” and at the same time “like” Mr. Roger’s neighborhood it actually is here. Everyday activities shadowed in the stark contrasts that blacken the normal part. Like the yummy, sweet marshmallow that is still there even if it gets burned beyond recognition in the bonfire. Like right now as I sit here typing in the peace of a garden, directly outside the concrete block wall (erected to keep this garden peaceful) there is a man blaring on a megaphone that he has medications for sale for everything from AIDS to nose boils (whatever that means). I just took a break and walked around the block so I could actually see this guy because he has been at it for over an hour now. He was sitting on what I think was a big child’s Tonka truck upside down, dressed in a plaid suit with a wheel barrow of packages I am assuming were the medications he was peddling, with a tower of some sort he has attached to the side of it creating a more distinct display of his wares. See what I mean. We have Shoppers Drug Mart and Haiti has a wheel barrow and mega phone. I was tempted to tell him that expiry dates mean something, that broiling all these meds in the oven-like Haitian sun wasn’t likely conducive to their stability, that AIDS required a doctor and more than one pill although the nose boils perhaps would be good to go with a Tylenol and just for my own little margin of fun was going to end with “the 4o’s called and want that suit back.” I’m back in the garden now determined to get back to the pensive state I was in before my self-imposed field trip.
Ironies. Contrasts determined by the realities of 4th world living and a culture maintaining their sense of normalcy without apology. Things like the “Rendezvous Bar”, “Sexy Girl Market” and “Houte Couture School of Fashion” (yeah – right) that I pass by every day on my neighborhood stroll that have been transformed today into churches. Christian hymns and Pastor’s screaming hell fire & brimstone warnings blaring out the doors on reverberating sound systems that would give a ‘normal’ person auditory hallucinations. Folks who haven’t got money for food dressed like they are on red carpets instead of broken concrete and mud. Women with doilies on their heads and men with big bibles standing on the street outside that is still littered with used condoms, empty beer bottles, a few random flip flops from the Saturday night crowd intent on projecting their piety with the morning’s effort they put into their outward appearance. At the Rendezvous Bar /Church a scabby, crusty old dog is being ushered out with very un-Christian-like shouts and kicks while the sermon goes on. Each party vying for the claim on decibel levels that they need to make their points. The dog can’t really run now, I am assuming because of the kicks and wobbles over to the corner of the building to collapse. This seems to appease the ushers –I guess as long as he remains on the fine line of dust dividing the church from his spot then they are happy their job is done and they parade back inside. Such a festival. The un-Christian-like part of me wants to march in there and kick them all. Since I don’t have a doily with me to cover the shame of my hair, I carry on.
Razor wire in its gruesome gallop of treacherous, twirling and procession of deranged arabesques dancing around the tops kindergarten classes, missionary compounds, churches, clinics, construction material stalls, etc. etc. etc. with the hugest display of this macabre march around the U.N. camp. We spend untold resources on studies and evaluations to determine what it takes to make children feel and safe in schools, how to make our churches ‘seeker friendly’, how to create atmospheres of tranquility in our hospitals and, well, we all know our government buildings have sleek protections systems invisible to the passer by so they to give off a sense of solidarity with the people. Haiti has razor wire and more times than not, security guards with rifles and clubs. Both scenarios in place for the same reasons –to protect the parties inside in the best way they can.
Or, how about the children I saw this morning dressed like dolls with more ribbons than hair, frill upon frill of chiffon touching the tops of lace trimmed socks and even tiny hands encased in white gloves, smelling like lemon verbena and baby powder as they float on the ends of their mother’s hands like candy floss on their way to church. While I see the brutality of this contrast washing clothes in every doorway, walking with buckets of water on their heads bigger and heavier than they are, emptying chamber pots into the street canal of sewer sludge because they have finished getting the candy floss decked out for Sunday School and now are attending to the next things on their 14 hours of chores to complete. These are the restavek (child slaves) children, an accepted part of this culture. The same parents that make sure their children are at their Sunday best, because they love them sincerely can issue endless orders and inhumane treatment to these other members of their household before they go off to church. How? Or, how can they sit in their pews at the “Sexy Girl Market”/Church singing “Jesus Loves Me This I Know” while I know they have had to pass by the boulevard street children who are so skinny and hungry their stick-like legs protrude from their filthy shorts like pegs on a pirate and their ancient hands must have reached out to every church goers pleading for a penny because they are hungry. Sad. Sad because in some other prettier packaged scenario, we (I) do the same thing.
Back at the hotel, I see that the owner has left for her trip to the Dominican. How do I know this? Because many of the staff are hovering around the T.V. on the patio, lurking about in the hallways talking on their cell phones and even the security guard on duty at the parking lot has leaned his rifle up against his moped and is on the street outside chatting up the Digicel phone card selling girl. She is very pretty so I guess it is understandable. Ahhggg, the Haitian work ethic. Do what you have to do and don’t do anything you can get away with. The code of silence among those workers employed for other organizations is remarkable. The ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy goes way past the gay issue here. Nobody’s going to ask and nobody’s going to tell anything to the big wig that employs them. Silence and loyalty is golden. It all balances out I guess since they run around like petrified poodles, pulling double duty when she is here. Always cracks me up. It also makes me ask if this is really any different from many work place scenarios at home. The candy floss flip side to that here would be the humble majority of poor folk that work from sun up to sun down at what I would deem as hard labor –everything one does in Haiti is labor-intensive. These are the unemployed that ingeniously set up small businesses based on the barter system to eke out a living any way they can. There is no T.V. to watch, no time to hover in a hallway and chat on the phone (there are no hallways period) when the boss is away –they are their boss. All in all it would look like one group has it easy because they have a nice clean uniform to go to work in and the sacred times when the boss is away and they can play a little and the others rise every day to do the same thing in the same clothes with no chance of play –ever. The truth is that even though it looks like a contrast –the employed vs. the unemployed it really is just survival unfolding in every way it can.
And survive they do! I am undone today with amazement from thinking about what I see and experience moment by moment in Haiti. They are hard core survivalists. Sometimes it’s pretty and sometimes it’s not. There is a Haitian proverb that says “I’m ugly, but I’m here.” How true. No matter what package they are wrapped up in, they are here surviving against all odds.
Peace, Julie
Posted on Sunday, October 3 2010, at 10:26 AM.