Missing a Misanthropic Humanist

"O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again" by Thomas Wolfe was one of his favorite quotes. I slipped it into an email once and he was elated.

This has been the most confusing grief I've ever felt. I don't know what happened, so please don't ask, and I don't think that matters anyway. I find myself getting irrationally annoyed and upset when someone asks, and with many other things recently.

When I first heard the news I was completely and entirely numb for a matter of seconds. Time stopped in that moment and it was meaningless, pointless, no big deal.

Zohar didn't buy it, which was smart, and then five seconds passed and I felt sad and lonely and grateful and confused down to my core. She later told me when she heard the news the night before her heart broke for me. "To have loved someone, that's such a particular experience."

It was a very particular experience. I stayed up that night and calmly read through all the emails I had. I was away from home, so I didn't have the letters, the pictures, the notes, but I had the emails. I read them until 3 in the morning, then I crawled under the covers and bawled for what felt like hours. I was staying in my sister's old room, and I thought about the time Jesse visited me in D.C. when the Blythes were there over Christmas. He and I took a nap together in that very room. He went upstairs first and lay down. I felt exhausted and almost all the family was gone so I gave in and went up to the trundle bed rolled up against the window. He had his headphones in and was listening to music. I asked if I could crawl in and lay down with him, and he was pleasantly surprised by my tenderness and scooted over while encouraging me to slide in next to him. I felt the presence of that moment so strongly.

There were so few precious moments like that, because we were long distance the whole time we were together, which makes all the tangible moments stand out in such a special way. But most of our relationship was the emails, and the phone calls, and the letters. The 14 page letter about philosophy and existentialism and the way the world works and how we all have a scared bunny inside of us. I'm so grateful for all those words and thoughts now, but I remember throwing that specific letter on the floor of Lizzy and Rachel's room. Jesse later admitted he realized how frustrating it must have been to get that letter instead of one about...feelings. We both would get so scared, and would say anything but how we really felt about one another. I was talking a big talk about vulnerability and the power of it at the time, but I wasn't practicing it with Jesse, at least not about him.

These feelings are so complex and painful. I can't imagine what his family is going through. One of the feelings I have is that I'm not supposed to feel anything, that it's unfair to carry this grief compared to what others who have been closer to him in recent years must be carrying. But then I look through the pictures, and I see the tattoo on his ankle, MH with arrows at the ends of the letters. And I know that he was very special to me and I was very special to him, and there's plenty of feelings for Jesse to go around.

We had one year together, when we went sledding and then drank hot chocolate in the kitchen, talking until very late. We would sneak into the graveyard or an older building on campus at night to write poetry. We would go for road trips, always daring one another to try new and exciting things. Jay But's love for life and adventure was infectious. I couldn't help but get swept up in the moment when I was with him.

But that year flew by, and then there were long distance phone calls with my calling card from my dorm room. One conversation in particular jumps to mind. We'd just seen each other and had a lovely time, and then got into pointless fights on the phone afterward because we missed one another and didn't know how to face that, and then I was struggling with a completely separate demon from our relationship. I remember Jesse's calm voice through that conversation as I admitted how hard things had gotten for me, and how negative I felt. He told me to find a mantra that grounded me, and to repeat it and breathe. The atheist say all things shall pass he informed me. "But don't use that as your mantra!" he quickly added. It was funny, but also so touching, how quickly he disregarded the worldview's advice which he so fiercely defended in every other conversation, because he wanted me to find something more comforting in that moment.

It was through those conversations on theology and philosophy with Jesse that eventually pushed me to want to go back to church. I stopped believing in the need for a church as an adolescent, when most of us reject the traditions and myths we're raised in. But suddenly in discussions and debates with Jesse I felt myself defending churches and organized religion, and wondering why I thought it so important that they not be misrepresented. His intellectual search for the universe's meaning pushed me to wrestle with my own.

The summer I first ran Fraser and was in way over my head, I remember calling him every weekend and processing everything that had happened throughout the week. I was completely overwhelmed and he would just listen and remark on how impressed he was with what I was doing, so supportive and so attentive.

I didn't tell him for a long time after, but I remember when I first fell in love with him. He wrote in an email to me, "My phone is always on for you, my door is always unlocked, and there's always a space and pillow for you in my bed." It was such a poetic, and vulnerable while protected at the same time, way to tell me his feelings, and I suddenly felt so grateful for how he was in my life. Even though we were so physically far apart and couldn't have a traditional relationship with dinners and movies and hanging out together, I loved who he was and I loved how he was a part of my life.

One of the longest emails he ever wrote me was a two page rant after he finished the 6th Harry Potter book and found out Dumbledore died. He confessed he wanted to write me an email longer than Jeana's but have it be about absolutely nothing but Harry Potter.

I feel it's really important not to romanticize how things were between us. We had a bad phone conversation in 2011. He texted me the next day and apologized and I asked him to not contact me for a while. Looking back through the email chain, there are memories of other arguments, miscommunications that became fights, and times when we flat out hurt each other. I wouldn't take any of it back. I grew so much through those formative experiences, even the ones that stung or weren't the nicest sides of me.

I also don't want to demonize things. When we were together, he was such a thoughtful person. The Christmas he visited me, he played his guitar and came to church for Grandfather. He tried so hard to befriend the cousins, although some of them were not impressed with an older cousin's boyfriend crashing the family party, but he didn't let it phase him. His gifts to me were always so thought out. He gave me a pocket journal before I left for New Zealand, so I could carry it on any adventure and record my happenings. He didn't know I'd bought a journal, to make for him. Those five months eventually helped us realize we would only hurt each other the longer we tried to pretend long distance was working for us. But I spent the five months with him gentle on my mind, and put every experience, every adventure, every thought and feeling into my journal for him. When I sent it to him, he promised me he'd give it back to me in five years. He said there was no way he could keep it forever. I told him I'd love to see it again someday, but I made it specifically with him in mind, every single page.

He respected my wish and we didn't talk much since 2011. Then, last spring, I wrote him an email:

• One of the volunteers in my classroom was looking through the etymological dictionary she got for my students.  She was talking with the students about the "mis" words.  Misogyny, misandry, misanthropy. "What would be the opposite of a misanthrope?"  Lisbet asked.
• 
  
• "A humanist," I explained. I couldn't help but smile.  Hope you are well.

Jesse replied:

Wow.... I wish reading that message didn't have this visceral response I'm prone to where my eyes kind of light up, my smile slowly creeps up, with one side higher than the other (this is my signature after all)  and I wish I there wasn't a warm feeling that was slowly and radiating from my heart outward in a manner so graceful and sage it acts more like water. 

Susan, right now I am in a place where my mind is allowing clarity, sanity, happiness, optimism and even this fossilized sentiment of hope and excitement for what's to come.  So am I doing well? In the past five years I have lived, mentally and physically in places so horrible, demonic and just dark that where I am now is something akin to enlightenment. 

Long story short, I am good.  

I hope you are well also, you know, even with the physical distance and the dispassionate temporal march which carries us on our own separate trajectories, creating further distance - nature's inevitability I suppose, I digress.  Even with all that, when I reflect upon you, our friendship and the MH times nothing but happiness and contentment for the times we had together were indeed incredible, amazing and just as magical in our hearts and minds now as they were when we set out as four innocent freshmen.  

Shit... Closing words. I would wish you well but I have not an iota of doubt in my being that you are anything but.  Life's never perfect, but my faith is that you are well. Take care Sweet Susan, One day there will be a one in a million recess which will inevitably bring us to the same swing set, until then - au revoir.

This was a hard winter break. When we got on the plane to Dayton and I realized we'd have to drive straight through Richmond, Indiana, I wondered if subconsciously I hadn't realized that and was pushing for it. I bought a six pack of Guinness at the Meijers off the highway and drank most of it over several nights in Kansas. My body has changed a lot in the ten years since Jesse and I downed Guinness' together while trying to figure out what exciting thing we could do in Athens (Sarah took us to the cherry trees on OU's campus so we could climb them). The beer was delicious and heavy and slow to go down.

We played Mafia as we have for the last 6 years, and all I could think about was getting back to my parents' house from Shabbat at Zohar's with Jesse and Josh. We didn't hear anything, and we walked around the main floor and it was completely empty. How could none of the 16 of them be here? They obviously weren't hanging out upstairs, so we went to the basement and found all of them chanting about who to eliminate.

"We need an anthropologist to help us figure this out!" my dad yelled and looked at Jesse.

"All I can say is, that no matter how this game goes, I hope we can all agree that we're going to play this again!" Jesse responded.

When the round came up where he became Mafia, he killed me off first, knowing I would read him better than anyone else. It was the second game when I was killed off the first round, so he got a lot of trouble from everyone for that. Aunt Julie was watching the next game and saw he was the Angel and saved me. "I've got a message for the angel," Aunt Julie said while the narrator tried to move us along. "It's too little too late!" Jesse got a kick out of that.

I look through the emails and I see some darkness and guilt and heaviness that he was carrying. I also see some beauty and inspiration. I remember the phone conversation when he told me he had gotten on a plane and was looking down at the earth, and knew his purpose was to create. I didn't say anything in response, which must have sounded weird on his end, but I felt chills, and I thought about that anytime he'd play me some music or share a piece of writing with me, how he was living out exactly what he knew he wanted and was supposed to be doing, and how beautiful that was.

I'm taking his advice to pick a mantra to keep me grounded. When I think about him and feel sad and lonely and confused, I frantically repeat "Beatpeacebeatpeacebeatpeace be at peace be at peace...be at peace.........be at peace..................be at peace" until I can begin to believe that he is.

A Blythe Spirit

There is something extremely comforting about doing dishes three times a day in a sink you took a bath in as a baby.  Sleeping in a bed in a room where you once slept in a suitcase.  Walking by a creek you used to dam up for a swimming hole.  Feeding chipmunks you used to swear you could communicate with by squeaking and moving your forefinger like a tail.  I needed this week, to remind me of the constants in life, myself, my personality, my spirit.

Lately I've seen my grandfather around the holidays, when we all come into town for a week.  It's busy,  it's confusing for a man already struggling with his memory.

Being at the cabin with him has been a nice, quiet, calm, refreshing time.  There are still lots of details he struggles with on an hourly basis.  Where did that jam on the table come from?  Where did all of his children get married?

My oldest cousin on the Goodman side, Gwen, started the tradition of creating scavenger hunts for the younger cousins whenever we got together.  One summer, my cousin Jessica and her immediate family were at the cabin at the beginning of the summer.  Jessica left a scavenger hunt for my sister and I, who were coming several weeks later.

It was exciting to do a scavenger hunt when the creator wasn't around, but it did provide some challenges.  There had been a few tenants at the cabin between Jessica's stay and ours, and a few of the clues had been moved or had gone missing by the time we started trying to follow the path of clues.  If the trail ran dry, we'd have to skip ahead a clue or two to find it again.  We ultimately did find the prize,  our names carved on a downed tree on the way to the meadow!

Talking with my grandfather at the cabin reminded me of that scavenger hunt.  I tell him it's a fun game to try to answer  the questions he asks, and use whatever puzzle pieces we have to figure out the answers, or make up our own stories.  (As my grandmother always said, "Never let the truth interfere with a good story.")  He laughs at my perspective on our story creating.  We decide the jam looks homemade, and is a berry neither of us know, so it was probably a gift from Christine who's from California, and it's probably a California berry.  We also figure out where all of his children have been married so far (Winfield, Ottawa, and Madison) by thinking of when they got married and where everyone was at the time.

I am impressed with how well he recalls the stories directly related to him.  How he broke his arm two weeks before marrying my grandmother.  How he parked his car ten miles north of her house, so Uncle Bob couldn't find it during the ceremony or reception, although he looked all over Superior.  How he was horrible at picking strawberries, and learned when he went to college that he was red/green color blind, which still did not impress his dad.  All the different churches he worked at, where he was associate pastor, where he was senior pastor, where all his children were born.

As we drove in the first day and passed the first car on the old country road, we wave hello.  At the same time, we both remember the same moment.  I used to sit in the middle of the front seat of the Great Grey.  One summer I learned about the country wave (you leave your wrist on the wheel but lift your hand in greeting) and the farmer wave (you just lift your forefinger).  I was so amused by that idea I used the dashboard of the Great Grey as my wheel and lifted one finger to each car we passed, which made my grandparents sitting on either side of me chuckle.

Remembering these stories, hearing new ones about my grandfather's life, is reviving me.  My grandfather hikes with me all the way to the meadow.  We go slowly and notice the flowers together.  The main thing he notices, of course, is how much good firewood there is up here.  I tell him my mom and I will walk up and get it when she comes, which makes him laugh.

We get to the meadow, and he decides it might be the last time he walks that far up the trail.  I remember one more story.  About 8 years ago, when my family, my friend Steph, and my grandparents were at the cabin together, my grandfather told us a story about a hike to the meadow he took by himself.  It started with some rustling in the bushes behind him as he walked back.  He finally broke out into a run, which is when a mountain lion jumped out of the bushes at him.  Without thinking, my grandfather stuck his walking stick up in the air, and pole-vaulted the mountain lion across the creek into a bush.  He went back the next day to check out the scene, and saw there were some berries on the bush.  My grandfather ate some of those berries, and they gave him just about the worst stomachache he'd ever had, but he never did find out what happened to that mountain lion.

My mother's reaction to this story: "Dad!  I can't believe you ate those berries!"

Moments with Strangers #2

Airports

I'm feeling good in the moment.  Airports will do that for me.  So many people with so many stories.  So many opportunities for plans to change at a moments notice.  So much time to spend reading, writing, chatting, calling people, going for walks, observing from coffee shops.

The stout wrinkled woman comes up to me smiling.  "Pasco?" she asked.

"Pasco?" I repeat stupidly.

"Washington?" she asks next.

"Washington?" I say, feeling like a parrot.

"Va a llegar Pasco..." is all I catch as she says something to herself, thinking over how to translate it to English.  (I've done this myself many times, the opposite way.)

"Yo no se," I offer.  "Lo siento."

"Ah!  Ok."  She laughs in delight at my attempt to communicate with her in Spanish.  We smile and go our separate ways.

I approach Gate 80 cautiously.  My flight was supposed to leave from Gate 64 at 2:00.  When I got to the airport, it had been moved to Gate 84 according to the Departure Boards, but Gate 84 wasn't publicizing that it was home to flight 6337 to Colorado Springs yet.  When it finally claimed the flight, it was delayed by half an hour.  Within half an hour, the flight was moved to Gate 80, hence my hesitation.

I hear one of the people sitting in the waiting area remark "...not leaving until 2:30 now."  I approach them, "Is this the flight to Colorado Springs?"

They shrug their shoulders with a smile, "We hope so!"  The gate has yet to own the flight, but I decide to sit down with this crew, because at least we're in this together now.  I warned my mother, I should never fly United.

I was about 12 when the curse started.  My dad was supposed to fly from the cabin to KC for a Goodman family reunion, and then drive my Blythe grandparents back to the cabin.  My mom asked my sister  and I to get my dad a paper to help his nerves while he flew.  The front page had a story about a plane crash, a bad omen, but my mom said give im the paper anyway.

We hung out in Denver all day because Aunt Diane and Ryan were flying in later that day.  We went back to the airport to pick them up, and my mom called the Blythe grandparents from a pay phone, who were grateful to hear from us!  They had been hoping we would call, and told us not to leave the airport, that my dad was still at the gate, where he'd been for hours, and his plane was going nowhere.

Since then flying United for me has resulted in lost luggage, delayed flights, and any mix-up you can have in an airport.  I still shudder when I think about trying to get myself and all my baggage to the Sierra Nevadas.

An agent appears at our gate.  "Where'd she go?" he asks us, inquiring about the last agent who has left.  We smile blankly.

"She went to find us a plane!" someone jokes.

"So she just left you all here, all alone," he shakes his head and smiles.

People have their smart phones out, checking statuses.  The plane has left its last location one mom informs us all, so its running behind but still moving along.

"You all could have driven to Colorado Springs by now," our agent points out to the mom.

"I think about that all the time while I'm in Denver," she replies, still with a smile on her face.

For however temporary, it is refreshing to be in a group of people that so easily bonded together to share this travel experience, with smiles on their faces and light laughs when we're supposed to be boarding and there's no plane in sight.  I can't remember being surrounded by such a stress free group of travelers before.

Goodbye Alleyside

My room at the Alleyside

The reverse culture shock from Haiti has been rough.  I made myself get up the first week every morning, drink my tea on the front porch, and think about how beautiful Seattle is, the greatest city in the world.  I want to go back, but I don't want to miss the moments now by obsessing, so I'm forcing myself to focus on the present instead.  There's been a move to Queen Anne with some new, exciting naturalizing to come.  In the meantime, the last of the sit spots from the Alleyside:

April 30, 2012

Windy.  Overcast.  High 50s.

"Look how lucky I am!" Chris said this morning.  "My car is covered with pink petals!"  I needed this, a reason why the wind and cold was so good and beautiful.

The wind picked up those petals and made them dance on the street, the way sand dances on a drum being played.

Each tree has a patch of color under it today.  Pink petals, green pollen.

The robin woke up even earlier than I did.  It looked well fed.  Plump, perched on the tree outside my window, which has bloomed substantially in the past week.  Chris saw it fly to our neighbor's roof, where its partner joined it.

A common Alleyside visitor! photo by Kate Maher

Weeks later Kate and I were sitting on the back porch at the Alleyside and saw a hummingbird perched on a telephone wire.  We commented on how exotic hummingbirds seem, but then there they are in the city in Seattle, sitting on the telephone wire like any crow, pigeon, or gull would do.

Haiti Reflections

Some of the group started feeling overwhelmed by the conditions we saw.  Nzunga advised that we not think about the big picture, instead we focus on one person, one thing at a time.  The school being built.  The girl we met who Kihomi is helping.  The eye clinic, the hospital, the orphanage.  I'm so grateful for these projects, for all the hard work Nzunga, Kihomi, Pastor Mano have done in Haiti, for how hard they all fight for education.

However, I can't focus on one person, one project at a time, because this is so contrary to how I was raised.  I was raised to look at the whole community, and support causes that help a collective group of people, so there's no unfair distribution of resources.  I have been raised on the big picture, the revolution, the community organizing, the collectivising.

(Here is an important point for me to pause, and recognize someone.  The person who I absorbed the word collectivising from cares a lot about truth.  She also spends portions of her stories recognizing others and their thoughts, so it's important for me to say that this word came from her.  I was on Lily So-Too's computer when I saw a folder labeled "Collectivising."  She has lived in co-op, communal spaces for a while, and participates in many community oriented groups.  When I saw this folder, I had an idea of what it might mean for her, why she might have grown this word, and I immediately went into the words and used it myself to write a poem.  The poem didn't come out precisely how I wanted, so I'm still trying the word on for size.)

I remember being impressed when Chris was going to Haiti with All Hands, and he had raised enough money to buy some extra things for the kids, bubbles and coloring books.  Chris said he was going to put them in the schools at All Hands suggestion, so that they were a collective resource that all the kids could access, instead of going to five or six families in a town with thirty families with children.

It's hard for me to think about "one at a time" in Haiti, because I've heard so many stories about Haiti that make it the definition of collectivising.

...for the last twenty or thirty years, the U.S. has basically been trying to turn Haiti into kind of an export platform with super-cheap labor and lucrative returns for U.S. investors.  And for a long time it seemed to be working: there was a lot of repression, the population was under control, American investors were making big profits, and so on.  Then in 1990, something happened which really surprised the hell out of everyone.  There was this free election in Haiti, which everyone here assumed would be won by the former World Bank official we were backing [Marc Bazin], who had all the resources, and foreign support, and so on--but meanwhile something had been going on in the slums and peasant communities of Haiti that nobody here was paying any attention to: a lively and vibrant civil society was forming, with big grassroots organizations, and people getting involved in all kinds of activities.  There was in fact a huge amount of popular organizing and activisim--but who here was paying any attention?  The C.I.A. doesn't look at stuff like that, certainly American journalists don't.  So nobody here knew.  Well, all of a sudden, in December 1990, these grassroots organizations came out of the woodwork and won the election. (Chomsky)

Nzunga told me things were still bad when Aristide was in power, that he just armed the other side.  I believe him, because he lived through it and I didn't even know about it at the time.  For me it all comes back to wanting to learn the language, to hear more stories about how things were.

Angeline drove us here!

My favorite times on our Haiti trip were the moments when I felt the barrier come down for just a moment between me and the things and people I was seeing.  When Nzunga started letting us ride in the back of the pick-up truck, and we would wave to all the kids in the countryside, shouting "Bonswa" to one another.  Driving around the city with just Nzunga and Angeline, and getting to see Angeline merge into traffic, swerve around city streets, and climb her way up a cliff at the wheel in Cap Haitien.  Sitting and listening to the DJ at the hotel the first night, and drinking my first Haitien beer.  Standing outside of the compound gate, telling the guard I wouldn't come in because I was going somewhere with Nzunga, and chatting with the school girls on the corner who looked and acted as if they had been waiting to meet me.

I definitely want to go back.  A big part of this trip was getting to meet some different members and churches of the Evergreen Association, which was really fun and I am extremely grateful for those friendships.  However, next time, I want to go back without being part of a group of ten Americans, so I can expand those barrier free moments into whole experiences.  Kihomi said the next time we came to Haiti, she would take us to stay with the women she works with in the villages.  I am going to start practicing my Creole now, to be ready for that opportunity when it arises.

The reverse culture shock has definitely been a lot harder than the initial culture shock.  I have been debriefing like crazy with anyone who will listen.  The conversation I had recently that helped me the most was when Ron and I talked about the idea of "one at a time" verses collectively changing a corrupt system.  Ron told me about a book, "The 100th Monkey."  He says the idea is you teach one monkey something, and then it teaches another, and suddenly by the time 100 monkeys have learned something, every monkey knows it.  That at some pivotal turning point, let's say 100, even though your process was "one at a time," there has been a massive shift in the collective conscious.  This idea helped me with my struggle of the desire for collective change, but also wanting to be supportive of the important work I saw Nzunga and Kihomi do.

Haiti is a free country

Haitians and Americans working on the school

Nzunga has lots of ideas about what I should tell you.  A few days ago, he just wanted me to tell you I am safe and alive in Cap Haitien.  Now, he wants me to tell you how hard I worked today.  Today we went to the site of the school and helped.  We carried concrete bricks and laid them around the perimeter of the school, so when they are ready to go on the school when the cement is done being laid on the first level.  After that came my favorite part, making sand.  Someone would shovel a scoop of gravelly, chunky, rocky sand into the sifter.  The other person shakes the sifter so all the good fine sand falls into a mound, and the chunky rocks stay in the sifter.  Then, the best part, you turn your body, flick the sifter down in a way so the rocks fall out and away into their own pile.  Carrying bricks I could do for about a half hour to an hour, but sifting the sand and flicking the pebbles I could do all day!

I want to back up and talk a little about the Haitiens that we are staying with here.  They are incredible, generous, fun people to know, and I’m so greatful to have such wonderful hosts.  They all have amazing stories.  Nzunga grew up in the Congo.  He talked today about that experience for the first time, and as soon as I mentioned it I could see the sorrow in his eyes.  He says it was a hard time for him, sometimes he doesn’t like to remember.  His parents passed away while he was a teenager, and according to him, he joined up with a bad crowd.  Nzunga believes if it wasn’t for the people who pushed him to get an education, he would be dead right now, so he would give his life for improving the education system.  He came to Haiti in 1998 with Kihomi, his wife.

Kihomi’s story is my favorite.  She grew up in the Congo, carrying fruit on her head, walking for hours to sell it with her mother.  When Kihomi got her education, her life changed, and she became able to provide a different life for her mother.  Now, she finds a few girls at a time and helps them with school.  One of the girls she is supporting came to the compound and sat with us for a few moments.  Kihomi found this girl through her mother, when Kihomi bought some oranges from her mother.  She heard the girl’s story, and has been supporting her since then, to get her to go to school.  We asked Kihomi how old the girl was, and found out this girl is 23, and still finishing high school.  That’s fine, says Kihomi, when they get to be 25 become a little too old for high school.

I told Kihomi about Seattle Education Access, and how in Seattle I help low-income and homeless young adults pursue higher education, and she laughed and said, “That’s what I do!”  I am very happy to have flown across the country to work with the Polly Trout of Haiti.

And finally the story of our Secretary General, Emmanuel Pierre, who we have been told to call Mano.  When he and Kihomi were driving us around Cap Haitien, they took us to the site of the elementary school being built, a project of the Haitian Baptist Convention that the Evergreen Association is supporting.  As we looked at the site that would one day hold six classrooms, and then eventually twelve when they built the second story, Kihomi started translating Mano’s story.

Mano grew up like the poor kids on the street of Cap Haitien.  His father passed away when he was 14, but there was always someone to look out for him and to push him to go to school.  He went through seminary, and became a Baptist pastor.  The main person who always took care of him was the Secretary General, and now he has been selected by the people to be the Secretary General.  Mano wants to use his resources and abilities to help other children get an education.  He says his village is not far from Cap Haitien, so he thinks of this as his city.  He has chosen the poorest place in Cap Haitien to build this school, so the poor kids who are growing up the way he once did can access it.

It has been an incredible experience to hear all of our hosts’ stories and see how their lives have been transformed by education, and how much they are giving to the education of future generations.  I’m so grateful for this experience.  Nzunga and all our hosts are taking great care of us.  Every hour, Nzunga tells us we should, “Drink water, drink water, drink water,” to an extent that not even Sheila Becker could rival.  Today we got the word that there was unrest in Port-au-Prince, and Nzunga rushed us back to the compound, about an hour’s drive away, just in case.

The police were striking in Port-au-Prince.  They are not well protected, and one of their officers was killed today.  So the police have started putting up barricades to demand attention and better protection.  I appreciate how Nzunga wants to keep us safe, and is doing so much for us, but I also want to be at the barricades, to see what is going on there.  I’m getting a bit frustrated with how sheltered I feel, but I have too much respect for my hosts to bush the boundaries they have set.

On our first day in Cap Haitien, I asked Nzunga if we could walk around in the daytime.  He hesitantly said yes, but he does not encourage it.  Ron asked if it would be best if we went in groups of twos or threes.  Nzunga then explained how much Mano was risking by hosting us at his compound.  He has been kidnapped at gunpoint from his own bed several months ago.  They assume, but do not know for sure, that he is a target because he always has American missionaries coming to stay at his compound.  If I were to leave the compound and walk around on the street, people would see me, see where I came from, and then Mano would be even more of a target.

Tomorrow we will go to a Haitian market so I can attempt to barter.  Nzunga explains that bartering is not about selling your goods for more then they are worth.  Bartering is a chance for the customer and the vendor to have a conversation, to build a relationship.  I think this will help me feel less sheltered, to get to walk and talk with the vendors in the market.

My Creole teachers at the compound

The other problem for me is if I was allowed to walk around the streets, I wouldn’t have much to say to anyone.  I did enjoy some fun “conversations” with the children staying on the compound.  They were standing on the steps, making faces and hamming it up while I sat on the balcony.  I ran inside to get my camera, and they let me take a picture and video of the boy making funny faces.  I said, “Bonswa,” and the girl said, “Bonswa.”  I said, “Como regule,” and she told me her name, but I couldn’t pronounce it.  I asked, “Como i?” and she told me, “I’m good.  How are you?”  I said, “Mwen byen.”  I pointed to things around the compound, and asked, “Qui q’cest in Creole?”  She taught me fluir, Jeep, meza, fruit, and a few other words I forgot.  I asked her if papaya, mango, guava, banana are all fruit (pronounced fru-eat), and she said, “Oui.”  She asked if I liked Haiti, if I liked Creole, and I said, “Oui.”  I pointed to my head and hesitantly asked, “Tet?”  She smiled and affirmed me.  Then we went through tet, epol, jenou, otey (head, shoulders, knees, and toes), and Ron came down to video us singing together.  She was very forgiving with my bad accent, Creole that slipped into Spanish or English, and lack of things to say.  I’m not sure how a conversation outside the compound will go.

Same as when I went to New Zealand, the culture shock is slowly seeping in for me.  When we first landed, others in the group remarked about the streets, the lack of lanes, the goats roaming around with no owner in sight.  Nzunga loves to tell us, “Haiti is a free country.  Those are free goats in a free country.”  On day one, I didn’t feel surprised by all of this.  (Perhaps this is because of Chris’ pictures and stories of Port-au-Prince.)  I told Ron I couldn’t tell what was going on, but I wasn’t feeling the culture shock.  He remarked that he always feels it more on the way back.  When you’re traveling somewhere new, you take the experience in without letting yourself be shocked, because this is someone’s way of life.  It is what it is.  When you go back to the States, you become astounded with the differences, and you open your critical eyes to compare the places and experiences.

I want to back up again to Nzunga’s statement that Haiti is a free country, the goats are free, the drivers are free, the pedestrians are free.  They follow no laws but their own.  I’m struggling with being so sheltered and not getting to understand the level of freedom that does exist here.  I know that this definition of freedom comes with a high cost, but I want to ride in the tap-tap, the Haitian public transit trucks and buses that hold more than double the amount of people allowed in the States, and are also traveling murals.  I want to walk through the markets.  I want to try manje rapid (fast food) from a cart by the side of the road.  I want to have that experience and be able to understand first hand what it means to give up the amenities and comforts that are provided for us on the compound, to have a different sort of freedom.

I asked Nzunga and Mano if I learn enough Creole, what is the best book I should read.  They both responded, people.  A wise answer, and very fitting for me.  I hope I get the chance to practice it this week.

The one night we stayed in Port-au-Prince, there was a D.J. at the hotel.  Some of the other travelers were pretty tired and not too happy about having loud music all night as soon as we got settled.  Pharez (the youngest person on the trip) and I were pretty excited.  We went down after the nightly reflection to go dancing, but there was no one there, just the D.J. and a couple of friends.  We sat with Nzunga, he bought me a Haitian beer so we could try it.  There was a young kid, about 5 or 6, in a red T-shirt who came out on the dance floor, and had impeccable rhythm.  After one Haitien beer and a day full of flights, I was ready for bed.  I woke up the next morning completley well rested, only to find out the music had gone on all night and hundreds of people came to dance at midnight.

Haiti

The big trip is finally here.  I've been thinking about it since October, when Chris was building schools there and unknowingly became a catalyst for my journey.  I've heard many of his stories, and several others from people at Seattle First or through Companis.  Whenever a student would stand me up at the Downtown Library, I would take a few minutes to learn a new word or phrase in the Creole-English Dictionary on the 7th floor.  I've learned mostly body parts from the dictionary, and words for food from the Creole podcast I found.  When I went home a month ago, my parents bought me some good books talking about the state of Haiti before the earthquake, and one with letters written by Haitins in mostly Creole.

I don't really think any of this will prepare me for what's coming, for actually being there.  I don't think I will be able to follow or speak a word of Creole when I am immersed in it.  What I was doing while reading and looking up phrases or words was spending time being intentional about this trip, making time to let it take over my thoughts and mind for a few moments of almost every day for months.

Now that it's upon me, I'm really excited!  I'm so grateful for all the support I've had making this trip possible.  From my two church families, the Women's Mission Society at Calvary and Companis at SFBC for donating some money to Evergreen Association for the cause, and the special commission from SFBC.  Thanks to my parents for the books, and the insight that was hard to find elsewhere.  Thanks to Chris for being the catalyst.  Thanks to the Sunday brunch crew for talking over the trip with me every week.  And the biggest thanks to Ned Parker for making it all happen.

When I read back in my journals and blog to last summer, I read the thread of cravings, yearnings, desires for something amazing.  Looking back at this year, and looking ahead at the coming months, I feel satisfied.