Encourage your children and loved ones to learn French in high school. They will tell you that Spanish is more practical, but you will remind them that French is the language of cab drivers in Port-au-Prince, and as you are screaming around the corners of Champ de Mars, you will thank this story for the tip. When you go to Haiti, your cab driver will scribble his name (l’Egypte Jan-Couis) and a phone number (3318-3134) — so charmed will he be by your noFrancais. A charmed l’Egypte Jan-Couis is no good in a time of duress (your twentieth hour in Haiti), and he will ask you grandly for a thousand gourdes and smile sheepishly when you hand him five hundred. By the end of your time here, a friend will tell you that a cab ride anywhere in Port-au-Prince costs about fifteen gourdes, and you have overpaid like an American. You will curse in Spanish, the language you took in high school.

I’m twenty-four hours into Haiti on this, the day after the birth of our Lord Christ. I ought to be dead — or at least kidnapped — and I found out last night that not even the Gideons have been here (you should know that I’ve never been in a hotel room without rifling through each dresser drawer. These were markedly Bible-free.) Of course, I’m here accidentally. I ordered my plane ticket for an arrival twenty-four hours earlier than I meant to, which meant that I have been in Port-au-Prince twenty-four more hours than have been accounted for me. The dangerous implications of such a miscalculated exposure unfolded before me while sandwiched between Frenchwhisperers on the flight from Miami, twenty-seven hours ago. I watched my similarly-aged and dissimilarly-wealthy plane neighbor ogle in horror while I asked her the best way to hail a cab from the Port-au-Prince airport. She breathed, “You’re going to be kidnapped,” flipped her cellphone open to Frenchurgentwhisper to her mother, and then bosomheaved, “We will drop you off.” And then we exchanged names.

This is the way it began here: a kiss on both cheeks, a “Joyeux Novelle,” and then an introduction. (The immediacy of affection makes me think of the college-length amount of time I took to know this boy I know before reaching out to hug him.) My gratitude was clumsy and American and raging through my body as we shoulderbagged through baggage claim and the flickering electricity. (The next time a blackout happened would be in the tenth hour of Haiti, in the shower: a choking spout of a thing. I screamed like the movies.) We squeezed past the shiny, clustered grapes of faces offering me rides and guides in a mess of Creole. I smiled Americanly and offered a strangled “No, gracias. I mean oui, no, si vous plait.”

This is my first hour in Haiti, and we pile into the maw of a Suzuki Trooper, a car nearly monopolizing the island of Hispaniola. (Besides these, of note are the rickety, disastrous tap-taps: gutted trucks and vans with painted tin shells of pop icons, rappers, and our Lord Christ.) The Suzuki Trooper dogs its way up a hill and connects the dots between potholes.

Graffiti forms the shapes of businesses and shacks and restaurants, indistinguishable from the other. The colors scream, the people congregate and tap-tap our windows. Hands reach. A woman wears five hats, one two three four five all the way up, grandly footing her way past the pepe. When you go to Haiti, you will see stripes and stripes of clothes and shoes sold secondhand alongside the road, and you will call it pepe.

I endure, again and again, my story being told in French and Creole (depending on the skin color), and the clutching of necks in horror. My wealthy-plane-neighbor’s mother bulges her eyes at me, and it is translated to me that she is certain I would have been kidnapped, so white is my skin. I overthank them for the ride, an apology for the inconvenience, my noFrancais, the white of my skin, the grease of my hair, the smudge of mascara down my cheeks. I mean it every time.

I mean it too when I thank a cleavage-y cousin of hers for explaining what is being heaped on my plate. We have, absurdly, arrived at my wealthy-plane-neighbor’s family Christmas celebration at an uncle’s house overlooking Port-au-Prince. This is how it begins. We meet in the morning, over the ocean, and by early evening fifty of her Haitian kin cup my face to kiss my cheeks in celebration of this, the birth of our Lord Christ, and in celebration of friendship and joy and another year alive. Introductions come afterward, along with more throat-clutching and bulge-eyeing from the cleavage-y cousins. My gratitude is clumsy and American and raging through my body, and I cling to my wealthy-plane-neighbor for the slim familiarity she represents. When you go to Haiti, you will cling to slim familiarity, and it will hand you a Kola which will taste a little bit worse than Diet Dr. Pepper but not as bad as Diet Sprite. I step carefully around the Haitians to avoid more face-cupping, and also to avoid Americanly breaking something (which happens immediately after I form the resolution not to do so. It is in the form of Kola-to-table-tipping, and it will happen again twelve hours later on the veranda).

The veranda happens twenty-three hours in, and it ribs the Hotel Oloffson like Jay Gatsby. I am a Suzuki Trooper ride, a hotel bed, a movie-scream-in-a-blackout, five hundred gourdes and one Kola past the end of the celebrated birth of our Lord Christ. Still, the Haitianscape has been relatively unmindblowingly poor. Still, I see the ocean. The trees are still palm trees and undeforested, and the gingerbread lattice which ridges the porch makes this hotel the most photographed in Haiti. My International Caution lingers despite all this. An American man (who looks like the rest of the American men in khaki and white to match his hair and skin) groans over a missing computer, and I clutch my shoulder bag closer, the American dollars and Haitian gourdes marrying in my wallet. I hear my mother’s warnings in my ear, groaning and clutching, and then the computer is found at the front desk, put there by a young boy sweeping beneath the tables. I clumsily, Americanly, unclutch my shoulder bag, and the khakis swish away toward the coconut grove.

The next pair of characters on set are a man like Einstein and the nation of Haiti as played by a little girl. She wide-eyes me at the table over, and I can tell she’ll be a story of mine later. The man is gentle in his French as he speaks to her, the white tufts of hair gentle too. His shirt is not so starched, his khakis not so American. They are beautiful and paternal. I ask her if she speaks English in my palsy French, and both smile kindly (which is how I knew I was an idiot, internationally). I ask him, and he says yes with a shrug. We struggle forth, and I learn that six years ago today, the day after the birth of our Lord Christ, he had happened upon this child’s swollen, pregnant mother bleeding in the streets. Now, they celebrate her sixth birthday on this veranda. He can’t adopt her, because he actually is a professor of math and physics in Germany, but he comes back occasionally to speak French to her. I make fish and monkey faces to her so that I can see her toothy laugh. And, in the most concrete example in my life that I am a stranger with candy, I groan through my shoulder bag for the candy canes I’d smuggled in from home. After it is clear that my French and his English have brought me to the end of what he can say to me, I thank him for the story and move back to my table. When their food arrives, she shows me every bite and how to chew it. I thank her every time, and I mean it every time. She eats it in small bites, one two three four five all the way up.

My twenty-fifth hour will snake me away from Port-au-Prince. I will gasp again and again as I see hospitals and brothels, each indistinguishable from the other, stripes of rotting oranges alongside the road, the lottery crippling a generation, the mud, the gutted riverbeds stinking. I will be driven in a Suzuki Trooper, its screaming tires dogging into the mountains. The trees will march fewer and fewer, five four three two one, all the way up, and I have just knocked over my Kola. And oh the girl, the girl is scribbling over my notes. And now she has written and unwritten the alphabet, and she is teaching me my vowels in Francais. She spells out her name r i v a l d i n e and giggles at my unHaitian r’s. She scribbles a monster, or perhaps it is just me with green skin, and holds it up to my camera.

It has, at this point, occurred to me at least a thousand times that I am a fool to discourage this gratitude as it rages through my body, and that I am alive and eating avocado and am unkidnapped and in Haiti and a white American and a bit clumsy and all these things happening all at once. I am broken by this Haiti, this cupping of faces and scribbling over notes. This is enough for now. I will learn this Haiti first. I will eat each hour up in small bites, one two three four five, all the way up.

Original artwork by Ollie Mikse

2 Responses to “Special Report: Hours in Haiti”

1. On 02/1/10 6:26 AM, Lydia said:

   

   Dude, how long did it take you to write this? It’s awesome Liz, great job!

2. On 03/12/10 12:04 PM, How to Raise Half Your Student Loan Debt in a Single Night (or, Be Excellent To Each Other) | Ghettoblaster Magazine said:

   

   [...] about what a year does to a person. I think about the fact that a little more than a year ago, I was sitting across from a boy outside the Hotel Oloffson in Port Au Prince as he taught me how to properly sink my teeth into sugar cane. I think about the low wall we sat [...]

Leave a comment