13674: Du Tuyau, Haiti antrave (big trouble) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: ViandeMoulue@aol.com

Okay okay, no more rumbling joke. I no try to joke but, Mister Olivier Nadal thanks I joke joke joke. I serious this time. Very very serious. A friend internet, smart smart guy, successful Haitien in United States, went Haiti for 4 day. He had business to do things. Serious business. He wrote on internet Haitian internet this interestingly serious thing. He Lavalas but now really, really, really mad. Désappointé. I think English say disappointed. Please no no joke. Read if you love Haiti. That is a Lavalas lover, ancien bourgeois in Port-au-Prince now big disappointed. What is going on around inside and around Haiti. Please read corbett intellectuals. Serious stuff. the guy is Haiti's de Tocqueville. Don't make ma shame. Pa fè-m wont. Please read and comment below anba.
Mister Corbett. Okay from this guy to publish. All to take out: name of place and people. So I did. Please please Mister Corbett publish. Very interesting thing and beautiful English from smart guy.
Lavalas antrave. Mister Olivier Nadal kontan happy.
    *****************************************************Last week I returned to Haiti for the first time in 18 years. I spent four days, and that was just about four days too many.
I had a few moments during which my sentiments approximated something positive, literally a few. *****, the neighborhood where I spent my entire childhood, virtually from birth, looks almost precisely as I left it. The homes retain their old-line grace and the verdure is still enveloping - for a sentimental fool like MOI, this was nice to see. I spent a night at a party, which I described elsewhere on the site, that I found inspiring. However, none of that made up for all what did disturb me.
My frustration began before I left New York. I believe I related my experience with the Haitian consulate in NY on a thread by ****. There were barely 10 days between the time I realized that I had to go to Haiti and the bracket on my agenda within which I could squeeze a trip. I made several calls to the consulate trying to find information that consulates of other countries have provided me routinely - what governmental agencies in Haiti handles this or that formality; what are the business hours of this or that ministry etc. The consulate was uniformly useless in its response to my inquiries. When I addressed my inquiries in French, the personnel was always useless and always courteous. When I addressed my inquiries in creole, the personnel was always useless and often discourteous.
I walked off the plane and missed my dad terribly. I revered him - I still do - and, upon returning from a trip when I was a child, he would always meet at the door of the plane and take me through the Salon diplomatique to skip the customs formalities. So, not surprisingly I instantly missed him when I walked out of the plane, and I figured maybe I'd feel good to reconnect with so many other experiences of my youth. Little did I know.
Less than a minute later I was standing in front of a very un-smiling agent in the customs area. He certainly did not seem particularly incline to welcome me or anybody into Haiti - understand welcome in the colloquial meaning of the greeting one normally gets when one visits, say, an office or a business in the States. Nevertheless, I smiled - it's a relfex with me - and said "Kouman w ye, frè m?" I'm still trying to figure out why he looked meaner after I said that. I propose a few possibilities - I spoke creole, and - I subsequently realized - in Haiti creole is still what you speak when you tacitly want to establish an individual's social inferiority relative to you. Or maybe he was a chèf and in the macoutist tradition a chèf is not to be addressed (good-, bad- or indifferently) unless he tells you you can, especially - and that's very important to remember - when the power relationship is inverse to the social relationship: he looked like the average Haitian gendam and I looked middle or upper-middle class, and traditionally in Haiti such a dude would make sure to remind you, at this particular moment, who's got the power over whom. Or yet again maybe he just was not in any mood to make nice.
This last possibility dawned on me when I stopped at my mother's house in Delmas on the way to the hotel. My mom was in the States, where she lives, but her husband was visiting at the time, so I dropped by. Mind you, Delmas is now a slum, no longer the middle-class area that it was when I left Haiti, but that didn't affect me negatively. As I've said, I can deal with the notion that misery exists in Haiti. What I can't deal with are some particular mindsets, and what I soon found out is that Haitians to a great extent are no longer inclined to be courteous to one another. I went for a walk around my mom's house, because I used to have friends in the area. I lived for a decade in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and even the rudest of rude boys whose eyes cross yours will nod or say "Yo." On that stroll in Delmas, as is done in the States, I reflexively nodded and said Hi to people when we made eye contact - the response I got was invariably a blank stare as if I were a foreign specimen. As I related to my stepfather, everybody had a min (i.e, .mad; trandlation of "min" from Du Tuyau) on their foreheads.
Then again that customs agent may just have been an indication that le macoutisme is alive and well in Haiti after a decade of rhetoric on social justice by the dude in Tabarre. In a nutshell, what I had to take care of in Haiti, I ended up taking care of it à l'haïtienne. Not that I have a problem with moun pa per se. There's that everywhere - you know someone, and he or she will do something for you through the back door and spare you some inconvenience. I see that happens in the States all the time. In my case it happened a little differently. I was supposed to meet a guy at 11:30 in the governmental agency in question. Somehow I ended up there at 9:30 and figured, what the heck, I'd wait on line like everybody else and get the process going. I quickly realized, at the rate that line moved, I'd get to the head of it the following Monday (I was there on Thurs and Fri was a holiday). So I just chilled and hung out and observed (it's at that time that I heard the machann commenting about her fingertip). Around 10:30 my guide and driver proposed that we take care of things really à l'haïtienne. He snooped around and located a fellow, who for double the usual cost of the formality in question (for 500 gourdes instead of 250 gourdes) he'd take care of things right then and there. Deal. Five minutes later, I'm at the head of the line. Nobody bats an eye, because I suppose that's a natural thing to occur. The official who takes care of this particular matter usually works in tandem with a partner, but at this particular moment he is alone. He nevertheless stops taking care of people who duely waited on line and takes care of me. The people on line get impatient and begin to grumble. Not just a this-ain't-fair kinda grumble, but a I'm-pissed-as-hell kinda grumble. I take no chances - I glare back, the classic Haitian ti boujwa glare that says, I'm me, you're you and I can officially kick your ass and nothing can happen to me. The grumble dies down. A classic Haitian moment, a classic macoutist moment, and one !
that bothers the hell out of me the next very second - 18 years before I'd decided a ti boujwa living in Haiti is inevitably part of the problem, and here Haiti's reality had imposed itself on me and made me enjoy the kind of power-social relationships that I truly despised. Of course, I did not anticipate Geek's question, but my answer lay in this incident less than 24 hours after I'd arrived - I have no desire to visit Haiti, much less live there, because its society is morally bankrupt.
As it happened, about half an hour later, after going here and there, I needed to go back to that window. I wait for "Inspecteur" So-and-So again to abandon people who had waited on line so that he could take care of me. There is another line for another purpose (I had been taken to the head of that one, too) nearby. Picture me standing in a space that is somewhat in the middle of the two distinct lines. Now imagine I'm standing to the side of Inspecteur So-and-So's booth, which puts me somewhat near the head of line #2. Something happens on that second line; I don't know what it is, but it sure pisses off the two gendarmes that are patrolling it (I think people on line were not being obedient enough about some direction one of the gad gave). In short order, the two gendarmes roughly set them straight, one with the butt of his Uzi, the other with a kokomakak. Here is what very depressingly flashed through my head at this instant: Duvalier, macoutes, that dude in Tabarre making speeches about social justice for the past decade, oh, 10 years worth of bullshit babbling. Then came the moment that really, really said Haiti is a focked-up place populated by focked-up people. (You thought I'd already told you that? No, I haven't). Here it is - as I said, I was standing near the head of line 2, where the cops decided people were unruly. I sure as hell looked like the principal unruly dude since at no moment did I wait on either line and yet I'd completed the business of both (I was waiting for the end result). Now as the two gad begin to rough up the malere on the line, you can imagine people take flight and the gad pursue them. One of the gendarmes comes face to face with me...and promptly swerves around me. Think of the superlative suspension of a Bimma swerving around an obstacle at the last minute then continuing straight on course - that's how expertly and instinticvely the gendarme calculated that I was not someone he should mess with, then without missing a beat he swung the butt of his rifle at the maler!
e standing 18 inches behind me.
I don't live my life based on grand theories, much less on sentimental illusion, so I have no desire to live in Haiti, because one cannot be in a septic tank and not to be part of the [censored].
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Lavalas my bródèrs (brothers) and sistèrz (sisters), bwa nou pran lan moulen.
Jean Du Tuyau pour la pléiade.