22165: (Hermantin)Miaim-Herald-Resilient Haitians stay spirited (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Mon, May. 31, 2004



Resilient Haitians stay spirited

Despite their problems, Haitians greet the world with a resilient spirit
that gets them through the best and worst of times.

By JOE MOZINGO

jmozingo@herald.com


PORT-AU-PRINCE -- The funeral was a somber occasion until the corpse decided
to sit up in his coffin.

Never had pews in the St. Anne's church downtown cleared so quickly. One
woman leapt six feet onto a high window sill.

Only outside, when the mourners realized the deceased had not returned to
the world of the living as a zombie -- but had simply moved to the
inexorable rhythms of rigor mortis -- did the laughing begin.

Laughing at each other's horrified reactions. Laughing at their poor friend
up there, sitting upright in his coffin.

Laughing unrestrained in the face of so much violence and misery.

Foreigners reading of all the ceaseless turmoil and squalor here might
assume Haiti is a land of forlorn people, broken and bleak, given in to a
wretched fate.

But Haiti has a soul of astonishing resilience.

''The violence and horror you see is a minor part of what Haiti is all
about,'' said Patrick Boucard, a Haitian who has traveled extensively and
now runs an art school on the south coast. ``It is the country where I've
seen people laugh more than anywhere else in the world.''

On May Day, Boucard helped organize an arts festival in the seaside village
of Jacmel that drew thousands. They listened to compa music, swam in the
Caribbean, picnicked on the beach.

TOMORROW UNKNOWN

''Haitians live in the present time because they have no idea what tomorrow
is going to offer,'' Boucard said. ``In that way, they make the best of
it.''

In Cap Haitien, several hundred people recently gathered on the main strip
to watch a donkey race. But to gasping laughter from the crowd, the
organizers could only find mules, which tend not to cooperate. One rider is
still in the hospital.

In Port-au-Prince, the streets are flooded with school children twice a day,
their uniforms sometimes frayed but always pressed and clean. Fathers
protectively walk their daughters through the traffic and the old
gingerbread Victorian neighborhoods that beg the expression faded grandeur.

Even in the mud-flat slums of Port-au-Prince, where every tin-roofed shanty
holds a story that would bring tears to any eyes, people tirelessly strive
to make things better.

At the Becky Dewine elementary school in Cite Soleil, Principal Florel Jean
keeps 500 students learning against daunting odds. There is no water, the
toilets don't work, and every few days the rain turns the soccer field into
a malarial swamp.

''This week, there is not enough income for chalk,'' she said.

Still, after 28 years of struggle, Jean is a bolt of energy in her navy blue
dress -- held together with pin-needles where the buttons are missing.

She stops in on a French class to make sure the teacher is hitting all the
right notes.

All the children stand at attention. ``Bonjour, Madame'' they sing eagerly
in unison, and then continue their lesson on masculine and feminine nouns.
Cousin, cousine. Orphelin, Orpheline.

''In Haiti, there are two languages for business, English and French,'' Jean
explains. ``We teach them all sorts of good ways to be a person.''

Now she is working with Father Athur Volel to start a professional school to
teach everything from home economics to drafting to computers. The building
is complete. They just need money to pay the teachers.

''Whatever happens, I'm going to continue,'' she said. ``God will take care
of me because I'm doing what's right.''

Father Volel first came down to this slum in 1967, and literally brought the
dirt to build his church on the mud flats. Everyone knows him. He is a
fixture of benevolence in a community that is accustomed to finding the
gruesome remains of the night's murders lying in its streets.

At 80, his walk is labored now, his eyes rheumy. But he is scratching
everything together to get his professional school going now that there is
some calm.

FOOD COSTLY

The murders have subsided, but a more pernicious trend worries him. The
price of food -- particularly rice -- has almost doubled.

''It's the hunger that is disturbing every one,'' he said. ``The biggest
problem right now is kids not having enough to eat.''

In slightly better-off neighborhood near Delmas 33, the rice is also the
utmost concern.

''I can't get water, a sack of rice costs $400,'' said Dantan Donald, 28.
``Things are getting harder and harder for us.''

So Donald sought a diversion and came down to the ravine to gather with a
hundred other men to bet on the fighting cocks. The day was sweltering under
the tin, everyone crammed together, sweating and smoking.

But when the two scrawny roosters were doused with ice cold water to get
their skin taut, the men's focus was laser-like -- on the fight and nothing
more.

Legs trembling, the roosters ripped into each other, clawing, pecking,
erupting into the air in explosions of feathers. ''Get him! Get him!'' the
men screamed.

Finally, the skinny owner of the losing rooster pulled his contender out of
the match before it was torn to pieces, and the losing bettors vented their
fury on him. But calmer heads prevailed, money changed hands, and everyone
stepped out into the breeze to chat and wait for the next match.

''This takes the stress off,'' said Jacques Andre, 35. ``A man has to have a
good time.''

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