Have we not shared with you this incredible song about all the lovely things contained in Haiti?

It's called ''Ayiti Se'' (Haiti Is),  and we have posted the English lyrics below. It's by the Haitian artist Mikaben. It's a great chance to hear some Kreyòl too. Enjoy!

Haiti is a pretty sea, a stunning mountain with beautiful rivers
It's pretty beaches with coconut trees, lovely landscapes with bright colors
Haiti is the smell of coffee that climbs up my nostrils at dawn
It's the scent of dew drops that's set for the budding of 10 o'clock flowers in the morning
Haiti is Bassin Bleu, the Pichon waterfalls along with Saut D'eau
It's the Arcadins isles, the Citadelle fort, it's Labadie and Marigot
Haiti is La Valée, Macaya's Peak, Marmelade and Pilboreau mountains

Haiti is dous makòs, it's a handful of grilled peanuts
It's a creamy smoothie that gives energy, it's an enticing bottle of ice cola
Haiti is some appetizing fried pork, it's a delicious fritter, some tasty fried goat
It's a delicious vegetable stew laden with crabs, it's flavorful rice with country greens
Haiti is a scrumptious broth, a pumpkin soup well-seasoned with bell peppers
It's mouthwatering cassava with peanut butter
That you dip in a corn shake
Haiti is a a dumpling that you marinate in bean sauce
It's pig woods, some good liquor
Haiti is the divine coffee that you drink at night

Chorus:
Precious Haiti, as much as I love you
I've come to put my heart in your hands
Haiti dear, as much as I adore you
Nothing will let me let go of you (x2)

Haiti is beautiful music, a street music band parade, a troubadour
It's a ceremony, a calabash dish, and a drum
Haiti is Ogou's land, the land our ancestors left for us
It's where slavery was abolished, it's the land of the free and the land of voudou
Haiti is festivals, it's night parties, it's ritual dances of Chanpetre
It's dancing and fun at Carnaval, it's a little island that never sleeps
Haiti is a game of dominoes, it's a winning hand of dice and cards
It's a Christmas Eve party with some good broth that keeps you awake

Haiti is a collective of farmers who get together to work the land
It's the women street vendors descending into the city
To go fight the hard life head to head
Haiti is a little kid that's dreaming of a bright future
It's the dirty water from sewer streams that doesn't quite know where it's going
Haiti is being under the tent since January 12th
It's mud on the levees that gives off a foul smell every time it rains
Haiti is the ground that knows true realities
It's a sad one, but by God's grace, it's not the only one that we can sing.

Chorus

Haiti is a mother that knows the meaning of pain
Who stands strong and tall, who's brave - even though she's aware that she's far from perfect
Haiti is a beautiful woman who's been through a lot
But who cleans up nicely so that her kids can walk with their heads up - proud
Haiti, it's all these things that make us love you
Even if the road is long, I know that we'll always be here to hold your hand
Haiti dear, believe me
Nothing will ever make me leave you
Let this song right here serenade you

Translation compliments of kreyolicious (with some minor changes)

Deporation Crisis in the Dominican Republic

Over the past week, an explosion of news stories, photos, and interviews have hit the internet - stories covering the mounting crisis facing hundreds of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent and Haitian migrant workers in the Dominican Republic. I for one am very happy for the coverage.

Maybe it has cropped up in your own scouring of regional news. Maybe you have no clue to what I am referring. Here, I hope, is a helpful recap of the brewing situation.

Haitians with the Dominican flag painted on their cheeks demonstrate in front of the
Central Electoral Board to demand their Dominican citizenship in Santo Domingo
on March 12, 2013. AFP PHOTO / Erika SANTELICES | Getty

The D.R. is Haiti's neighbor to the east, occupying roughly two-thirds of the land mass that is Hispaniola (the historic name for the island that Haiti and the D.R. share). Despite their proximity (or perhaps because of it), the two nations have faced centuries of tense relations.

The economic relationship between the two countries can be compared to that of the U.S. and Mexico. The D.R. has a high demand for low-wage workers in the agriculture sector, housekeeping, as well as in a growing construction industry. Haitians desperate for work regularly cross the border, and it's worth noting that this migration has been encouraged by both governments at various points. 

Economic ties aside, Haitians living and working in the D.R. make up a sort of economically marginalized underclass. Skin color, names, and occupations often set them apart.

This past week, a 2013 D.R. court ruling is coming into play, which may lead to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrant workers and perhaps Dominicans of Haitian descent. There is growing international outrage at the 2013 D.R. policy, which has essentially stripped citizenship from Dominicans with foreign-born parents going back to 1929. This means that Dominicans of Haitian descent, who may not even speak Kreyòl or have current ties to Haiti, could be rounded up with Haitian migrant workers and dropped into a country not their own.

The deadline for Haitian migrants to register in a regularization program was last Wednesday, and deportations have commenced for all who are found without the required paperwork.

The D.R. authorities claim they will carry out deportations with due process. Yet, at the same time, anti-Haitian sentiment and racial profiling have already led to Dominicans being deported to Haiti whose citizenship rights were taken away based on the 2013 ruling.

There is a poignant article written by a Dominican diaspora leader in New York City, condemning the actions of the Dominican government and calling for international pressure to secure the rights of all Dominican citizens.

Many groups, due to the proximity in time between this crisis and the killings in Charleston, are linking the discrimination faced by Haitians in the D.R. with the #BlackLivesMatter campaign by using the hashtag #HaitianLivesMatter. Demonstrations and petitions are surfacing from communities in the U.S. and the D.R. The New York City mayor has also spoken out on the issue.

As you search media for more coverage on this topic, I hope you will take a moment to pray, share a news story with a friend, and sign a petition directed towards the D.R. government urging them to put a stop to a hasty, misguided immigration policy that upends the lives of so many. These are all key ways to show our solidarity, to act.

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Extra resources: 

Ted wrote an excellent summary of the legal framework of these proceedings and recent news for MCC's Latin America Advocacy blog.

If you have 45-minutes, check out this documentary by Henry Louis Gates Jr that explores Haitian and Dominican relations through the lens of their histories.

We blogged more on this issue in February.

The Constant Gardener, and Other Stories

Katharine has brought to my attention that Stories to Tell is a blog we share. In its roughly twelve (12) months of existence, corresponding roughly to the time we’ve been in Haiti, I have published approximately one (1) post. I hope to see this change.

John Le Carré penned a thriller-turned-film about a hum-drum British diplomat pulled into an international conspiracy. As with all Le Carré protagonists, this one happens to have an exotic pastime: he gardens. Just as he often roots out the weeds that would kill his tender plants, the central metaphor for the novel (or at least the film; I’ve not read the book) is how he methodically tends to the crises that have overtaken his life. Hence the title, the Constant Gardener.

This also feels like an apt analogy to life here, though I don’t mean the getting-to-the-bottom-of-international-conspiracies part. I mean the weeding part.

I have no green thumb. I confess to have killed, inadvertently, many plants. But I have always excelled at one activity that is a corollary to successful plant-growing: weed-killing.

The job of choice through my adolescence, whether on church grounds or a family friend’s palatial suburban estate, was pulling weeds. I considered myself quite good at it but have found myself exercising this skillset less and less in the last decade. That is, until coming to Haiti.

For all of Haiti’s problems with deforestation (Katharine touched on this here), plants and trees can grow fast. Like, really fast.

An illustration. Several months ago we paid a Haitian fellow to “prune” the trees in our yard. Armed with a machete, he did more than take “a little off the top.” He hacked off limbs. Literally. The denuded trees and bushes were scandalized. And yet, a few months later they look like they did before.

Equatorial sun and torrential spring rains will do that. The problem is that weeds spring up just as quickly.

Looking for an easy way out of our yard’s growing weed problem, we tried goats. We’ve learned they lack discretion when it comes to dietary choices and hoped they would eat their way through our patches of weeds. We borrowed our bosses goats (pictured). Though cute, they were terrible. They tangled themselves by running in circles, bleated through the night, and, most fatal, did not eat the weeds.

Terrible.

And so a few weeks back I decided to roll up my (short) sleeves. I would reach back to my heady youthful days, reclaim my skills, and mount a campaign to reclaim our yard.

I figured the job would take about ten hours.

Ten hours later, I figure it will take another ten.

I am probably wrong.

The battle is already lost. While some grasses are gratifyingly easy to pull up, others are like quilting with the most tenacious clumps of roots I’ve ever seen. If I leave the yard for a few days I find a new patch has sprung up. If I revisit a corner dealt with a week ago, I feel as if I’ve traveled back in time.

People say adjusting to life in Haiti tends to amplify one’s sense of incompetency. Weeds, along with language learning, have taught me this is so. I may start growing weeds and killing plants, as that seems better tailored to my abilities.

Little birds

Piti piti zwazo fe nich

It is a favorite Haitian proverb of ours, and it means "Little by little, the bird makes its nest." The meaning is pretty clear, and it applies to so many situations. My two friends and fellow graduate students at the time - Sarah and Gina - and I used this phrase a lot when we were here in late 2010. After reaching the point in an introductory conversation where our limited Kreyol ran out, we would smile and recite this phrase. It signified, for us, that our Kreyol was coming along, so to please be patient with us. People loved that we knew this phrase. It was a real crowd-pleaser. 

For us today, it provides a reminder of a broader perspective. That we are like "little birds," just coming along in our understanding of so many things here. But, each step is productive towards some larger goal. Nothing is lost! Even those days when we feel like we don't quite pass muster, we can rest assured that even the bad bits can be used for something greater - redeemed for His higher plan.

Favorite Kreyol phrases and misadventures

It’s time that we share some of our most amusing moments in Haiti and favorite Kreyòl phrases thus far:

He must really love you!

One night, during our home stay in Dezam, we sat on the front patio with our host parents and a 19-year old friend, Vernard, a flashlight faintly illuminating our faces from its position on the ground in the middle of our circle. We were having a ti koze (a small chat) in the cool nighttime breeze. In the conversation, Ted mentioned that he is 29 years old, and I asked the others to guess my age (not thinking that they would guess I am one year older than Ted.) I was right; Vernard started off by saying, “Well, you must be younger than Ted, so…” and I think they may have guessed 26 in the end. When I revealed my true age, Vernard’s jaw dropped; he let out a loud laugh and clapped his hands in surprise, exclaiming “Wow, he must really love you!”

Our friend Vernard, pictured on the right.

Fè Dezòd

"Fè dezòd" is an expression that means literally “to make” (fè) “disorder” (dezòd.) Children often do this: “Ti moun yo ap fè dezòd!” (Those children are making disorder!)

One friend, also in Dezam, was a 6-year-old boy named Migerson who was often engaging in the activity of “fè dezòd,” so much so that our Kreyol teacher and distant relation to little Migerson also gave him the nickname “Tet di” (hard head) – this also came about because Migerson continued to climb on the grape vine from which he had fallen one morning, bumping his head pretty badly on its roots.

Migerson

"Radyo 32"

This is one of my favorites. Over staff lunch one day, we came across a term for gossip called “teledjòl.” Ted had heard it before so inquired further about its meaning. It’s apparently not a very nice way of saying “hearsay” or to refer to unreliable news you simply “hear on the street.” A young co-worker of ours, Fania, had another great expression for it: Radyo (Radio) 32. The 32 refers to the number of teeth in our mouths, and so Radyo 32 is her way of referring to gossip - love it!

Our great Port-au-Prince ekip - team

There is a dead chicken in your yard

Last Monday morning, the woman who works at our house two times per week - Madam Amid - came to me in the kitchen and said, "You know, you have a dead chicken in your yard..." I did a double take, as I was attempting to track carefully with her Kreyol. "There's a what in our yard?" She took me out back to show me. Sure enough, along our back wall and in plain view is a chicken hanging from a string attached to its foot, dead as a door nail. I asked her, "Poukisa li la??" (Why is he there??) This made absolutely no sense to me. Madam Amid explained that it, surely being a neighbor's chicken, had attempted to fly away but its string got caught on the nails and glass bottles protruding from the dividing wall between our yards. Oops! She then commented, "I tried to take him down last week but the smell was so horrible I couldn't go near him." Again, I had to do a double take. "The chicken was here last week, and I didn't see him??" "Yes," she tells me, "he's been hanging there for about two weeks!"

In memory of the departed (note: this photo was taken by Ted this summer of a chicken
that still lives, happily settled in her home in Davis, California)

Adventures

Within some of the day-to-day here in Haiti - getting up, making breakfast, washing dishes- I can forget what an adventure we are on, and what a privilege it is to be here.

In coming to Haiti, we have the honor of trying to learn a new culture and language. Studying Kreyol is really fun for us. Our first set of lessons occupied our three week home stay in Dezam, and they have continued every Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings through the end of next week. Ted and I would both like to become "Kreyol masters," I think. We see other foreigners who have worked here for years and we admire their language abilities. We want to be like them! But that mindset will discourage us more days than not while we're here. Some days we advance, and other days we can feel stuck in the mud.

We are still "kids" in a lot of ways. Learning a new language is not just about acquiring words, but about understanding innumerable nuances, gestures, and expressions. After three years here, we still won't understand most of these things! Learning language is about learning a new culture, really. And this is not an overnight process with some fast track option - not at all.

In the midst of our day-to-day, we need to remember that this is not our native context but appreciate the fact that we are here. It is a gift.

The two of us on our introductory tour of downtown, outside of the national museum