by Ted
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Two tree nursery committee members planted a "small forest" project (behind)
using the traditional konbit |
It starts with a drum and ends with rum, but it’s what happens in between that makes
konbit the cultural institution that’s helped the Haitian peasantry survive for centuries against all odds.
Konbit, the Haitian Kreyòl word used for just about any collective effort, usually refers to the equivalent of a Haitian barn-raising. It’s a work exchange, when a community member calls upon his or her neighbors to join a work party to help clear, plant, weed or harvest their fields. It’s all completed with the expectation that the work will be reciprocated when a member of the work party has a similar need.
We just returned from our first Mennonite Central Committee
(MCC)
konbit, a quarterly staff gathering. While there was no
back-breaking labor involved, there are more similarities between a traditional
konbit and MCC’s than you might think.
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| Almost all of the MCC Haiti team at our MCC konbit |
Hard work. A konbit in the field
usually starts as the sun is rising and lasts until mid-day or early afternoon.
Our konbit is really a series of meetings where every member of our team
is able to speak his or her mind. Two of the three days involved eight hours of
meetings like this, all in Kreyòl. We agreed on an agenda together, reported on
our activities, and posed questions to puzzle through difficult issues.
A coming-together. Beyond work in the
fields,
konbit has survived because it is a social scene: a chance to trade
stories and gossip, complain and sing.
Our
konbit is
a chance
for MCC’s Port-au-Prince and Desarmes teams to reunite. Though we sometimes
cross paths in the intervening months between
konbit, this was a chance
to really catch up: to meet new staff members; to see how a staff member’s baby
has grown; and to deepen relationships.
Music. Drums, bamboo or conch-shell horns,
flutes: the
chef of the
konbit in the fields often employs a band
to play these instruments throughout the day. The music serves to set the work
team’s tempo and keep up the party-like atmosphere. Our
konbit started
each morning with the sounding of the drum and Kreyòl worship songs that prepared
our hearts and minds for the work ahead.
* Listen to our team singing "Mesi Jezu" at Konbit
(just press play)
Food. Any good
konbit starts and ends
with food. Maybe a cup of sweet coffee and bread to begin, and a stomach-bursting
meal at its end. The Desarmes team’s cook Lucilla made hearty meal after hearty
meal, providing the foundation for times that were fit to laugh and share and
enjoy one another’s company.
Respect and Mutuality. Both types of
konbit
grow from the recognition that we need each other. There’s a common Kreyol
proverb that’s translated as “Many hands make the burden light,” and as I
reflect on our first
konbit experience, I’m reminded of a command in Galatians
6:2, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” In sharing
the load, we are able to see our hearts resonate with Christ’s own love and
concern for others, and we’re further knit together as a community.
The rum. Just
kidding. While many traditional
konbits do see the bottle passed around throughout the day and end in a
big rum-drenched party, ours did not. We instead closed out ours with
fritay--fried
goat, pressed plantains, and
pikliz--a crowd-pleasing combination of foods
meant to mark a special occasion, of which it most definitely was.
