Rocks in the Water, Rocks in the Sun: A Memoir from the Heart of Haiti

by Vilmond Joegodson Déralciné

  Fédrik wanted to make himself invincible to his opponents. So he turned to magic. He bought a couple of books on magic from street merchants. Then, he visited an houngan to make him invincible in combat.

  Still, his passion brought no money into the household economy. In fact, his martial arts cost the family. Moreover, his successes in karate left him with black eyes and bruises, despite his invincibility. He looked for ways to turn his passion into a way of life. Now that he had reached the level of a master, he thought of opening up a martial arts school of his own. However, with the Haitian economy going from very bad to far worse and people working full time to stay alive, it was impractical to conceive of such a future in his own country. It was equally impossible to enter a rich country: even if he had a passport, there is only one answer waiting for poor Haitians who ask for a working or visiting visa. So, he decided to try the only country that someone of his class could possibly enter: the Dominican Republic. He would take his skills across the border and see if he could parlay them into a career.

  In order to find out how to enter the Dominican Republic, he visited some relatives in Delmas 33 originally from his home community of Gros Morne. There, he made the acquaintance of a young peasant woman from Verettes who was working as a maid in the household of his relatives. For a minute, she made him forget about karate — no small feat. Soon, he was rethinking karate, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and his life as a single man.

  chapter eight

  I WAS FINISHED WITH THE JOB IN SOLIDARITE. It’s a strange job that pays you a cellphone that you can’t use. I needed money to activate it. But why did I need it? None of my friends had any kind of telephone. Besides, why would I spend money to call someone when the main thing I needed to tell them was that I had no job and no money? Why feed the cellphone when I was hungry?

  There was another problem. Cellphones were just becoming popular and this was a big clumsy thing. But my friends wanted me to carry it around, even though it wasn’t connected, so that they could hold it against their ears to impress total strangers, showing that they were cool. Which they weren’t. Next, they all wanted to have their pictures taken using the cellphone. Then they could pass the picture around to prove to people that they were the kind of people who spoke on cellphones. They were all holding the same phone. And they were all, in fact, the kind of people who didn’t speak on cellphones. It was sad.

  How would I earn money to feed my baby cellphone? And to feed me?

  One night, I was sitting in an abandoned car joking with some friends. We were in between my uncle’s shop where I would never work again and Jelo’s courtyard, where I lived. Near us was a big fire burning in an open sewer. We didn’t think anything of it; it had been burning for years. Every week the neighbours would set it alight to get rid of the garbage that piled up in the sewer. Also, we liked it because it kept the mosquitoes away. But a couple of white people came by to look at it as if it was significant. They seemed zombified, lost in the flames that shot five or six metres above the street.

  I judged that they needed help. I said, “Look, a couple of blan. Maybe this would be a good time to test my English.” Haitians imagine that blan are American. So we address them in English. That’s because Americans come to Haiti most often, whether invited or not. But I didn’t really know what kind of blan was illuminated by the fire.

  My friends said, “Go ahead. This is your big chance.”

  I walked cautiously up to them until I was between them, pretending that I too was looking at the fire. I then looked at them and threw a question into the air for whoever would respond, the man or the woman. “May I help you?”

  The woman was especially impressed, “Oh, he speaks English. He can tell us.”

  The man replied, “Can you tell us what is burning like this in the sewer? Where we are from, we aren’t used to seeing big fires like this in the streets. And no one seems concerned.”

  I didn’t really understand them. For me it was strange that burning garbage could interest anyone. Maybe they had the spirit of children who are curious about everything.

  I answered, “That is garbage they burning.”

  Their eyes opened wide. “Really! That’s amazing.” They seemed to be impressed by the mundane.

  We Haitians were still standing there while the blan spoke between themselves. It seemed that the conversation was over for them; it hadn’t begun for me. I asked them, “Who are you? Where are you from?”

  The woman responded first: “My name is Patricia.” The man after: “I’m Paul. We’re from Canada.” Then he asked me in French my name and I answered.

  I searched through my head for some other words in English to impress them.

  “Do you believe in Jesus?” I asked.

  Paul answered, “No.” Patricia said, “Yes.”

  I posed another question, “Do you know Martin Luther King?”

  They both said that they knew of King. I admired Martin Luther King and was searching for a topic that could lead us in a promising direction.

  A few minutes went by without conversation. They stared at the fire.

  Paul took up the conversation again. He asked me if I could help him learn the Creole language. He offered to pay me 500 gourdes ($11.92 US) to spend an hour to teach him Creole. I was amazed. I had never worked for such a sum of money. I took a little time before responding. I didn’t want to appear desperate. But I was desperate.

  I tried to make it sound like I was judging the offer. Cautiously, and taking all the excitement out of my words, I said slowly, “Okay … that would be possible.”

  Paul and Patricia were ready to leave. Paul asked if I lived far from here. I pointed to the gate of the property where I lived.

  “Okay, how about if I come by tomorrow morning?”

  We separated. I went to my friends to explain to them what was happening. They were amazed. They thought I was joking. They hadn’t known that I could speak any English. They were jealous. “Look at how lucky he is!”

  I went to tell Jelo of the strange encounter. Listening to the story, I could see Jelo’s mind operating double time, trying to figure out how to transform this into a jackpot. A blan meant money.

  The next morning, Paul knocked on the gate. My room was in the back of the grounds, behind the big empty house and out of sight of the gate. I sneaked a peek to see a blan standing at the gate. Quickly, I took the keys to the gate and invited him to enter.

  As soon as Jelo saw a blan, he realized that I hadn’t been joking. But Jelo had no language to communicate all his projects with a blan. He spoke only Creole. I made introductions, but Jelo and Paul were like a couple of babies trying to communicate without a language in common. For each question that Paul asked, Jelo responded in the affirmative, “Uh hmm. Uh hmm.” Always the same, without a clue what he was agreeing with … or to. I finally had to declare the conversation a draw so that Paul and I could go to the guest house where he was staying to begin our lesson.

  Paul knocked on the metal gate to the guest house. The security guards came to answer. They looked at me with contempt, as if I was a beggar. I had never met them and they knew nothing of me. But they were clearly unhappy about my presence with a blan. I had to ignore them in order to continue with my agreement with Paul.

  We went to a large room where there was a big blackboard. He brought chalk. I asked him to be at ease and to ask whatever he wanted. I taught him some vocabulary and grammatical rules. We also touched upon Haitian history and culture. We came to the end of our hour. He gave me 500 gourdes and I left him. He said that I could come anytime to the guest house to see him.

  When Paul accompanied me to the gate, the security guards were angry. They clearly did not like to open the door for a poor Haitian. My class was written in every rip of my clothes and in my undernourished body. They told my story. My pants, frayed at the bottoms, were kept from falling by a rope tied around my waist that was wasting away. But the guards heard me speaking French, the language of t
he rich, with the blan. Who did I think I was?

  The next day, in the morning, I went back to see if our class would become a course. I knocked on the gate. The security guards snarled, “Who is it?” I replied that it was the friend of Paul. They already knew that. There was a small slit in the metal door of the guest house. I peeked through it. I saw they were angry. I was bothering them. They took a few minutes before even getting out of their chairs. It was supposed to be their job to respond to the gate. They said, “Paul isn’t here.” However, when I turned my back to leave, Paul came to the gate. He had heard me from inside the grounds. He asked me why I hadn’t entered. I had to explain. He got me through customs and we went again to the big room and we picked up where we had left off the day before.

  With these attitudes, from black and white, I started to ask myself how I might survive this course.

  But Paul and I continued. This time, we decided to spend half the class at the blackboard and the other half just walking the streets. On the streets, he asked me how to say things, how to buy from the street merchants, and so on. He wanted to know how the local people lived. I explained everything honestly. We returned to the guest house at lunch time. Paul told me to just line up with the blan and to take what I wanted. The whites took salads and meats with a minimum of rice. I piled my plate with rice and sòs pwa nwa with a tiny piece of chicken. Even my plate was the opposite of the blan.

  The security guards could see us in the dining room through the forged ironwork surrounding the veranda. If there was extra food after the guests had eaten, then they would get it. Otherwise, they would have to pay for their own food. So, I decided to take my plate and offer it to the guards. I told them not to take it as a gesture of humiliation, but rather just what they would do for me if the situation was reversed. They accepted it and ate it ravenously. They thanked me and became friendly.

  A few hours later, I decided to return to see if things had changed. This time, when I knocked at the gate, they jumped up and answered it without any resistance.

  We communicated through our second language, French. Paul suggested that we exchange our maternal languages, English and Creole. I did want to learn how to speak English; it could help me in the future. So, we ended the Creole classes almost before they began. Instead, we decided on a fair exchange of languages. As an exchange, there was no more payment. It changed our relationship. Now we were both teachers and both students. However, from time to time, Paul would share some money with me, understanding my condition.

  chapter nine

  A WEEK AFTER WE BEGAN our language exchange, Paul and I were at ease with each other. I would visit him in the guest house and he would come to see me where I lived at Jelo’s. Sometimes, we would go on little trips to explore the capital region or the markets. Each time I returned, Jelo would start complaining to me.

  “Ti bòs, we don’t have any rice or oil. We need provisions,” Jelo would complain. His attitude toward me had changed. Since I now had a blan friend, he believed that I should take the responsibility of supplying the foyer.

  I started to feel pressured. I held him off, “Okay, okay. I won’t forget,” I would say. But each time I returned to our property, he would be waiting for me at the gate to see what riches I was bringing home. He imagined me returning with a sack of rice on my head, carrying a gallon container of oil. I always disappointed him. He always had recriminations for me.

  He would press me on the subject, “Ti bòs, you don’t understand what you’ve got. This is a big occasion and you’re letting it slip through your fingers. You have to ask him for what you want. If you don’t tell him, he won’t know that you need food.”

  Sometimes, I would respond along the lines, “Okay, what if he takes me for a liar? Obviously, I’ve been eating. He’ll ask how it is I’m alive. I must have been eating something.”

  Other times, I tried to educate Jelo, “What are you thinking? Why do you assume that all blan are rich? Paul isn’t rich.”

  Jelo was ready, “Are you saying that? Or did Paul tell you he isn’t rich?”

  “Not only did he tell me, I can see. We talk about things and I can see that he isn’t rich. In our conversations, I can see that material things are not the most important for him. Just, he wants to live in dignity like everyone has the right.”

  “Okay. So he’s not rich. But he can buy a little sack of rice. Even for a blan that’s not rich, a sack of rice is nothing.”

  I asked him, “And you, what do you know about blan? A blan can be even worse off than you. You think that if a blan lands in Haiti, that every strand of hair represents a gourde that has to be plucked before he leaves?”

  “Voilà! Now, I see. You are afraid to go to the blan to ask for something. I can see that going to school was a great waste of time for you. You didn’t learn anything about getting ahead.… It’s true you have an education, but it’s got you all in a muddle. Things are simple: just get a sack of rice. If I had gone to school like you, I would already be rich. Even though I never went to school, I find ways to get ahead. When I came here to the capital, I had no support from my family. This little job I have pays only 750 gourdes ($17.88 US) a month. You can’t feed a mouse on that! Each time the doctor comes by, he gives me fifty gourdes ($1.19 US) for food. But then weeks go by when he doesn’t come. So, tell me: if I had to depend on those fifty gourdes, would I still be alive? Hardly! He knows that food is expensive. He and his family are just mean. They spend many thousands of gourdes on their food every week. Me — they give fifty! They tell me not to waste it. Buy some bread, they say. They have no idea how hard I work to get out of this situation. I have to fill the reservoir with water and then sell buckets of it to the people around here who don’t have any. I have to be clever to stay alive. To eat each day, I need to buy a marmite of rice and to share it with the other poor people around here. They pay me just enough so that I will be able to do the same the following day and keep going.”

  The strategy that Jelo had devised was beneficial to the poor, and to himself. The local poor people paid him a small sum for the plate of rice that he made available every day. When he put all that money together, he was able to buy a full marmite of rice that he would cook the following day. If the poor had purchased their rice separately, it would have cost more. Jelo saved by buying in bulk for a number of people. The scheme assured him that he would eat every day. Also, it was a pretty good deal for the local poor people. Otherwise, they would each have had to buy coal and water for cooking if they did it separately. Only the street merchants, who depended on selling little sacks of rice and coal, lost a part of their market when Jelo bought in bulk.

  Jelo’s question made me think. For Jelo, the word “intelligence” referred to one’s success at exploiting others. If I couldn’t do that effectively, then he questioned the value of my education. However, “intelligence” could also refer to wisdom, to understanding how society and the economy and the environment function so that we make wise choices. And adapting to new information, to new facts. That would be a different kind of “intelligence.” Jelo had no patience for that line of thought.

  The doctor who paid Jelo 750 gourdes a month to protect and care for his property was also demonstrating Jelo’s kind of intelligence. He had been educated many decades earlier in Saskatchewan, in Canada. However, when the poor targeted the bourgeois homes, including his property — three different times over the previous decade — he would finally pay a big price for his privileged position. This had been a middle-class neighbourhood under Duvalier. As time passed, however, his home was increasingly surrounded by penniless peasants who couldn’t easily integrate into life in Port-au-Prince. There were no jobs, no services, no infrastructure. These paupers built shacks along the ravines, alleyways, and anywhere a couple of square metres stood vacant. His neighbourhood become uninhabitable … for him. He had to move way up the mountain for security. The doctor was bitter. “I was only trying to help the poor,” he lamented, looking at the violenc
e and insecurity in his old district. The doctor wanted to help the poor and profit very well from doing it. When he could no longer live there, he asked a friend from his church to find him a peasant who could act as a security guard. He was looking to pay peasant wages to an employee in the city. But Jelo did not stay innocent for long.

  For the doctor, medicine was first and foremost a business, not a service. When the poor targeted the clinic, it was because they were the most in need of its services, but excluded by their very poverty. They couldn’t afford the clinic. It would be difficult to find a poor family that had not lost someone because of the lack of medical care. The paupers in that neighbourhood suffered from all of the diseases of the poor. For them, the clinic was an insult.

  Once you exploit, you have to accept being exploited. Once you accept being exploited, you learn to exploit. You have to refuse both at the same time. Neither the doctor nor Jelo would call that intelligent.

  Jelo was frustrated with my reluctance to exploit my new blan friend. “Okay. Since you refuse, I’ll show you how to do it. Watch and learn.”

  One day soon after that, Paul and I returned to the courtyard of the clinic. Paul greeted Jelo. In response, Jelo took Paul’s hand and led him to a private corner of the yard. “Ti bòs doesn’t need to know what we’re talking about,” he started.