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

by Vilmond Joegodson Déralciné

  Once that neighbour had left to find a taptap, a church brother of Deland came up to offer his help. He had a truck, called a kantè, used to transport merchandise. It is larger than a taptap. There are two benches along the sides in the back for people to sit and room in the centre where merchandise can be piled or, in this case, people can stand. The problem is that there is nothing for people to hold onto to stabilize themselves. He offered his kantè to transport people from the wake to the church and, after that, to Saut d’Eau for the burial.

  There were many people at the wake who wanted to attend the funeral. Now they could get there in the back of the kantè. There were also those who saw that this could be a good chance to travel to Saut d’Eau at our expense.

  Two of my biggest problems seemed to have disappeared.

  My brothers and sisters and I prepared. I had just finished dressing when I heard a strange noise outside. I immediately thought that it was the beginning of another earthquake. I rushed outside to see my neighbour calling to me while jumping down from an old dilapidated taptap, “Here we are! I found a taptap to go the morgue.”

  It was too late to start looking for another. I gathered some friends who could help me carry the casket. We got to the morgue early. I showed the pass that the undertaker had given me to the morgue officials. I verified that the body that I was recuperating was indeed Deland. Sometimes morgues switch bodies so that the funeral ceremony takes place over the wrong person. Sometimes, also, a malefactor could turn a person into a zombie. The family of the zombified person assumes that he is dead. Meanwhile, after the funeral, the sorcerer can take the body and reunite it with its soul. The zombie can then be under the control of the evildoer. If the zombie should awaken in the morgue and try to escape, the morgue workers can kill him for good in order to not lose the business. So, it is common practice to check the body for signs of violence. I recognized Deland by a mark on his face.

  It was now seven o’clock. We had thirty minutes to get the body to the church and prepare it for viewing.

  The taptap seemed ready to fall apart at any minute. It was fighting against itself, as though different parts of the vehicle wanted to go in different directions. The tires were worn. And it complained loudly about the state of the roads, sputtering invective out of its tailpipe.

  And so it announced its approach to a commissariat of police. The police came out to see what was happening. A vehicle in Haiti has to be in an outrageous condition to attract attention. But this taptap was in a class of its own. It drew the attention of everyone, including the police. That there was a casket in the back added to the intrigue. Since the deceased is normally transported to a funeral in a hearse — and never in a taptap — the police had reason to be suspicious. The police asked the taptap driver for his licence.

  “What are you doing with a casket in the back? Where are you going?”

  We responded that we were taking the deceased to church for his funeral.

  “A funeral! Who authorized you to carry a coffin around Port-au-Prince in a taptap?”

  I said, “It’s true, Chef. It’s my father. We didn’t have the money for a normal funeral. So, the taptap driver offered to help us to get our father to church, where people are waiting.”

  The policeman didn’t believe me. “What kind of nonsense is this? You think I’m going to let you carry on like this?”

  “Officer, you think that I am lying about the death of my father?”

  “Are the police aware of this burial?” he asked.

  There were many cholera victims at the time. The authorities had prohibited their transport around the country for fear of spreading the disease. Some families were defying the authorities in order to take their loved ones to the family burial site. It was likely that the police assumed that we were involved in that sort of scheme. If not worse. So, I handed the policeman the official pass that the General Hospital had given me, authorizing me to transport the body.

  He accused me, “I don’t believe this. You wrote this!”

  What was the use of an official pass if no one believed it? While I was arguing with the policeman, the people in the taptap with the coffin climbed down. Among them was an elderly woman. She asked the officer to let us pass, since we were already late.

  He looked at us, dressed for a funeral, and then looked at the state of the taptap, shaking his head between disgust and amazement. He decided to let us carry on, but said that there were other police up ahead that would surely stop us.

  We were now late. I kept my eyes open for police along the route, praying that we not be stopped again. As the taptap chugged and puffed its way up the final hill, hundreds of people waiting in the courtyard of the church stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed. The vehicle had only barely outlived the person it was transporting. But it bravely inched its way into the courtyard of the church. People assumed that this old taptap was bringing some of Deland’s pauper friends. But when they saw me jump down, they understood that it was Deland himself who had arrived.

  Some of Dad’s old church brothers were shaking their heads. They asked me if the morgue had not given me a gurney to wheel the casket into the church. I answered no, that was beyond our means.

  The church had been rebuilt after the earthquake. It was clean and modern — even painted! Deland had worked hard, along with others in the congregation, to rebuild it after the earthquake. The taptap was a stark and noisy contrast to the church.

  Some of them came to me and asked, “Who is responsible for the funeral? You?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “There aren’t any others, older?” they asked.

  “No,” I replied.

  “And the morgue didn’t give you a gurney for the casket? If we had known that, we would have helped. Deland was a brother who had sacrificed and given a lot for the church.”

  These same brothers had known, as did anyone who opened his eyes, what the earthquake and illnesses had done to Deland. Now, the taptap was a visible symbol of Deland’s troubles, and ours. They claimed that they would have helped. That was a tactic to hide their shame that they hadn’t helped when it was needed.

  I understood at that minute, with all of these grown men in front of me with one voice, that shame is the consequence of not sharing troubles and poverty. If poverty were shared, then there would be no more shame. The concept would disappear. Poverty would have no meaning either. However, when everyone tries to hide his and her poverty, it becomes shameful. People want to distance themselves from it. I had no intention of hiding my poverty. I was even starting to like the old taptap that had, against all odds, arrived at the church with the casket.

  One of Deland’s contemporaries asked me, “How many children did Deland have?”

  “Seven.”

  “And his wife, she has been dead for a long time?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry to see how things have gone. It’s not like this we would like to have seen Deland’s funeral. If Deland has some children who are not in school, I would be able to help. I have a school. We could offer scholarships for them.”

  He gave me his telephone number. I wondered why. In this case, it wasn’t school scholarships that we needed, but food and clothes. I wondered why the offer was coming now, in these circumstances and in front of his church brothers. Years earlier, even months before, this offer — quietly and sincerely offered to Deland — might have been encouraging.

  “Deland might have appreciated such an offer when he was alive,” I said.

  I thought out loud, “When we all aim to be rich and important, this is the result. When we share our poverty, then no one would ever be in this condition.”

  I asked them if they would help me to bring the casket into the church. Inside the church, someone had prepared two chairs to support the two ends of the coffin.

  After the casket was in place, Mme Dieumerci, Mme Bolivar, and two other of Annie’s sisters arrived. Since Annie was pregnant, it was customary that she remain a
t home. Her family came up to embrace me and offer sympathies.

  When Annie’s family went to see the body, our old neighbour Marie, the mother of my childhood friend Lòlò who had died in the earthquake, came to ask me if there was a way that she could accompany Deland to Saut d’Eau. I told her to stay close to me and I would make sure that she got aboard the kantè.

  After the ceremony, everyone gathered in the courtyard of the church. I saw a cousin of my father who had brought his family in his minibus. He asked me if everyone was going to Saut d’Eau. The majority, I said, but we didn’t have enough vehicles. I thought maybe he was going to offer us his minibus. Instead, he asked me if I could pay for his gas. How much, exactly? One thousand gourdes ($25 US), he answered. He had always said that my father was important to him. Deland had always helped him. An old neighbour of Dad’s, his good friend, overheard and handed me the 1,000 gourdes to give to him. She said, “It’s not a loan. Just keep it.”

  After I passed him the money, he asked how we were transporting the casket to Saut d’Eau. I pointed to the taptap. He laughed, “That’s what you’re using as a hearse?! Better to put the coffin on the top of my minibus,” he boasted. “I have great doubts that that taptap can make it to Saut d’Eau.”

  He prepared to leave for the countryside, but in his minibus was simply his family. I had assumed that he was going to take others to Saut d’Eau. Instead, he had seen this as a good occasion to take a drive, which I would pay for, to his birthplace with his family.

  I looked for the kantè that Deland’s friend had promised. I asked one of his church brothers. He told me that the kantè had broken down and was in the shop. That was that.

  I asked James to get started on the way. He and several friends put the casket into the taptap and then headed off for Saut d’Eau. Once they putt-putted out of sight, I turned to face the huge crowd waiting for their rides to Saut d’Eau. I felt like Moses in front of the Red Sea.

  They were all looking directly at me. Everyone wanted to go to Saut d’Eau. I had no idea what I was going to tell them. I motioned to them to be patient a minute. Some understood my predicament and removed themselves voluntarily from the equation. There remained about thirty, asking me when the kantè would arrive, would there be room, and so on.

  I simply waited for a miracle. I had no money and I knew that the kantè was out of commission. I held my head high … to avoid looking anyone in the eyes.

  I didn’t have the courage to tell the crowd that the kantè was no longer available, especially my new in-laws. Since Annie was pregnant, she remained at home, according to Haitian custom and practice. I wanted her family to see — and believe — that I was a responsible son who could organize his father’s funeral. I also didn’t want them to see that my relations weren’t acting to help me out. Instead, they were profiting from me and waiting to see how I would manage. I wanted people, especially the Dieumercis, to think that I came from a noble, generous family. Unfortunately, the generous, noble member was now dead.

  One of Deland’s church brothers quietly called me aside. I knew him to be poor, even worse off than Deland had been. He passed 250 gourdes ($6.21 US) into my hand. He had seen what was happening and he understood. I’ll never forget that.

  I asked the crowd to follow me onto the street. I knew that 250 gourdes would not get us to Saut d’Eau. But it could get us to Titanyen, the large market well outside the city where the peasants from the north brought their products and the merchants from the city came to meet them. My own family in Saut d’Eau had brought their harvest to Titanyen for decades. Getting to Titanyen was a start. I would see where it led us.

  The thirty people piled into two taptaps that took us to Titanyen. There, the vehicles dumped us in the middle of the market. The market operates on Tuesdays and Fridays. The funeral was on a Thursday, and so Titanyen was empty.

  The taptaps dropped us off next to the workshop of my uncle. He was working. He had, needless to say, not attended Deland’s funeral. He told us that he had seen the taptap with James and the casket pass by hours earlier.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked me.

  I could see that he was plotting to “fix” whatever new problem I might have. “Everything’s fine,” I lied.

  His nephew, my old friend Willy, was now a furniture maker with his own shop in another part of Titanyen. I went to see him. He loaned me 5,000 gourdes ($124 US) and helped me to find another kantè, much larger than the one we had initially hired, to take us to Saut d’Eau. The truck driver charged me 2,500 gourdes ($62 US) for a return trip to Saut d’Eau. The truck was so large that the thirty of us took up only a third of the space. Willy decided to come along.

  We were in the middle of the dry season. The road that wanders through the mountains to Saut d’Eau was dry and the truck was kicking up all kind of dust. Before long, none of the mourners were wearing black. Everyone appeared to be white and in white. Our hair and even our skin was dusted white. This was the same route that Deland had initially taken to Port-au-Prince, with James and me in straw sacks across the back of a donkey. There had been no road then. This road was only a few years old. Peasants like Deland used to follow the mountain paths to the capital. This road was still mostly used by peasants and their donkeys carrying heavy loads.

  After awhile, we passed a very old taptap that had broken down on the side of the road. Its right side was suspended in the air and resting on a pile of rocks. It appeared to have suffered a flat tire without the benefit of a jack to replace it. So the driver and passengers had lifted it by hand and held it in place with rocks. That’s not unusual. On the ground, next to the taptap, was a coffin.

  We saw James and our friends sitting on the exposed roots of a huge tree, laughing and joking. We have known this tree for decades. When Deland used to go to and from Saut d’Eau, we would stop here and sit under its shade for a rest before we continued on our way. The chauffeur was struggling alone with the flat tire. A tire lay on the ground next to him. He was putting on a good show, but it was clear to everybody that there was no way that the taptap could carry on. It had barely outlived my father. It had reached its final resting place, between Titanyen and Saut d’Eau.

  James and I went to speak to the taptap driver. He said that the taptap wasn’t in the best of health. We argued that that was his responsibility. Normally, people don’t pay taptap drivers until they arrive at their destination since so much can go wrong. Drivers only collect their fees at the end of the route. In this case, his job was to get the casket to Saut d’Eau. Since he couldn’t do it, then the contract was no longer valid. We suggested that he should return part of the 2,500 gourdes ($62 US) that we had paid him. But he said that he had no money left. He said he had spent it all on gas and preparing the taptap. He couldn’t return what he didn’t have. Moreover, he asked if we could help him out. He said it wasn’t his fault, but the fault of the taptap. He gestured to it as though to plead for our compassion. The trouble that this damn taptap had caused him, we wouldn’t believe! Couldn’t we help him out with a little extra money?

  Time was passing and the heat was mounting. The body was no longer on ice in the morgue. We knew we had to get going. We put the coffin into the kantè and left the driver and his taptap to reconcile their differences in peace. Then we all continued on our way to Saut d’Eau together.

  Eventually, we passed Deland’s property that we had sold for the funeral. Nearby was a river that we used to love in our childhoods. We would go there to bathe and to fish and to explore. But it was gone. Others were also reduced to tiny trickles, their water all diverted for various projects. I missed the vibrant and beautiful rivers.

  Now, the konbit system that Deland grew up with is dead. Peasants work for each other, but they expect to be paid for the day, like any job. In Deland’s day, the entire community loaned themselves out in konbits. As they loaned themselves to work for others, the konbit would come to work their land in turn. That community aspect has disappeared. Increasingly, ea
ch peasant is on his own.

  The kantè went as far as it could. There was no way it could navigate to the burial place. After the road, it was able to follow the donkey paths for a little while. After that, we were on our own. My peasant relatives saw us and came over. Willy, who is strong, took the front of the casket and asked if someone would take the other end. One of the peasants stepped up and helped him. As they carried it, the others chanted along the way. The land was bumpy and I started to worry about the quality of the wood that my uncle had used. Claude had been able to do miracles as far as the appearance of the casket was concerned. But the planks used underneath were still rotting and unpredictable. I feared that they might give way before we arrived at the crypt. “Go slowly,” I advised. “Take it easy.”

  We arrived in the lakou where my father had begun his life. As we approached, we heard people crying out. I wanted them to be the cries that I remembered from my childhood, the cries of tet ansanm, of unity. But these were cries of division. We passed the house that Deland had built for Cécile, that they had inhabited for a couple of unhappy years before Deland left for the capital. Now, his little sister lived in it. She wept loudly and paced from one side of the little kay to the other. Never did she move beyond the limits of her own residence.

  In the past, death surmounted divisions among families and friends. Feuds were put on hold in the case of death. Now death had amplified the feuds.

  We descended to the kay of Deland’s elder sister, she who had asked us for 15,000 gourdes ($373 US). About a hundred people had assembled there. Even the family of my mother, Cécile, had come. We opened the coffin so that they could pay their respects. A few people were sobbing. The majority were piling their plates with rice and tiny pieces of pork or complaining that they hadn’t yet got anything.

  After we closed the coffin, a peasant led us to the tomb where my father would be placed next to Cécile. He told us that there was no more money to complete the work. I asked what work he was talking about. All that had to be done was to close the tomb with cement once the coffin was placed inside. I could see that the cement was waiting.