Brush with Haiti (20 page)

"Do you know what it means to run around like a chicken with its head cut off?" my mother once asked me. When we were growing up, she openly shared information about the things she knew.

"Like crazy?" I guessed.

"Just flopping around with no direction, no sense," she said. "I've seen it with my own eyes. My father would chop the head off, but the chicken wouldn't die right away. It would just run around the yard a bit, until it fell over." It was hard to get the image out of my head.

My mom did not generally dwell on gruesomeness or boast of experiencing such things. She was just matter-of-fact about it. She is one of the most genuinely kind people I have ever met and she did not purposely try to get a rise out of us.

She just wanted to pass on the knowledge. She was always pretty comfortable around food animals. She could clean fish and stuff sausage casings without batting an eye. She was not sadistic about it, or squeamish. She was just good about being in touch with her food. I romanticized her life as a young girl with the sounds of downtown Hammond, Indiana not yet silenced by the demise of Great Lakes urban economies and still enhanced by roosters waking her in the morning.

In the rural Caribbean, animal sounds fill the air. People there are close to their food, and it is not uncommon to see chickens walking the property, in and out of homes, in and out of kitchens. To be served poultry or eggs in their presence can be unnerving at first, but one gets used to it. In Haiti they are often thin, having subsisted on limited feed. Knowing I could learn to accept food that had once been alive under my feet, I wondered whether I could witness the slaughter. There were times when I was tempted to ask local cooks whether it was really true that chickens could run around with their heads cut off. It was not as if I doubted my mother's word. I was just curious.

The use of chickens and/or roosters in voodoo rituals is even more a mystery to me. I do know their blood is used though I have not witnessed it myself, at least in person. A friend of mine who consulted with a practitioner of Santeria near Chicago confided that she once underwent a "cleansing" that involved the use of a chicken. She left it at that, knowing I would probably not want to hear any more. In the documentary on voodoo I showed to my class, a chicken's neck was slit, just enough to cast droplets of blood across a person in need of healing. Understanding that much made me think twice when I heard crowing, particularly in urban communities home to Caribbean immigrants.

These are the images that circled through my mind as I lay awake that night, listening to their incessant cries. I also reflected on the fact that I took only a few photographs in my entire time there. I took one of a metal-worked art piece in the gift shop at Hospice. It was of the sun and moon depicted in a way similar to the
yin
and
yang
of Taoism, and reminded me so much of the man I still held in my heart. I fantasized that we complemented one another that way, and remembered him telling me in a phone call from California that he found sun and moon tiles to grace the fireplace in the bedroom ofhis new house. I knew that the piece would not fit in my suitcase and I knew that having it would only delay the inevitability of letting him go once and for all. But a picture seemed harmless.

I also took two photographs from my balcony of some boys playing in front of the small store across the street. Together they summarize why I hesitate to take photos there. To capture images of people is to capture so much that is wonderful about Haiti. But it can also put the photographer into the position of gawker. It is best to ask permission to take a photo of someone and even then it makes me uneasy, imagining how I would feel if someone from a foreign country stopped me on the street at home to take a picture. In a deeper exchange between people it can interrupt the flow offriendship or association, but boys horsing around while they purchased a Coca-Cola depicted a simple moment of pleasure, and I thought I would go unnoticed. They did not see me while I took the first, but in the second one of the younger ones stared up at me as if to ask why I thought I had a right to do that.

The last couple of photographs I took were of the sun setting on the hills of Port-au-Prince. It was gorgeous. My thoughts turned to those hills and the crowing exchange that continued as they darkened. I wondered about the likelihood of cockfighting in the area, so prevalent in the islands. When I commented to someone on the strength of the crowing, I was told it was due to the roosters being bred for lives of competition. It showed in their communication. They were expressing voices of oneupsmanship.

But that was not enough to explain what I heard in the night hours preceding the earthquake. Hospice St. Joseph sat high and the balcony outside my room looked out over the city to the west. On previous evenings I had watched the sunset -one of the most beautiful I had ever seen - hills lying to the left and to the right. They were densely populated with people living in concrete block homes, some having lived there for generations, many more having come there in recent decades. The beauty of the early evening sky cast the dwellings in a whole new light. Up close, their lives seemed unimaginably hard. From a distance, they were peaceful - quietly settled amidst the dark hills and bathed in glorious colors known only at the end of the day.

The daytime rooster crows of the city often go unnoticed as traffic and the noises of work and play take the stage. But in a city where only a small percentage have access to electricity, activity dies down with the setting of the sun and the occasional honk of a horn or shout to a friend begins to stand out. So, too, do the sounds of the animals. When thinking back, I remembered hearing sounds of dogs during previous evenings, barking back and forth from hillside to hillside. And I remembered hearing roosters, too. But nowhere near what I heard during the night before the earthquake. The crowing went on all night long.

Perhaps I slept lighter knowing I had a few last minute tasks to take care of in the morning. My driver was scheduled to pick me up around 9:00 or 9:30 and it is never easy for me to sleep soundly the night before a trip. Still, the sounds were greater than that. And they were nonstop.

"Er-er-er-er-errrr!" one would wail.

"Er-er-er-er-errrr!" another would carry on.

It was not so much that they were competing. This was not oneupsmanship. It was as if they were carrying a message as far as they possibly could - one to the next from my hillside to the next and the next and the next. Then, before continuing far into the distance, back again. They were not replying to one another as much as they were spreading the word.

God, just let me sleep, I thought. I did not know what had provoked them, but their cries clearly differed from those of previous nights.

Only sometime after the earthquake did I think again about that night, and wonder whether they knew something we did not. In following months there emerged an interesting discussion on an internet social network devoted to nature. A researcher was seeking input on how the animal world might be tuned in to natural disasters. I reported my experience, and was assured that the roosters undoubtedly sensed what was happening under the earth. If only we had know what they were trying to say.

The drive to the airport was one I will remember always. The morning air was clear and crisp. The sun shone. People sold their wares along the streets. Others boarded
tap taps
for work and shopping. Children smiled on their way to school. I leaned on my arm, resting on the open window of the truck, and took mental pictures of everything I saw. I considered taking the camera from my purse but decided against it. Life was getting better for the people of Port-au-Prince. They seemed at peace and full of hope. Things were moving forward little by little and I did not want to intervene in any way with the click of a shutter button. When I landed at O'Hare news of the earthquake sharpened those images.

The next day I returned
to my office. Part of my intention in being there was to establish some sort of normalcy, but I also needed to prepare for the new semester, which was due to begin the following week. I had promised myself that my syllabi, assignments, and schedules would be completed before I left for Haiti, but I got caught up in the holiday rhythm and took the idea of a break from work to heart. This would not be the first time I was rushed to make course preparations in just days before the start of classes and I had taught these before.

But this time there was no sense of anticipation, no sense of excitement or pressure, no surge of adrenaline. Not a drop. I sat paralyzed at my desk. Before I had left for Port-au-Prince I planned to discuss Haiti with my classes at some point in coming weeks, and would work it into the semester schedule. I had made such reports on travels to other countries before. But now I felt as if I had nothing to say. There were no words to describe what I had experienced; what I was still experiencing. I did not even know what it was that I was experiencing.

My work e-mail inbox was full of messages. Limited internet access in Haiti had caused them to pile up. I dazedly scrolled through them. There was one from the University Relations department that stood out. E-mails from that office are generally notices to the campus community describing recent press releases sent or activities coming up. But this one seemed to be addressed only to me. I wondered how they could be contacting me so quickly. I opened it.

Apparently the local newspaper was working to create a Spanish version of its weekend edition for the Hispanic community and a reporter wanted a comment about their new project from me. I had become known as the Latinamericanist, teaching everything from the Inca and Maya to recent Latino immigration trends in Indiana. I sat with my hands on the keyboard, not knowing at first how to reply. The weight that had settled over me was difficult to bear. I took a couple of shallow breaths and began to type.

"Hi , Wes. It sounds like a wonderful idea, but I'm not sure I will be able to talk with them right now. I just got back from Haiti yesterday. There was an earthquake. Kathy." Of course, he must have heard about the earthquake, but I could not find any more words.

When I ran into my colleagues they had varying reactions. Some had not heard that I was in Haiti and engaged in normal, everyday conversation as if nothing had happened. It was just as well. I wanted so much for work to be normal. A few others stared with pained expressions, not knowing what to say. I nodded and introduced topics unrelated to anything they had expected. Still others stopped dead in their tracks and told me how happy they were to see me.

"It's horrible what happened in Haiti. Just horrible," lamented an academic advisor in the hallway near the technology labs.

"Yes," I replied.

"I can't believe it. Have you been watching the news?"

"Yes."

"Of course, you have. Is it true you barely got out? Were you close to that area? "Well..."

"That's what I heard. I just can't believe it. Can't believe it."

People who worked in administration began contacting me. I knew the campus rumor mill was swift and hearty, but I was surprised this was even on their radar. Evidently a number of key players were in a meeting when someone noted I had been in Haiti and suggested I did not get out in time.

"Don't you remember that you had scheduled a later flight and then changed it?" the Dean's assistant reminded me.

"Uh... " I had forgotten that I initially planned to leave in the early evening, but realized I rarely get anything substantial accomplished on a travel day, so I might as well rebook my flight for morning.

"I still had the original paperwork and so did West Lafayette. We thought you were still there and couldn't get out!"

The university system had implemented a process by which the main campus was notified when any faculty member traveled to a country on the Department of State watch list. Purdue is widely known for its global research and teaching projects and couldn't prevent faculty from traveling to so-called dangerous areas, particularly when some of those places are home to international personnel and students. The phone call I received from West Lafayette's International Programs office to check on me was reassuring. I apologized for failing to let them know I had changed my flight.

Encounters with colleagues that struck me most were with two Chinese professors. The first, with George, was especially warming. George is kind and excitable, and at that time headed up our research office. A professor of economic history, he liked all things international, and had solicited my participation on a number of projects involving faculty and students. The summer before, I had traveled to Hong Kong on a collaborative research and teaching trip led by him. He was tireless and enthusiastic every moment, full of insight and anecdotes. He helped me come to appreciate history even more than I had, if that were possible, through his personal accounts of his vocational calling to the discipline.

George grew up during the Cultural Revolution, when intellectual pursuits in areas as truth-telling as history had become taboo, even punishable. When he reached college age, the widespread attacks on academics had come to an end, and he let his parents know his love for history had driven him to choose it as a major. They were crushed and fearful, having witnessed the government's attacks on historians through adult eyes. Nonetheless, he became a historian.

Our travels to and through Hong Kong allowed time for more conversations and the historical differences between the former British colony and the mainland became crystallized. I had visited Beijing, Shanghai, Harbin, Dalian, and other major cities in northeast China during a student recruiting trip in previous months. In comparing the two regions, one of the things I found most apparent was that Hong Kong was more, in a word, orderly. British rule had infused an unparalleled sense of formality there, and its experiences as a financial capital of the world had brought it a seasoned modernity that could not yet have developed in the rest of China, where growth was recent, fierce, and rampant. Still, some cultural similarities remained.