Let Sleeping Lizards LieCultural Observations That Will Change the Way You Think about God, Yourself, and OthersBy John H. Connorwesleyan publishing houseCopyright © 2003 The Wesleyan ChurchAll right reserved.ISBN: 0-89827-259-9Chapter One Haiti "Essential" Is a Relative Term We had two assignments to Haiti, one in 1993, before the United Nations troops came, and one in 1996, after the UN troops had established some order. The most visible changes were at the airport, where the people who hassle you unofficially were restricted to the parking lot. Also, there were noticeably fewer gunshots at night on the second trip. By the time we arrived in Haiti for the first time we had been missionaries for more than twenty years and had lived and traveled widely in Africa (twelve years in Zambia) and Asia (five years in South Korea and one year in the Philippines). We had heard about Haiti's prevalent poverty-it is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, and its people continue to risk death on the high seas trying to get into more prosperous nations of the region. Yet when we arrived, we were shocked at the prosperity of Haiti compared to other Asian and African nations we had visited. The marketplace was piled high with food, fruits, and all kinds of goods. There is no doubt that it is an underdeveloped nation, but we did not expect to find such plentiful stocks of merchandise. And on Sunday mornings, everyone had shoes to wear to church. That amazed us. Collectively, Haitians continually compare themselves to more prosperous nations in the region. There is an underlying belief that Haiti's "wealth luck" has been siphoned off by others and cannot be recovered. Haitians seem convinced that prosperity is a limited commodity. Therefore, the prosperous must be eliminated so that the limited supply of wealth can be dispersed again, enabling others to snag some. There is a general despair in Haiti, which I believe comes from the lock that Voodoo has on the nation. The negative picture of Haiti, however, should not be painted too broadly. There are many well-adjusted, happy folk in Haiti. One of my fondest memories is of a week's stay in a remote village that was safe and peaceful. I had that same feeling every time I attended church there, even in the heart of Port-au-Prince. January to June 1993 Money System The money system here confuses me. The official currency is the Haitian dollar, but there aren't any of those around, even though prices are generally given in Haitian dollars. The money that is available is the gourdes (pronounced guut). Most of the gourdes are so dirty that you can barely see the numbers. I know the value of what I have only because someone told me. The sizes are different too. Usually, you pay the Haitian dollar price with the right size of unknown gourdes. The gourdes is worth five times as much as the Haitian dollar, and the Haitian dollar is worth about half as much as the U.S. dollar, although the value fluctuates. I went to the market the other day and bought some sandals; they told me I paid too much. How do they know? Guns at Night Gunfire in the night is common. I have heard shotgun blasts, semiautomatic fire, and automatic fire. The missionaries don't go out or travel at night. Living here increases your love of light over darkness. Screams at Night I hear screaming periodically, but I think it's just Marge taking cold showers. It seems to me that a mission organization that owns a boat, four cars, a truck, refrigerators, ranges, and washing machines could afford a water heater. Maybe the dance of the cold shower is an anthropological phenomenon that requires some missiological interpretation. There might be a psychological benefit from cold showers that is not obvious to the untrained eye. My concern, however, is for the untrained skin. Lizards There are a lot of lizards around. I've named a few. There's George and Gracie on the east end of the porch. Gracie must have had a headache the other day, because George was chasing her all over the place. There are also some fairly large lizards on the west end of the porch. Every time they get close-about once an hour-they blow out their throats in a bubble. I call all of the west enders Fred because I can't tell them apart. One lizard in our living room looks like a little dinosaur with short front legs and an upright stance. Her name (how do you tell the sex of a lizard, by the way?) is YupYup, after the little dinosaur in the movie Land before Time. Some of the lizards make a sound like a mouse getting its tail stepped on. All of them seem to be able to change colors like chameleons, and they can jump like crazy. I'm convinced they can catch bugs out of the air by jumping. The lizards range in length from about a foot long down to very tiny. I like having them around; they're restful to watch and useful unless you're an entomologist. Iron Market I do not like the Iron Market. It is a typical Third World market, with stalls, stuff piled high, crowds, and smells. The one difference is the aggressive guides. "Hey I'm your guide, I'm your friend, I help you. Okay? Ver' cheap! You Christian, I Christian, one dollar, okay?" If you try to buy something, a crowd forms immediately with forty of the item, and everybody yells, waving stuff in your face until there is no air and just noise. And you'd better be aware of where your money is at all times and of who is touching you. I cannot think of anything that I need bad enough to endure that, even if it were free. Stuff It probably says something about Americans that we always learn the word for stuff. In Korea it is chime, in Zambia zintue, and here baguy. The work team says it all the time in English. "OK, let's get this baguy loaded." "Where's my baguy?" Beggars What do you do about beggars? They are all over the place. The ones that really get to me are the ragged boys with big, innocent eyes set in filthy faces and with palms upturned at about chin level. If you give to one, it's like the Iron Market revisited. One little guy stood at my window for half an hour, wrenching my heart while I waited for the shopping group at the post office. I knew that if I gave him anything, I would be deluged with requests until the team got there. There seems to be no end, and to whom do you give? At the corners, where traffic is crawling, one little beggar runs out in front of a car and cleans the driver's windshield. If you give him anything, a second bounds through the traffic and cleans the passenger-side windshield, and on the off chance that it will work, a third is already wiping down the front left fender. Where do you stop? Maybe the question should be where do you start? Filling Potholes There are the "working for da money, Boss" guys in the street. They are usually two entrepreneurs with a shovel who throw dirt into potholes and stand in the street passing a hat (one shovels while the other "hats"). If you don't give anything, they kick your car. Some of them do pretty good work. Other pairs just show up with the shovel and both of them hat. Thank you, Lord, for good jobs and steady incomes. Sleeping at Night Insomnia is no joke. We have been here almost a month, and I have not yet slept a full night through. Last night I woke up at 1:00 A.M. to the sound of a gunshot. There was also barking, which seemed to increase in volume, then a house siren began to wail. The barking moved up the hill toward the mission. Finally the siren stopped. Then there was a shotgun blast, massive barking continued, a different house siren began to wail, and there was another shotgun blast. Missionary Steve says I'll get used to it, but I have doubts. He says that the noises are good because the thieves have been detected and will have to move off. Isn't that encouraging? Now I have to stay awake when it's quiet too! Selling Goats Special Notice: Animal rights folks should skip this part. Humanitarians shouldn't have read this far. How do you get a live goat, chicken, turkey, duck, or pig to town in Haiti? On TapTap, public transportation provided by a large truck. "Tap tap" is the sound you make when you want to get off, hence the name. You cannot put your goat inside, hanging on the back, or piled on top; people have priority in those places. You must hang them on the side by their feet. This is often done, to the dismay of the goat or other animal, but it does get him to town. Who knows? He may be more tender for the ride. There is nothing in the world like a TapTap sailing along with goats, chickens, and ducks decorating the side, people gaily hanging on the back and piled on the top. The sight and sound is unforgettable. Dogs and Chickens The longer we're here, the harder it is to remember the time when I actually liked dogs and was ambivalent toward chickens. Those were days of innocence, long before these sleepless nights. Now, I suspect every chicken I see of only pretending to be awake during the day so he can crow all night. The dogs, at least, are honest. Village Pump Communities in the Western world have lost a certain ambience with the passing of the village pump (water, not Texaco). People talking, gossiping, drawing water, tromping around in the spilled water, bathing, washing vegetables-we've lost that atmosphere, along with hepatitis and amebic dysentery. The village pump is also where Third World people learn about anatomy. The little kid stands naked, being scrubbed down by his semi-naked mom, who says, "Be sure to wash behind your ears." He says, "Mom, what's an ear?" So there you have it, the first anatomy lesson. Rahrah Bands The rahrah bands were in high gear when we got back to Portau-Prince. This is full-swing voodoo. It is a monotonous horn blowing (one note each on two or three horns), drum beating, and the clanking of what sounds like a piece of railroad iron. The song has only one verse, which goes on for hours. It is interspersed with "singing" and whooping and other sounds learned from the Port Margot crows. This also takes place at night. On nights when there is no formal rahrah band (together in one place), there is rahrah band practice. This begins with one horn practicing his one note on, say, the first beat of 4:4 time. Then, a second horn with a different pitch comes in on the third beat. Then another horn comes in on the fourth beat. The result goes something like "honk, pause, buug, beep; honk, pause, buug, beep; honk, pause, buug, beep." Or it may be that a drum picks up three beats in a cadence, somebody with an iron pipe fills in one beat, and a big drum gives a onebeat time mark. Once the pattern is set, they pick up the tempo, faster and faster, until somebody can't keep up and it all falls apart. That may take twenty minutes. Then, maybe a horn will start in 3:4 time-rest, rest, toot-and the others fill in as before. Practice may last a couple of hours (often beginning at about 9:30 in the evening), and the "band" may be spread out over a mile. In fact, it sounds as if those on the ends may be playing in different bands from the one in the middle. For all I know, the whole island is in the band. It is amazing when you think about it: to participate, you only need to know one note and how to keep time, and that's negotiable. You don't have to go anywhere to practice, and you don't have to know the people you are practicing with. You can quit whenever you feel like it. (Hey, what's one note more or less in a whole song?) One drawback is that there is no melody. In fact, every "song" is different, depending on participants-and on which part you can hear. The Lizard Union I begin to suspect that the lizards have a union. There appear to be at least two shifts, day and night, and two areas of authority, trees and yard. The tree lizards also claim the porch. We saw a big lizard catch a smaller lizard and eat him; that was kind of interesting. The little guy's tail was going in circles like a clock hand with a broken spring as he went down. The big lizard didn't move for quite a while. I can't imagine what he felt, but I don't think it was remorse. I thought I heard a self-satisfied burp. Then he just waddled off, belly dragging. Maybe the big lizard was management. Come to think of it, I haven't seen Gracie around for awhile; maybe I misunderstood George's intent. The Citadel King Henri Christophe was king of the northern part of Haiti in the early 1800s. Having been a slave himself and having no desire to be a slave again made him a little paranoid, so he built the Citadel. The Citadel is a fortress set on a high mountain, twenty miles from the sea. It rivals any fort I've seen in Germany, England (including the Tower of London), the Philippines, or Korea. The fortress has hundreds of two- to three-ton cannons and mortars, all carried up the mountain by slave labor. The Citadel had a drawbridge and internal water supply, and it could house a couple thousand soldiers. It was built entirely without cement; they used cows'blood, molasses, and lime to make the mortar. Can you imagine squeezing that many limes? The construction cost 20,000 slaves their lives. For being a former slave, Henri didn't have much sympathy for people who still were. Anyway, it appears that Henri never had to use the fort, so the thing was a waste of time and effort. His army rebelled, and Henri committed suicide (a silver bullet to the heart). Actually, it was not a complete waste of time because it gives Jean Baptiste (and thirty others) a place to work as a guide. There are also about forty donkey people trying to make you slide off their donkeys' rear ends going up and off their heads coming down, plus the little guy that runs along behind to whip the donkey, and the owner pulling the rope. All of these people require money in increasing measure. The trip gives the guide about four hours to weasel money out of us. From our party of eight, he got about two thirds more than the amount originally agreed upon, plus kickbacks from vendors. Of course, he had to give a portion of that to the officials at the gates. Jean Baptiste also has ten kids, a sick mother, a dying father, and an invalid brother with eight kids to support by himself. The Citadel is worth seeing, once. But they won't let you in without a guide, of course. That's how the gate people get their kickback. So grin and bear it-but keep a tight hold on your wallet. More Lizards I'm still fascinated by the lizards. The butterfly gaily dancing through the sunlit yard or the dragonfly playing his helicopter games has no idea that hundreds of hungry lizard eyes follow his progress. As soon as he lands, the lizards stealthily move towards their prey. Even before he lands, the lizard community is full of anticipation. Continues...Excerpted from Let Sleeping Lizards Lieby John H. Connor Copyright © 2003 by The Wesleyan Church. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. 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