A writer's story - January 13, 2010

There’s a very good site that provides a pretty complete list of Haitian/Caribbean authors one should know about called ile en ile.


Hopscotching through certain of their links, I came up a story – an earthquake story – that will surely become part of the legend of what happened on January 13, 2010. One of the most famous contemporary Haitian writers is Dany Laferrièere, author of Comment faire l'amour avec un nègre sans se fatiguer. And one of the most famous contemporary publishers and critics of Haitian literature, who lives in Montreal, is Rodney Saint-Élo. Both writers were in Port-au-Prince for the Etonnants Voyageurs writers conference. Both were staying at the Hotel Karibe. And they were actually having dinner together when the earthquake happened. They’ve left two separate accounts of the dinner on the web. Laferriere’s is here and Rodney Saint-Eloi’s is here. Laferriere has a sharp eye out for what my Mom, if she were alive, would probably be calling God looking out for him – by which she meant the insignificant incidences that guide one past a disaster. God is in the blindspot. The writer, especially the comic writer, suspects that God is not alone in the blindspot, and that one can’t presume on what he is thinking as he sits enthroned there. In any case, Laferriere attributes his salvation to a mango and a lobster. On the day of the earthquake, Laferriere was setting himself up in his hotel room. He’d ordered a lobster. And he was concerned to find some mangos:

We patiently waited for the writers in the great lobby of the Karibé Hotel. Some were working under the trees. One could very well eat : the cooking is excellent. A lobster (in fact, it was a langouste) that I didn’t get last time because, even if it is succulent, it is sometimes difficult to digest – especially late at night. But I love it, thus I waited for the moment to peacefully dine on the lobster-langouste. But I did what I always do every time I arrive in a city : I looked around to find out if there were any mangos and avocados. I put them in my room. The mangos perfume the room. A tropical odor. It is not yet the season for mangos, but I found some being sold on the street. A little saleswoman squatting on the sidewalk, her back to the wall. A dress folded between her thighs. The white scarf. Oh how I love the tender, animated gaze of the women of this town ! Maette Chantrell bought me the fruits : five mangos and two avocados. And I didn’t even offer him a mango. How silly, I lose my head when I see mangos.

Fruits and veggies. The feast of my childhood. I love to come back at night, turn on the tele, or place a book on my nighttable – and devour an entire avocado with bread.”

And so Laferrière comes into the restaurant to have his lobster-langouste.

I chose my lobster and he [Rodney Sainte-Eloi] a poisson gros sel. They bring us a salad and bread. Too hungry, I began to eat. Rodney sees Thomas Spear [a U.S. professor of literature] drinking a beer alone in the courtyard. He invites him to join us. We chat. I ask the waiters to speed it up, because we hardly have ten minutes, as, at 5 o’clock, they are going to come for us. We elbowed the waiters a little. Because they love me, they poked the cooks…


There was a noise that came from behind my back. Terrible. As though we were being machine gunned. I turned around. Nothing. Suddenly, I saw the cooks speed past. I told myself something must have exploded in the kitchen. It took 6 to 8 seconds to understand that this was an earthquake. We ran, Rodney and me. Thomas remained to finish his beer, he said. We returned to find him. We lay down on our stomachs in the courtyard, under the trees, besides Isabella and Agathe [members of the Etonnants Voyageurs]. In diving to the ground, Rodney scratched his knee.
Suddenly, a second shockwave. I began to be afraid, for I had the impression that this was not going to stop – not before our death. I waited for the earth to open. Someone said we ought to leave the courtyard where there were too many trees and seek shelter on the tennis courts. We went. A small shockwave.
Faces were waxy. We didn’t know where we were. A cloud of dust rose above the city. Not a cry. Total silence. Total silence. »

Lyonel Trouillot again

I was a little sick yesterday, and I am burdened down with work. Sorry, then, for failing in my mission to translate some messages from Haiti. Again, today, this is Lyonel Trouillot, writing yesterday.

Port au Prince, the contrast of scenes and smells.

Tour of the city this morning on a motocycle taxi. With Jimmy, who is playing the role of private chauffeur. We found the gas in a station. Not too much of a fight. I expected more. As yesterday, when the neighborhood watched established by the young people distributed drinking water (not a lot, what they could find) to family representatives. Have I let myself be influenced by the people talking about looting and violence? Some injuries, some attempts to jump in line. No more. Certainly, there are city districts where things are a bit more complicated, but man is not devouring his neighbor to carry off anything he can.

In the districts at the base of town, scenes contrast with smells. Women wash down their stoops, sweep street corners. The large fallen chunks. A dedication to cleanliness, here. An odor of death, there. There are cadavers under the great crumbled buildings. I cross paths with people I know who have lost their near ones. We don’t speak of the dead. Interview with some French journalists. They admit that they haven’t seen the scenes of violence that everybody predicted. There is order to put in the discourses. There is also a will to begin again to live or rather to begin individual life and to begin a collective life. Some people speak of a library. Others of meeting responsible scholars. Others of starting benevolent associations of qualified professionals to inspect the buildings, to see which can be demolished, which can be used. I hear some people talking about agricultural products which should be encouraged and augmenting the production of them, nourishing and easy to produce.

Thinking of everything at the same time.

On the radio, too, I hear more and more pertinent and coherent talk. Some hours after the earthquake on 12 January and in the days that followed, we heard the silence of the state and sometimes disquieting and hallucinatory plans: abandoning the direction of the country to a scientific committee composed of great mystics (!), the sea which was going to wash over the totality of the land. … There begins to be more serious talk. One should not forget that 2010 is an election year, that the legislative voting should take place in some weeks, the presidential in some months. To find rational solutions. One of the major stakes here is not to let the earthquake put a brake on the democratic process. At the end of the Preval mandate, to put in place a provisional government if the elections can’t take place soon, that is a proposition that seems to have some echoes. The problem is that we have to think of everything all at the same time. One hears as well the spokesmen of the Haitian and American governments ‘clarify” that it is not a question of an occupation. This means that they have heard the muttering and understand that the majority of Haitians do not wish that the aid comes at the price of their political rights.

Return to the streets. Le Champ de Mars empties and fills. Yesterday, the trucks transported the refugees in the direction of the old ranch of Jean-Claude Duvalier (yes, he had a ranch, every man to his own little Texas). Their places have been taken. If the numerous streets seem empty, the shelters set up on the wastelands, in the clubs that dispose of a lot of land, are not filled. This city was as full as an egg, and even if people go south or north, there remains a lot of people.

The state, we always return to it.

Noon. New shocks. The flower pot near the computer shook without asking for my permission. We’ll never see an end to this. On the radio, they interview a psychologist about the sensation of constant disequilibrium, of vertigo, that many that people claim to feel. Its psychological, says the psychologist. Thanks for the information, Mr. specialist. But we need some information on the part of the state and the technicians to tell us and reassure us in indicating what attitude we should have concerning these aftershocks. Be it absent or present, it always comes down to the state.

Today, a new distribution of water in the neighborhood. This time, it was found by the pastor. I don’t support that man. Not because of his beliefs. But because of the noise of his preaching and his voice, which has a false sing song. But he brought water. And with the members of the watch, we discuss the future. We need to install things that don’t exist. Among other things, a small library. Need to include in the charter a clause on the sound limit for the radios. But we will have plenty of time to discuss this.

have you heard? there was an earthquake...

Obviously, I write. To aid Haiti, I’ve sent money to the red cross – and hope to send more. But I write. So why not translate some of the material I am coming across in French, I said to myself.

There is a fantastic site, Balawou, that has been publishing reportage and comment since the beginning. http://balawou.blogspot.com/ Sometimes I get the feeling that for the Americans and the English, the earthquake in Haiti was the equivalent of one hundred thousand house flies being crushed – not the kind of news that should interrupt one’s day, or be allowed to cross one’s blog, especially if you have made an important Deleuzian analysis of Lady Gaga. I however am such an old fashioned humanist that I feel all pinched in my human parts at the hundred thousand crushed houseflies. I'm even questioning the “leftist” credentials of the important Deleuzian analysis of Lady Gaga. I must be going senile.

Anyway: Lyonel Trouillot, who if there had not been an end of the world would have had a pleasant time at the Etonnant Voyageurs writing festival in Port au Prince, scheduled for 1/14/2010 – has been warding off the insanity by posting reports. Here’s one.

"Haiti, living with Death by Lyonel Trouillot.


Port-au-Prince, Wednesday 19 January, 9 am In certain quarters, the capital is like a deserted city. Few cars, few pedestrians. Ruins. And some bold spirits who try to fossick out some objects, some souvenirs, from under the fallen debris.
Really, we no longer are looking for the living. On the ruins of the house of my friend, Georgia Nicola, coordinator of the l'Atelier Jeudi Soir, we assess, with an engineer and some workers, the scope of the disaster. What is a great disaster except the sum of a thousand small disasters! Each small disaster is in itself immense. Lives, careers. Seven days after the catastrophe, the ‘after’ begins.

I ask a laborer for news about Josué, the handy man of the quarter (guard, coiffeur...). He’s dead, he is somewhere under the ruins, some houses further down. A glance towards the ruins of the said houses. Exit Josué. A young Doberman has joined us. He seems to have chosen us as his adoptive parents. His master’s house is no doubt destroyed. The day before, our friend Valerie’s family buried her, a long time member of the atelier who directed a theater school. This occurred in another quarter, at the foot of the city. A building blocked the street, like an immense projectile, in order to strike like a whip a school, a church, and a library.

You can’t weep for so many dead at the same time. It becomes almost ridiculous. In the pile, you can’t choose. I met my friend Danice, an artist for the magazine Le Matin. He lost his wife and his two children. The editor of the magazine isn’t staying there. His wife and his three children, who came from the U.S. to spend the holidays with him, are among the victims. This fucking earthquake has not left a single soul without his allotment of deaths.

Vigilance, but also extortions.

No one without his quota of deaths, that is one of the truth at the beginning of the after. I go down to radio Kiskeya, which has begun to function since the day before yesterday. I go for news. The distribution of aid is still posing problems caused by lack of coordination. The last [?] tentatives and hopes of the rescuers to take out the last [?] survivors of the debris. The small robberies of crooks who infiltrate the ruins in the night to take a computer, a gadget or cash from out under the ruins. The reactions of the police who are acting in some parts of town, putting up surveillance, often without any nuance. Vigilance, but also extorions. Where did you find that? While you are waiting, they arrest you, you can explain it later.

Some rapes. Some cases of looting. Carrefour, Pétion-Ville, le boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessalines... One thing is certain, neither the police nor the population will spare the bandits. In a number of quarters, the youth have formed neighborhood watches. The security of the zone is one of the priorities. Not evil, those who take the ones who steal. People need shelter, drinking water, food. They have neither the time nor inclination to play at democracy with the thieves, rapists and murderers.

Many questions. Question about the intention of the ones and the other givers of aid. About the U.S. in particular, which now controls the airport and announces the dispatch of troops, of new troops. The government is slowly shaking off its dumbness, but it isn’t yet sufficient nor sufficiently clear to reassure, really. I return. Port-au-Prince seems to have been emptied. Those who remain sleep in the streets. Some, because their houses have been destroyed; others, because they don’t want to enter theirs. I understand. I have developed a foul fear of showers and bathrooms. Among the rumors, the rich (there is still some in this breakdown) have reservd private airplanes. For them as well, without doubt differently, the question comes up, how to live after death?"

Haitians will rescue Haiti

Haitian history is shaped by racism and genocide. That history is sometimes difficult to tell, because it exists athwart a history we think we know, in which the forces of revolution are automatically identified with the history of the struggle against racism. But in the revolutions in the New World, this was not so – one of the British strategies against the Americans was to promise the slaves freedom. It was a cynical strategy, God knows, but it certainly complicates the epic idea of the American Revolution. And, as Benedict Anderson pointed out in Imagined Communities, the Spanish Court employed the same tactics:

“The Liberator Bolivar himself once opined that a Negro revolt was ‘a thousand times worse than a Spanish invasion.’ … It is instructive that one reason why Madrid made a successful come-back in Venezuala from 1814-1816 and held remote Quito until 1820 was that she won the support of slaves in the former and Indians in the latter, in the struggle against the insurgent creoles.”

Bolivar did change his mind – because Haiti gave him refuge. And so it was that Haiti sailed into the nineteenth century as a successful slave revolt state just as the forces of republicanism and a new form of racism – one that broke with the 18th century Enlightenment – began their long negotiation, their baleful synergy.

To get out ourselves from under these earthquakes took all of the last century.

It is, and must be, the work of intellectuals of good faith to remind us of these facts.
Yet these facts shouldn’t lead us to a dream of anger that is really an escape from present reality. And by present reality, I mean what is happening today, what happened yesterday, in Haiti – I mean the rescue effort that, as ought to be clear, reflects this past in its organizational soul. Sow when I read this story in the NYT, I wonder not about the racism of the twentieth century or the shock doctrine of tomorrow, but about the blindness of today, this hour, this minute.

“LÉOGÂNE, Haiti — The Marine helicopters began landing just before noon on Tuesday in a cow pasture here in this heavily damaged farming town about nine miles south of Port-au-Prince, kicking up strong winds and drawing crowds of the curious and hopeful.

About 125 Marines eventually landed here and planned to stay about 24 hours to unload initial shipments of water and food. They expected to spend the night camped out in the pasture.

…
The Marines passed the food they brought to the United Nations, which sent it by truck to a nearby stadium to be distributed. Corporal Sajous and other company translators filtered into the crowd to explain where the aid was going. But the message wasn’t getting out to everyone.
“Yes, they are going to give it to us,” said Son Son Maurice, 25, as he stood waiting. Asked if he was sure, he said “Yes, I am sure.”
The Marines did not leave the cow pasture on Tuesday, and what they witnessed of the damage in the area they saw from the sky as their helicopters flew in.”
Notice, again, again, notice until your eyes are bloody that this rescue treats the rescued merely as a bureaucratic problem in placement. Shall we distribute our stuff to them in X spot, or tell them to go to the stadium? Never is it a question of asking the people of Léogâne themselves to help in the distribution, to use their own wits and their own skills to set up diverse centers of rescue – to humanize those who have been shown, by the world’s plates, that it is laughable to speak of humans ‘dominating’ the world. Works of love have to be done by way of a leap of faith – that in fact human beings can love. These works of love, however, are done with such a lack of faith – such a suspicion that somewhere, someone will steal something – and such a curious unawareness that actually, the cognitive hierarchy in this situation between those who know and those who don’t puts the rescued over the rescuers – that the casualties, emotional and physical, will go up in this rescue.
I was heartened to see that certain rescuers do know this. The group lead by Paul Farmer, Partners in Health, has made it part of their mission in Haiti to use Haitians as rescuers. Farmer supposedly is close to Bill Clinton, and Clinton, frankly, is the man upon whom, at the moment, Haiti’s future really rests – depending on how vociferous he is, how much noise he makes, Haiti will swim or drown - although it has drowned and come back to life before. Drowning is how Haiti has survived.
Use your influence, Mr. Farmer.

The New Jerusalem and the old Adam: a haitian collage

"And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

10:26 He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?"

"I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there's nothing weak -- nothing passive -- nothing naïve -- in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King."

"And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.

And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.

But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?"

"MIAMI — America has a message for the millions of Haitians left homeless and destitute by last week’s earthquake: Do not try to come to the United States.

Every day, a United States Air Force cargo plane specially equipped with radio transmitters flies for five hours over the devastated country, broadcasting news and a recorded message from Raymond Joseph, Haiti’s ambassador in Washington.

“Listen, don’t rush on boats to leave the country,” Mr. Joseph says in Creole, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon. “If you do that, we’ll all have even worse problems. Because, I’ll be honest with you: If you think you will reach the U.S. and all the doors will be wide open to you, that’s not at all the case. And they will intercept you right on the water and send you back home where you came from.”

And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.

10:31 And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

10:32 And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side."

"But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people."

10:33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,

10:34 And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.

"Department of Homeland Security officials have also transferred 200 illegal immigrants from the Krome Service Processing Center here — a federal jail for people awaiting deportation — to make room for a possible influx of Haitian migrants.

The State Department has also been denying many seriously injured people in Port-au-Prince visas to be transferred to Miami for surgery and treatment, said Dr. William O’Neill, the dean of the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami, which has erected a field hospital near the airport there.

“It’s beyond insane,” Dr. O’Neill said Saturday, having just returned to Miami from Haiti. “It’s bureaucracy at its worse.”

Customs officials have allowed a total of 23 Haitians into the United States on humanitarian grounds for medical treatment, said a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security."

10:35 And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.

10:36 Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?

10:37 And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

The Looting Lie

What to say?

Read this:

"A deux ruines d'ici, une équipe de sauveteurs français -venus de Nice, de Lyon et de Guyane- ausculte en vain une dalle de béton. Sous cette toiture, devenue pierre tombale, une voix de femme s'est tue. Un peu plus haut, quelques rescapés ont pris place sous un arbre. Il y là Fritzner, un agent des douanes qui a perdu aussi son épouse. Jusqu'à mercredi, Miranda répondait aux appels ; depuis, plus rien. A ses côtés, le frère cadet de Philippe. Lui garde sous sa chaise un fusil à pompe, l'arme de service de l'aîné. « Dans l'état où il est, confie-t-il, ça vaut mieux comme ça. »"

Two ruins from here, a team of french rescuers from Nice, Lyon and Guyana vainly pound on a block of cement. Under this roof, become a fallen stone, a woman's voice has fallen silent. A little higher, some escapees have take up a place under a tree. There is Fritzner, a customs agent who has also lost his spouse. Up to thursday, Miranda responded to calls; since then, nothing. At his side, the little brother of Phillipe. He keeps a pump action shotgun under his chair, the service arm of his brother. 'In the state we are in, he confides, it is better like this."


Read this.

Kathleen Tierney: Social scientists began studying disasters in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A lot of this research was sponsored by the military and defense establishment, and the kinds of things they wanted to know about were related to nuclear war. They wanted to know how people would behave if Russia dropped the bomb on us—would they panic; would they engage in criminal behavior; would they engage in antisocial behavior; would they be able to pick themselves up and rebuild society? So, from the very beginning, researchers put a lot of emphasis on crime, deviance, looting—that sort of behavior—because that’s what their funders cared about. And there was a lot of field work done in disasters, where researchers go out in disaster areas and take a look at what’s happening. And what did the early research discover? If you go back to the 1950s and you look at some of those writings, a lot of it’s aboutdisaster myths—what people say happens in disasters versus what really happens. What these researchers discovered was that the media—even way back in the 1950s and 1960s—approached huge disasters with certain frames. When the media reports on disasters, they’re inevitably going to focus on the dramatic and antisocial, even if it’s one percent of the population committing these acts. And even back then, the looting myth always came to the fore of media reports.">Kathleen Tierney: Social scientists began studying disasters in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A lot of this research was sponsored by the military and defense establishment, and the kinds of things they wanted to know about were related to nuclear war. They wanted to know how people would behave if Russia dropped the bomb on us—would they panic; would they engage in criminal behavior; would they engage in antisocial behavior; would they be able to pick themselves up and rebuild society? So, from the very beginning, researchers put a lot of emphasis on crime, deviance, looting—that sort of behavior—because that’s what their funders cared about. And there was a lot of field work done in disasters, where researchers go out in disaster areas and take a look at what’s happening.

And what did the early research discover?

If you go back to the 1950s and you look at some of those writings, a lot of it’s aboutdisaster myths—what people say happens in disasters versus what really happens. What these researchers discovered was that the media—even way back in the 1950s and 1960s—approached huge disasters with certain frames. When the media reports on disasters, they’re inevitably going to focus on the dramatic and antisocial, even if it’s one percent of the population committing these acts. And even back then, the looting myth always came to the fore of media reports.

I am screaming

How many people have died in the last four days – 1,000? 10,000? Because of the lack of a rope. Or a crowbar. Or a wheelbarrow. Or a tent. Or water? What we are seeing played out in Haiti is the malign side of the action movie ideology. In this ideology, the people are ‘victims’, they are ‘helpless’, the must be ‘rescued’. This is the ideology that has created the astonishing spectacle of the U.S., the richest nation in the world, represented by the Southern Command, basically scratching its head for three days about how to get “into” Haiti.

The rescuers are already there. They are called Haitians. The inability to see them for what they are – helping hands, fonts of information and ingenuity, centers of rescue – is killing them.

Yes, Haiti, the poorest place in the Western hemisphere, will need an influx of doctors and nurses. But the labor to be done, the caring to be extended, the information about the places – down to addresses of houses in Delmas – is already there. Why is it not being used? Partly because emergency response structures simply have not taken into account the new world of communication – the internet. But mostly because a mindset, on both the left and right, insists on seeing the Haitians as victims, not rescuers. Normally, this is the kind of thesis that should go into an academic paper. But the letter now killeth. We observe, with sinking hearts, the cloud of witnesses whose witness is in vain. This is a typical message on facebook: “Olivier Dupoux is distributing drinking water to the victims of the earthquake in Haiti with 35 trucks he urgently needs DIESEL fuel !! Bring diesel to factory Rte #1Cazeau, corner of tabbar 34 01 11 12”. Did anybody hear it? We know in Jacmal, Claudy Lavaud Jules, who runs a hotel-restaurant that is still standing, has taken in a number of refugees. Has anybody contacted her? Jacmal, from all reports, has a working airport. Nothing is landing there. Why?

In crisis, all the old shit bubbles to the surface. We saw this in New Orleans. Well, there are geological strata of shit involving Sainte Domingue/Haiti that go back over the centuries of mass murder. Fine. I don’t expect this to change in the blink of an eye. But it is obvious, it is a fire crying in the sun obvious, that the refusal to take the people being ‘rescued’ seriously is murdering them.

In my tiny flyspeck of a life, I will not pretend this is not going on. I am screaming.