Haiti Noir

Miranda abruptly says that she and Alexis are going somewhere together, and she doesn’t need me for a couple of hours, so I go off to find some of the plants in my notebook. I even find the serpent’s herb, and it looks exactly like Grandmère Lucille drew it.

That night in Papay, we sit with Alexis under the gazebo of his modest house, nestled in a heavily guarded compound. For a man about to lead a march, Alexis looks enviably serene. He’s showing us the posters, like the ones with the fish, that he uses with people who can’t read. Small bats flutter in the distance as night approaches. When Alexis’s wife appears to announce that dinner is ready, Miranda seems a bit annoyed, and for a moment I wonder if Alexis is the real reason she came here.

Alexis speaks eloquently the following morning about fighting the Plan of Death, his name for what the World Bank, the IMF, and the U.S. want. He tells the audience gathered there that alternatives exist, and that just as two hundred years ago Haiti inspired the world with its revolution, it can again be an inspiration in the fight against globalization. For the first time, I really listen and let his words sink in. His call to arms lingers in the air. And then it rains. The steady drumming on zinc roofs is greeted by chanting and singing that lasts for hours.

Miranda stands up to present a painting she had secretly bought in Cap Haitien on our behalf, and which she is now offering to Alexis so that it can hang in the new dormitory. She thanks the crowd with the only two Creole words she knows, “Mèsi anpil,” and then sits down to thunderous applause. As I’m about to head back to my room, Manuel grabs my arm.

“This morning, an old woman came by the center and left this for you.” He hands me a stained envelope, with nothing written on it. “She said she heard you yesterday on the radio, and she knew your grandmother. She didn’t tell me her name.”

I wait until I’m in my room to open the envelope and pull out the folded yellowed pages, torn from a notebook. It’s Grandmère Lucille’s handwriting all right, and the torn pages are from the very same notebook I brought with me.

I can’t wait to tell Miranda the whole story, to see the look on her face when I say, Guess what? My grandmother knew Zora Neale Hurston. She helped her when Zora came to Haiti and wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God. She’s that Lucille, the one in Tell My Horse. My grandmother. This must be the reason she visited me in my dreams. To show me this.

It’s three in the morning by the time I drift off, lulled halfasleep by the farmers’ vigil. First the murmured Latin phrases, the Gregorian chants from nuns in sky-blue habits who came by bus for the march. Then the soft acoustic guitars of troubadours in straw hats, their lyrics as sweet as the wild honey from the bees of Papay. Dawn approaches, and for the first time in my life, I hear gospel music in Creole.

“We need to love one another other,” a woman’s voice sings, soaring and fading, trying to sow love in the dusty path of death.

We have two SUVs for the long ride back to Port-au-Prince, because some people from this center are coming with us. And, of course, Miranda is in the other van, so my story will have to wait. Despite the warnings not to march, the people voted to go ahead. Alexis’s eyes are calm but red-rimmed when he shakes our hands and thanks us for coming. He kisses Miranda on both cheeks and they look right into each other’s eyes. Am I out of it or did something happen between them? It’s true I didn’t see her much last night. Who cares? I feel triumphant this morning. Nothing can bother me now.

Alexis tells Manuel and the other driver to be careful. I take my seat of honor in the front, next to Manuel. Our two SUVs are whisked through the gates that quickly close behind us.

We’re stopped by uniformed men who, after peering into the cars, brusquely wave us on with their guns. I’ve never seen so many people with guns. We pass a village perched on the edge of a steep cliff. Below is the Lac de Péligre, the Lake of Danger.

Manuel is telling us how Americans created the lake in the 1950s to stop up Haiti’s largest river, the Artibonite, the lifeline for this region, known as Haiti’s breadbasket. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers planned the dam. It was supposed to be a development project that would bring electricity to millions. In Port-au-Prince, assembly plants and agribusinesses, along with some lucky families, did receive electricity. But upstream, peasants from the valley who used to live alongside the river ended up fleeing with whatever they could carry. These were the “water refugees,” whose pastel dwellings cling hopefully to these cliffs. I peer down at the charred skeleton of a truck at the bottom of the ravine. A tiny swerve in the wrong direction. That is all it took.