Found at: http://www.anguillaguide.com/article/articleprint/2405/-1/133/
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HEARTICALLY YOURS: Offerings From Haiti by Ijahnya Christian
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The donkey works, but the horse is promoted.
- Haitian proverb
As we approach the International Day of Solidarity with Haiti on Wednesday May 18th, I am torn between sharing the persistent flow of gory details being lived and experienced on a daily basis by some of the poorest people on earth and sharing some of the richest products of human creativity that this region has produced.
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Ijahnya Christian
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Since the mainstream media gives us some of the somewhat laundered accounts of the Haitian situation on a regular basis, I thought that this column could reflect on some of the greatness of the Haitian spirit as reflected in the country’s literary genius and hopefully in this sharing we can find ourselves reflected.
The first example is an excerpt from Jacques Roumain’s (1907-1944), Masters of the Dew, one of the precious items on loan from Rita Celestine-Carty and it would be a real treat if you could have this in her voice. It is short and sweet and in the common heritage that Anguilla shares with Haiti, the setting could well be the Valley Bottom.
“Simidor would beat a brief prelude, and the rhythm would crackle under his fingers. In a single movement, they would lift their hoes high in the air. A beam of light would strike each blade. For a second they would be holding a rainbow.
Simidor’s voice rose, husky and strong:
The hoes fell with a single dull thud, attacking the rough hide of the earth.
That woman said, man!
Behave yourself!
And don’t touch me!
Behave yourself!
The men went forward in a straight line. They felt Antoine’s song in their arms and, like blood hotter than their own, the rapid beat of his drum…They raised their long-handled hoes, crowned with sparks, and brought them down again with a terrific precision:
I’m in there now!
Bring it out! Oh!
What one bull can do,
Another can too!
Bring it out! Oh!”
If this does not remind you of something Anguillian, then you are either young, and an ignorant victim of our failure to teach our young what it means to be Anguillian or you are not Anguillian at all. In any instance you need to go out and buy yourself a copy of David Carty’s Nuttin Bafflin’ and a copy of Colville Petty’s book on the old East End School and It’s Community. Then promise to go to the library and read all that you can find on the Anguilla Revolution.
And now, an offering from a young novelist named Edwidge Danticat (1969), whose writing was introduced to me a few years ago by Carole Devonish. Last year, Danticat’s 81 year old Uncle, Father Joseph Danita, died in a U.S. detention facility days after he had fled to the United States seeking political asylum but receiving only “the Haitian treatment.” Eerily, the writer describes the process below in a piece entitled Graduation, published in New Writing from the Caribbean (Macmillan Caribbean, 1994).
“…Someone dressed in a navy-blue suit, carrying a black suitcase, said in a professional voice, ‘These Haitians can’t go back.’
‘Why can’t or don’t you want to go back?’ the judge asked me. ‘Don’t you love your native country? How can anyone claim any kind of attachment to the human race if he or she has no pride in the land that bore his or her ancestors?’
‘I love no country – better or worse – more than I love my own country. It is a poor and oppressed country, but it is my country. I am here in your country because people in my own country will pluck the hairs out of my skin and stab me with fire simply because my family has criticized the corruption, thefts and murders.’
No one could put my words in the judge’s language. I knew he neither heard nor understood them. He did not want to hear or understand me...”
The graduate was not to suffer her uncle’s fate.
“I was proud. I spoke good English; children beat me no more. I wore good clothes, uncoarsed my hair, and worked, too. I had more money than I needed. How Americanised I must have become.
A laugh echoed around me. Americanised? I? The AIDS carrier, the zombie, the voodoo beast, the caged, the homeless, the pitied, the despised, the feared, the ridiculed? And Americanised too? That was only the dream…”
What is not a dream but a reality cogently analysed by George Lamming in his essay, Coming, Coming, Coming Home (House of Nehesi Publishers, 1995), is the statement I would encourage all readers to ponder deeply. And it is this:
“It is a curious irony that the poorest of all Caribbean territories is also the richest and most secure in its collective sense of identity. There is no Caribbean territory where this is stronger or more authentic.”
It is a sentiment with which I absolutely concur and for those of you who may have wondered, it is the gift of the lesson that Anguilla can learn from Haiti.