Edwidge Danticat - The Butterfly's Way - Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States

My life as a Nyabinghi Razette has not earned me friends nor has it brought me wealth. However it has connected me even more to my Haitian self and has given me the aesthetic and spiritual freedom that I have always sought. Some people feel that a Haitian cannot be a Rastafarian. I don't see any contradiction between my lifestyle as a Rastafarian and my ethnic identity as a Haitian. Those who do not see the obvious parallels between us have a narrow view of both Haitians and Rastafarians.

Perhaps the closest analogy that can be drawn between Haitians and Rastafarians is through spirituality. Haitians and Rastafarians share spiritual paths (Vodou and Rastafarl) that have roots in Africa and that continue to act as positive forces in the world. Members of the African diasporas from different countries practice their own forms of spirituality such as Obeah, Condomble, and Santeria, just as there are different groups of Rastafarians, from the Twelve Tribe Rastas to the Nazarite Rastas.

Another issue that promotes the separatist view between Haitians and Rastafarians is language. In the Rastafarian trod, or lifestyle, the English language is prominent. Irits, the Rastafarian language, which is not to be confused with Jamaican patois, is overly influenced by English to the extent of drowning out other languages such as Haitian Kreyol . I am often appalled at the ethnocentric perspective of some English-speaking Rastafarians who go to great lengths to discredit and discourage other languages, especially Haitian Kreyol . A transnational Haitian, I was born in the United States and spent my formative years (age one through eleven) in Haiti; I speak English well enough so that it is relatively easier for me to adapt to Irits. At the same time, I have to recognize that Irits is one way that most non-Kreyol-speaking Rastas identify themselves as other-than-Haitian.

In spite of these struggles in and outside of the trod, my faith as a Nyabinghi Rastafarian could never cancel out my identity as a Haitian. I love Haitian music: mizik rasin, konpa; Haitian food: diri hole and barman peze. Now, as a vegan who does not eat meat, I cook brown rice with peas and I eat tofu and seitan instead of griyo and boulet . In fact, my version of Ital, or Rastafarian cooking, is Haitian food with vegan substitutes. By adopting an Ital or vegan lifestyle, I am fighting the diseases that have plagued many people in my life, including family members, friends, and acquaintances, who have suffered from diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart failure. Without forcing my lifestyle on anyone, I do think that a Rastafarian vegan diet might help many Haitians in the United States who are living under stressful conditions in crowded urban centers in New York, Boston, and Miami or are adjusting from a familiar tropical climate to a cold foreign one.

One of the most treasured manifestations of my life as a Razette and as a Haitian is expressing my love of colors, especially in fabrics, in dresses and skirts, as in the regal dress and headwear that African women wear. I love to wrap my dreadlocks in a beautiful festive Afrocentric fabric, praying for strength as I do from my African and Haitian ancestors.

During Nyabinghis, when Rastafarians gather to chant praises or Isis to the Empress and Emperor of Ethiopia, men are asked to uncover their dreadlocks while women are asked to cover theirs. When I was a "bald head" or had not yet become a Nyabinghi Razette, I thought that black people, including Haitians, who read the Bible were being brainwashed into accepting white domination. However, as a Razette, I became aware of the fact that many of the people described in the Bible, including the Queen of Sheba, King Solomon, and Jesus, are black Africans. Since contemporary scientific evidence shows that civilization began on the African continent, it follows then that Eve's and Adam's descendants would be black.

Rastafarl, provides me with a space to explore such ideas. Being a Razette gives me the spiritual freedom to create and re-create myself as a woman of physical and spiritual strength and power. My identity as a transnational Nyabinghi Razette, Haitian, working-class, dark-skinned black woman, doctoral candidate, mother, and wife is best captured by the creative and artistic framework of the collage that joins me not only to the immediate Haitian dyaspora in the United States, but to the larger African community all over the world.

My life as a Nyabinghi Razette encourages me to seek the truth about the condition of all black Africans on earth. Both as a Razette and a Haitian, my goal has always been to be free and to be myself. Both as a Razette and a Haitian, I want to live with the truth that black people have been the makers and builders of strong and beautiful civilizations. And they will continue to be.

I was twelve years old when I was tricked into exile. One weekday morning, as I was preparing to catch the school bus, my mother confronted me with her latest finding in what was then my burgeoning delinquency problem. Because I had neglected to cover the pot of rice from last night's dinner, the cockroaches had easily invaded and spoiled our leftovers. We quarreled: She blamed; I denied. And suddenly, forgetting to whom I was speaking, I made the horrible mistake of responding to one of her comments with the expletive "So?" In retrospect, I must have said the word with too strong a hint of exasperation, with too much of the sense that I had grown quickly inconvenienced by her diatribe. Not only had I said "So?" I had dramatized it by rolling my big insolent eyes. She had never liked that word so; she thought it was too curt, too arrogant, and too defiant. The word had no Haitian equivalent to which she could relate, against which she could measure its power. Especially now that it was being used in the context of an argument, she felt safe in assuming the worst of a word whose meaning she did not completely understand. "Pa di'm so," she said as she turned to stare at me in utter disbelief and disgust. "Don't tell me so," she repeated. "Do I look like one of your cronies that you can speak to me in such a disrespectful way?" My mother and I had been having many arguments like this one lately, but this dispute finally brought our conflict to a crisis.

She had had enough of my attitude. She deemed me too Americanized- too saucy-to handle. Her Haitian upbringing (the ruler by which she measured good and evil) could no longer tolerate such unfilial behavior, so she threatened to punish me by sending me back to New York to live with my father. She warned that as soon as I returned home from school, I would find my bags packed and ready for me to be sent away. The sauciness lingered: "Good!" I retorted. "I don't like Florida anyway!" Not taking her threat seriously, I sauntered off to school with an air of cool defiance. But because of the argument, I knew I had missed my bus and so looked more the fool than the victor I wanted to be; to save some face, I walked out of the house singing, "I love New York, I love New York" to the tune of a commercial jingle that she and I both knew. Clearly, my eyes were not the only things on a roll!

When I returned home, sure enough, my mother handed me my luggage and then, along with my uncle, drove me to the airport. Walking through the airport, I summoned the same cool saunter of nonchalance that allowed me to keep my dignity only a few hours before. But underneath that so cool exterior lay a completely incredulous and regretful prodigal daughter. How could I be so foolish? How can she be so serious? She's blown this thing out of proportion. Does she really mean to send me away? Am I really all that bad? Why must I always be so rebellious? Why does the sign over my flight gate read: DEPARTURE TO PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI?