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

If in fact the goal was to develop self-reliance in Jeannette, not only would the missionaries have supported local entrepreneurs, but during the yearly "hands-on" trips the missionaries also would have brought with them appropriate items such as farming tools, fabrics, blankets, lamps, and up-to-date medical supplies, rather than the hard candy, plastic cups, balloons, and sample vials of expired medicines. These items did nothing to help poor people escape their oppression and misery. Furthermore, they contributed to the significant amount of dumping I saw around the clinic and the school yard.

Since none of the missionaries on this particular trip had bothered to master the language of the people they served, I wondered if they could assess the people's needs and measure the effectiveness of their interventions. For example, What happened to the young people once they completed the last grade at their Mission school? They returned to their shacks to face hunger with the rest of the community.

I saw and heard discontented people who watched as the priest obtained a TV antenna, solar and wind generators, a garage, and a bamboo fence to keep them out of the mission house, while their children remained malnourished and thirsty in the mud huts. Weren't the people of Jeannette the reason so much money was donated to this project? Weren't their pathetic photographs used to touch the donors' hearts and pockets?

Now it is clear to me what the promotional bulletin meant when it said: "Do something for your soul, go to Haiti." For this mission, Haiti is a place to relax, have nightly cocktail parties, and feel important as you watch the natives beg for your leftovers and trash. Returning to my homeland with the Haiti Mission project did do something for my soul: It wounded it deeply.

Every morning from the time I was three

I had to open my mouth to receive

two tablespoons full of emulsion scott

sometimes I would pinch my nose so I couldn't smell it

making it easier to swallow that pasty white liquid

that left my tongue tasting of salty tears and cod liver oil

Often we had to chase it with homemade V-8

watercress celery beets spinach carrots and all sorts of

other things that grow in the earth to give little weaklings strength

Despite the grimaces pouts tears

despite the nos the I don't want tos the cries the wails

the screams that often preceded this ritual

eventually I would drink it

not because it's good for me

but because I had to I didn't have a choice

I had to open my mouth

let it slime down my throat

and swallow

When I was about fifteen

One day my father called all three of us in the living room

and told us we had to let go of our dreams

and be serious about the future

Poor man not even a son to carry on his name

he had been cursed with three girls

and we wanted to be a singer a dancer and a writer

After calling us by our names he said

I want a doctor a lawyer and a dentist

I remember saying to him

I don't care if I never have any money

(though I would change my mind later)

I don't care if I never have any money

even if I live in a tent as long as I have my music

What are you asking me that I live this life my life for you

In all my sassiness I dared him.

And when would I live my life? when you die?

the horror on his face I have since forgotten

but I remember mother verbally mourning her wasted life

having given him the best years of her life

and realizing that I only get to do this "life thing" once

so I was going to do it on my terms

as long as I have a choice

I remember the first time I went back to Haiti

It had been 17 years

but I had to hide in a hotel so daddy wouldn't know I was there

Desperate to refill all the gaps in my past

I stole back memories at night to retrace my childhood

I begged my cousin to drive me around

to the house on rue darguin

but it was long gone

and had been replaced with an edifice that

breathed the same coldness as the Pentagon

then we went to the gingerbread house

that too had been demolished and reconstructed

though the mango tree was still there

le petit chaperon rouge had been closed for years

vines interlaced with the iron of the gate

I went back again two years later

and I remember a conversation with a man

who has lived in Haiti longer than I did

this white man who says he loves my country

the country that I saw in newspapers and on TV

for seventeen years

the country that for the longest time I only went to in translation

we were talking about class and color

I was asserting my gramscian ideals

about the importance of and the need to fight both wars-

the war of maneuver and the war of position

especially the war of position

so we can take back spaces

hence why I tie my head with a scarf when I go to those places

you think they care he replied

they don't care about your aunt jemima head

uhmm! even after over twenty years in this country

you still have no other references I said quietly

Oh these ethnic notions I thought enraged

after over twenty years in my country his social limits were intact

for me that was the end of the conversation

after all this was not a teach-in

How do you overturn four hundred years of history

in less than one century?

I've been thinking a lot about writing a poem

about the meaning of the word diplomacy

about how this word is just another four letter word

about how this word is just another way to say

I am going to fuck you

not only are you not going to enjoy it

but when I am done with you

you're sure to say thank you

and like my sistahgurl says you might even pay me for it

in accrued debt interest

Can life exist without ideals

Can life exist without dreams

where does your soul go

when all you do is function

where does your spirit go

when all you do is function

I am only 31 years old and I am getting so cynical

I am trying not to be

I've been reading Shakti Gawain

trying to do creative visualization

trying to imagine

‹ imagine all the people

living life in peace ›

trying to imagine a better world

so I can change my world

so I can change the world

But I have been having a lot of difficulty

I keep remembering my friend B with her three kids

who after a year still can't get a job

its not because she's not qualified

or that she's not trying

but because she's not from the right family

she doesn't have the right connections

and her skin is too damn dark

worse

she doesn't play by the rules of the game

she doesn't do safe cocktail conversations

she was on the sidewalks in the 80s

bringing down the second revolution

she was there on the streets

in front of the palace

in front of ministries

in front of police stations

waiting

waiting to lay claim to dead bodies

no one else would acknowledge for fear of losing their lives

you know in Haiti one often inherits social scars by association

you know in Haiti one often inherits fatal scars by association

scars

wars

social fatal

death by association

tell me how to imagine a better world in this place

tell me how to imagine a better world in this place

where even after operation restore democracy