from June 15

Dear all,
Hello from my first full day in Haiti! And it was a pretty full day, though my first bit of work won’t happen until tomorrow.

Today we spent the morning in orientation, going over the code of conduct for volunteers, house rules, and a crash course in Haitian history and customs. Locals Baby and Samuel gave us our first formal Creole lesson (though the girls yesterday taught me a few key phrases like “I love you” and “shake your booty”). Then we heard in more detail about the different projects currently taking place in and around Croix des Bouquets.

What I didn’t realize is that GVN’s presence in Haiti is fairly recent. Though the other camp in Jacmel is more established, the camp here in Croix des Bouquets is very new, and the program here at Ecole Shalom is still very much in development. It’s an exciting time to be here, as new projects are being proposed over meals, after random connections made throughout the day.

After a delicious lunch (pasta in a thick, fishy broth and fresh veggies), we all hopped in a tap-tap for a bumpy drive into the center of Croix des Bouquets. There, we changed a little money and explored the marketplace. It was a bustle of constant movement and bright colours, with music blaring from passing tap-taps punctuating the commentary on the World Cup games coming from various television sets scattered throughout different buildings. After a bit of a walk, we settled into a cafe so we could email home, and ended up staying on to watch a bit of the game and have an ice-cold Prestige (a delicious lager) under the shade of a bright tarp roof.

We got back after an inevitable mechanical adventure (our tap-tap broke down in the middle of a crowded street, and I think it started up again by sheer collective will). Just in time: the first rains of our trip came shortly after we returned. It was a beautiful downpour. Upstairs in Ecole Shalom is one unfinished section, with wooden beams stretching up to the roof but no outer wall. As the water poured down from the tarp roof, we quickly discovered the pressure was more than enough to lean out over the courtyard, clutching the beams, for an impromptu shower. It was so completely spontaneous and refreshing – and guilt-free, as I’d hesitated even over my thirty-second shower last night for fear of depleting the limited resources.

After we dried ourselves up, we met on the lower level of the compound to discuss in greater depth the different projects we’ll each be assigned to tomorrow. There are several: a well-established orphanage (Dr. Robert’s Orphanage), a more needy and underdeveloped orphanage (Good Samaritan Orphanage), a housing construction projects (Homes for Haiti/Haitian Gardens), a medical clinic, a new construction project to build a disaster-proof Geodome for the collective storage of medical supplies, and various English classes.

Tomorrow, I will go with a group to Dr. Robert’s orphanage. We’ll see tomorrow what the routine is like, but veteran volunteers have told me it’s very focused on play and just positive, loving interaction with the kids. I think I can manage that! The little girls I met yesterday certainly made it very easy – they have a very sweet curiosity, a huge desire to learn and interact, and very little fear or hesitation. This was good for me, as I was quite hesitant myself, not wanting to impose myself or confront any big boundaries with no context or experience under my belt. I didn’t get a chance to pause – as soon as I stepped out the door, the darling little girls and their older sisters pulled me right into a halting but happy Creole/French/English conversation. The focus on family, on stories and on the home is a familiar enough foundation for those of us on both sides of the cultural gap.

Anyway, I won’t know what the experience will be like until tomorrow! So I will reserve my comments until then. After our meeting, we had the most utterly fucking delicious dinner I’ve ever had in my life. I don’t know how they season the salads here – they’re a sort of coleslaw, but with the perfect balance of chili and lime and something I can’t quite figure out. Spicy and divine. We also had these delicious cakey things...I don’t know what they are, but they seemed to be fried and made from a plantain paste. But the topper was chicken that was just...too delectable to accurately describe. It was rubbed with the most amazing spices and seasonings, barbecued and blackened, but still totally tender and...shit. I’m sorry, guys, you will never eat anything as delicious as what I ate tonight.

It’s been a fairly relaxed day, which is nice, but I’m looking forward to launching into something new tomorrow. On Wednesdays, Ecole Shalom hosts a women’s gathering in the afternoons. It’s a chance for women and girls to let their hair down without any gender pressure; like it or not, the male presence in mixed groups, at least at this compound, often seems to be domineering or at least distracting. Anyway, longer-term volunteers say it’s been a great space for women to chill out and relax.

Tomorrow, when I come back from a morning at the orphanage, I will help to organize a women’s soccer game! There is a large soccer field at the Ecole Shalom compound, and the men and boys are often playing, but women don’t join in their games. We’re organizing stretches, laps, drills and then a full game! It should be a blast. God knows I am not athletic in the least and I’ve got no experience playing soccer, but I’m totally game. I will update you tomorrow night with a list of my sport-related injuries (to body and pride).

It is only 8 PM, but I am totally exhausted. It’s partly mental, I think; around 7 in the evening, it gets dark very rapidly after beautiful, intense, fruit-bright sunsets. As the heat begins to slowly ease and the space is suddenly darkened, I find it very easy to fall asleep to the hum of the generator. I’ve been doing a bit of reading, in my spare moments, which partly seems to be a vestigial connection to something that’s totally not part of my life right now...and partly seems to make an odd sort of sense.

Mostly I brought poetry, things I can read and reread, but I also brought an old copy of Mandeville’s Travels. It was published in 1919 – so, ninety years ago – and though I didn’t realize it when I bought it, it’s never been read. It’s all in Middle English, which means that I am reading it slowly and savouring every sentence, but it’s also a neat and tactile interaction with my book because I’m sitting with a knife in my lap and cutting the sealed quartos of the book to turn the pages.

For those of you unfamiliar with my obsession of the last nine or ten months, Mandeville’s Travels is a thirteenth century travel narrative detailing the voyage of an English knight through the Holy Land to India and China and back to England again. Though the author adopted “Mandeville” as a pseudonym (pseudopersona?) and essentially plagiarized much of his account, it is rooted in a literary tradition spanning herbals, genuine travel accounts, encyclopedias, hagiography, and many other types of writing.

In his “travels” (or what he represents as his travels), Mandeville describes the places and people he encounters with incredible detail. What seduces me is the botanical narrative, and the rich vegetation that permeates the text. Often one reads descriptions of unusual fruits, plants, exotic animals – things modern travelers still encounter, and still struggle to describe. Now, as I am in a context where I’m doing the same thing – seeing sights I never could have imagined, and rediscovering things (like mangoes!) in their native environment only to realize how different they are...I feel even more of a kinship with Mandeville.

Initially, I found the Travels interesting because Mandeville seems in many senses to share my travel values. That is, the things I most appreciate about traveling and the things I tend to notice strike some people as unusual. I have a passing interest in monuments, historical places, beautiful architecture – but I am more allured by the idea of peoples, the rich variety of culture, and the incredible natural beauty all around me. I tend to spend most of my time examining native flora, overturning stones on the beach to pick out their different qualities, looking at how people interact with their environment in meaningful ways. The Mandevillean style of traveler, even if invented in this text, is totally sensible to me. Especially now, I enjoy vicariously experiencing the exotic, and exploring someone else’s attempt to define it and express it.

Okay, it’s twenty past eight and I am ready to curl up and fall asleep. We have an early start to the orphanage tomorrow, and I want to be well-rested. I am thinking of everyone often, though not too often – sorry guys, but Haiti is just so rich and absorbing. With the warm air in my lungs and the sharp scents in my nostrils and the dirt on my feet and the spicy food in my belly...all the energy I have left will go toward digesting my day, eyes closed, stretched out in my little tent. It’s been a good day. Love to you all.

Jess