On That Day, Everybody Ate Read online

  On That Day,

  Everybody Ate

  One Woman’s Story

  of Hope and Possibilty

  in Haiti

  Margaret Trost

  Koa Books

  P.O. Box 822

  Kihei, Hawai’i 96753

  www.koabooks.com

  Copyright © 2008, 2010 by Margaret Trost

  Cover and book design © Ayelet Maida, A/M Studios

  Cover photograph © Wadner Pierre

  Photos in the text courtesy of What If? Foundation

  Author photograph © Limor Inbar

  Printed in the United States of America

  Koa Books are distributed to the trade by SCB Distributors

  www.scbdistributors.com

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Trost, Margaret.

  On that day, everybody ate : one woman’s story of hope and possibility in Haiti / Margaret Trost. — Kihei, Hawai’i : Koa Books, c2008.

  p. ; cm.

  ISBN: 978-0-9773338-9-9

  1. Humanitarian assistance, American—Haiti. 2. Food relief—Haiti. 3. Haiti—Social conditions—1971– 4. Children-Haiti—Social conditions—1971- 5. What If? Foundation-History. I. Title.

  HV161 .T76 2008

  361.9/7294—dc22 0810

  2 345 6789/14 13 12 11 10

  Contents

  Foreword by Paul Farmer, MD V

  PART I

  Their Lives Are Going to Transform You

  Osekou!

  Seeds and Signs

  In-flight History Lesson

  M’Grangou

  Son Fils

  Beautiful Mother

  Cité Soleil

  Holding Hands

  Butterfly

  Father Gerry

  Reentry 35 Another Sign

  PART II

  Like Welcoming a Long-Lost Daughter Home

  “Welcome Home”

  St. Clare’s

  Miracles

  Paint for Jezi

  Poudre d’Amour

  The Market

  Time to Share

  Haitian Jezi

  The Best Day of the Week

  Manje!

  Piti Piti Na Rive

  PART III

  They Nourished and Fed My Soul

  Kado!

  Students

  La Maison des Enfants

  Water

  PART IV

  You’re Here to Love

  Kenbe Fèm!

  Fruit Salad

  Daily Mass with Manmi Dèt

  Nighttime

  Bòn Fèt

  Muumuu

  St. Jude’s Chapel

  The Man in the Street

  Empty Pots

  Here to Love

  Pase Yon Bon Moman

  Giving and Receiving

  Map Tounen

  Epilogue—April

  Post-Earthquake Update—September 2010

  Acknowledgments

  What If? Foundation

  Koa Books

  Foreword

  This deeply affecting story about an American’s coming to terms with her connection to Haiti—and thus to a world of pain and joy and suffering and inspiration—is surprisingly unsentimental, given that her story, and the story of the people she came to know and admire, is at turns wrenching and inspiring.

  Traveling from comfortable California to the slums of Port-au-Prince, Margaret Trost encounters, for the first time, an almost biblical poverty, “spread out for miles and miles in all directions.” But poverty, she knows, doesn’t just happen; poverty has a history, just as people living in poverty have their own stories. Struggling quietly with her own comparative privilege, Trost asks herself, again and again, what forces and events left so many Haitians living on the edge and what, if anything, might make a difference.

  On That Day, Everybody Ate is the story of how Margaret Trost answered these questions with the help of her Haitian guides—most of them parishioners of a Catholic church in which the commandment to feed the hungry is taken seriously—and it unfolds like a quiet revelation. As we learn about the family that takes in Trost (and her son and brother), we also learn about her own losses (widowed without warning at 34), her fears (Am I doing enough? How do we live on a fragile planet in which the excesses seen, say, in the Miami airport—all those unfinished meals!—and the hungry slums of Haiti are but an hour and a half apart?), and her growing awareness of how the ostensibly separate worlds of rich and poor, sick and well, hungry and sated, are really one world.

  This book should enjoy wide readership as more and more of us who do enjoy comparative privilege become aware of how much so many others struggle simply to survive. This small, polished gem of a book is one compelling answer to many questions about how to inject meaning in our lives without doing damage to history—without ignoring or erasing the ties that bind us all together.

  For those already familiar with Haiti, Trost also offers an intimate portrait of this parish of the poor, St. Clare’s, and of its leaders, including the courageous and charismatic Father Gerry Jean-Juste, the first Haitian to be ordained a Catholic priest in the United States. Even before the epilogue, which tells of Father Jean-Juste’s tribulations after a violent coup and international machinations unseat, yet again, the elected government of Haiti, the reader has been ably guided over the slippery and jagged terrain of modern-day Haiti. Indeed, the country takes its rightful place, alongside Trost’s host family, Jean-Juste, and his parishioners, as the source of important lessons for all of us.

  But On That Day, Everybody Ate is not a history lesson: Trost’s account, full of humility even as it is told exclusively in the first person, is above all her own attempts to come to terms with the shock of extreme poverty. It is moving and suffused with optimism and a simple, unvarnished conviction—her own and that of the protagonists she sketches so vividly—that no one should be denied the right to survive and that anyone and everyone can do something to make a difference in the lives of our closest neighbors.

  Paul Farmer, MD

  Partners In Health

  Harvard Medical School

  July 2008

  Osekou!

  On the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, at the top of a hill a mile from the nearest paved road, sits St. Clare’s Church. Its pink walls and blue-tinted windows are a welcome site of color and vibrancy in a neighborhood packed with one-room, concrete-block homes. The community, known as Tiplas Kazo, is one in a string of desperately poor sections of Haiti’s capital. Dusty, rutted roads wind among the houses. There are few cars and few trees. Smoke fills the air, as residents cook with charcoal in their tiny homes.

  On a windy January day, as our van struggles up the steep hillside, slipping on rocks and weaving around potholes, I watch children look up with curiosity from the pebble and marble games they are playing in the dirt. When we round the final corner and park on the side of the road, the exuberant singing of hundreds of women, men, and children streams out of St. Clare’s Church as if to greet us.

  I had never been to a Catholic Mass before, but after just a couple of days in Port-au-Prince, I was hoping a Haitian service might provide some insight and much-needed sustenance. I’d been one of twelve U.S. citizens volunteering at an orphanage and a hospice, and with one week to go, I was feeling overwhelmed and depressed.

  The sanctuary felt like a sauna. I looked for fans and saw them along the butter-yellow walls, but they weren’t working. I decided to sit apart from my group and mix in with the congregation, so I squeezed into one of the back rows, my hips pressed against the hips of my neighbors. I’d never seen a church so full. When it was time to stand, we all rose together—glued by our sweat—like one body. We sat down the sa
me way.

  I met my pew mates at the beginning of the service, during the welcome and “passing of the peace.” I was a little nervous, not sure how I’d be received, but they put me at ease with their smiles, kisses on the cheek, “Bonjou”s, and enthusiastic handshakes.

  The service went quickly—a lively mixture of singing, praying, a short sermon, and communion. Not understanding a word and not being Catholic, I spent most of the time looking at the parishioners. To my right sat an elderly woman with dark-brown skin and gray-streaked black hair pulled back in a bun. She had a kind face, full of folds and creases, and she was wearing a faded floral dress and a royal blue hat. A few minutes into the Mass, she reached for her purse and pulled out a paper fan, which she waved steadily in my direction. A cinnamon-colored man in his 20s sat to my left. He was tall and very thin, with black pants and a white shirt that hung loosely on him. With a strong, deep voice, he belted out the songs, which he and everyone else knew by heart. A 3-year-old with yellow ribbons in her hair sat in front of me. Although her mother told her not to stare, she couldn’t help herself and kept turning around in the pew to give me a shy look. “Blan,” she whispered to her mother, which means “white” or “foreigner” in Creole. And that I was—a midwestern 37-year-old mom with dark-blonde hair, blue eyes, and winter-white skin. I did stand out.

  During the offering, I watched, amazed, as every man, woman, and child walked up the center aisle to put a coin or two in the wood en box. The congregation was so poor, I wondered how they were able to give so willingly when they lived in homes without plumbing or electricity. In the middle of the procession, a 10-year-old boy just two rows in front of me collapsed. My heart stopped. Had he died? His father calmly picked him up and carried him out the back door, patting his back and whispering in his ear. I never saw them again.

  Two hours after the service began, it concluded with a prayer to Saint Jude, the patron saint of desperate situations. When things are at their worst, it is St. Jude you pray to, hoping that together with Jesus, he will make the impossible possible. The smiles on the faces of the children in anticipation of the prayer showed that this was a favorite part of the ser vice. The 3-year-old with yellow ribbons stood up eagerly, along with everyone else, and raised her arms above her head. I did the same.

  “St. Jude!” the priest called out in his deep, powerful voice.

  “St. Jude!” the congregation responded with equal intensity.

  “Pwoblèm nou grav!” (We have a serious problem), the priest said, looking up at the ceiling.

  “Pwoblèm nou grav!” 700 men, women, and children responded—their eyes closed and arms outstretched, praying with all their might.

  “St. Jude!” the priest called out again.

  “St. Jude!” the congregation repeated, their voices rising in unison.

  Back and forth, the prayer continued for several minutes, everyone rocking from side to side, eyes shut, concentrating on each word the priest said.

  “Pa bliye peyi nou, St.Jude” (Don’t forget our country, St. Jude). The priest’s white robe fluttered, as a breeze came through the sanctuary.

  “Pa bliye peyi nou, St. Jude.” The congregation’s voices filled every corner of the church, resonating off the walls, through the open windows, and out into the neighborhood. People a mile away could hear our prayer.

  “Pa bliye pèp Ayisien, St. Jude” (Don’t forget the Haitian people, St. Jude).

  “Pa bliye pèp Ayisien, St. Jude.” Everyone swayed, their arms waving above their heads, each phrase building on the previous one, the call and response reaching a crescendo.

  The priest spun around and faced the glass painting of St. Jude that was placed up high, just to the right of the cross in the front of the sanctuary. He let out a thunderous plea.

  “St. Jude, osekou!”

  “St. Jude, osekou!” the congregation cried back, holding the “kooooooooouuuuuuu” for several seconds.

  “Amen. Alelouya! Amen Alelouya!”

  “Amen. Alelouya! Amen Alelouya!”

  Then everyone clapped loudly. Exhausted and inspired, I clapped with them, tears filling my eyes.

  After the benediction, as I prepared to leave, I turned to the elderly woman who had greeted me in broken English at the beginning of the service, and asked her the meaning of the prayer’s final word, osekou. The passion with which it was said made me wonder. She looked into my eyes, lifted her finger, and drew three letters in the air: S … O …S.

  Seeds and Signs

  I’ve often wondered how far back the seeds of Haiti were planted inside me. The children of the Tiplas Kazo community in Port-au-Prince have become such an important part of my life that I like to think that over the years I had been preparing for my connection with them.

  Some of the seeds surely were sown when I was a child, sitting week after week in the second pew on the left side, right in front of the pulpit, at St. Paul’s United Church of Christ in Chicago. My father was the minister, and I spent my first eighteen years listening to his sermons. Dad always emphasized putting faith into action by reaching out to those in need and working for social justice.

  Perhaps more seeds were planted during childhood trips to the Cayman Islands, where my grandparents had a small cottage on the beach. The heat, the sugarcane, the palm trees, the humidity, the blue-green waters of the Caribbean—I loved them all. I spent hours on the dock watching tiny iridescent fish swim near the water’s surface. At night, I sat on the shore staring at the stars, listening to the waves, feeling the tropical wind, imagining myself as a Caymanian so I’d never have to leave.

  I studied French in high school. I hadn’t spoken a word of it for twenty years, but all those verb conjugations started to come back as soon as I stepped off the plane in Port-au-Prince.

  I was invited to go to Haiti in the spring of 1999, and my response took less than a second. It was one of those times when my heart spoke before my mind had time to catch up. I was helping out at a retreat and ran into a friend of my father’s, Bryan Sirchio, a minister and musician. I hadn’t seen him in years, but I instantly remembered a song he’d sung years earlier, called Staring at My Overflowing Plate. It described a scene at a Haitian restaurant—an American visitor was served a large plate of food, and just as he was about to eat, he looked out the window and saw hungry children with their noses pressed against the windowpane, staring at his meal. The waiter came over quickly and pulled down the shade, so they wouldn’t be seen. Bryan’s song was about how we pull the shade down and pretend not to see the suffering of the world.

  It’s so easy not to see you

  Close you out like a shade in the window

  Your condition seems so foreign

  Are you lazy? Why are you poor?

  Someone said you and I are connected

  That your hunger is linked to my fatness

  But how can that be—I never met you

  I don’t know your name

  I’ve got problems of my own

  I’m so busy—I do good things

  And I don’t know if I can make room

  In my life for your misery

  Someone said that the whole world is changing

  For you no longer will stand to be used

  But talk like that—it makes me frightened

  Scared what I might lose

  I’d never thought about Haiti before this song and hadn’t thought about it much after, but the moment I saw Bryan, the hungry children looking through the restaurant window came back to me. I asked him whether he still sang the song and if he’d been to Haiti recently. He told me that he still went several times a year, and sometimes brought people with him. Then he invited me to go with him on his next trip. He said it almost in passing, but my heart spoke and I said yes.

  Bryan explained that it would be a two-week “pilgrimage of reverse mission” to Port-au-Prince. It was called “reverse” because it was designed to be transformational for the participants. It would involve volunteering at an orp
hanage or with sick adults during the day and learning more about Haiti through various speakers at night. There would be plenty of time for reflection and journal writing. Witnessing life in Haiti, Bryan said, would probably raise all sorts of questions and feelings about life, faith, wealth, and poverty. “Their lives are going to transform you.” That’s exactly what I wanted.

  On the surface, I appeared successful as a businesswoman and parent. But beneath, I was struggling, going through the motions of life with a broken heart that I thought would never heal. At the time of Bryan’s invitation, I needed help and was searching for something—I didn’t know exactly what—but something that would move me forward out of the rut I’d been in. This trip could help. It was certainly worth a try.

  Eighteen months earlier, my husband had died. It was unexpected and devastating. He was 36. I was 34. Our son had just turned 5. On a warm September evening, as we watched the sun set in the countryside and talked about our commitment to slow down so we could enjoy each other more, I had no idea that five minutes later, Rich would be gone. The coroner never identified what triggered his asthma attack. Whatever the allergen was, it was so toxic, it killed him in less than five minutes.

  Never would I have imagined that I’d be a widow in my mid-30s, overwhelmed with grief. I’d always thought Rich and I would age gracefully into our 80s or 90s, spending our lives together enjoying fulfilling careers, volunteering for meaningful causes, raising two or three children, and then retiring to a beach house like the one my grandparents had. That vision vanished as I struggled desperately to blow air into his lungs. Suddenly, my future disappeared. I had no energy to think about anything except taking care of our son, Luke, and doing the minimum to keep my home-based health and wellness business going so I could pay the bills.

  I stumbled through those first few weeks and months, numb and without direction. Searching for meaning in Rich’s death, I pored over countless spiritual books, hoping they might shed light on why. I wanted to believe that Rich’s death had some purpose that would inspire me to move forward, make plans, and create a new future for Luke and me. Every day, I searched for “signs” that God and Rich were with me, talking to me, and that, at some level, all was well. Before long, everything became a sign—a butterfly, a cloud formation, a ray of light in the corner of my bedroom, a thought that didn’t sound like one of mine, a bird lingering at my window, an unusual dream. But even though I did feel reassured of God’s loving presence, I suffered at a level I’d never known before.