On That Day, Everybody Ate Read online

  I felt stuck, and prayed for more signs—hoping they would help me see my way out of my grief. When the invitation to go on the “reverse mission” came, I jumped at the chance. It seemed like this could be my sign. Going to Haiti was so “out of the blue,” it felt oddly right. I didn’t know where it would lead, but the experience would take me far away from Cottage Grove, Wisconsin, where I lived, to a place completely unknown. It sounded perfect. Maybe attending to the suffering of others might shift some attention away from my own pain. I filled out the application and sent in the deposit.

  In the nine months that passed between my saying yes to the “reverse mission” and actually getting on the plane, I didn’t think much about the trip. Shortly after I saw Bryan, I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to live with my sister. I was overwhelmed with the move, enrolling Luke in first grade, running my business, and beginning a new life in California. Every minute of every day was packed with work and parenting responsibilities. I seemed to be racing everywhere, often late, out of breath, exhausted, and stressed. As the trip to Haiti approached, I wondered what I had been thinking when I said yes, and I thought about canceling. But I didn’t.

  When the morning came to fly to Port-au-Prince, I grabbed all the material I should have read in advance, packed a small suitcase of hot-weather clothes, waved good-bye to Luke and my mom, who had flown out to take care of him, and headed off in a whirlwind for the airport.

  In-flight History Lesson

  As I flew from San Francisco to Miami, I thought about how little I knew about Haiti. I’d seen news reports years before of “boat people” struggling to get to Flor ida, but I couldn’t even remember what had caused their exodus. I knew that Haiti shared an island with the Dominican Republic, and that it was tiny, about the size of Maryland, but that was about it.

  I began to read statistics: Three-quarters of Haitians live on less than $2 per day. Four and a half million people—over half the population (56 percent)—live on less than $1 per day. Safe drinking water is not regularly accessible to over a third of the population. The countryside is 97 percent deforested. Haiti has a 70 percent unemployment rate, a 50 percent illiteracy rate, and the worst health statistics in the Western world. About 75 percent of Haiti’s farmable land is owned by just 5 percent of its inhabitants. Nearly half of Haiti’s wealth is controlled by 1 percent of the population.

  Then, I pulled out a stack of background material and a book Bryan had sent months before—The Uses of Haiti, written by physician and anthropologist Dr. Paul Farmer. Dr. Farmer is a professor at Harvard Medical School who since 1983 has lived and worked in Haiti, where he became a founding director of Partners In Health, a renowned nonprofit that works with Haitians to build clinics and provide free health care services for the poor in Haiti and elsewhere.

  Dr. Farmer’s text was mind-opening and heartbreaking. It detailed the complex history that helped explain why Haiti is the most underdeveloped country in the Western Hemisphere. It critiqued U.S. foreign policy and showed how U.S. companies and Haiti’s wealthy elite profited continually at the expense of the poor. By the end of the book, I understood his title—The Uses of Haiti—because Haiti has been used and exploited by others throughout its history.

  Haitians are the descendants of African slaves. In the 18th century, Haiti—called Saint-Domingue then—was the wealthiest French colony in the world, providing two-thirds of Europe’s tropical produce. In 1791, the slaves, led by Toussaint Louverture, organized and launched what became the first and only successful slave revolution in the world. The war against their French colonizers lasted thirteen years. Over 200,000 people were killed. The country’s infrastructure was destroyed and agricultural productivity stopped.

  When the war ended, in 1804, Haiti became the world’s first black republic and Latin America’s first sovereign nation. It also became the first nation to ban slavery and to declare itself a haven for runaway slaves and other oppressed people. I couldn’t believe I’d never read about this in school.

  But the world’s powers did not support Haiti. For the next sixty years, the U.S. refused to recognize Haiti as an independent republic, because the U.S. had slaves of its own and was afraid they might be inspired by Haiti’s example. A diplomatic quarantine, threatening visits from German, French, British, and American gunboats, and a growing economic dependency on the U.S. and Europe made it impossible to rebuild the country.

  I was astonished to read that France demanded that Haiti pay 150 million gold francs to compensate for French losses during the war. If Haiti didn’t comply, France would not recognize Haiti’s independence, and it threatened to return and reinstitute slavery. The sum of 150 million francs was ten times Haiti’s annual budget. Desperate for trading partners, and with the possibility of another French invasion and the restoration of slavery, Haiti’s leaders borrowed from French bankers (as required by the agreement) to begin repaying the “debt.” By the end of the 19th century, 80 percent of Haiti’s national revenue was allocated to repaying debts. It took Haiti 125 years to pay off the debt to France (estimated at a value of $21 billion today with interest and inflation calculated in), and the effects on the society were devastating.

  The Haitian Revolution was followed by nearly two centuries of power struggle among various elite factions and the masses of the poor, who never gave up their dream of full participation. On the heels of a popular uprising, the U.S. Marines invaded and occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. A new Haitian army, created and trained by the U.S. during the occupation, became the dominant power after the Marines left. There ensued a series of U.S.-backed dictatorships, including the brutal Duvalier regimes that lasted from 1957 to 1986. When I read about “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son “Baby Doc,” who succeeded him, their names sounded vaguely familiar. They had received millions in aid from the U.S., the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund over the years, but had used little of it to benefit the poor majority. Instead, it supported fraud, corruption, and the oppression of any opposition. Their feared militia, called the Tonton Macoutes, was known for killing all opponents. Thousands of Haitians fled the country for their lives.

  In the mid-1980s, Haitians began to organize in opposition to the dictatorship. Through tremendous courage and tenacity, their marches and strikes led to the overthrow of “Baby Doc” Duvalier. Meanwhile, a soft-spoken Catholic priest was beginning to touch hearts and raise consciousness, leading to the mobilization of the poor throughout the country. When I began reading about the rise of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, it seemed that finally something positive was about to happen.

  Aristide advocated for the millions of impoverished Haitians. He challenged the status quo, pointing out that Haiti’s poverty was a result of its history and the tiny ruling class that had always controlled social and economic power. In Haiti’s first democratic election, in 1990, Aristide was elected president with 67 percent of the vote. For the first time, the poor majority played a role in shaping national policy. Aristide’s government quickly initiated adult literacy and public health programs, and set out to raise the minimum wage, create land reform, and end corruption. These initiatives did not make him popular among wealthy business owners (in Haiti and abroad), landowners, or the Hai tian military.

  Just seven months after the democratic government was inaugurated, a violent coup led by members of the Haitian military forced Aristide into exile. The coup was followed by three years of repression and violence by the Haitian military and by paramilitary groups. It was later revealed that one of the top paramilitary leaders, Emmanuel Constant, was working with the CIA. Tens of thousands of Haitians tried to escape during this time. These were the “boat people” I’d seen on TV.

  Escalating repression, a flood of unwelcome refugees in Florida, no signs of the brutal de facto military government ending its reign of terror, and the growing international solidarity for the Haitian democratic process led the U.S., with support from the UN and international community, to return President Arist
ide to power. This reinstatement came with conditions, including accepting economic “structural adjustment” programs, some of which would privatize Haiti’s publicly owned utilities and would slash tariffs.

  In September 1994, 20,000 U.S. troops entered Haiti, and a month later President Aristide returned to serve out the remainder of his presidency. Back in office, he dismantled the much-hated Haitian army and focused on improving the lives of the poor majority. His term ended shortly thereafter, in

  February 1996. Power was transferred peacefully for the first time in Haiti’s infant democracy to René Préval, who was just finishing his five-year term as president when I visited the first time. Another presidential election was just a few months away. Aristide was running again and was expected to win.

  I put the book down in a daze and stared at the clouds. How could I live in the U.S. and know so little about our neighbor only 600 miles away—an hour-and-a-half flight from Miami?

  Fear crept into my mind. I had lots of questions for Bryan, the first being: Was Haiti safe? Haiti had such a violent history and the U.S. government had contributed to the suffering in so many ways throughout the last 200 years. Did Haitians resent Americans? How would it feel to be an over-fed white American among people who struggle daily for food and clean water? I’d just spent the daily income of about twenty Haitians on magazines and snacks at the airport in San Francisco. I had more on my airline lunch tray than most Haitians ate in a day. I felt nervous and guilty, and we hadn’t even landed. As the plane sped along in air-conditioned, high-tech comfort, been a day-just one day—in my life when I had experienced real hunger.

  M’Grangou

  As the plane descended into Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture International Airport, I watched the sparkly blue Caribbean turn to a murky brown just off the coast. From overhead, I could easily see that the mountains were stripped of trees. With most of Haiti’s trees cut down, there was no root system to soak up water, and when it rained, the precious topsoil washed into the ocean. This was one reason why Haitian peasants struggled to feed their families. Their soil was gone.

  Toussaint Louverture Airport’s tiny baggage claim area was chaotic and hot. I found my luggage quickly and followed our group out of the building. As I walked out onto the street, a crowd of men of all ages approached, pleading to carry my bag. Before I could respond, four of them reached for my small suitcase and disappeared into the crowd. I ran after them, weaving through dozens of people, worried I might never see my suitcase again, but at the end of the walkway I spotted them next to our group’s van. Bryan was giving them a tip. “Mèsi, mèsi” (Thank you), they said with both desperation and gratitude in their eyes.

  I felt sick to my stomach, and my heart was pounding. When I looked at my hands, they were shaking. I was afraid, overwhelmed by the mass of people that surrounded me, the smell of burning garbage, the heat. Sweat dripping down my forehead, I squeezed into a seat in the back of the van, clutched my backpack against my chest, and wondered if I’d made a mistake coming here. When the van finally pulled away from the curb, I was relieved to be moving again.

  The slow, bumpy ride to the hotel gave me time to center myself. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, trying to slow down my heart and remember why I’d come to Haiti. Helping out at the hospice had been my motivation. Reverse mission. Willing a positive attitude, I relaxed my shoulders, sat up in my seat, and started to take in the streets of Haiti’s capital.

  The roads were treacherous. Gigantic potholes, open sewers, boulders, no traffic lights or sidewalks—I’d never seen anything like it. Hundreds of people lined the streets. Groups of men studied the engines of stalled cars or repaired ripped tires. A chairmaker and a man creating bed frames out of iron worked next to each other. Women and young girls in dresses and head wraps carried water jugs on their heads, maneuvering gracefully around people and rubble in the street. Vendors, packed along the side of the road, sold mangoes and sugarcane, fabric and charcoal, waiting patiently for the occasional customer.

  Brightly painted minibuses and pickup trucks, called “tapstaps,” inched along, stuffed with travelers. Each time a tap-tap stopped, I watched in amazement as more people piled in. How they fit, I do not know. I was struck by the phrases, some writ ten in English, that decorated the buses: “Thank you Jesus,” “Pray,” “One love,” “Be cheerful,” “Patience.”

  We drove past shacks and decaying buildings, dodged around ragged chunks of concrete in the road and piles of garbage 6 feet high baking in the sun. I started breathing through my mouth. Heaps of gravel and half-dug trenches showed signs of development here and there, but, overall, the city’s infrastructure was ancient and broken.

  Each time our van slowed down, barefoot children wearing torn T-shirts ran up to our windows and peeked in. With palms outstretched, they cried out, “M’grangou,” which means “I’m hungry” in Creole. We were told not to give them any money, that if we did, our van would be swarmed with kids and it wouldn’t be safe for them in the street. Bryan assured us we’d have other opportunities to share our resources with nonprofits that provided services to children. The outstretched palms by our window remained empty. I couldn’t look in the children’s pleading eyes for more than a second and was relieved when our van started moving again. These children were Luke’s age. I learned later that they represented a handful of the thousands of orphans who roam the streets of Port-au-Prince.

  At dinner that night, I didn’t eat or talk much. None of us did. Every muscle in my body was tense. My mind raced, trying to sort through what I’d seen. I’d been to Nicaragua and Mexico but had never seen anything like this. Poverty wasn’t isolated to one section of town. It was everywhere-—spread out for miles and miles in all directions. The contrast from Miami to Port-au-Prince was beyond words. My heart hurt. I felt like sobbing, but couldn’t shed a tear. I was in shock. Reading about massive poverty was one thing. Witnessing people struggling to survive was quite another.

  Before we got up from the table, Bryan asked us to scrape all the food we didn’t eat onto an empty plate. I asked if I should include food that I’d picked at with my fork. Bryan nodded. Our waiter bowed his head in thanks as he quickly cleared the table and took the overflowing plates away. He would bring our leftovers to his children.

  Son Fils

  The next morning, we drove to volunteer at Son Fils, Ports-au-Prince’s Home for the Destitute and the Dying. The hospice’s small courtyard was full of frail men, some shaving, others playing dominoes. The Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by Mother Teresa, ran this two-story facility. Patients came from all over Port-au-Prince in hope that there might be a bed for them. Care was free. With limited medication—just whatever was donated—the nuns provided a loving environment for people to heal or die.

  I went up to the second-floor women’s area with three other volunteers from our group. As we rounded the corner, a nun carrying a tray of cooked rice greeted us. She looked just like Mother Teresa in her light-blue-and-white sari and habit. “Welcome. We’re glad you’re here. You can help change the sheets in the rooms. We have extra nail polish and lotion if you’d like to paint the ladies’ nails or give massages when you’re finished.” She smiled and walked away. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Her glow brought tears to my eyes and helped calm my nerves. How was it that, surrounded by all this suffering, she could be so bright and peaceful? My jaw relaxed a bit and my shoulders settled. She’d helped melt some of the fear and shock I was carrying.

  The infirmary was simple. It looked like overnight camp, with beds lined up neatly next to each other. A volunteer from a Canadian group was singing Creole songs with three of the patients. She told us that this room housed women who were sick, but not about to die. They were in the next room. She also told us that many of the women suffered from tuberculosis. A shortage of safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation, and severe malnutrition left Haitians vulnerable to TB and many other diseases. Some patients also had HIV/AIDS, one
of the main causes of adult deaths in Haiti. It is believed that AIDS arrived in Haiti through infected tourists. The combination of HIV and tuberculosis is particularly deadly. With proper medicine, recovery from TB is almost assured. But most Haitians couldn’t afford treatment, so they died.

  I lifted a mattress to tuck in the sheet and discovered one patient’s small collection of personal items hidden beneath— a pair of carefully folded underwear, a rosary, a comb, and a hair clip. That was it. Was this all she had with her, or all she owned? Glancing at the patients sitting on the balcony, I wondered who slept in the bed I was making. They were all wearing the same light-blue dresses—a gift from a U.S. donor. Most were in their 20s or 30s. Some were so thin it looked as though the slightest breeze could carry them away. Others seemed okay, until they coughed the deep, barking, painful cough of tuberculosis.

  Not feeling ready to venture next door, I stayed put and began giving manicures to two young women who looked like good friends. They came up to me and showed me their chipped, royal blue fingernail polish. “Mal. Mal” (Bad), they said. I nodded and smiled. They pointed eagerly to the bright red polish I was holding.

  Since they had enough energy to sit up, I handed them several cotton balls and a bottle of nail polish remover. The woman on my right carefully divided one of the cotton balls into four sections, as if it was a precious gift. With just one of these sections, she removed the polish from all ten of her nails. She handed the bottle and another quarter of the cotton ball to her friend. Then she handed me the other two sections and the other cotton balls I had originally given her. She didn’t need them. It had never occurred to me that you could remove nail polish with just a quarter of a cotton ball. I usually go through at least one, if not two, per hand.