A Brief History of Haiti in verse: Part I

In the Beginning 

Haiti is not incomprehensible.

Once one examines the infamously disastrous island’s rich history the country’s current chaos is quite understandable. The definition of a “failed state,” Haiti is not simply a failure unto herself but also the victim of our failure as well-intentioned outsiders lending aid over the decades instead of tackling the cracked foundations of the nation.

Foundations formed by concrete mixed in a puddle stirred by a shovel at the workman’s feet, quickly thickened with white lime. This cement hastily poured into hand-dug trenches carved from constantly sliding eroding mountainsides. Questionable foundations built with haste to meet the immediate need of shelter and safe placement. Foundations destined for failure for lack of building inspection, education, or regulation. These unstable cement and cinderblock slabs on unstable ground loosed by deforestation and typical tropical precipitation were doomed to crack, snap, and collapse with the perfect storm of flood, mud, or earthquake.

In the same tragic catastrophic vein of 2010 when hundreds of homes collapsed like dominoes, sliding down shaking hillsides, combining heavy concrete slabs, unforgiving cinderblocks, and piercing iron rebar into higher piles of dusty white rubble, so has Haiti through the centuries compounded disaster upon misfortune over and over. Like the deadly cyclones that swirl through the Caribbean every season, so circumstances in Haiti repeat and repeat with eerie parallels of mis-leaders and ill-treatment.

Despite years of relatively successful tourism and U.S.-aided infrastructure construction or tenuous peace, Haiti has never known true ease from the dreadful drama of third-world economy nor the satisfaction of functional autonomy. Instead, she is yet plagued by the series of unfortunate events which follow the conjoined twins of developing nations: Poverty and Ignorance.

Ageless and insatiable, these two are as needy and repugnant as they were many years past as they peered from beneath the cloak of the Ghost of Christmas Present, holding him with greedy paws that made even miserly Ebenezer pause. Together these terminal twins, who the Ghost called Ignorance and Want, constantly slaughter with weapons of contamination, malnutrition, and corruption.

From the time of their arrival on the peaceful island the local Taíno people called “Hayti,” Want plied the European explorers with greed, the need for gold and riches, fortune and lasting fame, courtly acclaim for their names. Ignorance assured them of their rights as lordly white men, superiors to which the simple natives owed allegiance. Together, Ignorance and Want (also known as the deadly fear of Poverty) dipped their bloody bayonet pen in the inkwell-skull of a Taíno Indian and began to record Haiti’s salacious, audacious, miraculous, record-setting history…

In fourteen-hundred ninety-two when Columbus sailed the ocean blue and in his pride ignored the guides and stumbled upon a surprising island paradise, original life in the “New World” began to die. The Taíno tribe of Arawak native islanders welcomed the confused conquistadors so sure they had succeeded in the short-cut to India that the Italian captain and his crew called their new neighbors “Indians.” Despite learning the locational truth of his incredible miscalculation, Colon maintained the “Indian” name and laid plans for exploiting this fresh new land and population. Blissfully ignorant of continental tyranny, the Taíno people shared their lovely island willingly. Hungry for funding and the foundation of accoladed legacy, heroic Columbus claimed and renamed the land called “Hayti” in the name of Isabella and Ferdinand, their Spanish Majesties across the sea.

Landing of Columbus, oil on canvas by John Vanderlyn, 1846; in the U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C.

Architect of the Capitol

Christopher Columbus https://www.britannica.com/biography/Christopher-Columbus

Now by Crown rights in control and command of this Spanish colony Hispañola, the immigrants took charge of the Indians. Betrayed by Columbus and his European brigade, the native Arawaks were chained, maimed, and enslaved, until disease and abuse utterly used them up.

Genocide: define it as the fate of the first Islanders, reduced to the verge of extinction in the civilized European pursuit of gold and the righteous conversion of pagan nations. Better their bodies die in torment than their souls suffer the eternal Inferno, confirmed enough High Church officials to keep the Spanish Crown backing the conquistadors beating the backs of the natives.

A few Church fathers found fault with this ideology and condemned the slavery. Nineteen years after Christopher Columbus claimed the New Land for Spain, Brother Antonio de Montesinos preached against the maltreatment of the Arawak people. The fiery frier claimed these savages were men with rational souls, meant to be loved as Christ commanded. Montesinos’ sermon persuaded one young dueño of a Hispanolian encomienda that he and his plantation were wicked and the whole colony in desperate need of redemption. Bartolomé de las Casas renounced his title and his lands and recommitted his life to Christ.

Father las Casas became a priest modelled after Montesinos who fought on behalf of the least of these: native people made slaves on their own invaded island. Through the skill of his quill and pestering presence at Spanish court, las Casas at last secured the preservation of the native Haitian population, the few who remained after decades of European immigration.

"The Right Reverend Friar and Servant of God: Fray Bartolome de las Casas"

Bartolome de las Casas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom%C3%A9_de_las_Casas

Sketchy estimations of Columbus’ legacy lay the deaths of some hundreds of thousands of Arawak Indians at his feet. An exact tally of the obliteration of the Taíno and tribal nations does not exist for colonial scribes neglected notation of names and ages of disposable natives. All we know for sure is the death toll was enormous so we wish muchas gracías a las Casas for his assistance with “la destrucción de las Indias” in 1542, fundamental in the passage of the Leyes Nuevas New Laws laying restraint to Arawak enslavement, and in establishing the Middle Passage laying way for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

For in all good conscience the priest had to offer an alternative source for the forced labor labor force able to fulfill the precious gold and cotton quotas. Padre de las Casas proposed to spare the long-suffering Indians and import instead a dark-skinned mando de obra from the Dark Continent.

Chained, maimed, and enslaved, hundreds of thousands of Africans were captured and caged in the grave-like bowels of slave ships. These men, women, and children of Guinea were naught but imported property considered expendable and unworthy of considerable expense for their maintenance.

The first shipload’s shipment arrived on the golden shores of Hispañola in 1577 and were set to work in the torrid heat of plantations. They cut sugarcane, harvested coffee and cacao beans, picked fruit and cotton, chopped ebony and mahogany trees, built palatial homes and entertained the white owners who despised them. Hispañola flourished from south to north: her beautiful seaports were centers for the Arts where the cultured and sophisticated might be enchanted by theater and cuisine and an abundance of beautiful colorful women were to be had and seen.

Theodore de Bry, Reisen in Occidentialischen Indien (Frankfurt, c. 1590-1630). Engraving
https://ournativeamericans.blogspot.com/2018/06/1492-christopher-columbus-carried-ideas.html

Anaika: Life is so Very Unfair

Life's not fair. We know. But sometimes Life seems so much more appallingly unfair to some than to others.

As some of you know from the emails and Facebook publicity I began circulating a few weeks ago, one of the fourth grade students at Christian Academy of Petit Gôave (CAP), Haiti is very sick. Anaika, eensy, weensy, teeny, tiny, petite, quick as a hiccup, sharp as a tack, and sometimes as sassy as a snapdragon, sweet little Anaika who has been achieving top-marks since she could make "rounds" and "lines" on the chalkboard with the other three-year old dumplings in Preschool 1, is sick. Bed-ridden, hospital-resident, no-release-date sick. 

Life in Haiti is always dramatic, constantly an on-the-edge risky business with Death the next careless chauffer taking the corner too fast in his careening charcoal truck. Sickness shared through the household along with the blankets, bar of soap, comb, and soup plate. Death is so commonplace that funerals are as much celebration of life and social to-do as weddings and graduations. 

Death has already taken two CAP students, one just under a year ago. Death has come much too close to Anaika already. 

The local hospital could do no more for her when the oxygen ran out and they had no more resources to help her swollen little body. They sent her off to the capital, with best wishes perhaps, while we who have taken children to that hospital as patients, hoped it could only go up from here. 

At first, Anaika's move seemed a curse. She was refused entrance. She couldn't be treated. She didn't have the proper paperwork. The hospital was unreachable through traffic or road blockades. Anaika's trip seems to run into only the brick walls of the hopeless maze of the Haitian medical "system." 

Fortunately God doesn't abide by the laws of physics and is not the least inhibited by walls. God instead arranged a complex network of people who knew people who made calls who got things moving and opened doors. An ambulance was sent for Anaika: a fully-equipped ambulance with oxygen and monitoring machines and trained EMTs. This ambulance navigated the congested roads of Port au Prince and in just 15 minutes had Anaika at Hope Hospital in her own room. 

There, in her own full-sized hospital bed, further dwarfing her malnourished, underdeveloped nine-year old form, Anaika was attended to by capable staff, under the care of the only available nephrologist (kidney doctor) in the country. Hope Hospital not only boasts this nephrologist but excellent equipment and hygienic, well-maintained facilities that are indeed a rarity in Haiti.

Anaika has been under the good care of the Hope Hospital staff since March 16. Her parents have been rather overwhelmed with the size and technology of the hospital. Loving, bubbling, gregarious people, Anaika's mother and father have always been incredibly supportive of their childrens' education and the school as a whole. As of this year all three of their children attend the school (the youngest is in Preschool 1) and all are very bright. Mom and Dad clearly see the benefit of education, such that might bring their children out of the one-room house with a dirt-floor, that might relieve them of the worry of eviction and starvation, that might afford medical care. 

Clearly Hope Hospital is a larger, grander, more modern and pristine facility than that to which the family, in fact most families of CAP students, is accustomed. However, despite being out of their ken, pulled from their town and home to stand at the bedside of their terribly ill daughter, Mom and Dad keep smiling. Despite the enormity of the medical bills continuing to pile, money they could never hope to make in their lifetimes as a marchand and mason, despite the dreadful prospect of dialysis multiple times a week for forever--Mom and Dad are not overwhelmed. 

I see in their faces and hear in their voices the same cheerful gratitude and head-shaking, awe-inspiring, humbling resilience I have always witnessed. Because these are people utterly reliant on God, people joyous through every circumstance, struck down but not destroyed.

Just today the school Director Beverly sent me a video of Anaika’s mama, Madame JM, standing at Anaika’s bedside where she was curled up on her side in blue hospital gown, wires connected to her bare feet, hair tucked into a cap. Madame stands with one hand on Anaika’s forehead and smiles into the camera, expressing gratitude for all the help they’ve been given, “for without it, we couldn’t manage. Nou pa’t kapab.”

Along with these two short videos of Madame were photos of Anaika sleeping. Her little face is scrunched up in discomfort, knees drawn up to her abdomen. Her kidneys hurt before dialysis, Beverly tells me. And my heart breaks all over again.

Dialysis is a terrible thing. It's a dreadful non-future, a cruel fate of constant waiting, pain, suffering, uncertainty. Dialysis is dreadful for anyone to endure: it seems worse for a child. It seems worser for a child from a country like Haiti. For a child like Anaika, so bright, such a shining star in school, such a pride and joy to her parents, people who for all their lives have scrambled for the crumbs and scraps Life has spitefully, niggardly occasionally doled them. 

It's so unfair. I want to pound my fists and kick my heels and scream and cry. Sometimes I do. I cry out to God and bawl about how it's so unfair and how can He allow this? 

"Why don't You just heal her?" I demand, sometimes. "You can, God! You told the little girl to Get Up! and she did!" And I read again about Jairus' daughter, how Jesus took her hand and commanded her to Get Up, then returned her to her delighted parents. 

It's so unfair. So unfair that some are healed, that some are healthy, and some are not. So unfair that some of us are born into such privilege and comfort, and some are not. It's not fair. 

Some weeks ago our pastor at First Congregational Church of Kingston, Pastor Josh, reminded us about the most unfair event that ever happened. He told us about a man who was struggling. The man really didn't want to do what God was calling him to do. He knew it would be hard, it would be painful, it would be awful. And he would be all alone. No one could do it for him. No one could go with him. In fact, even God Himself would abandon the man. Obviously the man didn't want to do it. 

He prayed hard, asking God, begging God, to make another way. The man was exhausted from traveling and working long hours teaching, but he stayed up late into the night, praying. He asked his friends to pray with him because it was so important. The man was so upset and so lonely he was hoping his friends could comfort and support him. Instead, they fell asleep. He woke them up and asked them to pray again, then went back by himself, face-down before God, asking for another way so he would not have to go through such a terrible ordeal. 

Twice more the man checked in with his friends. Both times they had fallen asleep instead of praying over him like he had asked. But the man wasn't angry. He still felt empathy for them. He knew they were tired and sad and scared, too. The man had accepted what God wanted him to do. It was horrible, it was going to be the worst thing anyone would ever do, but the man agreed to do it. 

"If You want me to, I will," he said. "Not mine, but Your Will be done." 

The man would be arrested on a false charge. He would be lied about by hired "witnesses" who couldn't agree on their alleged testimonies. He would be accused of doing things he never did. His words were twisted and perverted and his lessons of love rejected with hatred. People hit him. They covered his eyes then hit him and laughed and told him to guess who had hit him. They passed him from one judge to another. The judges realized the charges were false and the "witnesses" were faulty. They realized that there was no reason to imprison or punish the man. But the judges were scared of the mobs of people. They were scared for their reputations, of losing face, losing power and position. One judge agreed to let a proven murder and terrorist go free from prison instead of the man. Then he agreed to have the man whipped, and then to be executed. And the same people who had only days before paraded around the man proclaiming their excitement, fauned over him and fought for his attention, laughed at him as he walked to his death, bleeding from dozens of wounds. 

The man had no last request. No last meal. No last call or last visit. His mother could not see him. He was arrested in the dead of night in a park, tried, beaten, and executed in under 24 hours with no defense, counsel, or hope of appeal. Swift justice. No justice. 

The man was innocent. He was innocent of the crimes of which he was accused. He was innocent of any crime, of any misdeed, any shadow of misconduct. The man never spoke words which were not kind or helpful. He never lied. He never pushed or kicked or hit or slapped anyone. He never pulled a girl's hair or spied on the neighbors. He never stole. He always shared. He always told the truth, even if it was painful or made people dislike him. He paid taxes. He helped sick people, people no one else wanted to help. He respected his mother. He studied God's Word and honored God in everything he did. The man was everything good and right and wonderful and loving. 

He was the best man that ever was or ever will be. He was perfect. And he was executed like the worst of criminals. It was so unfair. 

Every time we begin to stumble under the grumbling gravity of the claim, or even the truth, of "Life's not fair!," ; every time we start listing the litany of all things wrong with the world today, or every intolerable action going on unthwarted by an immoral world, we ought to stop and remember Jesus, who is the epitome of injustice visited upon the innocent. Jesus, the First Example of the unfairness of life. 

No, it is not fair that Anaika is so sick. It is not fair when children are stuck in the hospital instead of romping outside or at once aggravating and delighting us in the classroom or the kitchen. It's not fair that so many live in dirt-floor poverty while some have air conditioners, Bluetooth in the shower, storage lockers, and paid vacation. 

It is not fair. Nevertheless, let us not weigh ourselves down with the negativity of all this unfairness, but let us seek God's plan, His maneuvering against the laws of physics, the networking, the provision, the small blessings and great miracles He works through the unfairness. 

Life is not fair. God is still Good. 

Anaika reading the Bible in her hospital bed

Anaika's medical bills are on-going and she needs all the help you can give!

If you would like to give money, please send through PayPal to bsburton902@gmail.com 

Many thanks from all of us. Mesi Anpil.