A Brief History of Haiti in verse: Part II

Pirates of the Caribbean

 In the interim, before Hispañola was renowned as this most successful of colonies called Saint Domingue; before carefully, cruelly controlled African labor heaped wealth to the proud French Crown; after Columbus and his crew enacted genocide on the native Taíno population with little material profit; after Brother Montesinos witnessed the abuse and voiced outrage which Padre de las Casas echoed louder still; in between these two extremes was another period of Haiti’s fascinating history, perhaps the most romanticized era in colonial complexity.

The age of piracy.

You may have noticed the drastic shift, the distinction between the aforementioned latter and former periods. Columbus sailed under the Spanish flag, while Saint Domingue’s great success was under French domain. Like the major fault lines that run beneath the nation and can in a moment evoke such devastation, this shift of ownership was not gentle nor any less dramatic.

In fourteen-hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue and by Christmas Day laid claim to an unchartered island in the name of progress and Spain. Fewer than one hundred years later, the “new” country was all but useless to her sponsors.

Through their foreign northern diseases and careless ill-treatment, the Spanish masters quickly burned through Haiti’s native Indians. The Taínos were overpowered, overworked, malnourished, and mutilated in sugar-mills, as gruesome castigation, or by bored overseers not yet convinced by impassioned Montesinos that these indios were humans deserving of Christ’s compassion.

[Spaniards severing the limbs and noses of Arawak Indians] (I have not been able to find accurate citation for this horrible engraving, but the best guess is that it is from Theodore de Bry who produced several images of this ilk to accompany las Casas' writings)

http://cultures-of-science.weebly.com/america-according-to-christopher-columbus.html

Tragically, then, Columbus’ brilliant founding of Haiti lost the majority of a civilization. The promising new colony with its lush resources of green forests and crystal rivers glittering with gold was deemed a misfortune, mere pyrite not worth continued royal sponsorship of failing export projects. With the little available gold exploited and the few frail Indians remaining defended by incessant las Casas, Spain disdainfully withdrew from her faded first New World conquest in favor of concentrated labor in the gold mines of Mexico and Peru. There, on the mainland territory, greater area provided greater potential for mineral riches and greater numbers of unsuspecting natives to seize for these treasures’ seizure.

Columbus’ great claim to fame lapsed into disreputable wilderness in the west and unsophisticated cattle range in the east. The few dubious Spanish settlers who remained herded bovines on the flat plains beyond the rugged mountain ranges, wondering how they had come to be keeping company with cows on this godforsaken, Crown-dismissed spit of land adrift so far from the bustling success of the continental Americas.

The West, in typical mystical jungle fashion, grew back quickly, thickly over the ragged spaces the Spanish had made their slaves clear for mines and plantations. On this side of the island even fewer and less reputable residents than the eastern ranchers kept camp along the coast with clear enviable view of passing boats.

Spanish galleons floating low in the turquoise waters of the Windward Passage, heavily loaded with the plunder of Peruvian and Mexican mines, took steady course for the splendor and hero’s welcome of Royal Court. These galleons passed close to Hispañola’s shore on their crossings back-and-forth. The arching trail of islands formed a veritable valuable corral called the Caribbean Sea through which the fat Spanish ships must navigate. Then they had to squeeze through the narrow passage between Hispañola and Cuba until at last they were free on the open Atlantic Ocean.

The watchers of these cruising vessels, dwelling on the nearby beaches, were a raggedy riff-raff motley crew of European cast-offs. Some had struck out of their own accord, too poor or socially abhorrent to seek their fortune further into foreign territory, laying over in Hispañola where there was essentially no decorum or police force. Some were runaways or miscreants, deeming anywhere more appealing than where they’d been. Whoever they were, these (mostly male) rolling stones formed bands on the beaches of the near-abandoned Spanish colony, enjoying simple existence not dissimilar to the island’s original inhabitants.

They slung hammocks between the trees, carved and paddled canoes, hunted the pigs-gone-wild brought by earlier Spaniards, and cooked pork barbecue slowly over open fires. These customs ensured the survival of some native Haitian culture and introduced Europeans to the delights of barbecued meat. Gradually these slow-cookers-of-meat-on-open-fire honed their skills to profitable levels, and they began to sell their unique barbecue meat to the crews of those passing ships, desperate for fresh meat after long weeks at sea. With their new trade came a new name: “buccaneer” became delegation for these French, Dutch, and English émigrés.

A Buccaneer, His Home, Boucain and Dog, From Histoire des avanturiers flibustiers, Vol. 1 (1688) , Alexandre Exquemelin, The Buccaneers of America, 1856, Print. http://www.piratesurgeon.com/pages/surgeon_pages/tobacco2.html

With their new name and trade, too, grew awareness and understanding of the very providential locational dynamics of their new Homeland and the gold and pride-heavy Spaniards. Only fueled by the ageless feud of France and Spain (with the added rivalry of mingled Dutch and English), these cunning buccaneers expanded their culinary enterprise into what the English called “privateering,” although the Spanish recipients, or victims, would simply call it thievery. The buccaneers banded into crews to command their own vessels, cruise the Hispañola harbor and surrounding sea, and prey on Spanish galleons’ wealth.

They were incredibly successful. To Spain’s disbelief, with alarming and audacious rapidity, Pirates of the Caribbean became the 17^th century reality. Infuriated Spanish captains demanded recompense for their lost cargoes and humiliation at the hands of such barbarous outlaws. Yet gleeful French governors condoned these cooks gone rogue, turned up their aristocratic noses, and signed Lettres des Marques to legalize the seizure of Spanish properties. France approved of their tropical Robin Hoods, well-pleased that these merry men should rob their rich rivals and relieve Spain of some of her abundance. Provided that they commandeered enemies of the Realm, France approved the buccaneers in their pursuits. With their change in trade again came a change in name, and the makers of barbecue developed into fearsome highwaymen of the high seas called “corsairs.”

Thus European rivalry abided over transatlantic tides and French pirates, as we might title them, checked Spain’s gleaming success, rendered Spanish (and other unfortunate foreign) captains extremely uneasy, sailors already queasy with not unsubstantial risks of crossing the ocean through storms or those dreadful equatorial hurricanes, further wearied by the ongoing problems of colonies including yellow fever, mosquitoes, crippling heat and humidity, unfriendly natives, and the dearth of eligible women.

Tensions and tempers brewed quite the torrid tempest in the small steamy spot of the Caribbean, all centered around Hispañola, what Spain surely now considered a curse, the worst of the otherwise lucrative, golden colonies. Although Spain yet owned Hispañola, the island’s western jungles were all but overrun by these buccaneers and corsairs, who grinned smugly as they pointed their guns and flaunted royal Letters of Mark at the captains and crews they accosted.

These Jolly Rogers spread beyond even the beaches of Hispañola to a rugged rock of a tiny island just north of Columbus’ northern Fort Navidad. La Tortuga was a name incongruous to its infamy as a piratical stronghold and paradise of lawless debauchery. Here, on Tortoise Island, merely 193 kilometers square, corsairs and their clans governed themselves. Crews already brazen with raids of Spanish prizes grew more emboldened in greater numbers as the shores of La Tortuga and Hispañola spilled over with pirates who answered to no one.

Map of La Tortue/Tortuga Island from 17th century (public domain) http://www.thewayofthepirates.com/picture/picture-of-tortuga-17th-century/

Shrewd French governors were aware of the delicacy of such impropriety: these privateers were a finger away from being utterly out of hand so even their highly amusing highway robbery of France’s rivals could turn into sheer anarchy and steal from France herself! These forward-thinking, self-wealth-centered courtly minds decided to attempt some oversight of the Tortuga and Hispañola corsairs. They elected an official to cross the sea and plant himself as a commander in the very heart of the yet-Spanish owned colony. By 1640, France had thence asserted and inserted herself firmly into the Hispañola territory, further weaking Spain’s near-extinguished claim on the first of her West Indian acquisitions.

Any European swell proclaiming himself commander was a tough sell for tight-knit pirate clans accustomed to self-governance, but eventually the boldness and bluster of French-sent Bertrand d’Ogeron earned him sufficient trust among enough of the buccaneers to assume top-position on Tortuga. Buffered by rocky bluffs, the island was an excellent natural fortress that afforded the French a defendable space for settlers determined to stay.

So by 1670 French loyalty mingled heavily with gold-heady pirates as d’Ogeron held down Tortuga and pointed cannons from deadly vantage point at passing ships. Spain was harassed on her own turf by land and by sea, and the cost of these pirates’ confiscations was draining her coffers, only recently so well-stocked with profits brought in from her properly orderly colonies. At last, near the end of the century, counting the losses as considerably in her favor, Spain struck a deal with France to jettison her “colonists’” egregious behavior.

“You’ve no need to patrol the coastal waters around Hispañola anymore,” Spain conceded to gleeful France. “She’s yours, for the most part.”

In proper legal procedure Spain and France drafted an agreement, a piece in the Peace of Ryswicks, a series of treaties between multiple disagreeing nations. Kings Charles II and Louis XIV signed and ratified their accords in 1697, affording the petite western portion of Hispañola to France, while Spain retained the remaining majority of the island where her vaqueros kept cattle on the eastern plains.

Signing of the Peace of Ryswick (1697)

 Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, Public Domain. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84072532.item

The new official colonies were renamed after the same holy man: Saint Dominic of Spain, founder of the Dominican Order of Friars. The Spanish called their diminished dominion Santo Domingo, the French, Saint Domingue. Then with the paperwork filed France earnestly turned her attention to taming her legitimately-acquired side of the wayward island. Where the Spanish, led by their protégé Italian captain, had failed France was determined to succeed. Noting what grew well in the sweltering climate,  French farmers laid plans for new plantations, and prepared to import the incredible labor force required to seed and reap the harvests.

Already Africans had been cleaved from their homeland to be packed in ships that cleaved across the Atlantic to the West Indies. Appeased that the native Haitians were no longer at risk (mostly because they no longer existed), the Church voiced no objections to the importation of these Africans. At the least, enslavement under white ownership exposed these heathens to Christian beliefs. At worst, they were little more than beasts and their deaths of little consequence. This holy indifference was further confirmation to the already festering notions of racial distinctions which would flourish with the sugar cane on Saint Domingue in coming generations.

Meanwhile, the French colony was officially begun with the turn of the eighteenth century. Piracy continued but with increasingly harsher consequences as privateering was no longer profitable to the competing European superpowers in the vicinity. England, France, and Spain all held highly lucrative colonies in the West Indies, chains in the link of the Western Antilles necklace arcing from the Bahamas to the coast of Venezuela. Sugar cane was the greatest rage and maintaining cane plantations the deadliest and demanding labor, requiring constant deliveries of slaves fresh off the boat from Guinea, not yet broken by the mill, lash, or fever. Wealth poured into Europe from all over the gorgeous, exploited Caribbean, but to Spain’s utter dismay and England’s green-eyed rage, no colony proved as bountiful as Saint Domingue.

From get-rich-quick Spanish conquistadors to pirate kingdom notoriety now little Saint Domingue was famous for her success and sophistication, the beauty of her cities, European-Creole culture, and many-colored women. Hayti, Hispañola, Saint Domingue, was no longer a mere link in the necklace of the Antilles, but the lustrous pendant at the center: the Pearl of the Caribbean was born.

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. 

Grampie: April 1, 2020

Remembering my Grandfather "Grampie" on the First of April 2020

From what I’ve been told this was Grampie’s favorite holiday. From my memories of him, I believe it. Although I don’t remember April tomfoolery specifically, I remember pranks, jokes, general eye-twinkling, steal-a-quick-wink antics. False teeth slid in and out over gums. Lit matches “swallowed.” “Friction” stories about rogue wolves and bucks leading wild chases over our own field and woods. Then there were the recollections of infamous incidents. Perhaps the most-oft repeated was the ladder-scare. Taking advantage of evening and well-placed windows, he once (or more than once) climbed a ladder from the backyard to look in the kitchen window above the sink where his daughter was washing dishes. The apparition of a leering head popping up in the dark window was obviously quite alarming. My aunt shrieked and fled the scene. To this day I don’t know how she ever recovered sufficiently to peer through a window at night. 

Apart from these tales of hilarity (and trauma), reigns the good humor, the gentle hands, the grin, the hat, vest, “dungarees” over work boots, and pipe smoke. All contained in those twinkling blue eyes which, all tomfoolery aside, would never pleasure in another’s pain. In all my memories there’s only one that echoes with a voice raised in anger, and that was directed at a dog who’d just killed one of his chickens. Even when merited, like the time we picked all the ripening apples from the wizened little trees beside the house only to smash them in the road, inexplicably amused by this wasteful destruction—even then, he didn’t yell at us or lose his temper. Our residual shame far outweighed the reprimand that lacked sound and fury. For beyond all other delights, savoring sweet treats, growing vegetables, bottle-feeding calves, building furniture and miniature carriages for toy horses, rambling the woods, chugging about on the red Farmall, beyond even puffing on his pipe, he loved his progeny the most.

Four children married and produced their own children, and then some of those grandchildren had children. By his final day, there were 14 grandchildren (plus four spouses) and seven great-grandkids, including the newest, still an infant. As of today, April 2020, there are five more spouses and nine more great-grandchildren, with more to come, no doubt. His legacy continues, with twinkling blue eyes, comedic humor, love of animals, woods, and growing things; skilled hands, sweet tooth-s, gentle compassion, and even pipe-smoking sprinkled through the generations.

Grands and Great-Grands August 2014

This year is the fifth year since he left us, since “his chariot came,” as my mother says. None of us have any doubt that he went Home, to Heaven, to the Paradise with endless woods through which he can roam with his new and perfect body. He is there, reunited with his mother and sisters and ancestors he never knew in life, at utter peace some place beyond the moon. Thus when we cried, when I cried at that one line of text relaying the news for which we’d been waiting all week, we cried for ourselves, for our sorrow at living without him. The world held a little less joy, a little less warmth. We all grieved differently, and some of us shared what we’d miss most, what we best remembered about this unassuming man from an unremarkable small town: this man who was so much to so many.

I remembered the prankster loosening his teeth and swallowing matches. Holding me on his lap during Sunday service. Hiding foil-covered chocolates for our Easter egg-hunt. Driving the tractor while we chanted “Faster! Faster!” When he let me drive in his lap and I mistakenly popped up the front tires; I exclaimed, “I did a wheelie!” so my cousins would be impressed rather than scornful. Holding the hose over a lethal waterslide made of pool-lining draped down a steep hill. 

Splitting and stacking wood with Dad on brisk autumn days, coming in for a mid-morning coffee break. Leaning over a heated box of eggs as we watched chicks hatch. The smell of woodsmoke and pipe smoke mingling as the winter snow kept him puffing in the snug cellar. Tilling and weeding the large vegetable garden at the bottom of the field; laughing as my cousin and I dug up the carrots and crunched them down unwashed (we assured him they tasted better with the dirt.) The Christmas present of a beautifully detailed miniature wagon complete with spoked wheels and functional harness to which I could hitch a toy horse. Him leaning back in his recliner while we combed his scant whitened hair and massaged the bald spot. 

Christmas Eve after Candlelight Service when we gathered in their home warm with crackling fire in the brick fireplace, tree with the wooden train set underneath, table laden with hors d’oevres and snacks with his homemade eggnog in the central place of honor (rum on the side.) His contented “bumbabum” hum which inspired our parody of marching about with spare pipes in hand singing “Bumbabum! Puff-puff!” in high hilarity. Us hiding his pipes in protest of the cancerous cough and Grammie’s worries; shaking our heads as there was always another pipe somewhere. Him filling the riding lawnmower with gas so we could take turns driving it around the house, towing the trailer with cousins. The little rusted folding chair perched at the top of the rock bluff overlooking the field he’d cleared as a boy. The blue lawn chair tucked in the corner behind the house where he puffed overlooking the backyard and barn. 

His surprise when in the first week of March, uncharacteristically early, I won our unspoken race of finding the first of the Mayflowers and presented him with a small bouquet. His sass and twinkle even from his bed when he regaled us with a risqué anecdote from his naval days about a woman’s enticing “chest” tattoos. The next week when I sat alone by his hospital-bedside reading poems aloud, my breath catching every time his did; his breathing was so slow I was sure each depression of his chest was the last.

These are the heirlooms I have now, these memories at which to grin, chuckle, and perhaps cry. Cry as I wish he were here to meet his newest great-grandbabies, to fuss over the dog, to trek the woods for his own Mayflower patches, to be the companion to Grammie, his partner for almost sixty years.   

Love never fails. 

These are the wistful cogitations left to me.

But in a way I make new memories with him still.

For he is there when I ramble down the familiar trails and venture off the path. He’s there when I brush aside the fall debris to scour for Mayflowers. He’s there by the pussywillow bush with its soft gray seedlings. He’s there at the barn door and atop the rocky bluff. He’s there at the pond behind the white-clapboard meetinghouse to which he once held historic keys. He’s there with the bluebirds flashing color through the somber landscape. He’s there in the smell of new earth and the chirping of peepers, for spring was his season.

So every spring, when the ground squelches with thaw, when paths overrun with streams, when the evenings lengthen and the maple buds red, when the first of the Mayflowers open gently pink and softly white under the stifling autumn mulch, I remember him more vividly. I miss him more exquisitely. I don’t know what he’d say to me, mess that I am, medicated and habilitated with no prospects and no progeny, rambling aloud to his stone, but I know he loves me still. His love sets me checking every day, beginning with the birth of March, for those hardy Mayflowers. Among the first blossoms I uncovered this year, patches of stubborn snow yet clinging to the ground, I saved a stalk for him, left it at his stone after my last visit. The fragrance was so sweet I lamented leaving it behind, but I said farewell until we meet again.

 

Mayflowers Spring 2020

Overcomers

Coronavirus, or COVID-19, is paralyzing the world. Nation after nation has been infected to the point that this small-time virus first spotted in China is now a global pandemic. As of Thursday, March 19, Haiti joined the ranks of infected. Two confirmed cases of coronavirus prompted President Moise to follow suit with other infected countries and declare a national state of emergency. The airports have been shut down to commercial travel; those with tickets out are uncertain if they’ll be able to leave.

While saddened to hear of corona’s confirmed arrival in Haiti, I was not surprised. Haiti has been victim to every category of disaster since her “founding” in 1492. For such a small country, this Caribbean island is globally famous, or infamous. In Haiti’s past twenty years there have been seven devastating hurricanes, bouts of deadly flooding and mudslides, and the infamous earthquake of 2010 followed by the cholera epidemic. Droughts and erosion have ruined arable land and left farmers empty-handed and the population hungry; military coups, gang warfare, corrupt politicians and officials (including aid-workers) have bloodied the streets and absconded with funds. Of the 58 heads of state, 23 were overthrown. The current president, Jovenel Moise, has been under fire since his inauguration in January 2017. If able to complete his term, Moise will be the 12^th head of state to do so.

street barricade

Protest in Port au Prince, fall 2019 (photo credit: Karen Bultje)

In just my three years living in Haiti and working at CAP our community experienced some of these political protests. Police retaliation that included stones and bottles thrown, bullets fired, and gas canisters released. Gang warfare and police retaliation. Road barricades of cinderblocks, tree limbs, and burning tires guarded by armed patrols. Complete country lockdown “peyi lòk” which closed schools and businesses so money and food became even scarcer. Resultant cases of severe malnutrition, spread of illnesses and maladies including parasites, fungus, and fevers. Hurricane Matthew with flooding and landslides followed by the resultant cholera scare and food shortage. Burns and wounds from motorcycles or cook fires, festering infection, and broken bones such as required hospitalization and daily dressing. Severe asthma attacks and hypertension requiring emergency intervention. Rampant stomach flu, fevers, conjunctivitis, ringworm and scabies. Malaria, typhoid, and dengue fever. Infected teeth and abscesses requiring dental work performed without anesthesia. Surgeries and complications. Stillborn babies born at home. Sunken-eyed malnourished infants. Misunderstood and untreated physical and emotional trauma. Abuse, abandonment, and mental illness tearing families apart. Death and too many funerals.

 

after Hurricane Matthew

Now that President Moise has declared the state of emergency, schools will close. Again. Over the past year Haitian schools have been closed more than they have been open, due mainly to the political protests. Since January, however, many schools have been successfully functioning, including our beloved Christian Academy of Petit Gôave. At CAP and many other mission schools around the country, students not only receive education but a nutritious meal, clean water, and as-needed health-attention. School is also the safest and most comfortable space many of the children know. Closing school means increased hardship for the students and their families, the staff and their families, and local business owners. And, of course, those of us who love CAP and all the CAP Family are saddened, wondering why, once again, Haiti never seems to catch a break. We weep for those children who will be so much hungrier without their daily school food. These are children without a spacious home to which they can retreat; they have no furnished bedrooms or living rooms, no internet, no Netflix, no shelves stacked with books, no kitchen tables set with crafts, no backyards in which to play. Most of them don’t have indoor bathrooms, running water, or toilet paper. Soap and clean water may be rare. Houses are often crowded and everything is shared, including germs mikwob. While for most of us “quarantine” at home is merely inconvenient, for the average Haitian it means suffering and possibly endangerment.

student's home: cinderblock and tin roof with curtain "door"

student's home: scraps of tin, plywood, mostly tarp; tarp "door"

This is a strange time. A frightening time.

Some think these are the End Times, that the Apocalypse is nigh. I don’t know. Even in the strange and frightening book of Revelation (titled “Apocalypse” in French) God does not reveal when the End Times will occur. We are not meant to know the exact date of the Last Days, but rather to be ready always, prepared to face the End at any moment. That’s a heavy responsibility. One I would fear much more were I not certain my own Last Day will send me home to Heaven. Regardless, these days are strange: unpredictable and unforeseen. Before a blizzard we stock up on milk, bread, and eggs. Before a hurricane we batten down the hatches. Before “Flu Season” we get our flu shots.

Coronavirus is something new, and new things scare us. But fear is not fortuitous. Panic is not productive. Hoarding is not helpful. Let us be rational. Fear is a liar. Do not be ruled by fear. My best advice is to turn to Jesus, to dust off that old Bible or download a Bible app so you can do some reading. (You have time now.) Time to read, time to reflect, time to pray.

Although no longer living in Haiti or working at CAP, privileged to love with my hands and feet, face to face and arm in arm with the gorgeous children, staff, and Ti Goave community, I still love with my heart and voice. I still pray. I pray God’s Word back to Him* on behalf of myself, my loved ones, and the world, thankful that time and distance do not limit Him. Neither does the size of the problem. And I remember what God has overcome before this.

God has been there through the worst pandemics in history, including the deadliest Bubonic Plague of the mid 1300s when upwards of 100 million people were killed. He did not permit our annihilation then, and He will not permit it now. And He is here to give us peace in the face of the unknown. I do not fear this “pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday” (Psalm 91:6) because God is supreme. He is both the Creator who designed our bodies and knows the layout of our very atoms, and He is the Great Physician capable of curing all ills. He is also our Father who cares for us, knows every hair on our head (Luke 12:7) and values us even more than the magnificent stars (Psalm 8). Thus I believe God will not allow coronavirus to destroy us, and He will bring Haiti through this latest crisis as He has brought her through every crisis since the enslavement and genocide of her native people beginning in 1492.*

Haiti is not hopeless. Again and again Haitians have risen from the ashes.  They are resilient, determined, long-suffering. They are inspiring, beautiful, hospitable. Instead of expecting aid from an unsuccessful government, Haitians have adapted and developed unique systems of business, healthcare, foster care, and justice. They are overcomers.  

“Overcomer” is a powerful song by Christian artist Mandisa released in 2013. Inspired mainly by a friend battling breast-cancer, Mandisa wrote the song to remind us that no matter how seemingly insurmountable the obstacles, or the pain, we can overcome when God is on our side. The video chronicles the fight for health of several real people, people who faced fearful circumstances and did not give up. Their courage was limitless because it came from God. God, who raises the dead, God who created everything from nothing, God who stays when everyone else has quit us, gives us power when we ask for it. Gives us courage and peace. He is still in charge, even though the world seems to have gone crazy. I have such blessed assurance knowing God is in control so I don’t have to be. Assurance that melts my fears with the snow and grows my determination with the Mayflowers. I can overcome depression and anxiety, suicidal darkness and self-harm; Haiti, and we, can overcome the newest disaster of COVID-19 national emergency, because God already has overcome all of it.

Just a few members of God's beautiful CAP community with and through whom He has done miracles  

*Some of the Bible verses I pray regularly: Psalm 91 and 140; Matthew 6:9-13; John 14:12-14, 27, 21:15-17; Romans 8:28-39; Galatians 6:9-10; Ephesians 3:14-21, 6:10-18; Philippians 4:6-7; Hebrews 12:1-2, 10-12

*By the year 1592, 100 years after Columbus landed on Hispañola and Spanish settlers/conquistadors began enslaving the native Taíno people, there were only 200 natives left on the island. Researchers contest estimations of the original Taíno population, but there were probably more than one hundred thousand. Philippe Girard, author of Haiti: The Tumultuous History—From Pearl of the Caribbean to Broken Nation, estimates there were originally 500,000.

“Overcomer” by Mandisa music video link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8VoUYtx0kw

Works Cited

@elizabethjdias, Elizabeth Dias. “Gabby Giffords and Robin Roberts Star in Top Christian Music Video.” Time, Time, 11 Sept. 2013, nation.time.com/2013/09/11/gabby-giffords-and-robin-roberts-star-in-top-christian-music-video/.

Brockell, Gillian. “Here Are the Indigenous People Christopher Columbus and His Men Could Not Annihilate.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 14 Oct. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/10/14/here-are-indigenous-people-christopher-columbus-his-men-could-not-annihilate/.

Charles, Jacqueline. “Haiti Confirms Coronavirus in Country, Closes Airports to All Commercial Flights.” Miamiherald, Miami Herald, 20 Mar. 2020, www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article241362616.html.

Gallagher, James. “Coronavirus: How Close Are We to a Vaccine or Drug?” BBC News, BBC, 20 Mar. 2020, www.bbc.com/news/health-51665497.

Girard, Philippe R. Haiti the Tumultuous History: from Pearl of the Caribbean to Broken Nation. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Heinl, Robert Debs, et al. Written in Blood: the Story of the Haitian People, 1492-1995. University Press of America, 2005.

“The History of Natural Disasters in Haiti - UFondwa-USA, Inc.” UFondwa, 23 Feb. 2018, ufondwa.org/history-natural-disasters-haiti.

The Holy Bible, New International Version. Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1984.

LePan, Nicolas. “A Visual History of Pandemics.” World Economic Forum, 2020, www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/a-visual-history-of-pandemics/.

Staff. “Outbreak: 10 of the Worst Pandemics in History.” MPH Online, www.mphonline.org/worst-pandemics-in-history/.

The World is Bananas: Modern Art and World Hunger

Many of you have probably heard and shaken your heads over the recent art sensation, or scandal, that took place at the Art Basel show in Miami, Florida last month. Famous Italian artist, and “jester” (“Maurizio Cattelan” Guggenheim) of the modern art world Maurizio Cattelan, presented his piece “Comedian”: a banana duct-taped to a wall. A real banana, already browning with age held to a plain wall of the gallery with one piece of gray tape.

The piece was sold for $120,000. Or rather, the “idea” was sold, as the first banana was eaten soon after by artist David Datuna, and replaced, which would have soon been necessary anyway for within a few days it would have rotted into mush and fallen from the wall.

You probably have lots of questions about “Comedian,” the artist Maurizio Cattelan, and the wealthy buyers who purchased “certificates of authenticity” to accompany their own bananas and tape. I certainly do. The radio hosts who first informed me of the debacle had their own questions, including the very relevant point of “How does the new owner take the piece home? Does he peel the banana off the wall, or does he get to carve out that section of wall because technically it’s part of the artwork?” Would the owner carefully remove the banana and its securing tape, place them gently in a lined box or briefcase with a combination lock made for valuables, handcuff it to his wrist before climbing into his limo or helicopter? There were so many questions about the purchase and transfer of “Comedian,” questions beyond the initial confounded “Why?”

"Comedian" : Jones, Jonathon "Don't make fun of..." article, photograph by Rhona Wise

Why? It’s a question we ask often in this turbulent life.

I asked myself “Why?” when I first heard of, then read about, Cattelan, his most recent piece “Comedian,” and the three top buyers. Upon further research I understand that Cattelan is known for his sacrilegious, macabre, and provocative artworks which poke fun at himself as much as anything else, including the very concept of modern art. He compares himself to Cassandra, princess of Troy, who was dismissed as a crazy babbler for her warning prophecies against Troy’s destruction. No one heeded her and Troy was destroyed by the Greeks. Whether Cattelan is warning us against destruction at our own hands I’m not sure, and I still don’t know what he hopes to gain from “Comedian.” I don’t know why the Art Basel would permit the work, a term that doesn’t even seem fitting to describe a banana duct-taped to a wall, I don’t know why anyone considered the work worth anything beyond the minimal production costs (one banana and a roll of Duck Tape), or why anyone would meet the asking price. For yes, indeed, Cattelan did include an asking price with the title of his piece. I wonder whether he laughed when his demand was met or whether he sighed at the continued foolishness of man.

I wonder if Cattelan wonders, as I do over and over again, why there should be such disparity in the world. Why one average banana and one average piece of tape should cause such an [expensive] stir while millions of children go hungry. Why there are VIPs who spend hundreds of thousands, millions, of dollars on frivolities, on nonsense, such as modern art like the “Comedian” or canvases painted with two blocks of color, while the common poor choose between medicine or food. Why are there even such persons as “Very Important People”? Why are some of us worthy and others disposable?

Why? Why? Why?

If you are like me these questions make you mad.

You move beyond bewilderment into anger when reading of the “Comedian” debacle, when you see a woman sheltering beneath an overpass, or a man holding a cardboard sign on the median in front of a shopping center. You get mad when students throw away unopened snacks and unbitten apples in the cafeteria trash barrels, when children complain that their phone isn’t the latest model or their car doesn’t have seatback screens. You get so angry sometimes that you pound your fists and cry.

Recently I got mad looking at photos of a beautiful second grader standing in her house. The floor is dirt. The walls are plastic USAID tarp patched with rice sacks. The roof is cracked scraps of rusted tin. In the one-room space there is a sagging bed and a table piled with clothes and cookware.

The smiling second grader stands with reddish-tinged hair pulled into erratic pigtails, hands folded in front of her, legs scuffed with dust, feet bare. She has said the flimsy roof leaks so when it rains the floor becomes mud. She lives with her grandmother, mother, and two brothers. No one works.

Usually the girl attends school and eats a good meal five days a week. For two and a half months her school was closed as political protests locked down the country, enforced by patrolling gangsters who forbid schools and business to function. To appease the gangsters and yet serve the students, the school compromised with a Saturday program: children came at 8:00, were fed breakfast, prayed and sang together, listened to a Bible story, played games, and ate a midday meal of rice and beans, departing in small groups around 1:00. The program was held at a private home and children attended in street clothes. It wasn’t much but a few hours on Saturday was better than nothing. The second grader had attended the latest Saturday program and received eagerly an extra plate of rice and beans. She wolfed down the heaping portion and then promptly threw it up again. She sobbed in embarrassment.

Why? Was there too much food in her shrunken stomach? Was the food eaten too quickly? Did she fear that this could be her last meal? Did she feel guilty that she had wasted all that food? Was she ashamed for showing weakness before her peers?

The answer is YES to all of the above.

The real question is why this beautiful little girl should be so hungry. Why should she and her family live in a tent-house? Why should they struggle for food? Why should she be barred from school and her guardians from work?

Why should one person drop $120,000.00 on a rotting banana while an entire family cannot afford a $25.00 bag of rice to feed them for a week?

All these why’s make me furious.

Furious like the day I heard the gangsters had threatened our students to keep out of school. Furious like when I saw photos of a first grader’s twiggy arms and legs framing his little pot stomach (signs of acute malnutrition.) Furious like when a four-year-old walked the two miles halfway to school on the heels of a neighbor. Like when the mother sent her fevered kindergartner to school because there was medicine at the school (ibuprofen.) Like when a third grader’s father came asking for food at the director’s house, hands held out in supplication from his bony frame. Like when a kindergartener’s mother nearly fainted in the office because she’d given her portions to her children and eaten nothing for two days. Like when a second grader endured an untreated broken arm for three days because he’d been taught not to complain. There is much that makes me angry. Much of that anger has a common source: poverty.

Shelley Jean is co-founder of Apparent Project and founder of Papillon Enterprises in Haiti, organizations dedicated to orphan prevention through job creation, providing work so parents can provide for their children. Shelley understands this anger.

“Poverty is evil,” she writes in her book Shelley in Haiti. “Poverty destroys. It makes people do things they wouldn’t do, and it kills…We were not meant to live in poverty” (Jean 146.)

And yet so many do live in poverty. Two thousand years ago Jesus promised that we would always have the poor among us, and we do. There are so many who cannot afford sufficient food, medical care, or housing; they lack what the average First Worlder considers basic necessities. Meanwhile, us First Worlders are wrapping up the Holiday Season. For the first time in four years, I’m wrapping up the Season as well, having been present through Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s.

Holidays are tough. The extravagance of decorations, festivities, gifts, and food is tough. Once you’ve seen the dirt floor and tarp and rice sack walls of a second grader’s one room house, once you’ve seen the malnourished twig limbs of a first grader and the hollowed cheeks of the fourth grader, you can’t enjoy First World holidays as you once did. In the bliss of ignorance and gluttony.

Instead when you enter the department store you think how much comfort those soft blankets and towels could lend those in leaky mountain shacks. You consider how the soaps and lotions could ease irritated skin and prevent scabies. How those toys could light up hunger-dimmed eyes.

You sit down to share a meal with family and imagine how many hungry could be fed by the bounty. How many could enjoy fare they’ve never tasted in their bland, bare diet. You bite a cookie and remember they’ve never seen such an array of desserts, not tasted gingerbread, whoopie pies, cheesecake, or apple pie. You want to fill a platoon of carts with goods and goodies for them, those children hungry in body and soul. Their parents, too. You want to invite them all home for Christmas dinner, dessert, cocoa and presents just for them beside a colorful tree.

Your Christmas wish is their provision, just a fraction to closer equality with the local kids you see at school in NH, with your own adored cousins with their own bedrooms and playrooms. You just want to lessen the disparity a bit. Just a bit.

Why can’t you?

Why? Why? Why?

“Shame on the artist and shame on the buyer,” you might say of the “Comedian” debacle, er, event. “Shame on them.”

I’ve thought that, certainly.

But I like to think that artist Cattelan gladly accepted the bids of eager buyers of his piece and donated the proceeds to a worthy cause. A cause that might feed hungry children, give vaccinations, or pay teachers. I like to think that the buyers of “Comedian” laugh themselves at the absurdity, share in the comedy, enjoy the banana, and proceed to spend much more money on feeding other hungry people.

I prefer to imagine the best of them because I don’t know the truth.

Just as we don’t know the history of the gangsters patrolling the streets of Haiti, the desperation of parents leaving their children at orphanages, the fear of children with food insecurity. We can’t know, truly, we of the First World, we of anywhere in the realm of Middle Class or above, the lot of the Poor. The cultural, generational poor. We can’t ever answer the heavy questions of why.

We can overcome our anger with determination. Our sorrow with perseverance. We can fight the evil of poverty, as Shelley Jean promises she will, every day (146.) We can strive to bring a little more equality to an unequal world, a little more joy to the despairing, a little more sustenance to the weak. We can lessen that yawning chasm of disparity a little more. We can stop fuming over the “why” and start focusing on the “how.” The first step is, in good humor, to put bananas and duct-tape to practical use in filling  bellies and  patching holes.

*Call to Action: If you would like to help this beautiful second-grader and her family upgrade their house, including purchasing new tin for a fitted, leak-free roof, please contact myself at rachel.allyssa93@gmail.com or Beverly Burton at bsburton902@gmail.com. Thank you. 

*Note: Upon researching Maurizio Cattelan I am very intrigued and have gained respect for the artist. I appreciate his wit, self-effacement, and courage at poking fun at himself, other artists, curators and collectors, and at his attempts to make us see with new perspective. Although I do not agree with what I deem religious degradation in some of his art pieces, I concur we are too consumed with ourselves and quick to adopt opinions and judgements without due consideration. Also reading about Cattelan and his previous works has alleviated much of my frustration about the "Comedian" spectacle. Note the sources on Cattelan listed below.

Sources

Buck, Louisa. “'Art's Most High-Profile Provocateur' Maurizio Cattelan on His New Blenheim Palace Show.” The Art Newspaper, The Art Newspaper, 12 Sept. 2019, www.theartnewspaper.com/interview/art-s-most-high-profile-provocateur-maurizio-cattelan-discusses-his-new-blenheim-palace-show.

Elbaor, Caroline. “Buyers of Maurizio Cattelan's $120k Banana Defend It as 'the Unicorn of the Art World,' Comparing the Work to Warhol's Soup Cans.” Artnet News, Artnet News, 11 Dec. 2019, news.artnet.com/art-world/maurizio-cattelan-banana-collector-1728009.

Jean, Shelley, et al. Shelley in Haiti: One Woman's Quest for Orphan Prevention Through Job Creation. Papillon Press, 2017.

Jones, Jonathan. “Don't Make Fun of the $120,000 Banana – It's in on the Joke | Jonathan Jones.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 9 Dec. 2019, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/dec/09/the-art-world-is-bananas-thats-what-maurizio-cattelans-been-saying-all-along.

“Maurizio Cattelan.” Guggenheim, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2019, www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/maurizio-cattelan.