A History of Haiti in verse: Part IV

 Creole, Vodou, and Francois Mackandal 

Africans of all clans, yoked and naked, stolen from their homeland, possessionless and powerless, nevertheless resolutely refused to relinquish their inner independence. In defense of their very humanity, God-given liberty to life which their captors denied, the shiploads of slaves shoved ashore on Saint Domingue found ways to unite and fight back even with hands bound in chains.

Captured all over the Dark Continent, these thousands of out-of-Africans did not share the same language, bloodlines, or beliefs. Yet as impatient French pronunciation disregarded their names, discarded their histories with their needs and freedom, consequently these thousands of immigrants forged new identities. The next-generation French born on the island were now commonly called “Creoles,” so the desperate-to-survive Africans began to identify themselves as “Haitians,” allying with the oppressed natives who had been used and abused by domineering white men. Instead of bowing broken backs beneath the cotton sacks or cowering before the overseer’s whip, the oppressed African-Haitians refused to be depressed. While most of European colonists drooped in the afternoon heat, their intellects and integrity lapsing into laxity, the slaves’ brains sharpened with their cane-cutting machetes, and instead of dropping exhausted onto meager cots each night, they worked long hours in the darkness, employing themselves in the second-job of escape-plotting and vengeance-scheming.

"The Slave Trade 1619-1808" (p 162) Santon, Kate, and Liz McKay. Atlas of World History. Parragon, 2006.

These African-Haitians invested in deception, proved exceptional actors and actresses who before their French masters wore masks of adoring devotion or the stoicism devoid of emotion, before they shed these masks with the completion of daily tasks to secretly reconvene with their compatriots from neighboring plantations, others who dared defy the Black Code and meet after hours without passes from their owners. Slaves had not the right to assembly, either, and gatherings of two or more warranted punishment, never mind suspicion from viciously defensive white minds.

However, the majority of small-minded emigres being fanned, fed, and fondly tended by their faithful Negroes did not consider their black beasts capable of cleverness. Donkeys and horses could no more conspire than could their slaves, who must be kept in-hand, as a strict father might raise his child. Thus their own racisme worked against the French-Creole colonials: the extreme minority on an island of perhaps 700,000 slaves. They never could have imagined, for example, the ingenuity of their “child-minded” beasts of burden in finding compromise among their hundreds of differing tribal cultures. Slavers and masters alike purposely purchased Africans from various regions to ensure their isolation, maintain barriers of language and practice. Yet on the common ground of Saint Domingue, chained together on the same tether, men and women whose nations never mingled forged new bonds. Brotherhood now tethered them together and they mingled their differing African dialects to invent a new language, formed almost mockingly with lots of phonetic French, and fragments of other European remnants left behind on the island after centuries of pirates and conquistadores and the Arawak originals. This linguistic improvisation is all the more remarkable for the majority of slaves were illiterate. (Of course, this would also contribute to the lack of consistency in Haitian Creole orthography even into the 21^st century.)

Empowered by their common tongue, their knowledge and cunning grew; they threw themselves into their surroundings, adapting to the wild jungles, rocky mountains, flat plains, camouflaging cane fields. They learned the local weapons, the herbal remedies and poisons, the toxic reptiles and insects. Their already-tropically-adroit constitutions largely immunized them to the swampy sicknesses, including the dreaded Yellow Fever. While the Europeans hid in the coolness of their houses, complained of the sweltering heat while demanding cold beverages and constant manual fanning, their slaves, whenever they could slip away, grew familiar with Saint Domingue’s secrets, knew her intimately, and hid the knowledge away for the right opportunity.

Opportunities they discussed at clandestine gatherings, when slaves from different plantations met under the trees, in swampy glades, under the moon, in religious rituals as inventive and cohesive as the new Creole language. Some Africans were Moors of the North who worshipped Allah; many were of polytheistic persuasion and called on different gods for specific purposes. Virtually all of the nighttime rebels were owned by ostensibly Christian men, yet some may have adopted the Gospel as their own despite the dreadful hypocrisy and cruelty demonstrated by these “Christians.” The ancestral spiritualism from Mother Africa twined with Catholic and Islamic faiths to bear another new fruit unique to Saint Domingue: the religion of vodou. A pantheon of spirits, called lwa in Creole, were distinguished with distinct personalities and vocations, including Baron Samedi, the god of death and Lord of the Crossroads; the beautiful possessively jealous Venus-like lover of men Erzulie Freda; and the all-powerful Damballa Ouedo, he who lived in the sky and had serpent for both symbol and servant. If so inclined, the lwa could do good things for good people, or terrible and wicked things to enemies.

 

painting by Gerard Fortune, 

photo credit: HaitianDominican Art, https://haitian-dominican-art.tumblr.com/post/136261890704/gerard-fortune

During the years of nocturnal rebellion the scheming slaves prayed protection for themselves and retribution for their oppressors as they gathered around a fire. Their drums haunted the Caribbean night, beating like an anxious pulse, sometimes like the call to war. Their feet that should have been beaten and weary with the fatigue of field labor danced heartily. Their voices joined Creole words to ancient melodies. The blood of pigs and cocks fed the ground or filled a gourd to pass around. Some attendees or houngan priests were possessed by a lwa and shrieked unknowable secrets or committed impossible feats like eating coals plucked from the fire without pain or fear. With proof of such supernatural endowment, congregated slaves made careful plans, combining their new knowledge of the land with past patterns of African poison. It was poison with which Francois Mackandal would attain such deadly success.

For six years Mackandal headed a conspiracy movement intended to eradicate the French. For six years after his escape from the cattle fields of his master’s plantation, Mackandal committed himself to the creation and distribution of poison, managing anonymous other slaves, both free and in captivity, to administer his toxic brew; through them he slew thousands of white folks and their livestock. For six years Mackandal lived outside society, off the grid, and evaded capture by French authorities. When he was finally arrested, his execution was meant to be a depressing spectacle to instill fear and quell rebellious notions in witnessing slaves. But Mackandal seemed to defy whites even from beyond the grave.

Since he had fled his own plantation of imprisonment, Francois Mackandal had harbored hatred for the white race and plotted vengeance. White people were certainly the clear reason for most of Mackandal’s suffering. He had been seized from Africa at the tender age of twelve, carted away across the waves to the West Indies and sold as a slave on Saint Domingue. Once there, no one cared what his life had been, whether he was educated, who his family was or what gods he adored. This boy was awarded instead among the most odious and lethal tasks on the plantations: partaking in the sugar-mill maintenance. Most unfortunately, like so many poor souls before him, Mackandal fell victim to the greedy grind of the sugar mill, run at rapidly risky rate by greedy overseers, and lost his left arm.

Probably an impressive physical specimen before, this one-armed young buck dropped drastically in value. Yet despite being damaged goods, he was a purchased asset nonetheless, and Mackandal was kept on in chains, assigned meaner labor as a livestock herder. He was now prey to even greater disdain by imperious masters who saw the only beast worse than a Negro a partially formed quasimodo Negro.

Subjected to such bestial treatment, one little wonders Mackandal held no loyalties for any masters or overseers, any free or poor whites. Seemingly he received naught but ill-treatment and unconceivable cruelty from those white people he encountered. Unlike some of the famous Founding Fathers who would follow in the future, then, Mackandal leaves no impression of belief in redemption, of eventual peace between black and white men. He day-dreamed instead of escape and retribution, and he schemed of serving the colony’s white masters their own bitter medicine in turn.  

 His plan began in earnest with Mackandal’s sudden escape, his flight from his lowly station on the lonely cattle fields. Like many slaves before and after him, Mackandal probably just took steadier grip on his staff or grass-cutting machete and bolted on legs powered by hard-labor and desperation, making for the mountains where he could vanish in the impenetrable crags, or join the ranks of Haiti’s first chimères: escaped slaves living outside the law and society. Their wild and high-altitude existence inspired the Spanish to call them “maroons” after “cimarron” originating from a word referring to mountain summits. The term caught-on as fewer slaves were caught, and indulgent colonial authorities forgave a few days of petit-marronage, which might include a visit to another plantation but concluded with a return to their master’s toil. Grand-marronage was utter acquittal from the lash: when a slave ran for the hills. If he could outrun, outlast, and outwit his pursuers, including the maréchaussée force, he could live free, above the grasp of greedy European masters. Realizing chances of survival were better with allies, maroons formed secluded communities in hidden strongholds in the misty mountains where they remained absconded, the hope of slaves in bondage and terror of plantation owners.

Land of Mountains
(photo credit: myself, 2016)

Attempts by the French at taking these maroon-run forts had constantly been in vain, and never, in the bloody history of Saint Domingue, would these well-trained, highly-equipped soldiers succeed in ousting these belligerent liberated blacks, nor often of even discovering where they hid in the myriad folds of the Land of Mountains still rife with jungle vegetation. Maroons camouflaged in the jungles, fortified themselves in the mountains, and bred new generations of black islanders born free in these hidden fortresses of Saint Domingue. Even as the French increased restrictions in attempts to control their immense slave population, the numbers of marrons increased, and those who remained in chains on the plantations fed on the legends these rebel bands who fought for freedom.

The maréchaussée police could not keep up with the number of runaways, never mind compete with the sneak-attacks and plantation robberies maroons executed under cover of darkness. No matter how many accused rebels they executed, how many potential informants they tortured, the immense cruelty and duress of the increasingly desperate French-Creoles could not stem the maroon tide, could not flush them out of their mountain forts. These forts seemed to disappear with the mists like the Isle of La Gonave, rendering themselves invisible at the will of their inhabitants. The marons who dwelled in these mysterious cloud-shrouded mountains were cautious, defending their refuge as soldiers. They dug pits fitted with sharpened pikes, kept strict codes of secrecy about their wild lifestyle. Rites of initiation into maron communities were also a clear reflection of African societal heritage, participation in which was intensive and demanding but imperative to the continued existence of communities, essential to infrastructure and the preparation of future generations.

Africans newly estranged from their Homeland, still trailing their chains, could more readily assimilate into the marronage life than could Creole slaves, long-time islanders accustomed to the strictures of plantations and some of the conveniences of colonial lifestyles. Nevertheless, anyone who could reach the gates could join the maroon clan. The clans were not unlike their pirate forebears, those motley crews of multiethnic runaways pursuing new avenues. Some might think of them, too, like Robin Hood and his group of gallant ruffians: outlaw heroes cleverly hidden in forest camps, always out of view of pursuing soldiers. However one chooses to describe them, the maroons were certainly impressive, these men and women rebels who took back their freedom, proved their mental equality, if not superiority, to their increasingly racist white captors.

"Le Marron Inconnu" ("The Unknown Maroon"), sculpture by Albert Mangones, 1967

photo credit: Alchetron, https://alchetron.com/Le-Marron-Inconnu

For the unfortunate truth we see is not that the African Slave Trade began from long-ingrained ideas of values of the color scale, where from ancient times those with the lightest skin which burned easily, turned red during labor under the sun, were God’s chosen, His most divine men meant to reign over the rest. Rather the reverse is true: that from the explosive growth of the slave trade, the staggering black tide of dark-skinned men and women made captive in Africa and condemned to terminal servitude around the white world, racism grew. Bitter seeds of the most poisonous sort sported roots that dug deeply, quickly, greedily, eagerly, spreading parasitic vines like pervasive kudzu ivy. Racism ran thorny tendrils around everything, corrupting with its coverage, choking the life out of healthy tolerance like the ropy northern Bittersweet. Racism thrived with the slave trade, so by the third century of its existence, Mackandal’s time of the 1750’s, it was firmly rooted as God’s own truth that some men were blessed with rights of dominion while others bore God’s wish for their submission.

In Saint Domingue, the white Europeans were God’s favored heads, while the black Africans were the lowest beasts of burden. Like the ancient Egyptians dwarfed by the Hebrews, the minority whites feared above all black reprisal, rebellion by those Africans who outnumbered them one hundred to one on sprawling plantations. Yet as much as they feared and loathed their captives, these white owners were at once fascinated by their physicality and dismissive of their mental capacity. They could not believe that such savages could foment organized warfare or carry out a poisonous conspiracy. Certainly they could not perceive how Mackandal, a one-armed runaway, had managed not only his own survival but

Needless to say, the French police force was severely relieved to catch Mackandal and duly eager for his speedy demise. However, they also wanted his death to serve as a lasting lesson to his fomenting rebel comrades, and any other slaves considering rebellion. They thought that public execution, burned at the pyre, would prove sufficiently vividly gruesome to staunch the steady ebb of unrest and revolt, as well as put to rest the pesky Mackandal himself for good. To their lasting dismay, the clever intentions of the French authorities backfired, for the funeral fire intended for Mackandal served instead as fiery inspiration for thousands of slaves.

On that January day in 1758 the maréchaussée did not kill a man but created an undying legend.

The witnesses in the Cap Francais square where they tied Mackandal to be burned watched at close range as he wriggled from the ropes and leaped free of the flames. The guards gaped in disbelief, probably, before springing into sprinting pursuit and seizing the one-armed man again. They secured him to a plank and rejoiced as the flames claimed him.

The whites would swear he died there, quickly expiring for lack of air.

But the black audience would claim Mackandal made a second escape, far more miraculous than the first. After the guards bound him again and left him for dead, Mackandal called on his lwa. They surely granted his desire, the blacks were assured, for the next moment Mackandal was transformed into a mosquito, a tiny buzzing insect ropes had no hope of holding. The mosquito flew free of the smoky square and who knows where he went next? As that nearly-invisible creature Mackandal might spread deadly Yellow Fever to his enemies.

Whatever truly happened in that square in 1758, which European records claim concluded in Mackandal’s termination, is less important than what ensued: the heightened brewing of revolution. Master and slave alike feared the invincibility of martyrs like Mackandal who carried on the crusade for freedom more fiercely than before when human form hindered his movements, whether as an insect or inspiration.

Although forty years would pass before the official Slave Rebellion of Saint Domingue began, Francois Mackandal’s conspiracy and slaughter places him among the Founding Fathers. Whether by his endurance as a slave, his bravery under amputation, by his guerilla tactics, intelligence, botanical and toxicological prowess as a maroon, or by his dignity at his execution and his mythic second flight to freedom, Mackandal modeled many qualities of a strong soldier. His legacy sparked greater courage in restless young men who dreamed of freedom, men who would one day be the officers of the Revolution.

Works Cited (so far): 

Antonio de Montesinos: “Christmas Eve Sermon of 1511”
https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/quotes/antonio-de-montesinos-christmas-eve-sermon-of-1511-on-just-treatment-of-indians

Bartolome de las Casas
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bartolome-de-Las-Casas

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

Columbus’ Crew
http://columbuslandfall.com/ccnav/crew.shtml

Davis, Wade. The Serpent and the Rainbow: a Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombis, and Magic. Touchstone, 1985.

Deibert, Michael. Notes from the Last Testament: the Struggle for Haiti. Seven Stories Press, 2005.

Dubois, Laurent. Haiti: the Aftershocks of History. Picador, 2013.

Francois Mackandal (Macandal/Makandal) ( ?-1758) (http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/people_mackandal_francois.html

Francois Makandal
http://slaveryandremembrance.org/people/person/?id=PP024

Girard, Philippe R. Haiti: the Tumultuous History from Pearl of the Caribbean to Broken Nation. St. Martin's Griffin, 2010.

Haiti (Saint Domingue)
http://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0111

Haitian Revolution
http://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0066

History of Haiti
https://library.brown.edu/haitihistory/1sr.html

Hurston, Zora Neale, and Henry Louis Gates. Tell My Horse Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica. Harper Perennial, 2009.

“Marquis de Sade: French author »
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marquis-de-Sade

Montesinos, Antonio de
https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/montesinos-antonio-de-c-1530

Saint Dominic
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Dominic

Santon, Kate, and Liz McKay. Atlas of World History. Parragon, 2006.

Short History of Tortuga
http://zeerovery.nl/history/tortuga.htm

« The Code Noir (The Black Code)”
https://revolution.chnm.org/d/335/

The First Voyage of Columbus
http://columbuslandfall.com/ccnav/v1.shtml

The Treaties of Ryswick (1697)
https://www.peacepalacelibrary.nl/2017/08/the-treaties-of-ryswick-1697/

A History of Haiti in verse: Part III

Out of Africa

Saint Domingue quickly grew crops of sprawling plantations headed by French gentlemen-planters and dainty ladies. They dwelled in indolence and opulence, leaving the real management of the incredible mass-production of the exotic tropical delicacies in such high demand overseas to their trusted overseers, lower-class white men or elevated slaves. Gloved hands concealing iron fists, the profiting planters were ever wary of slave-retaliation. Punishment was swift and daily existence severe for black chattel.

Plantation labor was severe punishment, for cultivating and cutting sugar cane was constant exhaustion beneath the hot sun, in fields of sharp leaves and unfriendly creatures, at risk of dehydration and the overseer’s whip. Refining sugar from the stalks was more perilous still, as the heavy wheels of the mill turned with all the unforgiving persistence of Sisyphus’ stone: the odd limb caught in the cogs was naught sufficient cause to stop the machinery, call halt to production and lose profits. Most owners were unimpressed by reports of severed hands or mangled arms crushed by their wheels of progress. They might object if a child were killed by the grinding mill, but only then for the cost of lost property.

Sugar mill with vertical rollers, French West Indies, 1665. [Charles de Rochefort, Histoire naturelle et morale des iles Antilles de l’Amérique … (Rotterdam, 1681), p. 332]

http://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0105

These losses were worth their weight in bloody sugar, for the ruthless continuity of slave labor produced profits unseen in any other colonies. Europeans had rapacious appetites for all goods from the West Indies, and Saint Domingue, under some mélange of landscape, placement, and colonial determination that placed great duress on the nation of slaves, was rising to meet the seemingly insatiable European need for tobacco, chocolate, fruits, and the almighty trinity of sugar, coffee, and rum. These Three flourished so abundantly in Saint Domingue that the colony single-handedly supplied one-third of Europe with these currencies, at the cost of extremely short slave life-expectancies.

Yet the wicked cycle of Want had begun, and even as their slaves died in droves from overwork and malnourishment, plantation owners noticed the weightening of their pockets over the weight of their conscience. The rich grew richer while slaves and morals grew sicker.

With greater fortunes the colonials built still larger houses and embraced greater extravagance, employed more slaves and lackeys to their service, and lounged in deeper lassitude. In the torrid equatorial heat with little to do, their idle hands letting hundreds of others cultivate their gardens, many of the plantation masters and mistresses turned to wicked mischief. For these bored Europeans, or next generation “Creoles” born in the colonies, the favored sport was slave-torture of such abhorrent proportion that even the notorious Marquis de Sade may have enjoyed vacation on the island provided they permitted his participation in the unnatural acts and brutality enacted on the unlucky Africans. De Sade’s namesake “sadism” tragically aptly applies to much of these white masters’ actions as belabored slaves were maimed for entertainment. Molestation furthered the exploitation, and many varying-shaded babies were fathered by white monsieurs who denied their relations even as they continued nightly visitations to their favorite beautiful female slaves.

View of a Sugar Plantation, French West Indies, 1762. [Denis Diderot, Encyclopédie, ou, Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Metiers … Recueil de Planches, sur les Sciences … (Paris, 1762), vol. 1, plate I] http://slaveryandremembrance.org/people/person/?id=PP024

Misery, depravity, and quick mortality were the expectancy of the captive soul from Guinea. Seven years was the average survival rate of the imported slave despite the tepid efforts of the distant French king and his ironic mandate for humane slavery standards. On the matter of black lives, the Sun King ratified The Black Code in 1687, which required proper Catholic Sabbath rest and holidays, care for the sick, forbade maim and torture, ensured families should be sold together and not torn apart. Le Code Noir even demanded that a white master who made a slave his “concubine” was required to make her his wife if he was not yet married, according to the proper rites of the Church. If already wed, the man was to be substantially fined and resign his former concubine to the hospital, along with her children, and not see her again.

These high points of Le Code Noir were joined, of course, with cruel corporal punishments including the whip and distinctly French flourish of the fleur de lys brand, the famous icon marking majestic heralds, royal genealogy, and the recaptured flesh of a runaway. Troublesome runaways also had their ears lopped off on the first offense. The second capture cut their hamstrings and earned another brand, to make a painful pair of matching shoulder tattoos. The third escape attempt ended in execution, as did offense against one’s owner. A slave who raised his hand to strike his master or one of his master’s family might as well have raised his hand in voluntary assignment to the gallows. These meters of justice, of care, crime, and punishment, were intended as infrastructure in France’s distant colonies. Overseers were to be overseen, masters held to task, and slaves not passed down through generations but eventually liberated. Perhaps these royal regulations would have made life bearable for the unwilling immigrants to Saint Domingue. Unfortunately, aging King Louis XIV kept a long-distance relationship with his best colony, and The Black Code, lacking local enforcement and endorsement, was summarily ignored.

Instead, for another two hundred years men, women, and children were torn from Africa, stolen from their homeland, packed in crates, and shipped across the sea to begin a life of hard servitude: to die quickly or slowly under the broiling sun and the lash of a capricious and unrestricted master’s whip.

They came, they worked, they died; they planned, they plotted, they survived.

 Originating from all over the continent, Africans of different nations were chained together in torment. Some were prisoners of war, conquered captives of their foes; some were victims of midnight raids, rounded up and marched out in chains by invaders; some were the sons of lowly serfs, born into the misfortunes of servitude. Some had been poor while some were royally connected; some had dwelled in villages upriver and some nearer the sea. They came from the northwestern regions of Walo and Cayor, Mandingo, Fula, and Baol; from the western gulf areas of Susu, Benin, and Annamabu. Some came from the southwestern Ndongo, Angola, and Kongo. Some had to march roped neck-to-neck before being crowded into canoes and paddled downriver from the easternly Bobangi, Teke, and Loango. From wherever they came, these motley crews of confused captives were forced to the western coast where slave ports provided their last glimpse of their Homeland before they passed through the doorways of no return and make the Middle Passage.  

“Gang of Captives Met at Mbame’s on Their Way to Tette”, 1861. [Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (Dec. 1865–May 1866), vol. 32, p. 719] http://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0003

Since 1482 when Portugal founded Elmina Castle, these slave ports complete with corrals and fortresses had been cropping up along the lustrous Gold and Ivory Coasts. And with each new “trading post” a point on the Triangle Trade route, the long-existent African-enslavement tradition exploded. Portugal persisted in its first-place position in slave exportation, shipping millions of Africans to its Brazilian silver mines. But Spain, France, and Britain were close behind in their staggering tallies and untold death tolls. Not half so prolific in their westerly slave-shipments were the Netherlands, fledgling U.S. America, and Denmark. The survival rate of slaves on many of these plantations was also greater than those Africans sent to Saint Domingue. Between the extreme equatorial propinquity and the extreme colonial antipathy, growing into atrocities, slaves simply had the worst of the New World.

Was it little wonder, then, that many a captive sought death before embarkment and enslavement among barbarians? “Having a more dreadful apprehension of Barbados than we can have of hell,” some bound men and women leapt into the sea, evaded their pursuers by remaining under the water until they were drowned, recalled one unnamed slave trader (Sources of the Western Tradition 351). Those who jumped did not merely seek relief but an afterlife reunion with their beloved homeland, a belief later generations on Saint Domingue would describe as seeking the “island beneath the sea.” Such beliefs would unite peoples from different nations, tribes, tongues, religions, and kingdoms. From differing allegiances and warring parties, these captured men, women, and children from all over Africa now shared one land, one goal, and one enemy. Bartolomé de las Casas had alleged that Africans could better endure the hardships and toil of plantation enslavement; he assured the Spanish court blacks were more resilient than the wasted Arawaks. His assertions were proved true as these victims, branded and bound, weak and unsteady after weeks at sea, stripped of clothes and dignity, found their feet on foreign colonial ground. And, with the astonishing conquering velocity with which France had transformed forlorn Hispañola into prosperous sugar-kingpin, these ultimate underdogs took groundbreaking strides.

The courtyard of the Cape Coast Castle showing the male exit tunnel; the first church of England in the background with the male slave dungeon underneath; the Dalzell’s Tower; MacLean’s Hall; graves; mortar and cannon balls. http://slaveryandremembrance.org/collections/object/?id=OB0070

*Yes, I do have an extensive Bibliography which is not here listed because the number of sources continues to increase with the research. But a special note of thanks to "Slavery and Remembrance: A Guide to Sites, Museums, and Memory" for not only providing much information but the majority of today's images, properly sourced. 

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