There
was no earthly explanation, when I first went to
Haiti as a tourist in 1986, why it felt like
home. The maze of market women and the taxis,
like mobile artwork that moved through piles of
rotting garbage — it was nothing like the
tree-lined, manicured streets of the Cleveland
suburb where I grew up. But I smiled back at the
people who smiled at me, a white woman walking
and sweating just like them.
Two years later, I returned to buy handicrafts
to sell at my store in San Francisco, but
instead of wooden trays and papier-mâché, the
Haitians were dealing in bullets and machine
guns. I had inadvertently arrived during a coup
d'état, and my plans changed. Instead of staying
for three months, I ended up staying for 10
years, eventually becoming a journalist.
My Haitian community began with the street kids,
skinny, intrepid boys with unusual names: Wawa,
Fatil, Eril, Ayiti, Ti David. I didn't have
children, and they didn't have parents, so we
became a family of sorts. I bought them
mattresses and shoes, and they taught me Haitian
street smarts and Creole. On the days that I
felt homesick, they made me laugh, though I was
the one with a roof over my head. They were
living in the charred courtyard of St. Jean
Bosco Church, best known for
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the bespectacled
priest who embodied the hope that one day they
could know a life better than the leftovers they
survived on. But the priest let them down, and
the kids scattered.
Soon I fell in love with a Haitian musician and
Vodou drummer, Jean Raymond. We married and had
a son, although not in that order. Kadja, who is
named for a Vodou chant, considers himself
black. When he was young, his Haitian
grandmother made him breakfasts of fried
spaghetti with ketchup or bread dunked in a
syrupy coffee diluted with milk and sugar. When
he wanted to get my attention, he said,
"Mom-mom-mom-mom," like the rat-a-tat-tat of the
gunfire that I was worried would wake him in the
middle of the night, or worse. Now, when he has
something important to say, he just calls me
Kati, the way the Haitians do.
The year that Kadja turned 7 and that I had a
gun held to my head for the third time, we moved
to safety in Miami. But Kadja, now 14, respects
his roots. On Haitian Flag Day, he wears a
Haitian bandanna to remind people that he is not
as white as he appears. He speaks Creole when he
wants to say something private in front of his
Hispanic friends and French if he must. If he
doesn't do his homework, he says, "Se pa fot
mwen," a Creole expression for "It's not my
fault," as if this has been done to him rather
than something he should take responsibility
for. He unconsciously taps out Vodou rhythms at
the dinner table, an inherent gift from his
father.
We still maintain a home in Port-au-Prince,
where Jean Raymond's band and music school are
based. Jean Raymond comes and goes; I go and
come — I've been there three times in the last
12 weeks to cover the unstable political scene.
But Kadja hasn't been there, hasn't seen his
Haitian grandmother in more than a year and a
half. Before a trip last month, Kadja wrapped
his strong arms around me and said, "It's O.K.
that you go, Kati, because you love Haiti, and
it's your job, but if you don't mind, I want to
wait for the kidnappings to stop before I go
back."
I nodded, afraid that I would start to cry. It
breaks my heart to agree with him, but he knows
how volatile Port-au-Prince continues to be. And
I am thankful that he doesn't face the
challenges — the poverty, drugs and political
violence — that young men his age in Haiti have
to face.
I had a very difficult reminder of this on
another recent trip: I ran into Wawa, one of the
boys I helped and who helped me nearly 18 years
ago. He is now a strapping man with a son of his
own. When he saw me, his beefy arms lifted me up
and twirled me around. "Kati, Kati," he smiled.
He is making his living as a pickpocket; his
deft hands defy his bulk. "Se pa fot mwen," he
said. The news about the other boys wasn't good.
Eril was dying of tuberculosis. Ti David, Fatil
and Ayiti were already dead.
I don't know what will happen in Haiti. I don't
know when Kadja will go back or exactly how his
connection to his roots will grow. It's better
for now to protect him from the potential danger
in the country that is his birthright, but I
dream about returning with him to the place I
love. It's beyond my control, se pa fot mwen,
but I have to hope.
Kathie Klarreich is the author of "Madame
Dread: A Tale of Love, Vodou and Civil Strife in
Haiti." She has reported on Haiti for Time, The
Nation, The Christian Science Monitor, NPR and
NBC.
