Edition #134 - What’s Going On, Alex? I Almost Settled In Haiti… Really!!!!

I do not question anyone anymore. I drink coffee and I live.1

- Tahar Ben Jelloun

It’s strange how my memories are being jolted back to life from one moment to another, in completely random circumstances. It’s as if, since I died and got back, I was experiencing 2 totally different timelines: one that goes most definitely onward through the happiness I decided to cultivate no matter the real state of my health condition and one that goes profoundly backwards as I have to contemplate the prospect of my own status of expected expiration, or at least it’s actually a reminder of such.

Adopting Robert, who’s getting slightly better in his parvovirus fight (we are at day 13 now), was a defying decision for me. Since I saw my journey be massively altered by my heart surgery and the unsettling nightmares that followed, I promised myself to stop making plans altogether and to cultivate what I had left, to avoid engaging in anything involving emotions or that had another further ramification into any sort of distant tomorrow… It’s hard to start something you don’t know you’ll ever finish, let alone a relationship that personally matters and that could potentially create a devastating ripple effect in somebody else’s voyage. I probably just stopped believing in what used to make me who I was, to see myself as an evolving entity… As being myself.

That conceptual subconsciousness for some was quite a vivid reality to me. It’s like your spirit is floating half awake between ethereal dreams and tangible corporeality somehow. You are alive, but you are not really living… At least, I wasn’t, not in any way close to how I used to, anyway. But equally true, I knew that “things” would actually change when I decided they did. That transformation comes with how far and deep I was willing to dive down afterwards… I knew it, but I wasn’t ready until I was. What followed wasn’t simpler nor any easier, but it was mine, which was a major step for me mentally. My body finally started to heal, but my psyche was still in too many pieces to even dare trying to clean it up… Maybe I didn’t need to clean anything up after all… Acceptance is an overused and too often misunderstood word that doesn’t mean much, if anything, and more…

I guess I just stopped inflicting myself with more misery than my denials needed in order to legitimize my overtly confusing conduct, whatever it was or probably wasn’t. I just stopped that torturing cycle and embraced a little more peace of heart, of mind, each day, just like that… Well, kind of just like that… I make it sound magical — it ain’t. But the results are if you want them to, and it led me to clean my “emotional” mess. It eventually and naturally slowed my alcohol intake down… Was I becoming an alcoholic? Maybe. I don’t know, I was too drunk to care, I suppose… I got back to writing, reading, seeing people (yes, I did like the isolation of the pandemic)… I started to care a little more about myself than worrying about disappointing others. Projects and ideas began flowing. Visions and dreams were reenabled. But most importantly, I allowed myself to live. And that fragile little “thing” could be encapsulated by what I told Robert when I adopted him: “We’re going to have the best freaking 15-20-year life ride ahead together!” whereas before, my wish was to make sure I wouldn’t die on Leonard…

So what about Haiti? What’s the connection? There’s none…! Well, there’s obviously one, and it’s not that Morocco played against Haiti in the qualification matches of the recent World Cup. I know it’s far-fetched, but I came into the realization of something I never expected while attempting to ignite a wide measure of my lost memories… When you live — for real — memories come back unexpectedly. That’s the connection. Yes, it could have been 2 introductory sentences to start that text, but where would be the reassuring factor (and fun) for you if it wasn’t to realize just how much more sane you are compared to others (me)? It’s a free empowering therapy for you right here… Don’t you feel better about yourself now? Ok, Haiti now…!

I must have been 18 or 19 years old when I decided to do international cooperation social work. I almost went to Sudan and Ethiopia but elected to go to Haiti, as my mentor at the time, who spent more than 25 years in Congo as a youth teacher and community servant, told me he had a contact within his organization that could help me facilitate my integration in a country ravaged by perpetual hopelessness and authoritarian abuses. I was freshly out of violent gangs myself, and while I wasn’t looking to redeem myself, I did want to be part of something positively bigger than all the sufferings I might have inflicted around me over those raging years that came to pass. “Who will I send?” I heard on some boring Sunday church service I attended with my father. It was a rhetorical question since that place never did anything to serve others but themselves (that’s another story), but it created something in my heart. I wondered if I could be something worth “sending”. I soon realized it’s not entirely about the quality of the person you send but about sending someone who wants to be sent in the first place…

“Well, you are the only candidate, Alex, which makes you the best one for the task! Welcome aboard!” sounded good to me. And there I went, but only after learning Creole (which later saved my life) before I got to Port-au-Prince. Good thing my mentor prepared me mentally because I couldn’t have been further from home than there. It was my first time being exposed to “organized” chaos, and I had to immediately compose with codes I didn’t fully understand at the time. I stayed in the capital for 2 days, then headed to Cap-Haïtien, where the trip would take place… or should I say the bad trip (at first).

While people were incredibly sweet, welcoming, and nice, I soon realized there were a lot of individuals who were deeply disillusioned about helping hands coming from abroad. Within my fourth day in the country, while riding a “tap tap” (a sort of public transportation consisting of wooden planks screwed into the box of a very, very old pickup truck), I heard 3 large men telling each other that they would take me aside and beat me to death once I dropped off the vehicle, a serious threat considering the rampant epidemic of ONG members who had started disappearing all over the highlands. Since I didn’t want to be found in a ditch in the middle of nowhere, my streetwise experience came into play. I started to talk to them in Creole, stunning them. I told them why I was there in the first place, to help kids, but also to learn from the different Haitian neighborhoods I would be involved in. “Learn what?” asked the biggest guy of the killing crew. “About faith, hope, and community,” I simply said in my limited creole vocabulary. And so we talked… They did jump out of the tap tap with me but didn’t jump me, and we befriended each other.

I ended up hanging out with them several days a week and later found out they were part of a ruthless and merciless local gang. But I saw them like they probably saw me, and I have never been worried for my security from that moment on. On the contrary, it opened me doors that were tightly shut down to others, and I did indeed learn a whole lot as I visited people, educating them regarding AIDS’ rampant proliferation and debunking the idea that sleeping with a virgin girl would act as some sort of immunity against the disease, resulting in a massive wave of rape and child abuse. I wasn’t there to judge or to moralize anyone — there’s no playbook in the face of desperation. I wanted to offer comfort in science and education, but in a dignifying way, which led them to call me “bon nèg blan an” (the good white guy). In the socio-geopolitical context, it was quite an honor to be called anything close to something “ok”, so that came as an honor for me…

I was residing at a local pastor’s house in the middle of the city. I could have stayed in the church’s countryside estate, which offered some sort of safer environment to visitors, but I wanted to stay with the people. And that decision made that whole 3-month journey a life-changing one. I heard and saw voodoo rituals, helped while a midwife screamed for assistance as she had to hastily intervene with a woman who was losing her child (a baby girl who got named Alex… sweet!), was called as a substitute teacher for the all-age and only class of a village, drove a doctor around, and on, and on, and on. I even learned about the NBA Celtics legacy and 10-year-old March Madness tournaments I would watch with teens on VHS tapes. I taught how to play Ramones songs to outstanding bluesmen who let me borrow their electric guitar one night… Life was hard, no doubt about it, but life was immensely rich.

Then came along Christèle, the youngest daughter of the senior pastor who had started the social and community work I was involved in. He started all that 20 years prior with basically nothing. And like her father before her, who had been sent by an American association to attend Princeton University and came back to serve his community rather than accepting different positions in America, Christèle was coming back home between each semester. She was tough as nails, incredibly brilliant and funny, stunning to the eyes, and even more so as a leader of the community. I don’t think she liked me that much at first, as she kept on saying there was some melancholy behind my greenish-brown eyes (really?!?) but we managed to get along. We would spend much of our days together. I never saw someone being so intentional. She wasn’t preaching some feel-good theoretic make-believes, she knew how to gather people, especially young women, to whom she was dedicating most of her time… I’ve learned a whole lot just looking at her devotional demeanors. She wasn’t only talking, she was THE walk…

At some point we were talking about my future, and she was encouraging me to get transferred to her university. I joked, saying I wasn’t a rich princess for Haiti. She told me she actually had a scholarship and was working full time over there, something she obviously didn’t have to do. For her, “things” aren’t given but worked for. I realized I didn’t have much planned after that actual trip. University… community service… nothing was set. She helped me a lot to focus, to establish what I wanted, what my goals were, what I was looking to accomplish, and, more importantly, what type of person I wanted to be…

And by the end of my Haitian journey, she asked me what I thought about our duo. I joked, asking if she was asking me in marriage, laughing that she would love Canada. She said the joke was on me, considering that my public education wasn’t worth much if anything compared to hers and that she was not interested in teaming up with some white dude who would rather go hide back home than embrace his obvious calling in a community that had already welcomed him. I said she was just an old single woman looking for a young man to do her chores (she was 22 years old). She said I was too young to be of any interest to a real woman (she might have had a point on that one). Our kind argumentative ping pong match must have lasted for a while…

I think, in retrospect, that while we had a significant affection for each other, our respective “callings,” or my lack of certainty regarding mine, were too palpable to envision a potential or eventual Haitian get-together. Even if I seriously thought about going back to Haiti not long after I came back home and would have liked to keep a connection with Christèle afterwards, it was preferable for both of us to maintain our distinctive sight on our individual purposes to avoid affective blurriness and pressuring expectations on each other, especially as I somehow knew that my story’s main destination wouldn’t be on the island, even if its people hold a very special place in my heart… But I seriously considered it at the time.

There are so many parallels I can make with that whole trip in Haiti and what I’m presently experiencing, except that I have a much clearer understanding of who I am, of what truly matters to me, and somewhat of where I’m heading, or at least the direction in which I envision what I’m seeing tomorrow, based on what I’m building now.

Yes, memories come back when you live… for real… unexpectedly… but undeniably.

Life creates life.

Your friend and brother,

Alex

PS: The seventh and probably last part of my “So What’s Going On, Alex?” series will be titled “My Record is Officially Done… There’s Only One Last Thing to Do.” Since I invited Jeff, Miss Isabel, Ben, and Sef (if I don’t change my mind…! 😉) to join me in Tangier to start working on the next record… Yes, if you managed to read until this point, I’m already starting the production for the second album of my 5 upcoming creative installments. I should share some fragments of those songs with you as the project starts to take shape… that’s called living!!!