Chapter
15
(Book 2, Chapter 3)
"...large chunks were eaten out of me.
it didn't matter where i was. it followed me in the hallways at the
US Embassy, at USAiD, at the Justice Ministry, at my hotel and at the
National Palace. i felt like i had had a bad accident which left me
stranded on foot in the wrong neighborhood, at a late hour and "johns"
in dark vans and foreign limousines were slowing down to look or wave
me in while i was doing my very best to emit a take charge attitude,
walking faster, trying to find a phone to call for help. No one ever
touched me. But i still felt accosted.
Old scars dehumanizing Black women as
"hottails" opened when i moved too quickly or thought too deeply. New
hurts held me back from avenues i should have pursued.
i was living the Outcast's ancient history in the now. i was as absorbed
by the mental landscape as all the dusky Sallies. All the proprietresses
of shadowy, secret, sensual corridors who've gone before me..."
*********
Chapter 14
(Book
2, Chapter 2, the Dark Womb)
"....The scenario was a bit tense. Aristide's
concubines/consorts were in a tizzy about me as possible competition.
Lawyers at the National Palace, both Haitian and non-Haitian, resented
the work he'd asked me to do. There was this Canadian "French" speaking
Diaspora versus U.S. "English" speaking Diaspora tension happening.
With the "French" speakers being considered "more Haitian."
Aristide had somehow surrounded himself with
people desperately afraid of losing their jobs to members of the Diaspora
and there I was, having formed a list, a loose network with over 250
Haitian-American licensed U.S. lawyers. Many of the Internationals working
in the human rights/justice reform sector feared educated Haitians,
like us, might usurp the gravy train of contracts they were looking
to monopolize. USAiD didn't want me in there as liaison coordinating
"their reforms" and intelligence officers were on my tail for more than
information.
i was slowly being blacklisted. Watching
so-called "friends" and droves of humorless drudges leaping to the other
side of any room my subversive self walked by. Soon, a letter was circulating
at USAiD for comments about getting rid of me for the U.S. Ambassador's
signature, a draft of which someone trying to confuse me or hedging
their bet "inadvertently" let me read before the Ambassador signed
the final version.
And to top it all off, i wasn't even getting paid for the aggravation!
it felt like i had sunken into a Palace intrigue sinister enough for
Satan's glee.
i was working everyday at the Haitian Ministry complex, one of Haiti's
upper-crust citadels where a woman's power lay in the men she associates
with. Not in her knowledge, skills or experience. i was working within
a complex where over two hundred and fifty people gathered to receive
pay-checks, most of whom had no training for their positions, no agenda
for carrying out their duties; some of whom were getting a paycheck
but had never step foot into the building much less done any work; some
of whom wanted nothing less than for the chaos to continue. i was playing
the part of the post-modern "organizational woman" not knowing who was
there to help me or to report me. i was "that educated woman," that
disconnected "creature" looking to put some administrative formula together
to harness the human capital there and direct it towards court, prison
and legal code reforms. i was working at a Justice Ministry where one
knew not which ally was earning extra money and status by being close
to, yes spy for, the U.S. and the Internationals. All this triggered
in me unparallel hysteria. i've not recovered..."
*********
Chapter 34
(Book 3, Chapter 7,
Life Within the Veil)
"...All the squabbling didn't faze me. i was there because i could
be and i was asked to come. Judicial reform wasn't my chosen work. i
sat back to watch the show. But along the way i did get sucked in. The
task overcame me. Helplessness engulfed me. i played it off, but i won't
lie; i felt humiliated, taken for granted and dismissed. i was going
through the texture and feel of lost. Historical events i'd lived through
or studied were suddenly accumulated as personal setbacks. Events such
as Martin and Malcom's assassinations is flashing in the photo reel
of my mind. Setbacks like the Bakke case. The horror of Clarence ascending
to Thurgood's Supreme Court seat. The incarceration of practically 50%
of America's young Black men. The living death of pregnant, unskilled
teenagers. The effects of the downsizing of America on Blacks and the
poor, especially in the early 1990s. Duvalier's dictatorship. The first
rise and fall of Aristide. The failed 1960s' Civil Rights Movement and
the failed African Liberation Movements - the senseless and bloody fratricidal
conflicts in Haiti, Africa and America. All these landed, took their
tolls and curled up in me searing me, not with rage, but unfathomable
grief, inchoate pain and chaos. Lucidity was substituted not with uncertainty
(i was certain this was not the way it should be.) But an enigma, a
riddle begging de-entanglement. This happened slowly, beginning at Sans-Srelle,
the Port-au-Prince hospital where i was born. Gathered consciousness
in the United States and met me some decades later back in Port-au-Prince.
i had taken for granted my confidence. My ability to dream. Make a mark
in the world.
i did not know that that was what made me who i am. So in some strange
way, even though i didn't make a difference in the judicial system in
Haiti and was kicked-out of there by the U.S. Ambassador. i have come
to see the lesson. it took writing this book and trudging through this
material. But i can articulate a part of what really was meaningful
to me personally in this way: i have learned that wanting to be productive
and to create beauty, believing in your ability to make a lasting difference,
no matter what the odds, is the whole game of life. A Black who wants
to save the world from racist pathologies and its pains, poverties and
requisite components such as unrelieved suffering and hunger will come
to the point where cynicism lives; where the life quandary is no longer
racism but a head-on struggle to keep faith and trust and keep moving
forward towards rebirth, resurrection and beauty; where it's about keeping
a grip on faith, not reason, not precedents; where it's about clinging
to dreams that give us our strength and confidence. Otherwise she'll
end-up living a truncated life, a life measured solely within the parameters
of just that "unruly struggle."
The other day i bought my elderly diabetic aunt Erna to have her check-up
at the Norwalk Hospital. i was struck by a quote attributed to the famous
healer, Marie Curie, on a poster hanging on the wall in one of the corridors.
it read, in part, "dreams must always be place very high," they give
us our strength and confidence. i lost my faith. i didn't know how important
and blissful i was with it until it was no longer there and i was gripping
at thin air.
Dreaming and enthusiasm is still natural for me. But it takes effort
now for me to keep certainty alive. it didn't before. i lift for hope
like my foot is glued now. i give it now, not in mindless, joyful spontaneity.
Young is gone. Christmas-red comes once a year. Bumps and bruises, psychological
and other, everyday, living in cells all over my body, within neuroreceptor
sites like that of brain tissues. Centrality is gone. Maturity means
i mouth faith and positivism now because that's the only intelligent
choice: i must give it in order to get it back. i choose to hope...soldiering
on. Holding on. Certainty gone...but anticipating tomorrow with enthusiasm.
'Cause life's now a game that i won't let psyche me out."
*
KENBE La!: Crossings of A Vodun-Roots
Woman, (c)1998 and 2000 by Èzili Dantò (unpublished). All rights
reserved. |
