We had just passed a cemetery and our interpreter was saying, "I don't know why you want to go into a cemetery. You need to stay away from there because there are zombies
(zome-bies) in there!" Our laughter prompted Fritz Marc to say, "Hey! Haiti is a mysterious country. We are different from other countries." Courtesy kept me from saying aloud what I was thinking but it was something along the line of, "Yeah, yeah. It's not so different from other countries we have known who have their own unique histories."
But you know what? The more we spend time here, the more we realize that Fritz Marc was right. Haiti is like an onion and what you see on the surface is not always the reality. Indeed, one has to peel back the layers to even begin to understand the people of this Caribbean nation.
As Tim and I have become immersed in folklore tales ("kont") and songs during our Creole studies, our eyes have opened to the challenges, joy, concerns, spirituality, and fears of Haiti's denizens. Both words and music stem from an "oral tradition" which has been passed
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down from generation to generation and in a time when people in the countryside would sit on their steps on a Saturday evening and chat, gossip and relax after a hard week of work. Soon some off-hand comment might prompt a thought which would inspire a story and adults, teenagers, children and toddlers would gather around.
The storyteller would call out "krik!" (creek) and if the audience wanted to hear her or him they would respond with "krak!" (crack). However, if the audience did not want to hear that particular storyteller they would withhold their shout of "krak!" and the storyteller could not continue.
It was not that the audience was trying to be rude but rather their commitment to a story and its teller was so great they would shout out remarks about characters and events; sing songs that were a part of the story; and encourage the teller with comments about their talent.*
Such times are not too different from my own childhood when our "Granny" would gather us in the kitchen to make a sweet, doughnut-like treat which she called "Hungarian donuts" (nope, we are not Hungarian). Each of us had an assigned task and as we set about doing those tasks we would talk about our day at school or about some activity in which we were
involved and soon our Granny was telling us a story from her own childhood or one she had learned from a friend. We were simply entranced by her vivid accounts of swimming across the Ohio River with her brothers in the early 1900s; of the time she and one of her sisters were trapped in the basement of a funeral home with a corpse; and how the gypsies came to town one day and her family was afraid they would kidnap her youngest black-haired and brown-eyed sister and how they set about to hide her.
Yes, we can learn a lot about people (and ourselves!) through stories and, perhaps, that is why Jesus used parables. Although His hearers oftentimes could not figure out what the story was saying (the Disciples, too, had to occasionally ask what they meant) I think Jesus gathered followers and would-be followers around Him in an effort to get them thinking and to begin peeling away the layers that would ultimately lead them to a sense of Whose they are. For once we know Whose we are, we will know what we are to do.
*Thanks to "The Magic Orange Tree: and Other Haitian Folktales" by Diane Wolkstein
But you know what? The more we spend time here, the more we realize that Fritz Marc was right. Haiti is like an onion and what you see on the surface is not always the reality. Indeed, one has to peel back the layers to even begin to understand the people of this Caribbean nation.
As Tim and I have become immersed in folklore tales ("kont") and songs during our Creole studies, our eyes have opened to the challenges, joy, concerns, spirituality, and fears of Haiti's denizens. Both words and music stem from an "oral tradition" which has been passed
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The storyteller would call out "krik!" (creek) and if the audience wanted to hear her or him they would respond with "krak!" (crack). However, if the audience did not want to hear that particular storyteller they would withhold their shout of "krak!" and the storyteller could not continue.
It was not that the audience was trying to be rude but rather their commitment to a story and its teller was so great they would shout out remarks about characters and events; sing songs that were a part of the story; and encourage the teller with comments about their talent.*
Such times are not too different from my own childhood when our "Granny" would gather us in the kitchen to make a sweet, doughnut-like treat which she called "Hungarian donuts" (nope, we are not Hungarian). Each of us had an assigned task and as we set about doing those tasks we would talk about our day at school or about some activity in which we were
Yes, we can learn a lot about people (and ourselves!) through stories and, perhaps, that is why Jesus used parables. Although His hearers oftentimes could not figure out what the story was saying (the Disciples, too, had to occasionally ask what they meant) I think Jesus gathered followers and would-be followers around Him in an effort to get them thinking and to begin peeling away the layers that would ultimately lead them to a sense of Whose they are. For once we know Whose we are, we will know what we are to do.
*Thanks to "The Magic Orange Tree: and Other Haitian Folktales" by Diane Wolkstein
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