Masisi avèk Madivinèz

Masisi avèk Madivinèz are the Creole terms for “Gays and Lesbians,” respectively.

Today a local young  woman started discussing them with me, particularly masisi (gay men). She said there were a lot of them in town. Generally they are clothes vendors who purchase theirs wares over seas and return to sell them here. She added that if they found me attractive they would give me free or discounted clothes, but that she could not reap such benefits. She did an impression of a masisi as an individual with a flamboyant strut.

BUT here is what was a little different about all that:

She said, in earnest, they all were born straight men, but that at some point in their lives they went to a bòkò (voodoo priest) that performed a ceremony transforming them into masisi. The intent of  such a ceremony is for the men to become wealthy, but as a by-product they lose their attraction to women and become attracted to men.

After she finished explaining this I was silent for a moment…

“… what… the?! That is non-sense!”

…and then went on to share some of my thoughts on the matter.

Ti Cooper

I met this guy in 1st grade:

This last week Cooper was visiting the NVM site just North of Port-au-Prince where he did volunteer work in the Summer and Fall of 2010. I was able to meet up with him for a couple days and check out the NVM project site which is really moving along. Today Cooper headed off to the Dominican Republic for a two month internship. Good luck ol’ buddy ol’ pal ol’ friend…

My Pets and other Zannimo

Click on the photographs below to enlarge and see their captions.

Haitian Street Food

Here are some of the tasty treats I have bought off the street around Hinche. There are many street foods I would never try, but as of yet I have not become sick as a result of these items:

Non cheri, nou pa janm kab retounen

So I spent some time overseas. Lòtbò, “on the other side,” as they say.

I took hot showers for the first time in over three months, drank water straight from the tap, watched the people of the world marvel in Times Square from an 18th floor hotel room. Passed time with my mother for the first time together in New York. Showed her where I had gone to school, where I had eaten discount sushi, where I had played chess in Washington Square, what my life was in that place at that time.

I am so glad I to have gotten to share those things with her.

–

In Miami I chatted for nearly an hour with a Haitian-born publisher of a press that translates and produces many educational resources in Creole. His company is one of the only such presses in the world to do so. Though the publisher stated his reasons for publishing in Creole as a matter of pragmatism, fulfilling a gap in the Haitian education system, privately I suspect he feels passionately and emotionally about the importance of promoting Creole in Haiti. But that is just my suspicion.

He spoke very eloquently.

He said that once he had sold everything he had in the USA and returned to Haiti. But ultimately, he came back. “But let’s not go there… not now.”