Rocks in the Water, Rocks in the Sun: A Memoir from the Heart of Haiti

by Vilmond Joegodson Déralciné

  “How much money do you need?”

  “Well … if you have 2,500 gourdes ($62 US), that would be enough,” he said. “We know that you don’t have any money.”

  “Really?” I said. “All we have is 1,000 gourdes ($25 US). Take that and see what you can do. Maybe in the future, we’ll find a way to give you the rest.”

  He took the money and put the coffin in its place in our presence. Then he filled the opening with cement to close it. We went to see my aunt before returning to Port-au-Prince. She and her children were waiting for us. She said that we needed to discuss the outstanding issues. We asked what else there was now that the burial was over and the people were finishing the rice.

  My aunt said, “No, no. We have to observe the Last Prayer.”

  I was confused. “Last Prayer?”

  One of her daughters reacted to my surprise, “Yes! Yes! We have to say the Last Prayer. If we don’t, the soul will never join the body. It will always remain in the lakou.”

  This was a Catholic custom that had a price tag. We weren’t sure that it was relevant for us. “Send the soul where exactly? What are you proposing?”

  The daughter defended the custom, “Yes. All funerals say the Last Prayer.” She led me outside to see the “tunnel” that the peasants had constructed in front of the house. A number of long branches had been cut down and placed to make the tunnel about six metres long. On top was a roof of straw and coconut leaves. Until the Last Prayer had been said, people thought that the soul of the deceased was still in the lakou. They would come to play dominoes or other games in the tunnel to be with the deceased. Once the Last Prayer had been pronounced, then the tunnel would be taken down.

  Our relatives told us that, for them, the funeral ceremony was secondary, and that the Last Prayer was all-important. They would have to slaughter livestock and prepare a large feast.

  “Without the Last Prayer, we can’t remove the tunnel,” they told us.

  “Well, we could take it down now and see what happens,” we offered.

  “No! No! No!” replied our cousin. “If you were to do that, we will have to pay the price. The soul would be forever in the lakou. If you can’t offer much, okay. You could just buy a case of soft drinks. That’s all.”

  My aunt was silent in the background. Her children were leading this charge for an expensive ceremony of Last Prayer. Of all people, my aunt knew of my father’s beliefs. Thirty years earlier, she had been stricken with the same insanity that had almost killed Deland. Together, and with the rest of the family, they became Protestant. But this ceremony was Catholic and Vodou. Both used the tunnel and the Last Prayer. I wanted to know why they wanted to revive this for Deland, of all people.

  “I understood that you were Protestants. Why are you planning this ritual for my father? He was Protestant, like you.”

  “Yes, we are Protestants. But everyone knows that it’s a custom. If we don’t do it, people will say that the funeral was poor and that we didn’t care for the soul properly. We don’t want to give them the chance to gossip like that.”

  I said, “Okay. I get it. You would rather please people. For whatever reason, I don’t understand. We have lost our mother and now our father.… Yes, I understand. I thought that you were going to help us. We aren’t foreigners. We aren’t blan. You know we have nothing. You know that! And now you want to see what else you can take from us while you have the chance. Now you want us to pay for a Vodou and Catholic custom that Deland had renounced. You say you reject it too. You say that you want to do this for some nameless neighbour who may not like your beliefs.… I wonder if it isn’t because this custom is also expensive.… I imagine that you will be able to show others here how generous you are. But the opposite is true. You want us to pay for your generosity. What kind of generosity is that? Even if it weren’t the case that we are poor, that we have debts, that Deland’s children are all in real danger in Simon. Alone. And you want to take their money to show off to your neighbours?”

  Someone interrupted us tell me that the driver wanted to get back to Titanyen.

  “Okay, listen. If someone wants to criticize, tell them to criticize James and me. I’m going to take down the tunnel now.”

  James and I went out and started to pull out the branches. There were a few people under it. There was a Protestant peasant who had been following my conversation with my aunt and cousins. He came to me anxiously, “Okay, Joegodson. Just leave the tunnel for now. What you said is true. But there are people under it now. Just leave them and I’ll take it down later tonight.”

  We left it to him.

  James told me to wait for him. He was thirsty and, before we left for Titanyen, he wanted to get a drink of water. He entered my aunt’s kay. There, he saw a cat sitting next to a huge metal tub, a kivèt, which was partly protruding from under my aunt’s bed, munching on a big piece of meat. James was curious. He pushed the cat aside and pulled the tub out from under the bed. Inside the tub was three quarters of a pig. She had served the mourners one quarter of the beast and cached away the rest. All with the 15,000 gourdes that she insisted she needed for the burial. Of course, she had asked for much more, and used much less.

  James had wanted to believe that his aunt was fond of Deland and solicitous of his children. He was unhappy to find that she had betrayed him in death while his family was in distress. It hurt.

  He came to tell me in secret what he had found. He took me by the hand to the room to see three-quarters of a pig in the tub. We both stood over it dumbfounded. My aunt entered and saw us.

  She said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. We had some meat here. We were going to give you some to return to Port-au-Prince. It might be helpful.”

  She cut off a little piece for James and another for me.

  I said to James, “You can take it, James. I don’t have the stomach to eat that. It would be like insulting our father.”

  James accepted the little insult. My aunt was half ashamed and half relieved.

  We left to board the kantè for Titanyen.

  Waiting in front of the kantè were more people than we had brought for the funeral. A number of others had decided to take the opportunity to visit the capital. Others had been in the region and heard that there was a free ride available to Port-au-Prince. When James and I approached the kantè, my cousin in the minibus was just arriving. He had taken 1,000 gourdes ($25 US) from me to pay for his petrol to bring his family to Saut d’Eau in his minibus. Along the way, he had had two flat tires. Since there was little chance of getting back to Port-au-Prince with his tires, he also decided to leave his minibus in Saut d’Eau and put his family into the kantè.

  Everyone climbed aboard. It was now full. When we had originally boarded in Titanyen, we had taken up only a third of the space. We were thirty then. Now, we were one hundred. And we were squished.

  The driver called me. “I negotiated for 2,500 gourdes ($62 US). That was for one way. I never agreed to carry a coffin. I never agreed to return. And I never agreed to carry half of Saut d’Eau back to Titanyen.”

  I was totally disoriented by this new challenge. He was right of course. Things had changed just as he argued. However, it wasn’t true that he had not agreed to return to Titanyen. That was why he was still there waiting.

  “Okay, tell me what you want.”

  He said, “You should pay me the same amount to return, of course! 2,500 gourdes.”

  All that I had left was 1,500 gourdes ($37 US). While he and I were engaged in this tricky negotiation, the people inside the kantè started to pound against the railings and the floor, “Come on, chauffeur! Let’s go!” This was not helping my end of the negotiations. I was expecting him, at any minute, to yell at everyone to get out of his truck and then take off for Titanyen alone.

  I made the mistake of telling him the truth. That I needed to get these people back to the capital, that I had 1,500 gourdes, and that I would need 500 of that to pay for the taptaps from Titanyen to Port-au-Prince. I coul
d only offer him 1,000 gourdes ($25 US). I may as well have poured oil on a fire.

  “What! That’s it!” He said as he charged to the back of the kantè and started clapping his hands together in frustration. “Everybody! Get down! Get down from the kantè right now!”

  No one got down. Everyone started whining. I stood to the side. This spectacle was just what I had been trying to avoid in front of the Dieumerci family who had come to Saut d’Eau in the group of thirty.

  Willy was in the cabin of the kantè. He had driven out with his friend the driver and would go back in the cabin as well. He told me that he judged the driver to be right. He advised me to find a way to solve the problem amicably.

  “It’s not because I’m trying to be difficult. I think he’s right too. I’m just telling the truth. I’m not holding any money back somewhere. I’d give him more if I had more. I don’t,” I said.

  Willy asked how much I had. I brought him up to date. He said that I didn’t have nearly enough. That’s what I’d been trying to tell everyone.

  Willy said, “Give me your 1,000 gourdes. I’ll add another 1,000.”

  He called the driver over, who accepted the new offer. He was so riled that he took the money from Willy, jumped up into the driver’s seat, started the kantè, and took off while I was still standing there. I didn’t run after him. I just calmly walked behind as he sped off. He knew I was there. He saw me in the rearview mirror if he hadn’t seen me standing next to the truck’s cabin. Anyway, he decided to give in and stopped twenty metres ahead. I walked to get aboard the back with the rest of the world.

  As I climbed aboard, I felt satisfied. Of course, we live in Haiti and it is always foolish to assume that nothing more can go wrong. But, when this kantè arrived back in Titanyen, I would have succeeded in my goal of giving my father a funeral. It didn’t matter how many people had tried and succeeded to screw me along the way. I breathed calmly.

  Mme Dieumerci and three of her daughters — Annie’s elder sisters — were there. They were content. They had seen that I had the competence to get through a number of obstacles. Of course, the kantè swayed and rolled backed to Titanyen. Mme Dieumerci, seventy-three years old, had to stand up and try to keep her balance like everyone else. But, in Haiti, that is normal. That is success.

  When we arrived in Titanyen, I split up the 500 gourdes ($12.50 US) into two parts. I gave 250 to James to take a taptap to Simon. He took all of that group. I hired two other taptaps, one to take people back to Bon Repos and another to go to Silo to drop off the Dieumercis and to carry on to Delmas 33. When I arrived home, Annie was waiting. “Did everything go all right?” she asked.

  “Better than I expected,” I said.

  chapter forty-four

  THE DEATH OF MY FATHER discouraged me about my future. What would my generation face? What about those being born? What was in store for them? Did my father have such thoughts in his youth? Could he ever have imagined how he would leave the world? And what he would leave behind? He had arrived in Simon and worked so hard to make a family and a business. He died in despair.

  My concerns were urgent, not at all philosophical. Annie’s doctor advised her that she would give birth on the fourth of February. I had no means to care for the baby. Deland’s funeral had added more debts to my account. I had a month to prepare.

  On 25 January, after I had returned from church in the afternoon, Annie said that she was feeling unwell. I wasn’t too worried. I had the doctor’s date in my mind. At eleven o’clock at night, she woke me to tell me that she was having cramps. I could see that the baby had dropped. I had little experience in this area, but I knew that midwives massaged the stomachs of women in childbirth with the oil from the maskriti plant. It is helpful to relieve pain. From time to time, Annie felt pain and then, a few minutes later, she was able to fall asleep again. However, near midnight, she was struck by a pain that would not subside.

  I didn’t want to leave Annie alone. I called Mme Bolivar, who lived close to us. Mme Dieumerci was staying there at the moment. They, of course, had firsthand experience in childbirth. They arrived and quickly determined that the birth was imminent. I needed to find a vehicle to get her to a hospital.

  I called a church brother but he had taken his car to the garage for repairs. Then I called my uncle, although I knew that even if his car was working, he would make me pay for gas.

  “Who is this!?” growled my uncle, registering his reaction to being called during the night.

  “It’s me, Joegodson.”

  “What do you want?!”

  I had only one hundred gourdes in the house. It wasn’t mine, but the payment from my friend Mardi to Mme Dieumerci for a jar of manba she had made. “It … it … it’s about Annie … she’s giving birth. I wanted to know if you would help her to the hospital with your car.”

  My uncle didn’t hear the last word. Maybe he heard in my voice my financial situation. He replied, “My car is broken down. You’ll have to find another way to get to the hospital.”

  I wasn’t surprised. I had known what his response would be. Mme Bolivar and her husband said that they would go to ask a neighbour who had a vehicle. They left. The neighbour had been sleeping like everyone else. He asked no questions, but got dressed and prepared.

  We had intended to go to the Doctors Without Borders clinic in Delmas 31. We got there at one o’clock in the morning. When we entered the courtyard of the clinic, a security guard directed us to a big tent. Annie was beginning to feel the pain intensely. Some nurses came. “What’s happening? What is it?”

  “We have a woman here who is giving birth.”

  “Sorry,” they said. “We don’t deal with pregnancies here. Just accidents — broken arms and legs and gunshot wounds.”

  We told them that we just needed help. The baby was almost delivered. But they offered their regrets and left us in the courtyard, alone.

  We piled back into the car. Annie was in the back, with her mother on one side and me on the other. The night was dark. There was no electricity. The road was bumpy and there were big potholes. The headlights of the car couldn’t illuminate all of the obstacles. Consequently, the car was surprised by each bump and every descent. So was Annie and, I’m sure, our baby.

  Despite the shocks, we set out for Chansrèl, a hospital along the Route Nationale. The car ride could not have been better designed to provoke the birth. Annie wanted to stop the car to simply get it over with. She preferred just to push the baby there, as we passed the broken-down Imperial Cinema on Delmas. But the driver continued toward the hospital.

  While the car continued along, we shifted our positions in the backseat. Annie leaned her back against me on one side and her two feet against the door of the car, on either side of Mme Dieumerci who waited for the birth almost as though she was playing goal, not sure how it would arrive. The baby cried and Mme Dieumerci said, “Ah, it’s a girl.”

  The driver stopped the car after the population of the backseat had gone from three to four. If he had been a taptap driver, he would have insisted on another five gourdes.

  Some police were on patrol. When they saw the car stopped, with the interior lights on, they assumed that we were thieves or kidnappers. They surrounded us. They were afraid of us. They had their hands on their hips, ready to pull their guns. They could have fired upon us to save their lives.

  “Look at this!” I said, “Everyone is afraid except our baby.”

  They had their flashlights trained on us as they hollered, “What’s going on here?!”

  Mme Bolivar responded, “It’s a childbirth.”

  They weren’t buying it, “Where is this baby?!”

  They continued to surround us. One of the cops leaned forward; his feet firmly planted a safe distance from the car as he stretched his head like a giraffe to peer into the backseat. He seemed to be willing to lose his head, as long as his body could escape in case of foul play.

  Fortunately, the baby cried. The officer relaxed. The others
also loosened their tensed bodies. “Okay, okay,” he said and stood at ease. Our daughter had already defused a tense situation. Only three minutes old!

  “Now where are you going?” he asked.

  Mme Bolivar told them we were going to continue on to Chansrèl to have the umbilical cord cut. They found that reasonable. They let us carry on.

  We got to the gates of Chansrèl Hospital at two o’clock in the morning. We asked the security guards to let us enter. We told him that it was a childbirth.

  “No, we aren’t accepting any more women. It’s already full inside,” he said.

  “It’s not to give birth. The baby is already here. We just want help to cut the umbilical cord,” said Mme Bolivar.

  He let us enter. In the courtyard were hundreds of people who had accompanied other women who were giving birth that night. They were sleeping on the ground.

  Annie and the baby were not separated yet. So Mme Bolivar went to get a doctor to come to the car. He cut the cord. Then Mme Dieumerci and I accompanied Annie and the baby into the hospital. At the entrance, they had us wash our hands with bleach to protect against cholera.

  All of the pregnant women were pacing, praying, and chanting to relieve the stress and pain of childbirth. I thought that three-quarters of Haiti’s women were giving birth that night.

  They left my daughter on a table, without any covers or any supervision. They put a bracelet on her wrist so as not to confuse her with the other babies. I asked the doctor if I could take the baby in my arms. He asked Annie if she knew me. They then took Annie into another room for stitches.

  Mme Dieumerci and I dressed the baby for the first time.

  When Annie returned, the staff led her and the baby into a big room that was both happy and sad. It was full of the women who had given birth and some who had lost their babies trying.

  At daybreak, a couple of nurses came by to register the births. While Annie was giving the information, a young man who had come with his wife came up to me. He wanted to name his baby after a German soccer coach. He asked me how to spell it. I had no idea. I asked him what it meant. He said he didn’t know, he just liked the sound. It sounded like “wokinlaw.” I suggested that he call the baby “Walk-in-law” in order to get the same sound. I told him what it meant. He thought it was a great idea and he registered his little boy as Walk-in-law. Often, parents choose names strictly on the sound. I have a neighbour whose boy is called Hitler, because his father thought it sounded nice.