I hadn't been in Haiti terribly long, and my language training had been interrupted by President Clinton's embargo on Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere. This embargo was his solution to the military coup that had ousted their first democratically elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide. One of my missionary friends said that the embargo, where prices soared and the poor got poorer, the hungry, hungrier, was like trying to fix a man's broken leg with a bulldozer. I was in the capital, Port-Au-Prince for language school, at the time, and anti-American feeling was so high that it just wasn't safe for me to be there any more, so out to La Gonave I went and learned the language more by immersion. All of this to say, my immersion took place at the hospital, so after a few weeks I could have long discussions with you about whatever ailed your little self, but if I had to sit in your living room and make polite conversation, I could only do so if you wanted to talk about your gallbladder. I was very one-sided in my command over the language, and this became clear to both me and to Oristiel one night about 2 AM.
My bedroom was solid windows on two sides, and the head of my bed right under the windows, so I got the full effect, I'm sure, of the first blast of scent from outside. I sat up in bed, gagging. Good heavens! What EVER in the world could produce a smell like THAT!! Had one of the dogs...well, communed with nature... under my window? After it had eaten Limburger cheese? I'm a deep sleeper and for a mere ODOR to wake me up was a phenomenon I had never encountered in my life before. This smell was like a living organism. I turned on my flash, just to make sure stinky aliens hadn't landed, or Haitian Bigfoot or something like that. Even the cockroaches were overcome and hiding.
I was coughing "Oristiel. Oristiel. ORISTIEL!! What is that smell???" "What did you say? The what??"" I was gagging. "The SMELL, the SMELL, what is it?" "It's the dogs." "Did they roll in...in...in...[there's no word for this in my vocabulary strong enough]...the latrine?" "Nooooooo." He seemed to be amused, now. "Oristiel, please look at what they have."
A long pause. Soon he gets back. "Yo gin tet cochon an." I thought about it. Tet cochon an...the head of...a pig? I must have puzzled awhile over this, and the stink wasn't fading. Maybe I was losing consciousness. Oristiel went on, "The dogs must have gotten it from the garbage."
Not my garbage! "Oristiel, you are just going to have to move it. Do you have a... " I pantomimed a shovel. "Do you understand?" He didn't. I pantomimed a shovel a few times, tried to describe it a few times, asked him if he knew where Cedieu, my day watchman lived, who had a key to the shed. No, no, and no. We would not make a good charades team. Also, to this day, I can never remember the word for shovel.
I finally got a cardboard box and told him to pick it up with that and take the head to the garbage again. He reluctantly got the box. "But, you know, they'll just get it from the garbage again." "Well, Oristiel, then you must burn it. Do you have matches?" Naturally not. He's not a smoker, after all. I got him a book of paper matches, and instructed him with my less than brilliant pantomime how to scoop up a disgusting, rotting pig head, take it out to the dump in the farthest corner of the yard, and set the box on fire. He turned away without enthusiasm, and I hardly blamed him. The smell now permeated the entire house, thanks to the superb ventilation, and the fact the ceiling fan in the living room hadn't been turned off in years. The theory was, you see, that it had run so long that if we turned it off it might never turn back on again. It might just realize how good relaxation felt. (We also did our work in the hospital and mission on that same principle, rarely taking an actual "day off".)
I felt a little bad for Oristiel as I envisioned him picking up the "tet", fighting off 3 dogs all the way to the dump, and then setting it on fire. But time went on and on and the smell diminished very little. No fire. Soon I heard a small voice in the darkness. "Mis? Mis? It won't burn!"
Heaven, give me strength. I went to the closet and got a plastic half gallon bottle of "gaz blanc". Gaz blanc is white gas, or kerosene. I said, "Here, pour this on it, then believe me, it will burn!" It was coming onto 3:30 AM now, I was sick of the smell that somehow seemed less potent as I became accustomed to it, and obviously wasn't thinking too clearly. When he came back 10 minutes later because he realized he had no more paper matches, I don't think I blinked an eye. I just handed him a box of wooden matches and flopped into bed, and even slipped into a light doze.
WWWWWHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was wide awake in an instant as I heard the sound of, I was sure, a jet engine lighting up, or possibly The Second Coming. Indeed, the room had a very faint glow, though usually it was dark enough to literally not see my hand in front of my face if it was cloudy. I looked out the window in horror.
There in the back of the yard, behind the shed, was a huge fire, and I saw Oristiel silhouetted against it. The dogs, showing more intelligence than we, had headed for the citron grove on the other side of the yard. I was frozen in body, but my mind was at full speed. 'Let's see, the shed will be next to burn, made of old dry wood, and full of wood and junk. Yes, and I believe there are a couple almost empty propane tanks in there, too, that should ...... O Lord, help us all! And next to go will be this house......oh no, just over the hedge on the other side of the dump is the Wesleyan school..... The grass is so dry, maybe the church will go up, too.....O Lord, please help, I am so stupid, stupid...... Of course there's no fire department.... isn't there a fire department? Surely there's -- oh get a grip, of COURSE there's no fire department, do you think they have nothing to eat, but they have a few shiny LADDER TRUCKS stored away in the town square? The whole village will probably go up. And WHY? Because the new, rookie missionary of just a few months came to minister to the people and managed in one night, in one fell swoop, to burn the whole village down......O God, help us all.......because of a stinky pigs head -- I'll have to go to headquarters and explain how I gave my watchman a half gallon of kerosene and matches and handily burned down the WHOLE VILLAGE......O Father, hear my prayer......'
I was sweating mightily, murmuring prayers and recriminations, until the flames died down. I sat shakily on my bed in relief. Eventually, just before 5, I laid down again. I didn't think I'd sleep, but I must have, because Oristiel's voice woke me up one last time:
"Mis, here is your box of matches."
No comments:
Post a Comment