Both Oars In Snapshots

Sep 25, 2009

At any moment, we can see something so intense and clear that we absorb it without really viewing it in the usual sense. We do not take in what we see by scanning the details from left to right. Instead, the image just burns itself wholesale into our optic memory like a snapshot. These snapshots are identified by four qualities. They often return spontaneously. They stay with us for a very long time, sometimes for a lifetime. When we take one in, we catch ourselves saying, "Did I just see that?" Above all, they remind us that no matter how long we live, we will never be able to say that we have seen it all.

These snapshots stay with us because they either explain something we have been pondering for awhile or provide new understanding in a moment of enhanced comprehension. They are epiphanies. They become moments of new and deeper understanding. Unfortunately, they are difficult to share with others even if we pick the best thousand words to describe them. They are like dreams: still clear to us after we wake, but almost impossible to relate to others.

In the past two months while I have been reacquainting myself with my second country, I have taken in quite a few images of this sort, some ironic, some funny, and some disturbing. I am not surprised by the frequency—Haiti naturally sets one up for experiencing snapshots. Heavily reliant on imports, Haiti, on the surface, looks and feels like the U.S. The sameness of things can lull an ex-pat into feeling a little too much at home. This makes driving around Haiti a bit like cleaning your room. Everything seems rather ordinary until "flash"—you find something under your bed that you don’t remember putting there, let alone having it.

My most recent snapshot occurred on an early morning visit to one of Haiti’s oldest Catholic schools, St. Rose of Lima. My youngest son and I stopped by the school to take in its history and architecture while on an impromptu Sunday morning tour of Port au Prince. [Sunday morning is the only day the streets are passable at more than a crawl and everyone else in our house likes to sleep in.] When we asked to see one of the sisters, the man at the door signaled to another security guard to come help us. As the second man came closer, I noticed that he had a decal on his black beret. It was the immediately identifiable outline image of Che Guevara . The man was at least 60 in a crisp uniform, guarding an institution and far too serious about his work to be the anarchist or romanticizing college student one usually finds sporting a Che. Then again, Haiti is an eclectic country where Harry Truman, Martin Luther King and Alli Salazi are memorialized with roads that nearly intersect. Maybe, it was his hat, after all.

A second snapshot is viewable almost daily. Haiti has begun recycling plastic again. Unlike in the U.S. where this involves discreet blue or green containers being filled by homeowners and set by curbs or delivered to waste collection depots, in Haiti recycling is done by the poorest of the poor. In search of daily sustenance, people of all ages scour the trash heaped by careless humans on the side of the roads and amassed in gullies by the rain to find those elements worth three cents a pound. To get enough weight to make the arduous task of delivering the material worthwhile, the plastic is piled literally two stories high on human drawn two-wheeled carts. It is not hard to see the negative impact of "packaging" when you see it being pulled down the road by a fellow human being obliged by economic circumstance to do the world’s dirty work. The caption on this snapshot: Something has to change—so many things need to change.

Armed with the objective fact that our incoming class of students was already full, I resolutely approached a parent who had asked for us to check once more to see if it would be possible to admit his son. I knew he would have a reason for us to make a special consideration. In a Haiti, 95% of the country has a reason. But, I was prepared. The class was full. I would listen, but the answer had to be no.

To be more persuasive, the gentleman mentioned an upcoming surgery. Unfortunately, I have heard that before, too. The answer was still no. To give his request more emphasis, he raised his pant leg to reveal a softball-sized, and I mean in all three dimensions, open wound in his foot that had been unhealed for so long that the skin was crystallized like honey on the edges. I could see to his bone. It was obvious that he was facing an amputation and would soon be even less able to find work.

Everything is more vivid in the strong sun. "Wow", I conceded, "I certainly have not seen it all."