Sunday, January 12, 2025

 Heading for the Hills of Haiti


Twenty-four years ago, as an anthropologist on the first of what would become many sojourns in the mountains of southeastern Haiti, I was initially shocked —then later — charmed by what I saw, heard, felt and witnessed. Charmed? Yes, “Charmed,” since I felt I’d discovered just that, here in anthropological paradise — this mountain world where, as I described it, “The clock had stopped in 1804.”


So, it was a coup de foudre— the beginnings of a love affair with the traditions, techniques and talents of my neighbors and colleagues. Many came to be friends. Yes, there were grudges, debates, hard feelings. I acquired a modest ability, of necessity, in speaking Haitian Kreyol. Is it perhaps not by understanding, but by misunderstandings that a deeper appreciation of the anthropological Other grows? Accordingly, anthropology as science is necessarily a process. In anthropological circles the term is heterology—“The science of the Other— which begins with the apparent incongruities of the voyaging account, the shocks to our own categories, and common sense.” (Sahlins 1995:118)


Given my training in anthropology, I was drawn to what this rural mountain culture had, not what it lacked. I considered, for a long while, the glass half-full, not half-empty, even as some of the children around me had distended bellies, reddish-tinged hair and hollow eyes… For their sturdy hands, at the end of thin wrists, gripped mine with a strength I couldn’t muster. And so, the malnourished sturdy children helped me up the long, winding switch-back, over rocks and slippery soil to our final destination, Mon Bouton.


For a long while, I held to this notion. Half full.