The Anthropologist's Hero, Carlo Levi

Clearly, God was in this place.

    Let me tell you: 

    My current  hero, the physician-anthropologist-partisan, Italian Carlo Levi, crafted an ethnography of his exile in mountains of Basilicata, Southern Italy, under Fascism. His memoir was Cristo si è fermato a Eboli,  — Christ Stopped at Eboli.

Nothing much about Christ stopping here, in these mountains, somewhere, in southern Haiti.  At 4,500 feet, give or take. Dr. Levi’s title is better translated as “Christ Never Made it Up Here.”

Mountain? This Haitian hillock. It’s too alive, verdant, earthy, sweaty, breathing…bare footsteps murmuring up and down the paths, Kreyol calling. Perhaps…perhaps, here, on this small mountain, despite the deprivations, the hard-scrabble lives I share…perhaps, here, well — Christ —that notion of redemption through suffering…doesn’t sell well here.  

At least, myself, I’m not buying.

Here, there is all-over green, pandanus, kokoye, trees, young and old pea plants…a vast, jungle-y drooping smelling life, a wildness that feels, in contrast to Carlo Levi’s bare village, starving peasants somewhere in 20th century Basilicata, in Italy’s boot, a dried, forsaken, abandoned plaster… 

Here, well, on the mountain, well, God is in this place. “And I didn’t know it.”  Mon Bouton, Haiti. 

       

         Now, I must show you. 

        

        Here.

In Living Color

Lives I witnessed, pitied

Lives I shared

The living earth, verdant, lush vines gripping

You could see, if not imagine, forever...Miami!

Yes, I am an anthropologist, a seeker, wanderer...and so?

 Introducing My Colleague, Elisee Abraham, aka "Toma"

My colleague, Toma, is a Jack-of-all-trades -- if he does not know how to do it, he figures it out. His efforts to support the various objectives of "If Pigs Could Fly - Helping Hillside Haiti ---that is, harnessing solar power to pump water, the school snack program and managing paid work projects in infrastructure and schools --- that and his work as a para-veterinarian have served his community for over 20 years. This is a salute.

https://youtu.be/vgJHfmd0xkE

 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.