Hot chocolate, college and rain in Haiti

From Nancy Young

I was watching a morning talk show when the hosts started talking about the weather, how cold and snowy it’s been recently and how hard it is to cope.

It was a segue into a friendly feature about hot beverage ideas, because, as they said, hot chocolate’s great but it gets boring after a while. 

I felt a little piece of my brain cleave right off.

The disparities between Haiti and here -- particularly since the earthquake but even before -- are often mind-bending for me. I feel like I need a whole second brain to take them in – an unlikely occurrence, so maybe I’d be better off focusing on how to get out of a hot chocolate rut. There is comfort in knowing that a problem, any problem, can be solved by chai.

But then I think of my friends in Haiti – like Peterson, a young college student who was living in Port-au-Prince working toward a computer science degree. Since the earthquake, he has moved back to the countryside with his family, away from the earthquake zone, his college plans indefinitely delayed.

Even before the quake, things were unimaginably hard – with more than two thirds of the country out of a formal job. Several months ago, I asked Peterson what he wanted to do when he graduated and he told me that when you’re Haitian, you learn not to make plans. Recognizing the naiveness of the question, he smiled a little to make it easier for me to hear the answer.

Since the quake, I’ve tried to get the message to him not to give up hope of college, but I think I just sound like a chirpy morning talk show host offering him chai. Instead, he is trying to buy a motorcycle to give taxi rides to help support his mom, brother ,grandfather along with some young cousins who lost their home in the earthquake.

Then I read about the heavy rains this week in Port-au-Prince and know that the Haitians too are talking about the weather – up to their ankles in muddy water.

Because it’s not even the rainy season yet – that starts next month -- when every afternoon and night you can count on a torrential downpour. Not so bad when you were a guest like I was, tucked in at a hotel, drinking a Coke. I was always protected in Haiti. But, outside, people regularly were swept up in the flooding.

And now pretty much everyone’s outside, afraid to sleep in buildings that could still collapse. Maybe protected only by sheets that are serving as makeshift tents. The real tents that are needed haven’t yet come in anywhere near the numbers that will provide protection to the people trying to cope.

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