Jon Lee Anderson returns to Haiti

Jon Lee Anderson's most recent dispatch from Haiti is worth reading. At L.U.S.K., his presence there was noted at least once before. Haiti needs help.

Haiti

An earthquake in Haiti has killed at least twelve people. The subsequent aftershocks have lead to various tremors and disturbances not at all limited to one wandering soul finding my blog on Haitians in Philadelphia and my childhood home posted around the time a far more devastating earthquake struck.

Haitians and Africans in West Philadelphia

In West Philly, there may still be a Korean church at 48th and Spruce although from growing up in the seventies, I remember when "the Korean family" who lived around the corner moved away. The two boys played two-hand touch football and other street sports with us, and then they left. It was around when Southeast Asians were moving in by the dozens and then hundreds--Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, and as kids, we'd enjoy playing basketball with these boys behind an apartment building where they had built a basket with a orange milk crate nailed to a large square wooden board.

Also, around that time or soon after, Haitian immigrants began to arrive. These latter immigrants included a couple who lived in my father's third-floor walk-through apartment for a while. The Haitian husband had been on the radio speaking against his country's leadership, and although my father was not a political man, he enjoyed the opportunity to help this couple. Because they would walk through the first two floors to get to their third-floor quarters, I'd see them regularly whenever we stayed with my dad.

Africans came later, and it seemed as if at first Ethiopians were most visible although over the ensuing decades Africans from many other countries have recreated the Baltimore Avenue corridor--at least, from 45th to 49th Street--that I was raised a block away from. Many more settled further west, maybe in or near Eastwick where their children attended public and Catholic schools and did quite well. (I don't remember too many Nigerians from West Philly, but I have recently read that Nigerian Americans have the highest rates of undergraduate and advanced degrees of any group in America.) Today if you walk down Baltimore Avenue, you can't miss Dahlak and Gojjo, but there is a West African restaurant, and others I believe.

Reading Dinaw Mengestu's first novel reminded me of how I'd imagine the lives of some of the African guys, no few of them cab drivers with graduate degrees from other countries which hadn't proved useful in America. The book has a rich sadness that many immigrant lives are never fully divorced from. Yet people continue to arrive and seek employment, education, or other means to come to America. From Irish to Jewish to Vietnamese to Haitian to Ethiopian and more, West Philly has benefited from immigration policies that have let people in from all over the world.

I last saw the Haitian husband who lived at my father's in Sam's Place, a beautiful old movie theater that had a huge main screen, chandeliers, and a full lobby for men's and women's conveniences on a carpeted lower level. In the theater, I recall gold and red colors and wall-to-wall rugging that looked like it had seen its fair share of spilled popcorn and soda. I was in my late teens or early twenties, and it was long after the man had lived on my father's third floor, although Philadelphia is that kind of town, a place where the past can quickly return to the present. A "small town" is how many express it. Anyway, I recognized him right away. He was with another adult we knew, and it was a warm, if brief, visitation from my childhood at 44th and Pine, the part spent at my dad's house in the 1970s. And then, as Roberto Bolano would say, I never saw him again.

The current administration appears intent on reviving an America that the president knew or imagined from years ago. It's an America markedly different from the one I knew spending my first couple decades off Baltimore Avenue in University City. It's worth noting that there were always many other versions of America over our several centuries. Melville notes that twenty languages were spoken in the New York City he knew around when Moby Dick (and The Communist Manifesto) were published. Today it could be closer to two hundred, but I doubt we'd be a stronger nation if it were possible to hear only one.

jon lee anderson is in haiti

I'm trying hard to save money and remain a lapsed New Yorker subscriber, but Jon Lee Anderson sure doesn't make it easy. I'd say his international reporting from the past ten years has been my favorite of all the stuff I've read; as you may know, he has written from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other war-torn countries. Well, at least this text-messaged interview is online.

To me, he communicates a humanity that overcomes any sense one could get of "professional gawking" from the war correspondent; also, he must have endured numerous dangerous moments along his journey to completed stories, and I don't recall ever getting a sense of machismo, false bravado, or any other dislikeable traits that end in "o." With my own occasional tendency to brag--about the goofiest things imaginable, like frisbee throws and fiction translations, he reminds me of what a ridiculous joker I can be. 

haiti

So what else is new?

I heard about the tragedy in Haiti last night and after the usual lament for the already so poor and disenfranchised islanders, my disorganized, tired mind thought about Samuel Dalembert (the much maligned Haitian-Canadian center for the Philly 76ers) before I thought about my singer-writer friend Cassendre Xavier, who had been kind enough to show me her cover art for a recent book she is completing. If you follow this blog, you might recall USK's interview with her in March, 2009.

Anyway, it seems to be more of the same, the poor getting dumped on in the worst ways imaginable while the rest of us try to save or protect or build upon our own little lot in life. Roberto Bolano's "Maurico (The Eye) Silva" is on my mind when I think about the futility of the situation, but I think about Voltaire's Candide and its "philosopher" Pangloss too.

Many Haitians live in the larger Philadelphia region, and I was fortunate enough to know a married Haitian couple who lived in my father's third floor at 44th and Pine for a couple years of my childhood. The husband's name was Antoine Astache (spelling is probably off), and he had been on the radio in Haiti, speaking against whatever government was spoken against in the 1970s. He was a very warm person, and I remember running into him years later in a movie theater and being greeted again with his kind smile.

I believe that my 8th grade French teacher, Mr. Bien-Amie (yes, "Mr. Good Friend") was also from Haiti, and I remember a classmate's tape-recorded rap that included the refrain of "Fermez La Bouche," followed by "You shut up!" in the way that this kind teacher would repeat in English when the message warranted it.

I also know that Philly, poor in its own way, couldn't find anyone to pay to accept a huge ship full of its garbage that for this reason wound up floating around the ocean for months and months (years if I'm not mistaken, years during our John-Street years if I recall correctly). In the end, as I remember it, Philadelphia paid Haiti to accept this malodorous bounty; we paid their government to leave our trash on their beach. (In fact, this Steven Hayward article says, "Even Haiti wouldn't take it," and in fact, I am mistaken about the dates too... if this is the same ship, then its travels began in 1982.)

If you would like to donate to Haiti, here is one URL that can help.