Amour  

Metamorphosis

By:
Martine Poitevien.

Reference :
Sourire Magazine.
Fevrier 1995

In August of 1978, I boarded a departing flight from Miami to Haiti with such hesitancy, it bewildered me. Upon my arrival in Haiti, I had anxiously awaited my departure, but at that moment, I was filled with a persuasive sense of dread. I turned to bid a final farewell to the well-wishers who had escorted me to the airport and wipe a single tear from my eye as at was overcome by the eerie realization that might never see their faces again. These very people had served as catalyst to my adolescent awakening. Something almost spiritual had happened to me on this enchanted isle. I had experienced and subsequently, of my very existence and of it, my life was a forever changed.

I could never have envisioned such a metamorphosis upon my arrival in Haiti. In Fact, I had arrived in my country filled with prejudices which did not paint a flattering picture of the motherland.. I was a naïve, pubescent Haitian-American girl who was convinced that due to an accident of birth or some cruel twist of fate, I would be forced to endure this involuntary journey among virtual strangers as foreign to me as the land of my parents' birth.

As we traveled from the airport, cars, congestion, chaos and confusion seemed to be the natural order of things in Haiti. Who could imagine that in the midst of all this madness lay a tropical paradise waiting to be explored. But I chose to focus my attention on the unsettling sights and sounds that surrounded me rather than acknowledge the friendly, yet curious stares of my escorts. I was fully aware that, at some point, I would have to respond to the onslaught of questions about myself with more than a polite smile. This was rather discomforting considering my Creole was incoherent at best, and my French equally undecipherable.

We were nearing our destination as we traveled a very densely populated thorough fare which, I later learned, was the Delmas road. Within minutes, we were driving down an unpaved deserted roadway at the end of which I beheld a sight that simply took my breath away. Encased in the folds of magnificent iron gates sat the most palatial structure I had ever seen. The landscape was sprinkled with flowers and foliage so exquisite they must have been-picked by God’s angels. I had left “civilization” beyond the iron gates and crossed over the paradise. As days passed, each home I visited was more beautiful than the last, each landscape more splendid. I was welcomed by people. I had never met but who embraced me as if the had known me all their lives, and who freely opened their homes and their hearts as if I was one of their own. They were monger strangers or nameless faces. They were my family, my brothers and sisters, my people. I embrace my culture as it had embraced me with its music, its dance, its soul, its syncopated rhythms, its very essence. The prejudices I had arrived with were but a distant memory. There was no language barrier because what I experienced transcended mere words. Thus began my adolescence awakening, my metamorphosis.

My time in Haiti passed as quickly as a whirlwind love affair. I had journeyed on the well-traveled roads of Port-au-prince to the mountainous passages of Kenscoff. In Leogane, my mother’s birthplace, I walked the paths my fore fathers walked and visited the burial grounds which hold the remains of my grandparents and where , one day, my mother will also be put to rest.

So as In boarded the plane that day, it was not sadness I felt but a sense of loss, like a child snatched from its mother’s bosom. I have not return to my homeland since that youthful endeavor, but I will always know in my heart that for a special moment in time, I came home. I will always cherish that period of my life, for, in many years, it helped me identify who I am and and served as an affirmation of my self-worth. I am eternally grateful for having had the opportunity to visit Haiti unlike many of my Haitian-American peers who will spend a lifetime never seeing with their eyes from whence they came. I am equally grateful for having visited during a time where life in Haiti was as sweet and bountiful as endless fields of sugarcane that stretched as far as one’s imagination.

Whenever people inquire about my first love, I respond by telling them that I met my first love on a blind date. Initially, I had reservations about our meetings due to all the negative things I had heard about this mysterious stranger. When I arrived, I was nervous and hesitant, but my curiosity was aroused. With time, I Began to understand and appreciate what had once been a mystery and became infatuated. Eventually, infatuation blossomed into love.

When I am asked to name my first love, I say that my fist love is not a person, it is a place. My first love, I answer, is Haiti. And although we may be far from one another, Haiti is always in my heart. They said you never forget your first love, and I believe this to be true. Haiti, I love you forever.

Note from Macaya :

Haiti has been also metamorphosed during the last thirty years. What can we do ?

Your opinion : washipo@macaya.org