September 18, 2011

If you live in Haiti you can’t help but notice that on almost any corner of any street there is a person with a wheel barrow full of sugar cane they are selling. The sugar cane is cut into yard long pieces. (Sugar cane for those of you who don’t know, looks to me like bamboo only it’s a deep reddish purple color.) The person selling it peels off the bark, cuts it into smaller pieces and put them in baggies. I have no ideas how much they cost but it can’t be much. People then bit a piece off and chew it for awhile; then they spit it out – on the ground or into their hand while looking for a discreet place to drop it. That’s usually on the street or if they’re in a tap-tap, on the floor.
Well I’ve never tasted sugar cane to my knowledge and I’ve always wanted to try it but nobody has ever offered me a piece. Nobody, that is, till yesterday when I went to the Saturday meeting of the Friends of St. Francis de Sales, the youth group founded by one of our men four years ago and is still shepherded by two of our postulants. There, one of the young women was eating some “cane” and I was offered a piece. I was delighted and thanked her. The group looked at me, whether to see if I liked it or what, I’m not sure, anyway they seemed happy when I smiled with my first “chew”. Sugar cane is very pithy and as you chew it you get the taste of the sugar juices it contains. When they disappear, like the flavor of bubble gum, you can spit it out and take another bite. It crossed my mind as I chewed that this piece of cane had been handled by the seller who had hacked it off with his/her machete and peeled it, stuffed it into a baggy with his bear "ungloved" hand and sold it to the girl who in turn handed it to me. Were her hands germ free? What do you think? No, of course they weren’t, so “Live dangerously!” I thought. (Living dangerously here in Haiti and living dangerously in the USA means two different things. Here there is a cholera epidemic which is still in progress. You don’t “catch” cholera like a cold. You have to ingest something contaminated – like maybe contaminated sugar cane. Anyway, I’m still alive and no worse for the wear and the sugar cane was good and I’m glad I had a chance to try it – “dirty hands” or not.

This morning I celebrated two Masses, one at six o’clock and one at nine. The one at six was in a very primitive chapel which belongs to our parish, St. Clare. Our men conduct a Word and Communion service there every Sunday morning at eight o’clock. Last week they asked me if I would ever consider saying Mass for the folks there at six o’clock. I said yes but we have to be ready to go at six so we can finish at a decent time to get back, grab a bite to eat and then head off to Cité Soleil for Mass at Ste Anne’s Chapel. They assured me that would be done so off we went before six o’clock this morning to have Mass in the chapel. The road there is unbelievable, heavily rutted and filled with huge puddles of standing water. After a very uncomfortable ride through a densely populated area we headed up a hillside for about a mile. The road was nothing but a washed out path but with our trusty Isuzu Trooper on loan from the Sisters of Providence, we finally arrived at the chapel. Because it was so early I didn’t have time to go over the Mass in Creole. I always do this even though I’ve been preparing the texts for several days before. Well, I felt today was a disaster. Creole has lots of little three and four letter words. I get over one and I’m faced with another. Talk about tongue twisters! Let me make a little aside at this point.

Maybe I’ve said this before but it showed itself in full effect this morning. It is simply this: I was never taught phonics. I was taught “word recognition”. What’s that you say? Well instead of beginning with letters and teaching the child that each letter has a “sound”, I was “taught” (shown) a group of letters along with a picture and told it meant whatever the picture showed. For example: I was shown the picture of a ball and under the picture were the letters “b-a-l-l”. I learned that his combination of letters meant “ball”. Those of you who learned to read with phonetics had learned the sounds for “a” and “b” which together was “ba…” and then “l” so along with “ba” and the added “l” sound you sounded out “ball” and your little brain made the connection – “Oh, that’s ball.” You who learned phonetics can “sound out" words you’ve never seen before syllable by syllable and make a stab at what the word sounds like and is. No so yours truly. I’m at a total loss, well, not a total loss. After 73 years on this planet I’ve come to recognize many words and I know about phonetics so I can also “sound out” words but it’s not “second nature”. Mentally I have to pause and think what do these sounds mean – oh yes, then I have it. If I don’t have it and I’m reading in public something I haven’t prepared beforehand, I panic and fumble and stumble and I’m reduced to a little kid who is standing there in from of everybody and who has just wet his pants. That’s no kidding. It really is like that. Now of course this happens rarely when I’m speaking or reading English out loud in public, but what about French or now, Creole? Now we’re back to scratch as in “starting from scratch”. Well, for French I’m better than I was but it was agony when I was a scholastic in Fribourg. I was passed the book we were reading at table and I had to read “cold turkey” as it were. Again, if I recognized the word, no problem, but if I didn’t it was mentally “stop, try to figure it out and come out with the word”. Torture for an adult! Now it’s pretty much the same thing for Creole. I’m just not proficient enough in Creole to know what I’m reading. I may have the gist but I’m still flying by the seat of my pants. I get through two or three of these little words, each one being a challenge, and then I come to one that’s different – maybe with a nasal sound and I panic. Now this would be bad enough if it were only I who suffered and felt embarrassed. “Too bad Tom, so you messed up – big deal, just go on, etc., etc., etc.” says the little voice in my head. But it’s not just me and we’re talking about celebrating Mass a very holy experience – one which demands reverence and a real sense of presence. How many times have you heard about “this priest from Africa, or Columbia or India, - you can’t understand a word he says.” Well now, I’m that priest and the poor Haitian people who have gathered for Mass have to put up with this big American white guy who stumbles over has words. That really gets to me. By the way, It’s called by St. Francis de Sales in his book, An Introduction to the Devout Anne's wasn't any better. But what really touched me today was seeing a woman after Mass who had a very twisted foot, no doubt from birth. It crippled her but she simply walked with a limp. We gave her a ride down about three quarters of the mile-long hillside I spoke of earlier. It occurred to me that this woman must have gotten up at maybe four thirty to get ready for Mass and to start the hike up to the chapel. God bless her, crippled foot and all, there she was having make her way to Sunday morning Mass dressed very neatly despite the Haitian dust which is everywhere. Talk about “the faithful remnant,” she’s very much a part of it.

With that I’ll end. Bless any of you who have managed to get this far with the blog. Count on my prayers and keep me in yours. Tom