A thousand ways to stay alive

I could have started with ‘Devwa Afwontman’, the first volume of poetry by my friend and former student Litainé Laguerre, who lives in the Cité Soleil: “The Duty of Confrontation” is the translation of the book's title in Creole. It says that the individual must not give in to circumstance: we must not lie down and sleep as if nothing is wrong.

His book “Devwa Afwontman” features heavy gunfire. Dust and dirt. Bullet casings. Animal carcasses. It features the will to live and very few tears. When I count the tears and think about it, I realise that water doesn't play a big role in this book overall - probably because you could write a separate book about the water in the Soleil, the stagnant bodies of water which are reservoirs for parasites.

Then there's the rainwater that transforms the streets into canals, seeps into the houses and sometimes rises to knee height, washing everything towards the sea, at least everything that isn't strong or intelligent enough to hold on to something. And then there's the clean water, which is never running water. To collect it, you need a bucket or a plastic bag. You need Gourdes (Haiti's currency) to buy a bag full. And you need the strength to carry it.

“Anyone who grows up in Soleil has a different mindset to a middle-class child who grows up in the library”

I could have started with my friend Litainé himself, describing the studious teenager he was when he became a member of the ‘Atelier Jeudi Soir’. I could have started with his need to write and develop his own way of thinking. The intellectual he had developed into seven years later and with whom you could talk about literary history and theory, about Nietzsche and Frankétienne, poetry and epic poetry, metaphors and sentence structures.

Litainé remains a mystery to me in many respects. Anyone who grows up in Soleil is moulded differently in his perception and feelings than a middle-class child who grows up in the library. I know little about Litainé's attitude to love, to lust, to need, to selflessness, what the night means to him. How we are in ourselves is determined by the environment we grow up in, by the pros and cons of our life, by ruptures and continuities.

That's why people who come from different environments have to learn to listen to each other so they can talk to each other. Litainé and I will continue to experience our friendship as a kind of Bildungsroman, between Soleil and Delmas, Delmas and Soleil.

I could have started with my daft astonishment, which quickly turned into admiration. Admiration for this determination to give meaning to one's life and to acquire knowledge despite the lack of libraries and electricity and despite the shootings, the demands made by the gangs and the terror that emanates from them.

And despite the conspiracy thinking of the religious zealots who want to sell you Jesus as your personal saviour and denigrate the others. A Jesus as vicious as a poisonous dwarf, who is closer to the Book of Kings and the Fifth Book of Moses in the Old Testament than to the Gospel according to John. A Jesus who doesn't likes your old mum - because of her voodoo practices - nor your cousin who, like you, knows how to get by with tricks and dodges. A Christ who even wants to turn your half-brother against you. And almost everyone here has a half-brother or half-sister. Mothers have to build a new life for themselves, replace a first father with a second one, although it is actually clear that the second one will behave in exactly the same way as the first one: they'll fight then run away.

Yes, I could have started off in that way - by realising how stupid it was of me to wonder. By realising how stupid it is to think that all ‘Soléiens’ are the same and don't struggle to be themselves just like people everywhere else. The idea that they are a herd, united by misery and a certain resilience.

I could have started with the admission that sometimes you are as dumb as an NGO. Not that NGOs don't have their good points. Some are quite useful. Others, however, are just a refuge for broken people who would have done better getting involved with political groups in their own country and making a difference there instead of coming here as self-appointed saviours.

Unfortunately, when talking about Cité Soleil, we also have to mention the young French woman who told us that she was “working on her relationship with this country” as part of her job. I could have started by telling myself that I was no different from this young woman when I wondered about something that is quite normal: the claim to singularity and to a self-chosen, autonomous self.

Of course, the residents of the ‘Cités’, the ‘Bidonvilles’ and the ‘poor neighbourhoods’ need healthcare, care facilities and teachers. But it is just as important for them to be seen as individuals who are struggling to get by. And who have to struggle with more difficulties than people elsewhere. People live in Soleil, not statistics. When Litainé talks about his friends or acquaintances, he's talking about people and personalities who try or succumb to the temptation to be something unique. That's probably the most difficult thing for the “foreigner”: recognising that everyone, even in Soleil, has the right to be different.

I could also have started with social processes or social structures. With the American occupation of Haiti, which lasted from 1915 to 1934. With the centralisation of power in Port-au-Prince and the subsequent impoverishment of the peasants. Then I could have moved on to the murderous farce of the Duvalier years, to the peasants who were carted to Port-au-Prince in lorries as claqueurs for the dictator's speeches.

“I am the banner of Haiti, one and indivisible. Bravo, Monsieur le Président. I have no enemies other than the enemies of the nation.” Bravo again, Monsieur le Président. Afterwards, however, they forgot to bring the rural inhabitants back to their villages and fields. This is how the ‘Cité Simone’ - as the Soleil used to be called, named after the dictator's wife - came into being: as a catchment area for the farmers who were to be turned into workers by the industrial development that never took place.

I could have gone into the relationship between town and country, the alliance between the merchant bourgeoisie and the government - and the fact that the poor people were burdened with direct and indirect taxes and otherwise left to their own devices. To the fact that when they migrated to the city, they lost their power of resistance and influence.

I could have spoken of what the city offered and still offers: a spectacle of the quick riches of the corrupt, of legal bandits and ordinary bandits. Of the appeal of the US subculture, which has become an idol and role model. About the gadgets of a messed-up modernisation. Of the fury of consumption. Of the loss of cultural orientation.