Haiti does have some unique dishes. One is picklese (recipe below), a combination hot sauce and slaw/pickle. Another unusual specialty is diri djon djon, a rice dish made with Haitian mushrooms. The mushrooms are mild-flavored and turn the rice black. Compton says that pumpkin soup, joumou, is eaten on New Year’s day, other special occasions, and sometimes on Sundays. “Sunday is the day to visit,” she says. “When there’s no movies, tv or radio, visiting is the main entertainment.” Haiti is 90 percent Roman Catholic (and 100 percent voodoo) so they have a Carnivale, a.k.a Mardi Gras. Easter is the biggest festival of the year; when a beet salad is traditionally eaten.
The reasons Haiti was the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country well before Jan. 12 are as diverse as they are complex. It has a long and miserable record of almost chronic catastrophes, political as well as natural. But Haitians point with pride to the fact that their country was the first black democracy, freeing themselves from French colonization in 1804 and instituting a constitution in 1805. That democracy hasn’t been perfect or unbroken: the brutal dictators “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son, “Baby Doc,” controlled Haiti from the 1950s to the 1980s; no small part of Haiti’s current problems can be traced to them. Haiti is once again a democracy, although political graft and corruption remain rampant.
Haiti also has a proud literary history; in fact an international literary festival was to be held in Port-au-Prince the same week as the quake. Jérémie is called the “City of Poets;” it’s most famous was Alexandre Dumas who wrote The Three Musketeers.
Can the horrific disaster of Jan. 12 present an opportunity to set Haiti onto a new course? Bellerive thinks it can. He’ll be attempting to persuade the international community – especially donor nations such America – that Haiti has “a good recovery action plan [that] won’t just rebuild what was destroyed but present the Haiti that we’re all dreaming of” by the next decade. Compton agrees: “It’s absolutely the hope of everyone who cares about Haiti.”
Certainly it will be a long and difficult struggle. It’s difficult for Haitians to look that far ahead when so many don’t even have a plastic sheet to call home. Bellerive knows that: “Our goal at the moment isn’t to escape poverty. It’s to escape misery so we can get back to poverty.”
There are many charitable agencies accepting donations for Haitian relief, from the Red Cross to churches and other religious organizations. Choose any that suit your preference; just be sure that it’s well established and reputable.
Contact Julianne Glatz @[email protected].
