You can see it written across the faces on the street.
Just as some must have seen hundreds of years ago,
when kidnapping Africans flourished – when ripping
souls from wailing families, from tribes and thinning
homelands, was to some like plucking apples from a
tree and shipping them off to market. Greed was
King again, holding tight the reins to deny views of
the ripening fate. But it was clearly written there,
fear, across their faces on the street, the heart of a
birthing nation – now peering through the rubble.
Slave lords ignored the moans of wincing neglect,
in favor of their thriving businesses, exporting goods,
and strong bodies, off to the bazaar of human shame.
790,000 faces soon bore the pain there, in desperation,
hopelessness and grief through each step of fate. Later,
the Republic’s founding trouble-makers were isolated,
anchored on a non-compete paper raft, in the world of
steel hulls powered by the impious. The destiny of a
deserted people grew clearer across thousands of faces
now on the street, peering through the rubble.
Cries of full freedom meant more trouble, so the paper raft,
was loaded and cut loose, as a drifting prison, carrying this
new nation into acid waters of abandonment, eating away
at the flimsy craft and thousands of unprepared, untrained
captives, struggling with unfamiliar currents – no rudder,
nor maps, and one discarded compass – without a needle.
Then, while the world danced with busyness and glee of
other opportunities beckoning beyond the lingering fate here,
little effort was focused on what was written on those faces,
now peering through the earthquake rubble.
Yes, the paper raft drifted over the waterfall when the quake
struck. The huge loss of life, rebuilding needs and costs pose
enormous challenges. Yet, now there are methods to rebuild
structures to ride earth’s plates and greatly reduce death and
damages; new ways to industrialize and invest profitably with co-
operation and human purpose; exciting ways to educate and not
indoctrinate. Yes, new development opportunities and human
need suggest this is the time for Haiti, the Americas, and others
to work together to jump-start a new Haiti. Generous help is
pouring in, even while cynics continue to polish their mirrors.
Is Haiti cursed by a pact with the devil, as Pat Robertson says?
Doubtful. Yet if so, who might have been parties to such a pact,
including parties of commission as well as parties of omission?
Who? Do you see either of those expressions written on the faces
of those on the street – or in the clear innocent eyes of the children?
It is more likely that any such pact might truly instead be a “pack,”
as a pack of two of the devil’s favorite candy bars – Almond Greed
and Dicey Decadence – which he plants among all of us and in
particular situations in history, working like a mouse trap, poised
and ready – to charm and deceive new recruits to do his work.
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Dedication: The above 5 stanzas of 10 lines each are dedicated
to those first 50 Africans who were taken by force in 1503
to those first 50 Africans who were taken by force in 1503
to the island of Hispaniola, named by Columbus, and upon which
in 1749 the city of Port-au-Prince was founded on the western
portion of what is now the Republic of Haiti.
Copyright © 2010 C. Page Highfill
