By Jean H Charles
Haiti was at the end of the November and at the beginning of December, the theater of an unprecedented cultural explosion. There was:
- First, the International Conference of World Mayors led by the Mayor of the City of Tuskegee, Alabama.
- The Jacques Roumain International Colloquium,
- The Voices and Percussion festival
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| Jean H Charles MSW, JD is Executive Director of AINDOH Inc a non profit organization dedicated to build a kinder and gentle Caribbean zone for all. He can be reached at: jeanhcharles@aol.com |
And “Haiti Etonnants Voyageurs” the First International Festival of Books in Port au Prince: “all writing is a moving island”
This International Festival of Books came from the City of St Malo, France, and the venue of the last festival under the theme “Caribbean”. St Malo has for me a personal significance. Educated at a young age by the French Christian Brothers who came mostly from Brittany, in the region of St Malo. I grew up being a citizen of St Malo, France, and of Grande Riviere, Haiti. It was for me a personal catharsis that Haiti was the next venue after St Malo for this celebration of the power of writing.
Writing for what? And for whom? These were some the questions that more than fifty writers from the Caribbean and from the rest of the world wrestle with and answered for a large audience in an intimate setting all over the country.
At FOKAL the House of Culture in Haiti, I was in the front row, close to Kettly Mars, the young Haitian novelist explaining to an international audience that her journey to becoming a writer, as well as her transformation into a grounded woman became when she assumed her role of a mambo in waiting perpetuating and repairing the homfort (the voodoo chapel) in the family lakou (habitation). To my question as to her anxiety of writing for a public in Haiti too poor and rather under educated to bother about books and reading, her answer was straight and forthcoming. “I write for the passion of writing, I write because, it comes from my heart and my soul. I have to put down this child within me, whether or not it will be appreciated or valued by others.”
There was on the same stage Louis Philippe Dalembert from the French Diaspora, the nemesis of Dany Laferierre ( How to make love to a Negro) The only two Haitian writers who live off their profession of being a full time writer.
The venue for the book festival was all over town, the same evening I rushed to the French Cultural Institute to be closed with:
- Maryse Condé the centaur from Martinique who took on the task of defending the Haitian children victimized by their peers with the venom of discrimination and racism filled into their brain by their parents. She wrote a passionate and instructive book about Haitian History for the pupils of the island and for those of the rest of the world.
- Madison Smartt Bell (from Baltimore) who wrote an anthology on Toussaint Louverture, in some three volumes on the Black Spartacus, the foremost Father of Black Emancipation worldwide. This Haitian General could have change the face of the earth for the best, if Napoleon in co hoot with Thomas Jefferson did not put a clamp on his zenith. Bell understood all that, it is the reason why he has devoted his time and his life to be a scholar par excellence on the Haitian Revolution.
- And there was Hans Christophe Buch from Germany, the writer who went so far as to become the husband to Erzulie Dantor (a voodoo deity) to enter into the magic of Haiti.
The colloquium was all over town. To tell their stories the writers came from all over the world
Jamaica Kincaid, (United States/Antigua) Gisele Pineau, Edwidge Danticat, (United States) Russell Banks,( United States) Eduardo Manet, (France) Simone Schwarz-Bart, Patrick Raynal, Addourahman A Waberi,( France. Djibouti) Philippe Bernard, Roland Brival (Martinique) Carla Suarez (France and Cuba). Maryse Conde (United States- Guadeloupe) etc…
It certainly could have been a feast for book critics and for lovers of books, including the paparazzi. Except, Haiti is still under a de facto embargo imposed by an invisible hand that hurt the country and the Caribbean in general. I have witnessed a country in full cultural explosion that can please any connoisseur voyageurs.
I have attended a true and real voodoo ceremony at the Cultural Institute of Ethnology. Apparently it is open to the public for the modest sum of 10 Haitian dollars or $1.25. It takes place every Friday at 12.00pm.
I stumbled unto a squatter villa transformed into an art gallery. The artist, a part time gardener, displays his painting with other valuable pieces of art, some by famous Haitian painter’s right there in this abandoned house. The owners might be in Florida or in Canada still waiting for a better Haiti.
Michelle Pierre Louis the Grande Dame of Culture in Haiti, the Executive Director of FOKAL, told me that culture was the lifeblood that maintains Haiti into sanity during those difficult times. Ostracized by the rest of the world, the Haitians have turned inward to create in music, art, literature and sculpture some of their best productions.
To repeat a statement read some time ago in the New York Times by a famous film producer, interviewed as to where he is heading for the Christmas holiday season, his answer was for me: a reveling statement ” I am going to Haiti to be inspired”
May you all lovers of art, of creation and of unusual path, take the road to Haiti for a pilgrim to the Deity of Inspiration, Revelation and Transformation! |
