Sunday, February 11, 2007

HUN Update, February 11, 2007

Hey HUN,

I moved yesterday. While my new locale is certainly more secure--two thick steel doors with a lock and two quarter-inch bolts guard my door, and concrete walls ensure that I will hear my assailant's pickax long before they actually break through--I already miss the room that, for all its imperfections, has been the closest thing I have to a home. Though I shall not miss the three full-height mirrors, one on the wall in front of the bed and one on either side, that makes absolutely sure that the first thing I see every morning is the damage that sleep has inflicted on my weary, unresisting body.

My previous habitat was a guest room within Jean's house, but I have known all along that it was a temporarily dwelling to be vacated when we had readied the guest apartment behind the house. It is built atop a concrete ("concrete" is an assumed adjective around here, but I try to say it often for clarification) shed, but I have found to my delight that with some practice I should be able to pull myself up to my door without ever using the stairs. I miss rock climbing a great deal, and this will provide some opportunity to remind my arms that they won't be idle forever.

My new apartment (and I use "new" in the loosest possible sense of the word) has three rooms: a foyer/living room, a bedroom, and a bathroom. The bedroom is dominated by the queen-sized bed (a mattress on four concrete blocks) and a large metal...object...that I assume to be a shelving unit. The entrance, however, is a decent size and is quite empty except for a plywood table and a number of wooden shelves covered with books. Far be it from me to begrudge shelves of books for taking up space! I shall be sure to peruse them when I have a moment; I'm quite excited. The bathroom is in need of a little TLC--the shower is home to a veritable museum of insectoid life forms, and there are so many ants that it made me wonder for the hundredth time why nobody has properly developed ant cuisine--but with a little love and a lot of gruesome guerrilla warfare, I expect that before long it will be perfectly serviceable.

I spent much of yesterday cleaning. First I did some thorough sweeping, which was an exercise in futility as the dust simply flew up to escape my swaths and settled as soon as I turned my back. It did do some good, though; the room is now free of spider webs, dried vegetation, and one iguana (no, I didn't kill it). To my surprise, one of the things I found on the bookshelves was a sponge still in its plastic. I filled a bucket with water, dragged it up, and began scrubbing in earnest.

Floors in the States just don't get dirty like they do in Haiti. Dirt in Haiti is like a skyscraper, with different strata and rates of rent for each. The top levels, most vulnerable to footprints and sweeping, are left to the surfs and the peasants: dust particles. The next layer is for the commoners, and consists primarily of larger-than-average dust particles and sand. Getting rid of it is like trying to sweep sand off a beach, for all the good it does. The deepest layer is a diabolical grime that clings to the floor "like barnacles to big whale bottoms" (name that Disney movie). As I was sweeping, I could hear it mocking me: "Hah! Brooms? I'm not ticklish."

Suffice it to say that I spent a great deal of time scrubbing, and when I was done, I was left with what may possibly be the most brackish water I have ever seen. I got to my feet, my back and neck doing their best to convince me that perhaps it was about time I started treating them like the old, worn body parts that they were and start assigning grueling tasks to spry teenagers, and looked down at my bucket, then dipped the sponge in to clean it. I lifted it out and squeezed, noticing in passing that the water coming out looked reasonably clean. It made me think.

I get really frustrated with people sometimes. It's hard to see how crappy people can be to each other, and still maintain a positive perspective on humanity. Look at all the awful things we say and do to each other! When I look at people collectively, it's really easy to focus on the evil. My bucket of water, you see, was mostly just water. I doubt if a tenth of it, by volume, was actual dirt. But water is clear, and dirt is opaque, and so for all I could tell it was a bucket of pure mud. It was only by observing the water I squeezed from the sponge--that is, by focusing on the individual instead of the collective--that I understood that, as bad as it looked, the water was still mostly clean. It was encouraging.

It's easy to get caught up in origins and destinations. But time and time again, and I beg you to forgive me this cliché, I find that the lessons are found in the journey between the two. I think that's why God keeps us moving all the time; why He never lets us stay in our comfort zones. Because moving and learning and changing are all interrelated processes, and all are necessary in that one key process of becoming.

And now, let us become better speakers of Haitian Creole.

Let's talk about nouns today, shall we? We're going to talk about three things we do a lot with nouns.

Door : port (port)
A door : yon port (yo*-port) *indicates nasal "n"
Doors : port-yo (port-yo)
The door : port-la (port-lah)

Pretty easy, right? The word "a" is translated as "yon." Words are pluralized by attaching "yo" to the end. But definite articles, I'm afraid, are a little more tricky. For example:

The door: port-la (port-lah)
The car: machin-nan (mosh-een-na*)
The country: peyi-a (pay-ee-ah)

So there are a few different ways to say "the," and it just depends on the noun and how it sounds. There are certainly rules that govern this, but basically the only way to learn it is to hear a lot of vocabulary and get used to hearing it said a certain way.

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If you are new to this newsletter and would like some background, please visit my blog, which contains an archive of all my updates. Here is my contact information:

Phone Number: 011-509-617-7720
Address for Letters: Pastor Jean Petit-Frére, P.O. Box 407139, Ft. Lauderdale, Fl, 33340
Address for Packages: Pastor Jean Petit-Frére, 2525 NW 55 Court, Hangar #24, Ft. Lauderdale, Fl, 33340

Important: Remember to address it to "Paster Jean Petit-Frére" and write "Attn: Dan" on the back of the envelope or package. Thanks!

God Bless,

Dan


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