#dandicat

[raikovich-blog-blog]

Sketchbook 3: Edwidge Dandicat

Research:

Tonton Macoute: A ruthless and corrupt paramilitaristic organization established in Haiti in 1959 to keep President Francois Duvalier in service.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide 2004 coup d’état: A rebel overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide's presidency over Haiti because he was seen as an unfair and corrupt president and because his election was found to be questionable; there are also questions circulating about the U.S.'s involvement in the coup.

 Reflect:

The children across the street were piling up the leaves in Madame Augustin's yard. The bigger ones waited on line as the smaller ones dropped onto the pile, bouncing to their feet. shrieking and laughing. They called one another's names: Foi, Hope. Faith, Esperance, Beloved, God-Given. My Joy, First Born. Last Born, Asefi, Enough-Girls. Enough-Boys, Deliverance, Small Misery, Big Misery, No Misery. Names as bright and colorful as the giant poincianas in Madame Augustin's garden.

They grabbed one another and fell to the ground, rejoicing as though they had flown past the towering flame trees that shielded the yard from the hot Haitian sun.

This passage reflects the barrier between Sophie (Dandicat) and the other children. Sophie is different from the other children because she does not live with her mother, she lives with her aunt who has neither a husband nor children of her own. This distinction between Sophie and the other children displays the complexity in her life in relation to the others' more simple lives. The list of their names is equivalent to the joy and energy they share as they play in the garden of leaves. In contrast, Sophie is unable to fully enjoy her youth because of her strange situation and because of the upcoming news. Dandicat's life was strikingly different from other children - she was more quiet, more reserved, more observant. She held the wisdom and manners of an adult just as a young child which fueled her emotions and actions.

[clairesgould]

My grandmothers were also talking about souls, which never really die, even when the visual and verbal manifestations of their transition—the tombstones and mausoleums, the elaborate wakes and church services, the desounen prayers that encourage the body to surrender the spirit, the mourning rituals of all religions—become a luxury, like so much else in Haiti, like a home, like bread, like clean water.

In the year since the earthquake, Haiti has lost some thirty-five hundred people to cholera, an epidemic that is born out of water. The epidemic could potentially take more lives than the earthquake itself. And with the contagion of cholera comes a stigma that follows one even in death. People cannot touch a loved one who has died of cholera. No ritual bath is possible, no last dressing of the body. There are only more mass graves.