“We Are Ugly, But We Are Here”

By Edwidge Danticat

One of the first people murdered on our land was a queen. Her name was Anacaona and she was an Arawak Indian. She was a poet, dancer, and even a painter. She ruled over the western part of an island so lush and green that the Arawaks called it Ayiti land of high. When the Spaniards came from across the sea to look for gold, Anacaona was one of their first victims. She was raped and killed and her village pillaged in a tradition of ongoing cruelty and atrocity. Anacaona's land is now the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, a place of continuous political unrest. Thus, for some, it is easy to forget that this land was the first Black Republic, home to the first people of African descent to uproot slavery and create an independent nation in 1804.

I was born under Haiti's dictatorial Duvalier regime. When I was four, my parents left Haiti to seek a better life in the United States. I must admit that their motives were more economic that political. But as anyone who knows Haiti will tell you, economics and politics are very intrinsically related in Haiti. Who is in power determines to a great extent whether or not people will eat.

I am twenty six years old now and have spent more than half of my life in the United States. My most vivid memories of Haiti involve incidents that represent the general situation there. In Haiti, there are a lot of "blackouts," sudden power failures. At those times, you can't read or study or watch TV, so you sit around a candle and listen to stories from the elders in the house. My grandmother was an old country woman who always felt dis- placed in the city of Port-au-Prince where we lived and had nothing but her patched-up quilts and her stories to console her. She was the one who told me about Anacaona. I used to share a room with her. I was in the room when she died. She was over a hundred years old. She died with her eyes wide open and I was the one who closed her eyes. I still miss the countless mystical stories that she told us. However, I accepted her death very easily because in Haiti death was always around us.

As a little girl, I attended more than my share of funerals. My uncle and legal guardian was a Baptist minister and his family was expected to attend every funeral he presided over. I went to all the funerals he presided over. I went to all the funerals in the same white lace dress. Perhaps it was because I attended so many funerals that I have such a strong feeling that death is not the end, that the people we bury are going off to live somewhere else. But at the same time, they will always be hovering around to watch over us and guide us through our journeys.

When I was eight, my uncle' s brother-in-law went on a long journey to cut cane in the Dominican Republic. He came back, deathly ill. I remember his wife twirling feathers inside his nostrils and rubbing black pepper on his upper lip to make him sneeze. She strongly believed that if he sneezed, he would live. At night, it was my job to watch the sky above the house for signs of falling stars. In Haitian folklore, when a star falls out of the sky, it means someone will die. A star did fall out of the sky and he did die.

I have memories of Jean Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier and his wife, racing by in their Mercedes Benz and throwing money out of the window to the very poor children in our neighborhood. The children nearly killed each other trying to catch a coin or a glimpse of Baby Doc. One Christmas, they announced on the radio that the first lady, Baby Doc's wife, was giving away free toys at the Palace. My cousins and I went and were nearly killed in the mob of children who flooded the palace lawns.

All of this now brings many questions buzzing to my head. Where was really my place in all of this? What was my grandmother's place? What is the legacy of the daughters of Anacaona? What do we all have left to remember, the daughters of Haiti?

Watching the news reports, it is often hard to tell whether there are real living and breathing women in conflict-stricken places like Haiti. The evening news broadcasts only allow us a brief glimpse of presidential coups, rejected boat people, and sabotaged elections. The women's stories never manage to make the front page. However they do exist.

I know women who, when the soldiers came to their homes in Haiti, would tell their daughters to lie still and play dead. I once met a woman whose sister was shot in her pregnant stomach because she was wearing a t-shirt with an "anti-military image." I know a mother who was arrested and beaten for working with a pro-democracy group. Her body remains laced with scars where the soldiers put out their cigarettes on her flesh. At night, this woman still smells the ashes of the cigarette butts that were stuffed lit inside her nostrils. In the same jail cell, she watched as paramilitary "attaches" raped her fourteen-year-old daughter at gun point.

Then mother and daughter took a tiny boat to the United States, the mother had no idea that her daughter was pregnant. Nor did she know that the child had gotten the HIV virus from one of the paramilitary men who had raped her. The grandchild the offspring of the rape was named Anacaona, after the queen, because that family of women is from the same region where Anacaona was murdered. The infant Anacaona has a face which no longer shows any trace of indigenous blood; however, her story echoes back to the first flow of blood on a land that has seen much more than its share.

There is a Haitian saying which might upset the aesthetic images of most women. Nou led, Nou la, it says. We are ugly, but we are here. Like the modesty that is somewhat common in Haitian culture, this saying makes a deeper claim for poor Haitian women than maintaining beauty, be it skin deep or otherwise. For most of us, what is worth celebrating is the fact that we are here, that we against all the odds exist. To the women who might greet each other with this saying when they meet along the countryside, the very essence of life lies in survival. It is always worth reminding our sisters that we have lived yet another day to answer the roll call of an often painful and very difficult life. It is in this spirit that to this day a woman remembers to name her child Anacaona, a name which resonates both the splendor and agony of a past that haunts so many women.

When they were enslaved, our foremothers believed that when they died their spirits would return to Africa, most specifically to a peaceful land we call Guinin, where gods and goddesses live. The women who came before me were women who spoke half of one language and half another. They spoke the French and Spanish of their captors mixed in with their own African language. These women seemed to be speaking in tongue when they prayed to their old gods, the ancient African spirits. Even though they were afraid that their old deities would no longer understand them, they invented a new language our Creole patois with which to describe their new surroundings, a language from which colorful phrases blossomed to fit the desperate circumstances. When these women greeted each other, they found themselves speaking in codes.

- How are we today, Sister?
- I am ugly, but I am here.

These days, many of my sisters are greeting each other away from the homelands where they first learned to speak in tongues. Many have made it to other shores, after traveling endless miles on the high seas, on rickety boats that almost took their lives. Two years ago, a mother jumped into the sea when she discovered that her baby daughter had died in her arms on a journey which they had hoped would take them to a brighter future. Mother and child, they sank to the bottom of an ocean which already holds millions of souls from the middle passage the holocaust of the slave trade that is our legacy. That woman's sacrifice moved then-deposed Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide to the brink of tears. However, like the rest of us, he took comfort in the past sacrifices that were made for all of us, so that we could be here.

The past is full of examples when our foremothers and forefathers showed such deep trust in the sea that they would jump off slave ships and let the waves embrace them. They too believed that the sea was the beginning and the end of all things, the road to freedom and their entrance to Guinin. These women have been part of the very construction of my being ever since I was a little girl. Women like my grandmother who had taught me the story of Anacaona, the queen.

My grandmother believed that if a life is lost, then another one springs up replanted somewhere else, the next life even stronger than the last. She believed that no one really dies as long as someone remembers, someone who will acknowledge that this person had in spite of everything been here. We are part of an endless circle, the daughters of Anacaona. We have stumbled, but have not fallen. We are ill-favored, but we still endure. Every once in a while, we must scream this as far as the wind can carry our voices: "We are ugly, but we are here! And here to stay."

Edwidge Danticat, from Haiti, published Krik? Krak (1995) and Breath, Eyes, Memory (1995). She won a Pushcart Prize for a story in the Caribbean Writer in 1994 and also was a recipient of the Canute A. Brodhurst Prize for fiction.

Clinton & Bush Together on Haiti

The Earthquake in Haiti II

January 16th, Obama, GW Bush, Clinton: Together on Haiti

Former U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton are joined by U.S. President Barack Obama in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington while speaking about disaster aid to Haiti January 16, 2010.

By David Jackson / USA Today

President Obama thanked predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton today for heading up a new Haiti fundraising project, and asked them to tap America's compassion to help the impoverished nation devastated by a deadly earthquake.

"In times of great challenge in our country and around the world, Americans have always come together to lend a hand and to serve others and to do what's right," Obama said at the White House, flanked by the former presidents.

During brief remarks in the Rose Garden, Bush and Clinton both praised Obama for the government's initial response to the earthquake disaster. Both told Americans the best way help is to give money as soon as possible to finance relief workers who are already arriving in Haiti.

"I know a lot of people want to send blankets and water," Bush said while making his first visit to the White House since his presidency ended. "Just send your cash."

Clinton said the new project -- The Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund -- is designed to be "a place where people can know their money will be spent."

It can be accessed at clintonbushhaitifund.org.

Bush and Clinton are heading up the same kind of fundraising effort for Haiti that Bush's father and Clinton did for the victims of tsunami that hit Asia in late 2004. Obama called it a "model that works," one with a big advantage.

"America has no greater resource than the strength and the compassion of the American people," Obama said.

The two ex-presidents also sat for television interviews to be aired tomorrow on the Sunday morning talks shows -- the questions were restricted to Haiti only.

In the Rose Garden, Clinton spoke of his long-time personal connection to Haiti, including the fact that he and wife Hillary honeymooned there. "I was in those hotels that collapsed," he said. "I've had meals with people who are dead."

Bush -- who took major heat for the government's response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 -- commended Obama for "a swift and timely response to the disaster."

Obama said the new Bush-Clinton partnership is a signal to the world that "in these difficult hours, Americans stand united." He also warned that rebuilding Haiti will take time -- lots of it.

"Our longer-term effort will not be measured in days and weeks," Obama said. "It will be measured in months and even years."

Before their remarks, Obama, Bush, and Clinton met privately in the Oval Office.

Oh, to be a fly on that wall.

Bush had not been back to the White House since his last hour as president, a year ago Jan. 20.

In the months since, Obama and his aides have repeatedly cited "the mess" that they "inherited" from the Bush administration, from the financial crisis to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bush, who left office with very low approval ratings, has been silent on Obama's presidency. But high-ranking backers such as former Vice President Dick Cheney have assailed Obama on items ranging from his health care plan to counter-terrorism policies.

The Obama-Clinton relationship has also been in the news lately, thanks to a new book on the 2008 presidential campaign. In Game Change, authors John Heilemann and Mark Halperin report that Clinton regularly blasted Obama as the latter fought Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination; Obama often returned the favor to the ex-president.

Since Obama became president, however, he and Clinton have worked on a variety of issues, including the nuclear threat from North Korea.

The authors of Game Change also reported that Clinton and Bush speak regularly by telephone.

So we suspect this morning's chat was fairly comfortable. After all, these three guys belong to a rather exclusive club.

Meanwhile, here's a White House statement on how the Haiti project came together:

Shortly after learning of the magnitude of the destruction in Haiti, the President determined that any relief effort would have to be sustained over the long term, and would require a substantial private component. Furthermore, as donations and offers to help immediately began to pour in, it became clear that a point of coordination was necessary to facilitate the contributions of individuals and other non-governmental organizations.

The President admired the substantial success of the effort to raise money and awareness in the aftermath of the Tsunami, and believed that a similar effort would be necessary to respond to a challenge of this magnitude.

The President called George W. Bush at 6:35 PM on Wednesday, January 13th to discuss the idea. The President also discussed the idea with Secretary Clinton.

The Earthquake in Haiti.

Happy 2010

Now that the Christmas and New Year festivities are over and we have already enjoyed our annual leave period, how about taking a look at the old traditions? Christmas is a Christian holiday that celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ, but many Christmas traditions come from pagan, or non-Christian sources.

Christmas Trees come from a German pagan tradition. They were brought to the English (who later brought them to the US) by Prince Albert, the German husband of Queen Victoria. Evergreen Wreaths and Boughs. Wreaths are circles of leaves, berries and/or flowers that are usually placed on the front door.

Boughs are tree branches. Evergreens are trees that stay green all year long. Because of this, they are pagan symbols of life. They were used to show that life is eternal and continues even in winter, the season of death. Decorating with Holly comes from the Roman solstice celebration called Saturnalia. The Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year, when the sun shines for the least amount of time. In ancient Roman solstice celebrations, people gave each other holly because they believed it kept away lightning and evil spirits during the long nights. People have exchanged gifts for thousands of years. The Saturnalia in Rome took place at the beginning of the New Year.

People gave presents as symbols of the good luck, prosperity, and happiness that they wanted their friends and family to have in the coming year. Christians credit the Magi, or Three Wise Men, with starting this tradition when they brought gifts to the Christ Child.

Santa Claus is a mix of characters from many different traditions, all of them pagan: the Dutch St. Nick, the English Father Christmas, and the German Kris Kringle, among others. For centuries Norse and Germanic peoples have talked about the Yule Elf, who carries presents to people who leave him food on the Winter Solstice. HC

“Old Irish Saying”

If you want to know what God thinks about money, just look at the people HE gives it to."

Stupid Quotation

"If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure." - James Danforth "Dan" Quayle was the 44th Vice President of the United States, serving under George H. W. Bush (1989–1993). He served as a U.S. Representative and U.S. Senator from the state of Indiana.

Famous Quotation

"It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous". Robert Benchley.

Robert Charles Benchley was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor. From his beginnings at the Harvard Lampoon while attending Harvard University, through his many years writing essays and articles for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, and his acclaimed short films, Benchley's style of humor brought him respect and success during his life, from New York City and his peers at the Algonquin Round Table to contemporaries in the burgeoning film industry.

LAUGHTER’S THE BEST MEDICINE

At The Court House

Defense Attorney: What is your age?
Little Old Lady: I am 86 years old.
Defense Attorney: Will you tell us, what happened to you?
Little Old Lady: There I was, sitting there in my swing on my front porch on a warm spring evening, when a young man comes creeping up on the porch and sat down beside me.
Defense Attorney: What happened after he sat down beside you?
Little Old Lady: He started to rub my thigh.
Defense Attorney: Did you stop him?
Little Old Lady: No, I didn't stop him.
Defense Attorney: Why not?
Little Old Lady: It felt good. Nobody had done that since my Abner passed away some 30 years ago.
Defense Attorney: What happened next?
Little Old Lady: He began to rub my breasts..
Defense Attorney: Did you stop him then?
Little Old Lady: No, I did not stop him.
Defense Attorney: Why not?
Little Old Lady: Why, Your Honor, his rubbing made me feel all alive and excited. I haven't felt that good in years!
Defense Attorney: What happened next?
Little Old Lady: Well, I was feeling so spicy that I just spread my old legs and said to him, "Take me, young man, Take me!"
Defense Attorney: Did he take you?
Little Old Lady: Hell, no. That's when he yelled, "April Fool!" And that's when I shot the son of a bitch!

Don't Let Me Be Late

A little girl, dressed in her Sunday best, was running as fast as she could, trying not to be late for Bible class. As she ran she prayed, "Dear Lord, please don't let me be late! Dear Lord, please don't let me be late!" As she was running and praying , she tripped on a curb and fell, getting her clothes dirty and tearing her dress. She got up, brushed herself off, and started running again. As she ran she once again began to pray; "Dear Lord, please don't let me be late!...But don't push me either."

Top Secret

You've all heard of the Air Force's ultra-high-security, super-secret base in Nevada, known simply as "Area 51?"
Well, late one afternoon, the Air Force folks out at Area 51 were very surprised to see a Cessna landing at their "secret" base. They immediately impounded the aircraft and hauled the pilot into an interrogation room.
The pilot's story was that he took off from Vegas, got lost, and spotted the Base just as he was about to run out of fuel. The Air Force started a full FBI background check on the pilot and held him overnight during the investigation.
By the next day, they were finally convinced that the pilot really was lost and wasn't a spy. They gassed up his airplane, gave him a terrifying "you-did-not-see-a-base" briefing, complete with threats of spending the rest of his life in prison, and sent him on his way.
The next day, to the total disbelief of the Air Force, the same Cessna showed up again. Once again, the MPs surrounded the plane...only this time there were two people in the cockpit.
The same pilot jumped out and said, "Do anything you want to me, but my wife is in the plane and you have to tell her where I was last night!"

A Bit Too Late?

The orthopedic surgeon I work for was moving to a new office, and his staff was helping transport many of the items. I sat the display skeleton in the front of my car, his bony arm across the back of my seat.
I hadn't considered the drive across town. At one traffic light, the stares of the people in the car beside me became obvious, and I looked across and explained, "I'm delivering him to my doctor's office."
The other driver leaned out of his window said,
"I hate to tell you, lady," he said, "but I think it's too late!"

To The Top

There is a story about a monastery in Europe perched high on a cliff several hundred feet in the air. The only way to reach the monastery was to be suspended in a basket which was pulled to the top by several monks who pulled and tugged with all their strength.
Obviously the ride up the steep cliff in that basket was terrifying.
One tourist got exceedingly nervous about half-way up as he noticed that the rope by which he was suspended was old and frayed. With a trembling voice he asked the monk who was riding with him in the basket how often they changed the rope. The monk thought for a moment and answered brusquely, ”Whenever it breaks.”

Rules of Thumb

IT’S NOT THAT EASY BEING GREEN

So, you think you know what green is, right ? "It's a color!" you say.
"The color of grass and emeralds and little, round peas, and long, thin string beans!"
Okay, that is true. Green is all those things. But green is also SO MUCH MORE!

Here are some uses of green you might not know:
green - inexperienced (as in green like a young tree) I think he's too green to bear this kind of responsibility, but his boss wants him as a manager.
green - not ripe (describes fruit) These papayas are still green. You'll have to wait for a couple of days to eat them.
green - concerned about the environment. More and more people are becoming green: they are recycling and looking for ways to get rid of waste that don't pollute the land, water and air.
greens - leafy, dark green vegetables such as spinach and kale. Kids don't like to eat greens. They prefer ice cream and candies.

Green Expressions
to have a green thumb - to be good at growing plants.
My wife has a green thumb, and I sure don't.
to be green with envy - to be jealous of something someone else has. When Helen was given a pay increase, her friend Martha was green with envy.
to give the green light to something/someone - to say that a project can proceed; to say yes to a plan. Bob’s last project went so well that the boss gave him the green light immediately.

Green Things
Green card – official permission for a foreigner to work and live in the USA.Greenhouse – glass building where plants are grown all year round.

Word of The Day

OUTLOOK

Function: noun

Plural: outlooks

Meanings:
a) The way that a person thinks about things
e.g. (count) The students all seemed to have the same outlook. The outlook of the 1990s (the general attitude of people living in the 1990s) Her political outlook.

Note: This sense of outlook is often followed by on.
e.g. The book totally changed my outlook on politics. They had very different outlooks on the world. A positive/optimistic outlook on life.

(noncount) Despite our differences in outlook, we got along together very well.

b (count) : A set of conditions that will probably exist in the future : the future of someone or something — usually singular
e.g. The country’s economic outlook

Note: This sense of outlook is often followed by for.
e.g. The outlook for the company is hopeful. The outlook for tomorrow is scattered showers and temperatures in the 70s.

c (count) : a place where you can look out over a wide area
e.g. Scenic outlooks along the highway.

also : a view from such a place
e.g. A beautiful outlook.