Alvarez - A Wedding in Haiti

Also by JULIA ALVAREZ

Novels

How the Garca Girls Lost Their Accents

In the Time of the Butterflies

YO!

In the Name of Salom

A Cafecito Story

Saving the World

Nonfiction

Something to Declare

Once Upo n a Quinceaera: Coming of Age in the USA

Poetry

Homecoming: New and Collected Poems

The Other Side/El Otro Lado

The Woman I Kept to Myself

Books for Young Readers

The Secre t Footprints

How Ta Lola Came to Stay

Before We Were Free

finding miracles

A Gift of Gracias: The Legend of Altagracia

The Best Gift of All: The Legend of La Vieja Beln

Return to Sender

How Ta Lola Learned to Teach

How Ta Lola Saved the Summer

How Ta Lol a Ended Up Starting Over

A Wedding in Haiti

The Story of a Friendship

JULIA ALVAREZ

A Shannon Ravenel Book

ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL 2013

Contents

for los pitouses & all the Ludys

Authors Note

In telling this story, I am not claiming to be an authority on Haitian matters. This is a book about a friendship with a young Haitian, Piti, who happened into a farm and literacy project my husband and I set up in my native country, the Dominican Republic. Through that friendship has come an opportunity to discover my neighbor country, who was and still is the sister I hardly knew. But these two journeys to Haiti are only the beginning of an evolving relationship, which has deepened with the writing of this book. My friendship with Piti and Eseline and little Ludy and their extended families and friends back in Haiti also continues to evolve and teach me how much is possible when we step outside the boundaries that separate us one from the other.

Julia Alvarez

September 2009 October 2011

con la Altagracia a mi lado

ONE

Going to Pitis Wedding in Haiti

Circa 2001, the mountains of the Dominican Republic

M y husband and I have an ongoing debate about how old Piti was when we first met him. I say Piti was seventeen at the most. My husband claims he was older, maybe nineteen, even possibly twenty. Piti himself isnt sure what year we met him. But he has been working in the mountains of the Dominican Republic since he first crossed the border from Haiti in 2001 when he was seventeen years old.

Bill and I might have forgotten the year, but we distinctly remember the first time we met Piti. It was late afternoon, and we were driving past the barracks-type housing where he lived with half a dozen other Haitian workers on a neighboring farm. On the concrete apron in front, the group was horsing around, like young people having fun all over the world. Piti, whose name in Kreyl means little one, was the smallest of the group, short and slender with the round face of a boy. He was putting the finishing touches on a small kite he was making.

I asked Bill to stop the pickup, as I hadnt seen one of these homemade chichiguas since I was a child. I tried to explain this to Piti, who at that point didnt understand much Spanish. His response was to grin and offer me his kite. I declined and asked if I could take his picture instead.

On the next trip, I made a point of finding Piti so I could give him the photo in the small album Id brought as a gift. Youd have thought I was giving him the keys to a new motorcycle. He kept glancing at the photo, grinning and repeating, Piti, Piti! as if to convince himself that he was the boy in the photo. Or maybe he was saying thank you. Msi, msi can sound like Piti, Piti, to an ear unused to Kreyl.

A friendship began. Every trip I sought him out, brought him a shirt, a pair of jeans, a bag in which to cart his belongings back and forth on his periodic and dangerous crossings of the border.

What I felt toward the boy was unaccountably maternal. Somewhere in Haiti, a mother had sent her young son to the wealthier neighbor country to help the impoverished family. Maybe this very moment she was praying that her boy be safe, earn good money, encounter kind people. Every time I spotted the grinning boy with worried eyes, I felt the pressure of that mothers prayer in my own eyes. Tears would spring up and a big feeling fill my heart. Who knows why we fall in love with people who are nothing to us?

A coffee farm or a mistress?

O ver the years, Bill and I got to see a lot of Piti. Whenever we could get away from our lives and jobs in Vermontshort trips of a week, longer trips of a few weekswe headed for the Dominican mountains. We had become coffee farmers.

Every time I get started on this story, the curtain rises on that vaudeville act that long-term couples fall into: who did what first and how did we get in this fix.

It began in 1997 with a writing assignment for the Nature Conservancy. I was asked to visit the Cordillera Central, the central mountain range that runs diagonally across the island, and write a story about anything that caught my interest. While there, Bill and I met a group of impoverished coffee farmers who were struggling to survive on their small plots. They asked if we would help them.

We both said of course wed help. I meant help as in: Id write a terrific article that would bring advocates to their cause. Bill meant help, as in roll-up-your-sleeves and really help. I should have seen it coming. Having grown up in rural Nebraska with firsthand experience of the disappearance of family farms, Bill has a soft spot in his heart for small farmers.

We ended up buying up deforested land and joining their efforts to grow coffee the traditional way, under shade trees, organically by default. (Who could afford pesticides?) We also agreed to help find a decent market for our pooled coffee under the name Alta Gracia, as we called our sixty, then a hundred, and then, at final count, two hundred and sixty acres of now reforested land. I keep saying we, but, of course, I mean the marital we, as in my stubborn beloved announces we are going to be coffee farmers in the Dominican Republic, and I say, But, honey, how can we? We live in Vermont!

Of course, I fell in with Don Honey, as the locals started calling Bill, when they kept hearing me calling him honey, this, honey, that. The jokey way I explained our decision to my baffled family and friends was that it was either a coffee farm or a mistress. Over the years, I admit, Ive had moments when I wondered if a mistress might not have been easier.

We were naveyes, now the we includes both of us: We hired a series of bad farm managers. We left money in the wrong hands for payrolls never paid. One manager was a drunk who had a local mistress and used the payroll to pay everyone in her family, whether they worked on the farm or not. Another, a Seventh-Day Adventist, who we thought would be safe because he wouldnt drink or steal or have a mistress, proved to be bossy and lazy. He was el capataz, he boasted to his underlings, the jefe, the foreman. He didnt have to work. Every day turned out to be a sabbath for him. His hands should have been a tip-off, pink-palmed with buffed nails. Another manager left for New York on a visa I helped him get. (Like I said, it takes two fools to try to run a coffee farm from another country.)

Still, if given the choice, I would probably do it again. As Ive told Bill many a timeand this gets me in troubleeven if in the end were going to be royally taken, Id still rather put my check mark on the side of light. Otherwise, all the way to being proved right, Id have turned into the kind of cynic who has opted for a smaller version of her life.

And things have slowly improved on the mountain. Over the years, the quality of the coffee being grown in the area has gotten better. Local farmers are being paid the Fair Trade price or higher, and the land is being farmed organically. We also started a school on our own farm after we discovered that none of our neighbors, adults or children, could read or write. It helps that Im associated with a college, with ready access to a pool of young people eager to help. Every year, for a small stipend, a graduating senior signs on to be the volunteer teacher. Recently, we added a second volunteer to focus on community projects and help out with the literacy effort.