I'm a racist cat murderer!

I got called racist the other day by one of the Haitian guys on my site. In the morning we piled onto the ute, about 16 of us, with 4 barrows, 4 sledges and a few other tools, and pulled up next to the site which was adjacent to the UN compound here in Leogane, after a nervous tap tap ride. The drivers have been driving more recklessly lately, possibly because there are less tents and rubble on the road slowing them down. Either way with 16 people on the back we’ve been reaching some sphincter puckering lean angles and I had a word to Mackenson, our jacked mesh singlet wearing driver, to slow down please. I had another word to him when I discovered the railings on the back of his ute, that we all sit on, could be picked up and pulled of his car with one hand. They weren’t even screwed down! With the 13 or so international volunteers were three Haitian guys, as part of the local volunteer program.

When I first got here I was pretty dismissive of Haitian male work ethic, of which I could see no evidence. Crazy blanques would toil away in the sun, including young girls, helping this society rebuild, while young Haitian males would sit around drinking rum in the shade appraising our efforts. Since then increasing numbers of these guys have signed on to work with HODR for no payment other than food and generally they are excellent workers. Initially they thought we were being paid and resented the fact we were stealing their jobs. Since then word has slowly filtered through the community that we work for free (many people still believe we‘re on wages however) and these guys have earned the respect and friendship of most of the long-termers on the base. Some of them are pretty cool cats, sledge hammering all day in dress shoes, collared shirts and wraparound sunnies without raising a sweat. Us blanques get around in smelly singlets and grotty shorts because we sweat so much, so I guess no matter where you are, black guys are just cooler than white guys. We communicate through body language which gets tiring after a while and it leads to some interesting misunderstandings, but it hasn’t stopped me from bonding with some of them very strongly.

We got to the site, where a large house had pancaked through it’s supports. It was next to the Sri Lankan UN troop compound and you could hear ‘revielle’ being tooted at various times during the day. Out the front of the house was a small grass field and a cow grazed lazily, attached to a rope staked into the ground. It wasn’t concerned by our presence. As an aside, Haiti would be a great place for all the animal rights activists to live, because I am yet to see a cooped up chicken, goat, dog, cat, cow or pig. They are free to roam around and eat garbage on the side of the road as they please, thus serving two purposes-rubbish removal and a source of free range organic food. Goats, which are all small and petite with little furry horns, clop around on dainty little trotters, trying to ignore the pigs who are sprawled in the mud they nimbly avoid. To be fair to the pigs, they don’t just slop around aimlessly in a mud bog. First they shit all over it, and then roll in it. At least they aren’t using Tupperware. Any animal that can so casually fall asleep in a pile of it’s own effluent inspires a weird kind of respect. Mud has become a permanent fixture now the rainy season has started. Anyway they all look so happy and tasty I’d like to encourage this type of farming in Australia. You can buy an entire pigs head in the market out the back of the base, or a trotter. Delicious, like icing sugar eh?

Back to my site. One of the local guys was moping around, being surly, and generally not contributing. Sledging a roof is very hard work and if one team member isn’t pulling their weight it’s bad for moral and it means the people he is trading in with end up working harder than everyone else. In Haiti you never know why someone may be upset due to the general living conditions here and of course personal tragedies from the earthquake, so after a few hours of putting up with it and a few gentle enquiries as to whether there was anything I could do to help I pulled him over and said:

Me: Peterson, what’s the matter mate?
Peterson: Fuck off
Me: Right…We’re all volunteers here so I can’t tell you what to do, it’s your choice to stay or go. We don’t pay you, you don’t have to be here. Do you want to work?
P: What you talking about, I’m fine.
Me: Peterson you have a choice. Work, or leave. You can’t be here if you don’t put in.
P: You’re fucking racist man
Me: What? What did you say?
I took a step closer to him and stared into his eyes.
P: I said you’re racist man
Me: Get the fuck off the site. Now.
Peterson looked at me in confusion.
Me: Piss off mate, and don’t come back. You‘re an idiot. I don’t even want to look at you.
I gestured toward the road with the sledge in my hand, then turned away and started hitting concrete.

I was filthy with the guy. He had a lot of hide making that sort of statement and I didn’t feel in the least like apologising for any real or imagined offence I’d caused.

To his credit, he stuck around, and from that point onwards he worked harder than everyone else on the site. He did a really good job and busted his guts all morning. At the end of the session he came up to me and shook my hand and looked me in the eyes and said “mon zami” which means “my friend” in Creole, so I suppose he was just testing the boundaries. A few days later he told me he is 18, and dreams of being a soldier.

I imagine Haitian men don’t have many authority figures, or heirachical organisations in their lives, so they need to learn the rules too. There are lots of complications in relations between locals and the foreigners here, especially when we work together. Some of these are; The interaction between wealthy whites and poor blacks and the historical connotations this has, educated Western women dealing with men from a male dominated society, between two sets of people who can barely communicate, between communities suffering in poverty and well funded, extravagant NGO’s cruising streets in air conditioned sparkling 4WD’s…

Speaking of well funded, Bill Clinton visited today. The UN first blockaded the street with forty or so 4WD’s and the a Sri Lankan commando regiment secured the area in front of our base. The US secret service guys (and gals) staunched around in the khakis and earpieces, and the coolest thing I saw today was a female secret service agent, probably all of 5 foot tall, walking around with a machine gun. The clip itself had a spare clip attached to it. In Haiti you see things which might not have occurred to you previously, and they appeal. For example, watching a girl swing a sledgehammer, sweating in the heat, is really cool. Watching a girl drive a piece of heavy machinery, like a Bobcat or Caterpillar track is hot. Girls with heavy weapons take the cake though and I wish Bill would come every day so we can enjoy the sight more often.

Anyway he pressed some flesh and to be honest I got a bit bored of waiting so I went back inside but everyone else got a handshake and a photo, at the expense of 2 hours in the Haitian sun. I’m starting to regret not waiting it out actually. Anyway if the big fella could swing some money our way that would be a fantastic outcome because I strongly believe that HODR is one of the NGO’s that are making tangible differences to Leogane.

I’ll admit my first impressions about Haitian (males) were generally wrong and that these people are hard working, motivated and have good intentions, towards us and their communities. Amongst the locals there is a lot of frustration with NGO’s in general because they have (relatively) lavish camps but are seen to be acting with their agendas in mind rather than the interests of the Haitian community. Many Haitians feel they are using their presence here to gather donor money, rather than get the communities back on their feet. The truth is, I’ve been so busy on the ground running sites that I don’t have a good handle on the organisational situation here, so on a macro scale it’s hard for me to comment on Haitian politics, but I know what I see in the streets day to day.

I’ve taken a step back in the last few days, setting up a meeting with a microfinance company called Finca. My role, if any, will be to act in a liaison type capacity between the locals and this company so they can start disbursing loans to the community. I’m looking forward to this as it forces me to think and is related to what I did at university and at work in the past. At any rate, it’s a little ironic that I used to sell loans at Macquarie Bank, and will soon be selling them here in Leogane, Haiti.

There was a guy from Chicago who arrived stayed for a week, called Thomas. He was on one of my sites for four days and helped me finish. In the short time I knew him he was a good guy. The site was frustrating because there was nowhere to dump the rubble, and three houses had fallen in a heap together so it was hard to work out where the boundaries were. I negotiated with a local school principal to let me dump concrete in his driveway if I promised to get a Bobcat in to clear some collapsed buildings in his schoolyard. Whoever had built the house had used no rebar in the construction of the building so the bricks were effectively using friction to hold together. When the earth started to move there was no lateral support at all and the chalky cinder blocks crumbled to dust, and the houses imploded.

There was a flock of local homeless kids, aged 3-10 or so who come and visited us every day. They would run our empty wheelbarrows back for us and we’d treat their cuts and infections with the first aid kit.

One morning they brought a cardboard box to the site, with a cat in it. The cat didn’t look happy with it’s current situation. It appeared healthy enough but was very lethargic, breathing fast and shallowly. We gave it some water but it didn’t respond. I ignored the cat and kept working, but it was still there, next to a pile of dirt when we got back form lunch. It hadn’t moved an inch and the kids were tormenting it. I later learned this was because the cat was cursed and the kids were throwing stones at it to rid the demons from it, in a type of voodoo exorcism. Ralph, an old bloke from Tennessee, helpfully suggested we put it out of its misery, then put his head down and shuffled off with his wheelbarrow. Thanks Ralph. On that site we also found a litre bottle of rum. Fantastic, something to toast a hard days work with tonight right? Wrong. According to voodoo religion the devil was in the bottle, because the bottle had survived whilst people living in the house hadn’t, so to smell the rum would be dire, and to drink it would be worse. The locals we had with us were extremely cagey about that bottle so I let them pour it out on the ground. We weren’t even allowed to touch it, the homeowner did the honours. Disappointing? Yes. But cultural sensitivity is always high on my agenda of course so we did the right thing.

Back to our cat. I looked at Thomas, who being from Chicago knows about as much as I do about putting animals down. He picked it up in a shovel and we walked it behind a tall wall into the grounds of the school, which was fortunately free of kids. It didn’t struggle when he picked it up. Our diagnosis was that the cat had insurmountable problems. Simon dumped the cat onto the ground.

“Do you reckon we just leave it here?” I said.
“I dunno man, it seems kind of callous just to let it die slowly don’t you think?” Thomas replied.
“Ah yea I guess so, do you reckon we kill it?”
“Err…yea it would be the right thing to do…” He trailed of frowning and looked at me doubtfully.
“Sweet, go ahead, I’ll get rid of the kids,” I gestured at the gaggle of kids who had followed us around the corner. Some of them had no pants on and their little peckers were dangling in the afternoon breeze. One of them had an eye patch taped to his leg, where I had cleaned an infected wound with alcohol solution from the first aid kit. Lacking a proper bandage I thought the eye patch was a good compromise and he was still wearing it twenty-four hours later, although it was filthy by now.
“Fuck that-you kill the cat and I’ll get rid of the kids,” he said dropping the shovel at my feet, and shooed the kids around the corner.
This shouldn’t be too hard I told myself. I wasn’t fooling anyone however, and grimaced as I picked up the shovel. I had no idea where to start such a distasteful activity. I figured if I used the sharp edge of the shovel to try to decapitate the little bugger I couldn’t go wrong, since it happens like that in movies so it must be true, and a cat is smaller than a person.

I aimed at the cats neck with the shovel, took a deep breath and drove the shovel into the cats neck with all my strength and weight behind it. The loamy ground beneath the cat gave way (fuck!) absorbing most of the impact, and the cat reared off the ground screaming in agony! The little bastard was glaring at me!
“Shit! What should I do?” I croaked at Thomas who was looking at me in horror.
“Hit it again! Hit it again! Hit it harder you pussy!” Dammit, I thought, again someone calls me a pussy.

Hit it again I did. I weigh about 200 pounds and the cat absorbed the whole impact, and still didn’t die! Instead it started screaming loudly in a very human fashion, and thrashing it’s forepaws about.
Christ, I thought This is not going to plan. Shovel no good. With that thought I threw away the shovel and looked around for something to crush cats skull with. Handily nearby were 4 cinder blocks concreted together with rebar running through them. I picked it up-it must have weighed 80 pounds-and drove the concrete into the cats head. It impacted…and bounced off to the side. This was farcical! The cat writhed around and looked me square in the eye, half it’s head blown away, it’s remaining hair on end, mouth wide open. I could see down its throat and its tongue was spasming uncontrollably. It knew I was trying to kill it.

The truth is the cat appeared to be under some duress. Still, as bad as the cat felt, I’m sure I felt worse-I’ve never killed anything bigger than a cockroach before and this wasn’t euthanasia, it was cold blooded murder! Jesus bloody Christ! I’m done, I thought and dropped the block on the cat a final time, so I didn’t have to look at it. I could see it’s fluffy legs poking out, twitching slightly.
“Fuck this! Bloody thing won’t die!“ I said to Thomas, whose face was aghast in horror, and we scurried away, feeling less than manly about the whole episode.

I checked a few minutes later and the cat was well and truly dead, so in the end I suppose we did the right thing. However I know now that shovels are useless for that sort of thing, and will certainly use a sledgehammer next time.

There’s a couple of volunteers from here in Leogane who have been with us from the start. Emmanuelle is tall and gangly with big hands and feet, a brilliant smile and a happy go lucky disposition. He is 17 years old. Tony just turned 20, and I think most girls would consider him very good looking, with perfect white teeth and lean build. He is more reserved than Emmanuelle, and speaks very little English. They’re both black as pitch and often sit outside Joes, the bar next door, in the large dark tent outside our base. “Tim!“ They’ll call out and I never know who they are because all I can see are a t-shirt and some teeth. These guys are fantastic. They live together in tents next to the piles of dirt that used to be their houses, and come to work for free everyday to help rebuild their community. These guys have latched onto me and become loyal friends, sometimes to the point of frustration.

We get one day off a week and with about 20 words of common language between us misunderstandings happen. On my one day off I usually hang around base, eat, sleep or get on the computer to email/catch up on things.

The other day Tony asked if I wanted to go to the beach on Sunday. Since I'd had a few beers I said yes, then forgot about it. He showed up at 10am the next morning and I thought, dammit, I’m tired, hungover and the last thing I want to do is faff around going to the beach with Tony, who is a nice guy but speaks 12 words of English, and I speak 6 words of Creole. Anyway we walked down a dirt road, across some pasture, past some cows, through a sugar cane plantation, past a mango tree forest and attempted a creek crossing. I was wearing thongs because I thought we’d be ten minutes, travelling by road. (We both got stuck in the mud and had to dig our shoes out, which sounds fun but given the state of the water, which joins to the town drainage system it was a stress test my immune system didn’t need).

Along the way we would point at things and teach each other the words in our languages-bef=cow, zeb=grass etc. Anyway it’s really pleasant, eerily quiet and still in the country side. Rustic and tranquil, while walking amongst the sugar cane, with a little imagination you can pretend you’re back in the 17th century, when Haiti (part of what was known as Hispaniola) was a Spanish colony, and a pirate haven.

We pressed through the dark cane forest towards sunlight and finally broke through onto the beach. I stopped and smiled inwardly to myself. Brilliant sun, gunmetal blue sky, white, pebbled sand, warm water, some wooden fishing boats wrecked on the shore. The boats looked like the skeleton of a giant sea creature washed up on the beach, great wooden ribs tilted over in the sand and driftwood scattered on the ground around them. There was a rickety wharf, poking out with tiny oared launches tied off to it, palm trees lining the shore, and a lone fisherman arranging his nets on the dock. It was special.

I was tired and worn out, physically drained from weeks of hard labouring in the sun and sleeping on cardboard. My feet were chafed, my forearms and elbows were sore, my back ached. I was emotionally tired, from living in a giant dorm, from the work, from the isolation from family and friends. I shuffled slowly into the water which lapped lazily at my feet, a powerful feeling of vindication washing through my body, and for the first time since I left Australia I thought to myself, To think I could be in an office right now, in a job I hate, but instead I’m here…in paradise. I was relaxed, content. This was being alive. It was a spontaneous thought and I’ll remember that feeling for a long time, and always be grateful to Tony for dragging me to the beach that Sunday.

A young boy ran down the beach towards us. He stripped nude and ran into the water, doing cartwheels and flips in the shallow current. He flashed a huge smile and bumped fists with us, and started doing handstands. His black skin glistened as he threw himself about while Tony and I floated, relaxing in the water. All the worries I had about whether I’d made the right choice to be here or not melted into the sea and drifted away. Life slowed down a little just then and for a while there was nothing but the restorative calmness of the present. We were one with the sun, the water and a small nude Haitian kid doing cartwheels in the waters of this tragic Caribbean paradise.