Have yourself a Haiti-focused Christmas (or Chanukah if you hurry)

In time for the holiday shopping season and with inspiration from the "shameless commerce division" at Car Talk, I thought I would share a few Haiti-centric ideas for your gift giving and/or receiving list. The list is definitely limited so if any of you have a recommendation to add please share them in a comment.

Books - There are some fabulous books by Haitian and Haitian American authors and some good books about Haitian history out there. Here are a few that I have read:

• Any of the short stories, novels or memoir by Edwidge Danticat a contemporary Haitian-American author who is even Oprah-endorsed
• Graham Green's classic novel The Comedians which is set in and around an actual hotel in Port-au-Prince hotel during Papa Doc days. It's a great story and if you read it, I'll send you pictures from the real locale so you can see the pool where the dead body was found.
• The Serpent and the Rainbow, a very engaging non-fiction book written by a botanist about his search for the plants used to induce Zombies in Voudou. Wes Craven (a Wheaton alumni) made a film version a few years ago ....haven't seen that and heard it isn't great in the way it portrays Haiti and Haitians....but definitely recommend the book. I'm in the middle of it right now.
• Most of the books by or about Paul Farmer are worthwhile reads - The Uses of Haiti will give you the most background on US-Haiti relations, Pathologies of Power and Infections and Inequalities address global health and human rights issues more broadly, and Mountains Beyond Mountains tells you Paul's incredible life story to date in which Haiti plays a starring role. Paul has very particular views on human rights & development and Haitian politics that I'm still trying to develop my own response to....but all the more reason for you to read his work and then we can talk about it!

Music - Music is at the core of Haitian life and culture. Haiti has some unique musical genres including rasin, konpa and troubadour....many of which are highly danceable. (If you are in or around Manhattan, check out the Caribbean club SOB which has a weekly night featuring Haitian performers). I have absolutely loved exploring the live music scene here in Port-au-Prince and hope there will be time for much more of it when my work life gets a little less crazy. Some of these bands are based in the USA and you might be able to purchase their music online. If you check out the web links and can't find a place to buy the music, let me know and I can pick it up for you here in P-au-P. Here are a few of the bands I've seen so far ....

• My favorite musical experience to date was seeing the up-and-coming artist Belo in concert during my first week in Haiti in 2006. He is a fantastic song writer and performer whose debut CD Lakou Trankil talks about things that matter including social injustice...and love. His work doesn't fall into a single category but if you like Reggae or folk or just good music you will like Belo. Not sure how easily you can find his CD in the US yet, but you can check out one or two music videos posted on youtube.
• RAM plays rasin music which is one of the styles most connected with voudou. The group was founded by Richard Morse the present owner of the Hotel Olaffson, the setting of Graham Greene's novel, who is the US-born son of a famous Haitian musician mother and an Ivy-league professor father. Almost every Thursday night they play a live show at the hotel that starts around 11pm and continues into the am hours. I'd try to describe it but you just kind of have to experience it. It's going to be one of our first stops if my brother Emil ever comes to Haiti.
• Konpa is probably the most popular form of Haitian music - there is this one rift that you can hear over and over in almost any konpa song that immediately gives its origins away. I don't think that most konpa is musically amazing....but I do think that most Konpa is totally entertaining...especially if you have someone to dance with. Krezi and T-Vice are two boy-bands who are played all the time on the radio. I prefer Djakout Muzik's sound.
• Troubadour music has a classic folksy storytelling quality that I really like. I've heard this guy named Wooley play several times and really love his music. He is accompanied by a women with a deep captivating voice....but I haven't managed to find them online yet.

Arts and crafts: Of all the country's I've experienced, Haiti definitely has the strongest tradition of painters. All over Port-au-Prince you see canvases with bright paintings by copycat artists for sale on the road sides. Many of them are good in their own right. Sequined flags used in voudou are considered collector's items. Metal art made from oil drums is another Haitian craft that I personally love.

• Haitian painters can be found through a number of online galleries based in Haiti and in the USA. Here are a few links ArtMedia Haiti, Galerie Macondo , MedaliaArt . It's fine art and the prices reflect that.
• A number of non-profit artisan sites have Haitian metal art and sculpture. Check out these sites: Ten Thousand Villages, A Greater Gift , Pacha World

Donations: For those who have it all, sometimes the best gift is nothing material at all. There are a number of wonderful Haitian and international organizations doing good things in Haiti who would gladly receive a donation in the name of your loved one. I will try to update this if I can but here are a few that I know of and would personally choose to support: Beyond Borders, RNDDH, Partners in Health,

Drinking my words

Back in September I wrote a post lamenting the loss of Gimmee coffee and expressing my rather reluctant committment to drinking local coffee when I am in Haiti. Well, I am happy to report that I was wrong to be so pessimistic about the potential for actual enjoyment of my morning coffee here in Port-au-Prince. Haitian coffee is good stuff...very good stuff. Turns out it was the nasty, boxed, imported-from-France*, UHT milk that was ruining a wonderful cup of joe during my previous stints here. I am now enjoying my coffee the same way I like my chocolate - sans milk - and now 6am doesn't feel quite so early as it it did before.

(**This is merely saying that it is imported from across an ocean. It is NOT intended to be a patriotic political statement in the line of "freedom fries" served in the US Congress.)

Selective memory

Saturday, December 1 came and went for me this year just like any other day. I had breakfast with my friend Lindsay, helped my housemates put on a baby shower for the couple we live with, and then tried to do a little work around the house. It was a good day – but I always wish it would feel like something much more than that.

December 1 is World AIDS Day. A day to remember the millions who have died, and to gather hope for the 40M people currently living with HIV as well as the more than 5 billion people in the world who are not infected. Yet this year, even though I work in an HIV-focused clinic, the day passed for me with nothing more than a music video on MTV acknowledging the significance the day holds.

On a more personal level, Sunday, December 1, 2002 is the day in which I was involved in a terrible accident on the way to a World AIDS Day event sponsored by World Relief Mozambique. Early that Sunday morning our double cab pick-up, filled with more than a dozen teenage volunteers in the bed of the truck, was hit head-on by a semi trailer on a road leading out of Maputo, Mozambique. Six people in our car died very gruesome deaths, including the driver who was seated next to me.

Every year, I try so hard to think of a way to remember that day in a way that seems adequate to the pain that the others in that car felt, a way that honors the family members who lost someone they dearly love, and in a way that acknowledges my own gratefulness to God for the fact that I walked away with little more than a sore back and a few small scars on my arm.

Yet somehow each year the day just seems to slip by. No one else ever reminds me of it. I sometimes try to tell other people the story, but each time I tell it, it sounds less and less like my own story and more like something I heard from someone else. Just as my physical scars are fading, the memories of the intense images and feelings I experienced on December 1, 2002 are also fading.

In post 9/11 USA, there was a sudden surge in bumper stickers, window placards, and t-shirts bearing the words "Never Forget" over a silhouette of the twin towers. I've always been disturbed by this. In the context of the Iraq war, widespread fear of terrorism and immigration battles, they invoke a need for revenge, a sense of prolonged bitterness and justified resentment. In such a context, we must begin to forget. Otherwise we will never move forward. We will never seek or find peace with those we labeled as enemies on that day. In the Christian faith, we talk about God’s forgiveness that is accompanied by totally forgetting our wrongdoing. Forgetting can be as powerful as remembering.

I’m beginning to accept the truth of this in my own story – it is good that I have begun to forget what happened on December 1, 2002. Otherwise I might spend the rest of my life in constant fear of the next truck coming down the road. I might, as some days I have wished I could, just plant myself in a rest stop and refuse to go on.

December 1 is World AIDS Day and it will be World AIDS Day for the rest of my lifetime and likely that of my children and grandchildren too. I am thankful that the day is marked in a way that will always remind me that it is part of my story and the story of millions of others affected by HIV/AIDS. However, I am also letting myself forget some things about that day too. There are, God-willing, too many roads still to be traveled and many more days to be both remembered and forgotten.