A case of the blans

Last night my fellow Illinois-born friend L and I went to a party to celebrate the 4th anniversary of JUPED - a "youth" (read anyone who is single and not too much older than 30 years old - e.g. me) organization that is partnered with MCC, a volunteer organization that a number of my fellow foreign ("blan" in Kreyol) friends are associated with.

It was great to be there. We drove out to a neighborhood towards the edge of Port-au-Prince that begins just where the paved roads end. They had set up lots of small tables and chairs in an empty school room. There was a DJ and a dark dance floor set up in the next room over (dark rooms seem to be a prerequisite for dancing to Haitian Kompa music). As the night went on, people filtered in, a few short words were said, we were served drinks and several courses of snacks and then a full meal after midnight....but mostly people just sat around and chatted -getting up from time to time to hit the dance floor. It was fantastically mellow - and brought me back to my days living in Honduras and Kenya where I just felt so much more in touch with community life.

One thing about the night, though, did remind me that I was in Haiti - not Honduras or Kenya. It was L - my fellow North American friend. During my seasons in Honduras and Kenya, I was most often, the only foreigner in the room. In Haiti this time around, that is rarely the case in my social world. There is almost always at least one other blan (usually L who is fortunately for me much more attuned to Haitian culture and speaks much better Kreyol than I do) who I am out and about with.

It's been really interesting to get a slightly different perspective on what it mean to be the foreigner now that I have been able to watch Haitians interact with my blan friends. One thing I've become aware of is how I too often buy into the stereotypes of blans.....but then somehow naively assume that those stereotypes won't be applied to me or my friends.

One (not very positive) illustration - there is a definite stereotype that when you see a blan man out with a Haitian woman in a club, she is most likely a prostitute. More than once, I've been guilty of making conjectures about whether or not the relationship is based on money or actual love. Then, the other night, I was out with a female Haitian friend. We ran into a blan friend of mine who was out with his Haitian girlfriend. They were being a bit too publicly affectionate - but I still wasn't prepared for my Haitian friend turning to me and asking, point-blankly, if the girlfriend was a prostitute. "Of course she's not!", I said. But why not? She was just applying the same stereotypes that I do every day.

There is such an interesting and sometimes exhausting tension involved in being another one of "those blans" in the eyes of most people I interact with here. It's really hard to find a balance between being aware of and sensitive to the assumptions (which are both positive and negative) and knowing when to just let it go and allow people to think what they will...