I need to give you all a little bit of backstory. My friend, Keziah, is a couple years older than me and she has lived in Haiti for over three years now. She's lived in various places: an orphanage in a ghetto, Dorothy's house, and a small rented house/apartment. The little house (which she fondly nicknamed “The Shoebox”) was provided to her by an organization that she was working for. Recently, she resigned from that organization. So, she has had to find her own housing.
She wanted to stay in the same neighborhood as “The Shoebox” since she was familiar with it and she knows many people there. To many people, her neighborhood doesn't look like much (and I don't know many American's that would fight to live there), but to her it is home.
Thankfully, a woman that she was providing medical care for mentioned that she had a small place that she would like to rent out to an American. Before Kez left for the United States for the summer, she and Tita, the landlady, agreed on an amount for rent and a date for Keziah to move into the house. Tita promised Keziah that she would leave furniture in the house for her, fix the water pump, move all of her personal belongings out of the house, and clean it up some.
A few weeks before Kez came back to Haiti her friend and former employee, called her up to inform her that Tita had not done ANY of the things she promised, the apartment was not ready at all, and she was demanding more money. Kez made arrangements to stay with Dorothy for a few days until she got these problems solved.
After a long discussion argument between Kez and Tita, it seemed that they had everything resolved. Kez was told that she would be able to help move Tita's things out and begin cleaning up the apartment. Now, that is where I come in.
Kez asked me to go along with her to help clean up the apartment. I was warned, “It's pretty bad...wear old clothes.” Of course I agreed to help out. So, I met her on the street at 6:45 AM and we walked there together. It is about a 45 minute walk from my house (uphill the entire way over rocky Haitian roads) to get to her place. On the way, we stopped and picked up her two Haitian friends, Bill and Edjou, to help.
When we arrived at the house, we were greeted by a large rotund, old, angry woman, with quite a few missing teeth: Tita. She was in a
We stood on the porch arguing (actually, I was just listening) with her for what seemed like at least an hour. Finally she let us into the house to start moving her things down to “The Dungeon” (the vacant very creepy basement apartment with no windows). Kez had explained her apartment as “a cute little place with lots of potential”. After walking inside, I realized she is a much more optimistic person that I am.
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| the living room: you can't tell in this picture but it was COVERED in thick dust and smelled rather stale |
Although Tita owns the building, she has been living in a tent by choice. Partly because she is afraid of being in a building if another earthquake hits, and partly because then she can make money by renting out her home. So, her apartment has not been lived in for quite some time. Needless to say, everything inside was covered in a thick layer of dust and grime. There was trash laying around, the refrigerator had a very disgusting odor wafting out, the kitchen was a cluttered mess of pots, pans, and dirt, the bedrooms were used as storage for clothes, and half a dozen mattresses, and the bathroom...well, let's just say it was scary.
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| The kitchen |
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| kitchen |
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| a bedroom filled with junk |
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| cleaning up the kitchen |
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| my broom for the day |
The pictures don't even come close to showing what it truly looked like in person. Not only was the mess in the apartment overwhelming, but Tita did not stop yelling all day. When I say that, I literally mean that she yelled for 6 hours straight. No exaggeration.
She would yell at us to move something to “The Dungeon” then when we picked it up she would yell not to touch it. She would yell at us to leave something alone then two seconds later she would tell us we could move it. Then, intermittently she would go back to yelling about wanting more money or wanting to clean the apartment out herself. But, we all knew that if we would give her more time to clean it out, she would never actually do it. In fact, she was yelling SO much that a small crowd had gathered outside on the street to sit on the curb and listen to her. I heard more than a few people quietly whisper, “She's crazy!”
All day I was wishing that I could get her on video, but coincidentally, I was too afraid of getting yelled at by her. Kez and I came to the conclusion that in America, we like to play sports for fun. In Haiti, they like to argue. On the walk home from her apartment, we decided to get ice cream from Epi'dor as comfort food after the crazy day with Tita.
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