Saturday, January 30, 2010

The Port-au-Prince I Knew

(A poem is sometimes the best medium in which to express and apprehend a tragedy. This one expresses what I feel and endure even from the safe retreat of afar)

-by Tontongi

It was a sonic, dreadful, shocking blow
the scoop, the news that day
for them it was— alas! — reality
those seconds of horror
a terrible moment
hell on Earth magnified
multiplied
the cement-brick walls protecting my refuge
against the elements and my security ceilings
suddenly have become destroyers.

Your most trusting hut or lovely home
can any moment collapse on your head
disposable cadavers you become
in those seconds when your destiny is made
amid a long desert of suffering
hell on Earth magnified
ten-times multiplied.

Hell on Earth
a sea of blood and tears
where even survivors are not safe:
“I don’t know if we can make it,”
my nephew said after surveying
the long Calvary of broken bones
human humming as a trailing pain slope.

Amid the unending real-life nightmare
daily consumption of vivid tragedy
history is remade — Did you know
people on this island always die stupid death?
Unnecessary deaths for lack of nutrients
lack of water to drink, cook or bathe
lack of medicines to sustain wellbeing
lack of everything that saves life.

My people are always dying
they die on a Monday morning
without any obvious causality
slow mass dying in silence
outside the glaring eyes of CNN News
they die outside human consciousness.

Even after deadly, repetitive tremors
Haiti has not disappeared, not ever.

The skeletal remains of the majestic Cathedral
whose spectral and eerie shadow
charmed my childhood soul
feel like slow, painful kicks on my wounds.
In my remembrance of our first encounter
she was a revelation
a discovery of a new space
joined with atemporal grace
she existed as in a dream
a furtive moment in passing.

She was the place for great Te Deums
also where things happen unexpectedly
her high silhouette seen from afar
hid unseen truth from sinners and saints
her odor of burned, wet candle
mixed with rum and sorrowful tears
conferred a peaceful, existential mystique.

Hotel Montana was destroyed
in a swirling fury just like the Cathedral
I remember going there almost every Sunday
with my sister Mimine a regular loyal fan
to hear the mini-jazz band Les Fantaisistes
and dance the melodious Compas Direct rhythm;
I remember I went there on a November 1st
a teenager in search of thrills and peer cachet
and enjoyed so much the Gede Vodou feast
that I drank myself to total oblivion
Hotel Montana was the place.

The agony of Port-au-Prince is painful
but my Port-au-Prince was already long dead
long before this extra-destructive quake;
she had become a neglected, mistreated city
a monster slum eating up the whole land
she had become a beauty turned ugly
a dirty and unsafe and toxic Port-au-Prince
a place where people die in slow but sure death;
she was no longer the Port-au-Prince I knew
she was overpopulated and dreadful
she needed a revolution or a quake.

Still I mourn sacred human bodies
suddenly violated by Nature’s madness
I mourn those innocents’ entrapment
in the great void of contingence
those who already had nothing
who now lose even that nothing
those suddenly transformed as cadavers,
human rubbish for the mass pit.

Yet I enjoy the genuine togetherness
even amid Big Brother’s reflexive antics
Somalia replay in 2010 except this time
the Haitian people will early see the light
they would remember 1791 and before
and what came after and beyond
and the people of the world will stay vigilant
to preserve centuries of valorous struggle
to gain what we have so sacrificed to gain:
real-life freedom
the dignity of being.

I would welcome our neighbor’s grace
in bringing water and firefighter
to extinguish the fire in our house;
I would welcome his goodness of heart
in providing sustenance and comfort
yet I would still resent him if he stays
against my will in my house in a guise
and tells me what to do like a master;
I welcome genuine solidarity and empathy
from those who care and share my sorrow
I welcome the helping hand
and not the holding grip.

Even from the distance of exile
I feel the unending tremors of the quake
the daily nightmares remaining reality;
in the mortal incineration of my home town
an important part of me has joined the ashes
I mourn my people’s anguish
yet my heart even in the absence of joy
is full of the hopeful wind of change
full of the creative energy even chaos
sometimes entails in its infinity
my soul takes pride in this human togetherness
and is full of hope for a better Haiti
a Haiti rebuilt on sounder and more just grounds.

Those who come from afar
and the land’s children who stay put
the survivors who endure utmost calamity
the doctors, the nurses, the vigilant reporters,
those who feel and care
those who want to continue
until human decency is achieved
I salute your great sacrifice
at the end that’s what counts
human solidarity in action
I salute you
I salute your sharing my dream.

-Tontongi, January 28, 2010

______________________

To see other writings by Tontongi, go to website :
Pour voir d'autres écrits de Tontongi, aller sur le site:
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http://www.tanbou.com

Friday, January 22, 2010

La Katrina d'Haïti

(Quand la furie de la nature et la faillite humaine contribuent à la catastrophe)

-par Tontongi

Le tremblement de terre du 12 janvier 2010 a causé en Haïti des dégâts d’une proportion apocalyptique, particulièrement à Port-au-Prince, à Léogane, à Jacmel et dans la région sud-ouest. Pour un pays qui était déjà en proie à une multitude de handicaps, ce coup du destin a été particulièrement anéantissant. Pourtant il a tenu le coup, le pays, malgré le flot de sang et de pleurs, malgré les os brisés sous les décombres, malgré la squelettisation de la majestueuse cathédrale de Port-au-Prince dont l’ombre spectrale, enfant, attendrissait tant mon émoi, son odeur de bougie brûlée agrandissant sa mystique.

Comme les quatre cyclones qui ravageaient Haïti en automne 2008, ou encore Katrina, le cyclone qui frappait les États-Unis en été 2005, le séisme du 12 janvier a démontré l’ampleur que peuvent prendre les désastres naturels quand ils se combinent avec la négligence, l’incompétence, la corruption et la mauvaise foi des humains.

Naturellement, il faut faire la différence entre la science sismologique qui a identifié les patterns géologiques et le mouvement des plaques tectoniques qui causent et aggravent le tremblement de terre, et l’action (ou l’inaction) des humains et du système socio-politique haïtiens quant à la mise en place des paravents, sinon de prévention, du moins de réduction des dégâts envisageables dans une crise séismique. C’est la différence entre un État fonctionnel comme celui de Cuba qui affrontait à peu près les mêmes cyclones qu’Haïti en 2008 avec considérablement moindres dégâts, et l’État dysfonctionnel d’Haïti, historiquement au service de la bourgeoisie prédatrice, qui ne s’est jamais souscrit à la notion de l’État comme protecteur du bien-être général et des moins privilégiés.

Un système inhumain et des conditions sub-humaines

La tragédie séismique qui engloutit Port-au-Prince et le sud-ouest d’Haïti en ce jour de janvier 2010 changera à coup sûr la physionomie des villes et régions affectées, mais espérons que changeront aussi à la fois la conception et les pratiques de fonctionnement de l’État comme une poule aux oeufs qu’on déplume à volonté. Espérons qu’engloutisse avec les piliers des bâtisses et des monuments, avec les blocs de béton jadis protégeant les refuges, avec les cadavres jetés dans les fosses communes comme des immondices anonymes, tout le système socio-politique pourri d’Haïti qui considère le prochain comme un pallier et un pion malléable à merci, un système qui n’a cure que des gens vivent au milieu de la crasse et de la misère la plus horrible si l’automobile tout terrain du bourgeois est assez robuste pour y circuler à grande vitesse ; un système inhumain qui accepte que des gens vivent dans des conditions sub-humaines pour perpétuer le statu quo ; un système de perdition qui intimide par la terreur étatique et l’invasion étrangère, par l’exclusion et la répression, par l’exploitation et la subjugation de l’humain par l’humain.

Je pleure les gens qui meurent, parents, amis et connaissances, à l’instant d’un soupir et d’autres après une longue agonie ; je pleure ces gémissements et bourdonnements qui émanent de la profondeur des hécatombes sérielles, ces morts de la malchance et de la contingence dont la survit dépendait de la faillite d’une conjonction de facteurs à la fois arbitraires et prédéterminés mais qui tous témoignent de la démission relative d’une partie importante de la société : son propre État national.

Je pleure les enfants de l’oubli, ces disparus à peine parus dans notre monde de faux-semblants dont la ténacité vitale de la petite Jeanne, sauvée des décombres, a témoigné l’existence. Je pleure le grand vide d’être et les espaces dilapidés ; je pleure la furie destructive de la nature et le sang et les pleurs qu’elle a fait couler, sa violence mortelle contre les membranes de la terre, contre le corps sacré des humains. Je pleure cette massive manifestation de l’existence de l’horreur ; je pleure ses victimes innocentes.

Je me réjouis, toutefois, de voir au milieu des laideurs de la tragédie, cette immense manifestation de solidarité provenant des quatre coins du globe pour aider Haïti à s’en remettre, pour l’aider à survivre les coups. Pourtant je ne peux m’empêcher de revoir le spectre de Katrina, revivre l’abandon de la Nouvelle-Orléans seulement quelques mois après que les larmes de crocodiles eussent été versées. Haïti connaîtra-t-elle le même destin de ré-statuquosation que la Nouvelle-Orléans quatre années après Katrina ?

En effet, il serait condamnable de ne pas nous souvenir de Katrina dans le contexte du tremblement de terre en Haïti. L’éclairage, la vigilance, les apports de solidarité, les incriminations dans les médias nationaux et internationaux, les cris pour le changement étaient presque les mêmes qu’en Haïti aujourd’hui, mais seulement quelques mois plus tard les choses étaient retournées dans l’ordinaire de leur mondanité. Les morts étaient morts pour toujours ; on n’avait pas à en questionner les causes ni gaspiller les ressources pour en redresser les dégâts. Katrina n’était plus un scandale et la misère humaine, même exposée sur les écrans de télévision et d’ordinateur, n’était plus part de l’urgence et encore moins des priorités.

Fausse compréhension basée sur une fausse prémisse

Nous accueillons avec indulgence ceux-là qui, face à la passivité démissionnaire de l’État haïtien durant les premiers jours cruciaux du tremblement de terre, émettent le voeu que les choses soient prises en main par les étrangers, particulièrement par les Étatsuniens. C’est un désir suscité par la frustration, mais c’est une fausse compréhension des choses basée sur la fausse prémisse que les étrangers auraient les intérêts haïtiens à coeur plus que les Haïtiens eux-mêmes. La solidarité étrangère à Haïti est jusqu’ici formidable, les forces humanitaires de sauvetage et d’aide à la survivance, les secours médicaux et d’autres ont accompli un travail extraordinaire qui a sauvé beaucoup de vies dans une situation générale de chaos et de destruction. Mais leur travail de secours aura sitôt pris fin, et ils plieront bagages. Le peuple haïtien restera confronté aux mêmes problèmes : l’exploitation, l’inégalité, l’exclusion sociale, la détresse économique, la victimisation par les circonstances et les contingences.

La solution n’est certainement pas, loin de là, dans la recolonisation d’Haïti comme le préconisent carrément plus d’un ou plus implicitement dans le voeu que les étrangers prennent charge d’Haïti. En fait, l’ironie bien amusante de cette assertion c’est qu’elle ignore ou passe de l’éponge sur le fait qu’Haïti ait vécu justement, avant le tremblement de terre, sous le paradigme de la charité étrangère et de l’ajustement structurel promus par le Fond monétaire international et la Banque interaméricaine de développement qui sévissent en Haïti comme des proconsuls de l’impérialisme.

La responsabilité de la colonisation et de l’oppression postcoloniale

Comme le rappelle Peter Hallward dans un article dans The Guardian du 13 janvier 2010, « les décennies de politique néolibérale ’d’ajustement’ et d’intervention néo-impériale ont dépouillé le gouvernement d’Haïti de toute capacité significative d’investir dans son peuple ou d’organiser son économie (...) Haïti est couramment désigné comme ‘le pays le plus pauvre de l’hémisphère occidental’. Cette pauvreté est l’héritage direct possiblement du système colonial d’exploitation le plus brutal dans l’histoire du monde, aggravé par des décennies d’oppression systématique postcoloniale ». Hallward est correct d’attribuer aux conditions socio-économiques existant en Haïti une part de responsabilité dans les dégâts causés par le séisme : « C’est cette pauvreté et l’impuissance qui expliquent l’énorme échelle d’horreurs à Port-au-Prince aujourd’hui. » Hallward conclut l’article avec le voeu qu’en plus de l’aide d’urgence envoyée par la communauté internationale qu’elle réfléchisse sur ce qu’elle peut faire « pour faciliter l’auto-responsabilisation du peuple d’Haïti et des institutions publiques. Si nous sommes sérieux dans notre volonté d’aider, il faut nous défaire de nos velléités de contrôler le gouvernement d’Haïti, de pacifier ses citoyens et d’exploiter son économie. Et puis nous devons aussi commencer à payer au moins quelques-uns des dommages que nous avons déjà causés » [notre traduction de l’anglais]. À la lueur du blocus illégal par États-Unis des ports et de l’aéroport de Port-au-Prince, la mise en garde de Hallward est bien judicieuse.

C’est en effet difficile de voir ceux-là mêmes comme Bill Clinton, George W. Bush et Nicolas Sarcozy, cet héritier du revanchisme français, dont les décisions politiques sont en une grande partie responsables des malheurs d’Haïti maintenant se métamorphoser en champions de son bien-être. Le paradigme de la charité, de la dépendance et de la prise en charge, c’est celui-là même que l’impérialisme bien-pensant (ou son pendant le néocolonialisme globaliste) avait déjà imposé sur le reste du tiers-monde, Haïti servant comme laboratoire. Il faut rejeter catégoriquement cette voie-là.

Une opportunité de repartir à neuf

Ce qu’en outre les forces progressistes doivent avancer dans le grand débat d’idées qui se mène en cet instant, c’est que le tremblement de terre et la réponse passive de l’État à son égard témoignent non seulement de la faillite du système politique, mais ils rendent possible en même temps l’opportunité de chambarder tout le système pourri et le remplacer par un nouveau système rebâti sur des bases plus solides, plus bénéfiques aux intérêts du peuple.

En effet, Haïti n’était pas, loin de là, un paradis terrestre quand le séisme fonçait sa furie son centre névralgique. Haïti et Port-au-Prince en particulier vivaient, avant le tremblement de terre, dans des conditions quasiment séismiques, dans une situation terrible de sous-développement qui amène à son sillon la misère, la corruption de l’État, la nocivité de l’environnement, l’abjection de la vie ou simplement la laideur de la contingence. Haïti était en désolation avant le tremblement de terre, la désolation est maintenant amplifiée par les horreurs en série que vit journellement la population.

Cependant, malgré ses horreurs, le tremblement de terre présente pour nous une rare occasion de repartir à neuf, repartir à partir du projet original de libération nationale, d’indépendance et de solidarité avec les autres peuples qui combattent l’oppression ; repartir vers la création de la société de droit et de justice sociale, vers une vie décente faite de dignité et de fraternité solidaritaire. Au lieu qu’elle nous engouffre davantage dans l’impasse de la sub-humanité, cette catastrophe nationale, contrairement à l’humiliation de février 2004, doit nous faire avancer vers l’avant, non pas en terme de la conception productiviste du progrès, mais en terme de la réalisation du projet humanitaire vers la transcendance, vers la réalisation de la justice sociale, la dignité de l’individu, la sécurité et le bien-être de la collectivité.

Il n’y a aucune raison pour qu’Haïti demeure une singularité de l’abject, un superlatif de la pauvreté, ni un cas particulier qu’illustre la conception raciste de développement de l’humain.

Oui, même pétri dans le chagrin par la mort des gens que j’aime et je respecte, même vivant la mort dans l’âme l’horrible cauchemar de destruction de Port-au-Prince de mon enfance, je me réjouis de la solidarité universelle que manifeste cette collectivité de nations et de peuples envers la souffrance de mon peuple. Je m’en réjouis, car c’est la récompense de la raison contre l’ignorance et contre l’inhumanité de la notion qu’on puisse bâtir une éthique de vie sur l’exclusion, l’avarice et l’apparence. Dans ce présent moment de chaos, de confusion et de priorité de la survivance et du chacun pour soi, c’est bien réjouissant de voir ces images de solidarité et d’abnégation de soi. Même si on voit dans certains moments de la tragédie la manifestation animale de la contingence, il y a encore l’espoir de reformuler ou de réaffirmer le grand besoin de transcendance, de civisme et de sacrifice de l’ego pour arriver à un nouveau paradigme de réinvention de l’être comme à la fois liberté et solidarité avec l’Autre, une nouvelle éthique de vivre ensemble.

La grande tragédie où s’engouffre aujourd’hui le peuple haïtien est bien douloureuse mais je reste confiant qu’il la surmontera avec courage ; les jours qui viendront seront assurément jalonnés d’épreuves, mais à la fin le pays reprendra sa force car, tout comme le bistouri du chirurgien blesse pour la guérison, cette présente tragédie peut être une opportunité de rebâtir un demain meilleur. Haïti ne moura pas. Loin de là.

-Tontongi, 20 janvier 2010
(Cet article peut être aussi lu dans la revue Tanbou : http://www.tanbou.com;Alterpress : http://www.alterpresse.org/ et Haïti Liberté: http:www.haiti-liberte.com)

N.B. Je veux profiter de cette occasion pour présenter mes condoléances aux familles de mes amis et collègues d’Haïti qui ont perdu la vie dans le tremblement de terre. Je pense plus spécialement à Pierre Vernet qui a été un farouche défenseur de notre créole, à Georges Anglade, le grand géographe et excellent « audienceur », et à Mireille Neptune Anglade, une grande championne des droits de la femme. J’écrirai éventuellement un hommage spécial pour honorer leur mémoire. Mes condoléances et sympathies vont également aux familles de Christine Toussaint, de Myriam Merlet, de Magalie Marcelin, d’Anne Marie Coriolan, de Micha Gaillard et de tous mes compatriotes, connus et non connus, affectés par cette tragédie.

Pour voir d'autres écrits de Tontongi, aller sur le site:
To see other writings by Tontongi, go to website :
Pou wè plis tèks Tontongi ekri, ale sou sit:
http://www.tanbou.com

Friday, January 1, 2010

Y2K Revisited

Ten years ago, the world was supposed to end or to turn upside down by a computer bug: the Y2K. I wrote the following text about the same time. I am sharing it here for the first time with my English readers. (January 1st, 2010)

The Anthropology of a Bug: The Y2K Collective Hysteric Booby-Trap

In one thousand years from now, when the post-back-to-the-future humans look back to 1999, they will have a big laugh seeing the collective, Kafkaesque booby-trap we had set to one another in that year. They will probably appreciate the stories of people who had looked for safety from one continent to the other; people who confessed to God for their most inner sins, convinced that the end was near; families which had stocked tones of foods, heating oil and first-aid accessories, fearing a central, all-purpose computer system will stop functioning on the year 2000 due to the malignity of an evil bug.

The Boston Globe of Monday January 3, 2000, had reported the case of a New Hampshire state prison inmate who “sewed his eyes and lips shut with dental floss Friday because he feared the new year.” Perhaps not related to the computer bug per se, but symptomatic enough of the millenarian fever, The New York Times reported on March 28, 2000, the unearthing of 330 followers of a Uganda cult named Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God who “died in a fire set by some of its own members in a chapel on the cult’s isolated compound in Kanungu [who] believed that the end of the world was to come on Dec. 31, 1999.”

Perhaps, the future humans will not laugh after all. Being then totally entangled in the web of post-digital computer governance, they might, all to the contrary, very well be highly impressed by the great prescience and wisdom our contemporaries will have had exhibited in 1999. What if the Y2K phobia were really the foreseen signs of things to come?

During the last three days of December 1999 (referring to the Western calendar of course), I saw myself thinking about what Alexis de Tocqueville would say if he were living in Boston at that particular juncture of the United States’ history, he who had asked: “Why the Americans are more concerned with the applications than with the theory of science?” How would he react to the Y2K collective hysteria?

Naturally, like most clear-minded people, I had tried to ignore the Y2K concerns until the very last moment, until it was no longer a distant possibility, but an imminent threat whose pervasiveness was equal only to its ingenuity in mixing, on an interchangeable mode, fantasy and reality.

When my wife asked me to withdraw some cash from the bank and turn off the computer — “just to be on the side of caution,” said she with a skeptical wink — I knew the hysteria had hit home. Still the rebel part of me refused to accept what was now presented to me almost as a fatality: the Y2K bug lurking around, threatening my already precarious life. I however refused to take any step that would give credence to the premises of the Y2K’s conjecturists. Retorted my wife: “Your rejection of preventive measures against the Y2K bug is just a manifestation of your innate stubbornness in refusing things that would make your life easier...”

To win the argument with my wife, I used my favorite technique : the high ground. With a grave tone of voice, I said to her : ”I refuse to accept the premise of the Y2K hysteria, that is that life would end by the action of a stupid computer programming or non-programming. I refuse to be taken in!”

In reality we were already taken in. For my part, deep inside, I was not sure that the Y2K zealous were not right after all. What if they were? What if the food that I eat, the home where I live, the job I have, the heat that warms my body were connected to the capricious compulsion of a computer bug?

Sectorialization of time

On the eve of New Year’s eve, I went to a neighborhood bar in Cambridge to relax and take notes about the Y2K phenomenon, for future use for the book of memoirs I was working on. By then, to my great pleasure, the Y2K fever had become, a great source of anthropological inquiries, a rich, uncovered region for discovery of the Western mind. In the book, I was discussing precisely what I called the reverse-anthropology : How does a Haitian expatriate apprehend the West, including the USA, with his own cultural outlook in a way that reverses the look from thing seen to seer, similarly to what Frantz Fanon calls le regard de l’Autre, the gaze of the Other? If any thing, I was very happy by the rich insight provided by the Y2K’s riddle on the US cultural symbolisms and social mores.

In the bar that night, I asked two Eastern European men what did they think about the advent of the new Millennium and the Y2K bug. The older man, a Polish, former professor, said in a half philosophical, half sarcastic tone that the world was just having a good time. He called the whole thing “superficial” because it doesn’t take into account the existence of other world calendars, like the Arabs’ or the Chinese’s. We both agreed, to my delight, that the Y2K’s millenary fatalism was just part of the arbitrary sectorialization of natural time by the West.

My other interlocutor, a thirty-something Russian, changed the conversation, as soon as I asked the question, from Y2K concern to Russian grandeur — or more precisely Russia’s non-grandeur. Forgetting his known antipathy to all that is Russian, I made the mistake of saying to him that Russia is a great country (just like I consider almost all of the countries in the world). He said: “No, no, Russia is not a great country; America is... What you call Russia’s so-called greatness is only related to its killing and subjugation of other people”.

I couldn’t argue against that logic, knowing of Russia’s historical imperialism, and its killing of the Chechen people at the very moment we were talking. I reminded my interlocutor, however, that he had just said that the U.S. was a great country even though it was a well known fact that the U.S. has committed atrocities as repulsing as that of the Russians. He responded : “Well, I agree; but America does some good for the people all over the world, while Russia...” Was this guy having the bug? I thought.

I soon realized this was an unwinnable argument. Here I was, a Haitian, arguing with a Russian about the “greatness” of his country. I told my interlocutor just that, that I was not comfortable defending Russia with him. He seemed to have caught the irony of it, for he cut off the conversation without any additional reply, waving good-bye to me in a friendly and gentlemanly fashion.

Interestingly enough, within the West itself the debate was raging, acidly at times, as to the right time and the best way of celebrating the new Millennium. Some critiques pointed out that the real time-sequence for the new millennium to take place was on January 1st, 2001, a year later. Others have observed that other cultures, civilizations and countries have different calendars and time configurations that emphasize different celebratory significances that don’t necessarily correspond to the Western norm. One could even feel sorry for the Palestinians and the Israelis who not only had to deal with their respective Y2K bugs and mutual distrust, but also with the invasion of their already crowded living space by hundreds of thousand of Orthodox and Roman Christians along with their millennialist, lunatic fringes.

Naturally, the “relativist” critiques were not too happy seeing the TV clips of celebratory extravaganza in front of the Pyramids by the Egyptians, the state-of-the arts fireworks in Tiannamen Square, nor the vigilant upbeat mood of the Israelis for that matter.

My next interview was with a Haitian immigrant I met in Harvard Square, Cambridge, who has been in the US for the last eight years. He’s from the Haiti’s countryside, a small village where there is no electricity nor water system. He came here from the wave of Haitian refugees who left the country by boat during the fascist military coup d’Etat that toppled the elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in September 1991. At first he didn’t know what I meant by Y2K bug; when I explained to him in Haitian Creole what it was, he proffered a big laugh. His laugh reminded me of this interlocutor who, back in Port-au-Prince in 1969, during the Apollo 11 mission, proffered a similar laugh to the notion that human could go to the moon; he thought the whole thing was a hoax.

I asked my Harvard Square interlocutor whether he was worry about a Y2K-caused general debacle that may result in his losing his job, his saving, his apartment. “Well,” he said with sapient resignation, “in this case, I would take a boat back to my village and care for my pigs and corn field. Espri m ap pi anpè, more peace to my soul.”

Kissingeresque precept

In my search to apprehending the meaning of the Y2K bug in the US’s consciousness during the last three days of 1999, I found myself talking with a MIT researcher, expert on genetic treatment for dyslexia. This scientist and I have chatted in the past about world politics, but I never saw him as passionate as when the subject came on the Y2K bug. Of all my interviewees, he was the only one who put the Y2K delusion in its contextual, logical and consequential conclusion. He complained most of all about the tremendous amount of money that was spent to “fix” the Y2K problem. His estimate was that the powerful financial forces have wasted up to 500 billions of dollars to solve the presumed computer bug, while they would not spend a fraction of that money to solve real human problems. “This goes to show,” he said, “that’s not money that is lacking.”

I reminded him that Henry Kissinger once said (or it’s attributed to him to have said) that the best way to solve a problem is to invent the problem in the first place. My interlocutor liked the analogy, but that didn’t make him any less angry. This scientist told me he had developed, since twenty years now, a tumor removal treatment for dyslexia through lesser technology that needs only a few millions of dollars for experimentation. He’s still begging for the money to come.

Just like what the Kissingeresque dictum implies, my own analysis is that the Y2K thing was just a ploy by corporate USA in inventing an artificial bug (or enlarging a small problem) in order to maintain its overwhelming control of the current electronic and internet revolution. Cartesian by profession, the corporate thinking was that: “If I can prove to you that I can solve that catastrophic problem, therefore I am better; therefore I am in charge.” Naturally, if you accept the premise, you will forget that the problem was pre-fabricated by the savior himself...

The last person I talked to about the Y2K bug was, sure enough, a computer programmer I met by pure chance. He confirmed my gut feeling that the “problem” was blown out of proportion. He told me that, in fact, he had just helped his company fix the Y2K problem and, as a result, was promoted, at the last week of 1999, chief computer analyst. He was now happy, enjoying the end-of-the- year holidays. Given the sense of catastrophic enormity the media have associated with the Y2K problem, I was curious to know how did he do it. I asked him. “Simple,” he replied, “I just re-programmed the computer to count from 1999 to 2000, 2001, 2003, and so forth.” Wow!

Terrorist threat and Y2K specter

In the midst of the millennialist fever that was grabbing the West, it was interesting to see how the usual international terrorist threat had entwined with the end-of-the-century Y2K specter. As 1999 was ending, suddenly the terrorists seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. To read the US media, one would think that the long US-Canadian border had become their staging area, and the whole United-States was now in peril.

With the arrest of two Middle-Eastern men who, according to the authorities’ allegations, tried to cross the border with an arsenal of fire arms and explosives, the specter of omnipotent evil was now becoming reality. Many of us living in those so-called Post-modern societies have had the impression that life was going to come to a sudden stop. Of course, everywhere else in the globe, people thought of those Western eccentrics as nuts. Caprice of the rich?

The terrorist threat, evidently, had not materialized. Not at that moment. In reality, as proven by the real terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, what serious terrorist would attack the West at the moment of high alert of December 1999!

I remember the subdued reaction of that acquaintance of mine who asked me if it was safe for him to travel to Europe following the arrest of the two presumed terrorists at the US-Canada border. “Don’t worry my friend,” I told him, “travel to anywhere in the world you want; the terrorists are now coming to the USA!” Two or three days after that exchange, I saw this same man in a Cambridge coffee shop. He told me he had decided to stay in the US to be in his cozy home with his family during the Millennium celebrations. Did he stay in order to save his family and friends in case of catastrophic Y2K debacle or terrorist attack? I didn’t know.

My own take on the dreadful terrorist threat was that the presumed terrorists were too much busy preparing for their own Millennium celebrations — and the family obligations that they entailed — to invest much attention to terrorist actions per se. It could also be that the terrorists who were caught at the Canadian border, taken in by the Y2K panic like everyone else, were just moving to safety their arsenal in the advent of the up-coming Y2K blight in the United States: Where’s a better place to hide the precious arsenal if not in the belly of the beast itself?

Time and space symbiosis: the Vodou dedoubleman

“What is time any way?” I asked myself as year 2000 busted in without any change in my existential environment. Soon that I had asked the question, the answer came to me through the Boston Globe edition of January 3, 2000, in an article titled “A Rip in Time,” co-authored by Stephen Reucroft and John Swain. The article’s authors have consulted the science fiction author Michael Crichton and the theoretical physicist Julian Barbour to inquire about the meaning of time. Their response is that, time is not only arbitrary, it’s also illusory. Using a kind of timeless symbiosis between Albert Einstein’s relativity and the quantum mechanics in their respective work, they assert, at least as alleged in the Globe article, that the time-space dualism is imaginary, and that what is there is there, existing in its own time-space uniformity; they go so far as to suggest that our actual conception of time may be due to a hangover vision or psychotic alteration of reality. Says Julian Barbour: “The Big Bang is as close to us as the house across the street. They’re both in our head so they’re here”.

For a better understanding of the time-space symbiosis, the article’s authors could have as well questioned any Haitian Vodouist about the phenomenon that is known as dedoubleman or doubling: one person seen at the same time in two places, or in two different localities in a time period that is physically impossible to travel by the normal means that are available to him.

You meet this person in Jacmel, a town in the mountainous Southern Haiti with challenging road conditions; you chat with him and wave good-bye. You travel in a fast GM Jeep (or on a horse) to Gonaïves, a town located in the Central, Northern part of Haiti, at some 160 miles from Jacmel. Arriving at your destination, the first person you see is the same guy you left in Jacmel some six hours earlier. You continue the conversation you were having with him. Naturally, you would ask yourself how did he get to Jacmel so fast knowing well he didn’t use either an air plane, a car, a boat, not even a horse...

It could also be you’re in Cap-Haïtien, in the Northern section of Haiti, talking on the phone with this person in Port-au-Prince, distanced from each other by some 150 miles. “By the way,” says your friend on the other line, “ I just bumped onto George in the square, he sends his regards to you.” “What George?” you ask, “George Gobert,” responds your friend. You ask for more details of identification. You’re both talking about the same George. “George Gobert! He just came by my house, here in Cap-Haïtien, and told me to say hello to you, only fifteen minutes earlier!” you exclaimed. Naturally, no one ever knows how does that happen because, according to the conventional wisdom, you wouldn’t dare ask George himself, knowing deep inside he’s been revealing his dedoubleman Vodou power to you.

Time as process

One of the many surprises I found when I came to France, and later to the United-States, was how much different their notion of time was from Haitians’, especially with regard to setting and honoring appointments and their modalities and commitment, more precisely the respect for the schedule.

On many occasions US-American friends have complained to me about being dissed by Haitians with whom they had made appointments only to be left in the cold, sometimes literally. No trace of the other party. These complainers were generally very upset by the incident, experiencing it as personal rejection.

One particular person reported, with unhidden resentment in her voice, that a common friend offered her to bring a group of musicians to play in a public event she was organizing. Relying entirely on our friend to provide the music, the person was extremely upset when, the day of the event, no musician showed up.

Others would complain of rendez-vous set for a specific date and time, and at a specific place that were not honored. The worst of all, adding insult to injury, those no-show culprits wouldn’t even bother to apologize when seeing the injured party the next time, acting as if there were no problems.

What my whining US-American friends didn’t know is that there was in fact no problem as far as the Haitian was concerned. Not that he didn’t care about hurting the other person’s feeling. He did. Simply, since, for the Haitian, there was no process, no follow-up, no serial confirmations, there was not a commitment. The initial agreement on the project or encounter was essentially, at best, tentative. Here again the definition/meaning of what is tentative is vastly different between the Haitian and the US-American. While for the Haitian it implies everything that is not part of a process, for the US-American it means appointment agreements that are not specifically determined or definite, but are still considered, even partially, as a commitment. In any case, between the two sides the misunderstanding was total, each one modulated by its own frame of reference, its own sense of certainty and expectation.

Actually there was never a chance for the projected happening to ever occur. Too huge was the cultural gap between the US-American who showed up and the Haitian who didn’t. The former’s action is molded by a well-structured socio-economic system that puts a premium to timeliness, while the latter’s upbringing environment is rather unpredictable, formed in hazard, even chaos, modulated by both contingential chance and spiritual determinism.

The capitalist notion of time — time subordinated to the imperatives of production— is foreign to the Haitian psyche, ever among those who had worked before emigrating to the West. For most Haitian immigrants (in the West), it’s already enough of a burden that they have to “give the white man his time,” as they say, meaning working long hours, at specific time frame for meager pay. Ironically, they are usually among the most punctual and reliable of the workers, but their loyalty is left at the gate of the workplace. All other commitments of their time are relegated, for lack of a better term, to the realm of the original Haitian conception of time as a process, a process of priority selection.

For a farmer or a mammal-bovin grower habituated to the slow cycle of natural fecundation, who after long years of maturity must again spend dozens of hours on the long march to the slaughter-house, the notion of time is pretty much expansive, relative. What my US-American friends couldn’t comprehend was that for someone whose life has been a long struggle against time (time awaiting fecundation, time lost in illness, in precocious death, in boredom), a verbal, non-work-related commitment cannot be abiding. Since nothing is never given to him without long days, often long years of negotiation, the agreement to meet or to work on some ulterior project cannot be expected to be timely.

I know by instinct that an appointment to meet with a fellow Haitian, whatever heartfelt and detailed was the initial agreement, is just an idea, at best an intention which cannot be achieved in the time frame/fashion in which it was considered. If we say, for example, we’re going to meet in two weeks from now, at a specific time and place, I know for certain we will have to talk at least twice before the time of the appointment. The second time to confirm the initial agreement, the third time to re-confirm it, preferably the day before or the very day of the appointment. Only then the planned encounter is sure to take place. It must be a process. Otherwise, I surely will be left in the cold.

“Much ado about nothing”

As 1999 came to a close and 2000 entered without much happening, a kind of Shakespearean much-ado-about-nothing general feeling caved in the air. I liked the fact that, after all, I was still alive and well, my family was OK, and the world didn’t come to an end. My dismissal of the whole Y2K thing as a fabulous trap didn’t spare me some worry about its possibility. But seeing that my gut feeling was now proven real, confirmed by the peacefulness of the post-Y2K era, I decided I must let myself go to the infinitude of existence.

By the second day of January, there was a sense of collective feeling of well-being, and an optimist look on reality that seemed to take hold. Everyone I asked said they were feeling good about themselves and about the future, even without any specific, factual evidence to back up their claim. In fact, by now, the whole Y2K thing had become an universal joke. Dana Brigham, owner of the Booksmith bookstore in Brookline, Massachusetts, passed around the joke of this CEO’s very imaginative response to the Y2K compliance : “He dutifully changed all the “Y”s to “K”s in his company’s database.”!

Although I shared the positive vibe coming all around me, and let myself be immersed in the multitude’s new fervor and idealization of the future, I knew good feeling may not be enough to overcome the powerful forces which fester fear, instability, confusion and boredom in our lives; still I wanted to give life a chance. Why not a self-imposed illusion, one just like the Y2K’s magical wand, but which would make everything look green, bright, sunny, beautiful, worries-free?

I know Alexis de Tocqueville admired a great deal the industrious genius of the North-Americans, but what would he think of the metamorphosis of his lovely subject from genius to fabulist of the Unknowable, as we see it in the confrontation between the cyber-magnetic forces and the socio-economic finalities? To answer that question, I went to the Cambridge Public Library to check out if de Tocqueville’s famous book, Democracy in America, has any futurist insight on it. Of course, Tocqueville didn’t have a clue about the Y2K bug, but he went close enough when he told the following story: “I once met an American sailor and asked him why his country’s ships are made so that they will not last long. He answered offhand that the art of navigation was making such quick progress that even the best of boats will be almost useless if it lasted more than a few years.” For de Tocqueville, this offhand answer was endemical “of the general and systematic conception by which a great people conducts all its affairs.” De Tocqueville believed that part of the North-American psyche (and of the West in general) is to create unnecessary industrial crises, that in turn become an “endemic disease” that cannot be cured, “for it is not due to accident but to the essential temperament of these peoples.” My question is then, is it really “temperament” or rather strategic subterfuge to confound everyone and maintain control? In any case, de Tocqueville surely saw a trend in a people accustomed to align its dream to reality, and confound in the process both of them.

I don’t know what the future generations will think of the Y2K bug; but one thing is now sure: They will be so much bombarded by all sort of imaginary bugs that they may as well decide to get rid of all the technological media that mediates their relationship to life, and return, as the Haitian immigrant suggested, to their small villages and care for their pigs and corn fields.

—Tontongi, Cambridge, March 2000

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