- Title Pages
- Title Pages
- Title Pages
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 We Don’t Have Enough Water to Make Tears
- 2 What We Have, We Share
- 3 Pearl of the Antilles
- 4 Maroon Man
- 5 We Will Carry You On
- 6 You Can’t Eat Okra with One Finger
- 7 Fragile as a Crystal
- 8 Children of the Land
- 9 Grains and Guns
- 10 The Ones Who Must Decide
- 11 Our Bodies Are Shaking Now
- 12 The Creole Connection
- 13 We’ve Lost the Battle, but We Haven’t Lost the War
- 14 Social Fault Lines
- 15 Monsanto Seeds, Miami Rice
- 16 Home
- 17 For Want of Twenty Cents
- 18 The Super Bowl of Disasters
- 19 The Commonplace amid the Catastrophic
- 20 Beyond Medical Care
- 21 Hold Strong
- 22 Mrs. Clinton Will Never See Me Working There
- 23 The Central Pillar
- 24 Elections
- 25 We Will Never Fall Asleep Forgetting
- Epilogue
- Index
The Commonplace amid the Catastrophic
The Commonplace amid the Catastrophic
(Tales from Nine Months Out)
- Chapter:
- (p.154) 19 The Commonplace amid the Catastrophic
- Source:
- Fault Lines
- Author(s):
Beverly Bell
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
In this chapter, the author reflects on the state of affairs in Haiti nine months after the earthquake. Amid the pall of suffering caused by the earthquake, everything seemed normal in Haiti. People fell in love, relaxed in the shade, hung out in the courtyard in the evening, talked about the goings-on in the neighborhood or village or the latest government scandal, and took pride in their homeland. In the countryside, one could especially forget for a while the effects of the calamity. Disaster-struck areas were still open to opportunities to kick back, celebrate life, and just go about daily business. The author shares her random observations from a Sunday in Port-au-Prince as she took a walk in the neighborhood, from residents coming together from their nearby shattered houses to re-create community and help each other make the best of a crisis, to people talking about Haitian politics and especially political parties.
Keywords: earthquake, Haiti, countryside, Port-au-Prince, neighborhood, community, politics, political parties
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- Title Pages
- Title Pages
- Title Pages
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 We Don’t Have Enough Water to Make Tears
- 2 What We Have, We Share
- 3 Pearl of the Antilles
- 4 Maroon Man
- 5 We Will Carry You On
- 6 You Can’t Eat Okra with One Finger
- 7 Fragile as a Crystal
- 8 Children of the Land
- 9 Grains and Guns
- 10 The Ones Who Must Decide
- 11 Our Bodies Are Shaking Now
- 12 The Creole Connection
- 13 We’ve Lost the Battle, but We Haven’t Lost the War
- 14 Social Fault Lines
- 15 Monsanto Seeds, Miami Rice
- 16 Home
- 17 For Want of Twenty Cents
- 18 The Super Bowl of Disasters
- 19 The Commonplace amid the Catastrophic
- 20 Beyond Medical Care
- 21 Hold Strong
- 22 Mrs. Clinton Will Never See Me Working There
- 23 The Central Pillar
- 24 Elections
- 25 We Will Never Fall Asleep Forgetting
- Epilogue
- Index
