Straw hats and handkerchiefs
My Sombrero
Confession…I have developed a desire to be Haitian.
I like to joke with my Haitian friends–Eunide, Robinson, Frandy, and Shila (one of the nurses here in the clinic) that a few more weeks in Haiti and my skin is going to look just like theirs. When they laugh at me and tell me that maybe if I had 5 years… that might do the trick… I point to the tell-tale anpil blanc pre-Haiti colored V’s left by my flip-flops across the top of my feet. They just laugh harder, shake their heads, and tell me that I’m fou.
All jokes aside, I have been surprised how often people ask us for our nationalities, here. All of us are referred to as blanc, but blanc doesn’t mean American, it just means not Haitian. Sometimes, we are asked before even being introduced to a person. And I am even more surprised how many times American is not the first guess that we receive. You can’t tell an American by the color of their skin or the shape of their eyes. I know that there is no biological argument for race, but there are few enough non-Haitians here that you can for the most part tell by some combination of skin color, language, at an introduction whether or not someone is likely to be Haitian. In the US, seeing someone who may have Chinese ancestry doesn’t mean that person is only visiting the country for a short time period…for the most part, if you meet someone here whose family is from China, that person does not also consider him/herself a Haitian. I have received shouts of “Senorita,” and “Mamita,” (the Dominican Republic isn’t too far away…so maybe a little of my Latina blood shows through?) and one time, a man walking towards me in the street pointed at me and said, “You, you Japoneze.” Shilpa, on the other hand, is a complete enigma to the Haitians. It seems that there aren’t too many Indians walking around Haiti, and therefore the Haitians don’t know what to think when they see her. Many people ask if she is Haitian, thinking that she looks more Haitian than American, European, or Ching-Chong (the name Haitians give to Chinese, Japonese, and Koreans).
So although we have accepted that Shilpa is the only one among us who will ever be mistaken for Haitian, no matter how long we stay here in Leogane, we did find a way to appear more Haitian in our dress…even if it wasn’t on purpose.
On Saturday, July 3rd, while walking through the streets of Leogane, we came across a woman selling straw hats. From the perspectives of Hannah, Genevieve, and myself, who had already managed to sunburn our shoulders by sitting on the roof for just 30 minutes earlier that day, the reason for wanting a wide-brim straw hat was only partially for the sake of fashion. Not to mention, buying a hat for sansenk goude (150 goudes = less than $4 US) was cheaper than buying more sunscreen. Deciding on a style and brim width was one task, but each hat (even different versions of the same style) had a slightly different shape, size, and feel. By the time that we were ready to make our selections, there were few hats on display that one of us had not worn…at least twice. Julie and Genevieve ended up with cowboy style-slimmest-brim hats made of two different colors of woven straw; I ended up with a medium-brim hat that is wide enough to just shield my shoulders from the sun; and Hannah left with a wide-brim sun hat that is capable of providing shade to her entire body when she sits beneath it. Although Hannah and I still haven’t seemed to figure out how the women outsmart the wind and the breeze created by passing cars to keep the wider-brimmed hats on their head.
Although it’s more uncommon to see the Haitian women walking in town without a hat than with one, when I returned to the clinic, I realized that my hat didn’t seem to actually make me any more Haitian. Dr. Merisier saw me and said, “Oh, you have a sombrero!”
I guess when I’m trying to be a Haitian, I’ll just leave my hat at home and stick to wrapping the handkerchiefs that I bought at the market around my head to keep the hair off of my neck.
