Braids and Challenges in the Dark
Caroline Anris
Jan. 1999There was a blackout last night at the orphanage in Haiti. I'd spent the entire day sitting in a chair surrounded by the closest of my Haitian women-friends while they braided my hair with extensions. They jerked my head this way and that, laughing at me and making jokes and I'd yell "Youch!" here and "Jesus!" there. I didn't ask for many breaks because they'd bust out in laughter every time and so I sat there enduring their affection, hoping in vain that the misery they inflicted on me would help me not miss them so much after I was gone. They ribbed me about it, saying this must be the reason white women don't braid their hair, because they have no patience and they act like babies. And I said it must be the reason Haitian women did, because there was so much meanness in it. We'd all laugh then, and they would ease up for a second or two before bearing down on me again. They were on their feet all day long (11 hours in all), tediously braiding God knows how many extensions all the way to my waist, listening to me whine and complain like a two year old the whole time. When it was finished my head felt like it weighed a hundred pounds and the beads and bells jingled every time I moved.
People had been filing in and out all day, saying their goodbyes, and some friends from the group Boukan Ginen had come to see me off and were beating the drums when I finally got up from that chair. They played and sang for hours that night, singing, "Kawolin ou ale kilè w ap vini wè m ankò? Peyi sa a ap chanje" and many improvised chants about the children and our work and how they'll be waiting for us in Haiti.
I'd loved dance all my life but never had the money for lessons, so I gleaned what I could from Soul Train -- this in a white Southern family who to this day hasn't figured me out. And so I started studying Haitian dance just a couple of weeks after my arrival in Haiti and it changed me in ways I hadn't thought of. I got strong, I got free, and I got sexy. Dance might just have been Haiti's greatest gift to me. So on this last night before our departure to the States, I danced.
The kids danced too, and they sang. I'll never forget Titoto singing some made up song about how he's going to wait for me if it takes all his life and how I will always be his mama, tears streaming down his face and his voice rising and falling with the beat of the drum. We had a couple of those white candles you buy in the streets for a goude or two and the light only extended to the edge of the circle of singers and dancers. One of the Haitian women came and danced with me, tears in her eyes too. I remember thinking how her body moved so smooth, were it not for the swell of her hips and breasts I would have sworn it was a huge snake, had I closed my eyes.
As the night wore on we moved out front and were standing around talking when we heard the sound of a rara band in the distance. There had been a funeral that day and they'd been drumming and dancing in the streets off and on since then. We'd gone down to watch earlier and I wanted to jump out there and dance with them so bad I could taste it, but didn't have the nerve. They were headed this way now and my husband hollered out for the kids to bring the drums and I was moving around to the rhythm when they started to pass out front of the orphanage and the main dancer came over to me, dancing in my face in an unmistakeable challenge. Well now here they were, and me with a whole head-full of braids punctuated with beads in every color known to mankind. I had no choice! I had to dance.
They all had 5 gallon coffee cans and pop bottles and we had drums. The music that came out of that was amazing. You couldn't resist dancing. It was like the beat got in your bones and danced your body for you. The dancer in front of me was doing that walk they do at Carnival where your hips dance more than your feet and you throw your shoulders back like you own the world, and so I did it too. The people squealed and made lots of surprised comments about how they never thought a white woman could do that. Well that just egged me on of course, and so I swung my braids back and shook my shoulders at them and they cheered some more.
The dancer was determined now. I think he thought it would be really bad to lose to a white woman. But this was my last night, there was a fire down the way, no electricity, and the whole place was rooting for me. I must have stuck out like a sore thumb in the dark among all their sultry black faces. But I didn't think about that. I just I gave them every hip thrust, every gouye, every chika I knew, dancing in the street till my legs burned and my scalp hurt from the weight of the braids swinging this way and that.
Finally the dancer turned his back to me and did this radical chicken walk low to the ground, just daring me to follow. My legs burned like crazy but I went for it. I started out high and sunk deeper every step till my butt almost touched the ground and everybody started screaching. Then I got the shoulder shake going, threw my head back and let my braids drag in the dust behind me and made those little north-east-south-west jerks with my hips in a square, and that won it all, hands down.
The orphanage went wild. My girlfriends were all laughing and shouting, "Kawolin sa a!!!" and all the kids were dancing around like little pagans. Someone from the other group yelled out that we might have won the dance but it didn't matter because we didn't have an oungan. My husband yelled back that we didn't need one because our dancer was so strong.
We never did get electricity, and I still wonder what that night would have been like had we not been in a blackout. It's likely the kids would have wanted to watch TV or listen to the radio. And I doubt we would have danced so long or been outside talking under the stars when the rara band came by. But the way it happened, it made my last night a memory I'll carry with me the rest of my life. And when my grandkids ask for a story, I'll tell that one.
We had electricity here in the States when I finally had to give up and take the braids out. It glared on me unmercifully the first time I looked at myself without them. Then it was me with all the tears running down my face. I missed friends who stand on their feet for hours to make me beautiful. I missed people who touch. I missed music and dancing every day, and I would have given just about anything to get back in that chair and complain all day, with their black hands in my hair and on my face and shoulders, turning me this way and that, telling me what a wimp I am. But there's work to do here and a long road ahead before we can go back and build our orphanage. And so I got out my blow-dryer and plugged it in, looking at myself in the mirror, thinking how much prettier people are by candle-light.
Copyright © 1999 Caroline Anris - Life series by Windows on Haiti