Poze - Haitian medicine for modern times
New York City, baby! Not mustachioed, pot-smoking Brooklyn. Not sensible Long Island. Not New Jersey suburbia, or land of steady habits up in Connecticut. Nope. Manhattan Island: the finger-snapping, caffeinated, capital of capitalism itself: obsessed with cash, flash and the rush of more.
Forget sweeping helicopter views of sparkling skyscrapers, and light twinkling on the East River. Manhattanites aren’t kissing by the angel of Central Park. They’re standing nose-to-armpit in the subway, and dodging rats on filthy streets. A good number are saying “the struggle is real” as they hustle to that helicopter over the Hudson. The rest have given up and started yelling in the streets. Their shrieking mixes with screaming sirens, clattering jack hammers, and BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-CRASSH! of rubbish trucks at 3am. Aggressive, relentless, and proud, Manhattan is a million hearts pounding with ambition, anxiety, and nitro cold brew. There’s one mode: FULL SPEED AHEAD! One fuel: ADRENALINE! And one vocabulary: HUSTLE! GRIND! SLAY! Busyness is essential, rest is discouraged, idling is prohibited.
You’d better be working, socialising or exercising, sugar, because that’s the program here. Want to take it easy? Then move to the suburbs, sweetheart, because NEW YORK DON’T STOP and there’s NO SLEEP TIL BROOKLYN.
New York City, baby. Welcome to the jungle.
This animal is sipping jungle juice from a Starbucks cup at JFK airport, hammering at my laptop as I SLAY! my to-do list before flying to visit an aid-worker friend in Haiti: a former French colony in the Caribbean.
In front of me, a group of non-profit volunteers chatter enthusiastically about their malaria medication, suncream and battery packs. They are effervescent, sparkly-eyed students and seniors in cargo pants and matching t-shirts, with bulging backpacks that bump into passers-by as they pose for a photo, raising thumbs-up, rock-on and peace fingers to the camera. After a few false starts, there’s a snap! cheers! round of applause! A few whoop and high-five as a man with Ray-Bans on his baseball cap claps loudly: “ALRIGHT! LET’S DO IT!!”
Thrilled to SLAY! poverty in Haiti, the air is electric. “I can’t believe it’s finally happening!” “Yah!! It’s so awesome!” “Totally!” There’s a soft ruffling of cargo pants as the man sitting next to me jiggles his bum.
HAITI, HERE WE COME!
Oof.
The bubble bursts at the luggage carousel in the island’s capital, Port au Prince. Cindy, a nurse from Tarrytown, doesn’t have her bag. Nor do I: a canary yellow case that was probably a bit too funky. I’ve lost luggage before, and found that airlines usually return them in a few days. Trying to be helpful, I explain this to Cindy.
I am not helpful. Cindy frowns. She turns to her team. “But I don’t get it?!” she grimaces. “I wrote my address on it perfect!”
Ray-Ban Man takes charge. “Lemme talk to somebody” he says curtly, and strides off to accost a tall, trim, gentleman in a short-sleeved blue shirt. He waves his hands about, then sets them on his hips, legs wide apart like a Power Ranger. The man in the blue shirt lifts his chin ever so slightly, then walks s-l-o-w-l-y to a lady in a bulging blue shirt, sitting behind a window. In a wig of tight shiny black curls, red lip gloss and blingy nails, she’s chatting on the phone and munching snacks. Seeing the men approach, she swivels her chair to the wall and continues to chew and chat.
Ray-Ban Man glowers. Boss Babe lounges back in her chair.
The group is restive. A couple of blue shirts is sighted observing the volunteers, then looking away quickly. Now, things really kicks off. “Oh this is just TOO MUCH!” “HUMPH! Really summin’, idn’t it?!” “WHAT are they even doing?!” Heads shake. Hands rub frowning brows. “They are literally ignoring us! Literally do not care!” “Unbelievable!” “SO not cool.”
“Eugh. This is really hard right now,” Cindy says, as she slumps on her rucksack.
I sip some water, taking in the scene. Volunteers like chickens; squawking, flapping, solving nothing. Blue shirts beyond standing serenely; utterly peaceful, utterly calm, utterly . . . unhelpful?
As I wait, I wonder. What if this happens every day, and they know that it’s due to a problem at JFK? What if they’re not allowed to speak to the baggage handlers? What if Boss Babe would spit fire at them if they tried? What if the only thing that they can do, without risking the small salary that feeds four families, is to wait for Babe? And they’re doing it with enough peace to make sure they manage on the small amount of food they have today?
I take another swig. Yeah. Maybe the right thing for them to do is exactly this: nothing.
Ooh! A glimmer of hope sparkles from Boss Babe’s fingernails as she puts down the receiver and smiles at Ray Ban Man. The missing bags will be with us in a few minutes.
Happenin’ yellow case in hand, I walk to the crowd of drivers outside arrivals, and agree a price with Celestin, a cheery chap in red shorts, white t-shirt and dusty flip flops. He opens the back door of a battered Mazda, and motions for me to get in. “Ok?” Celestin beams into the rearview. “Poze?” It’s not a French word, and I don’t understand. “T’est bien? (you good?)” “Ah, oui,” I reply. “Très confortable.”
But holy crackers, this is not comfortable. The puddly, potholed roads of the capital give way to rutted paths of rubble as we bump along to Port Salut: a coastal town in the South. Unphased about balancing on the ridges that are all that remains of washed-out roads, Celestin crunches over piles of rubble, swerves round running goats, and bounces over gaping holes. He squeezes past drivers equally untroubled about toppling into a trench; motorcyclists carrying four, five adults; one with two goats aboard; one with a coffin strapped to his torso. It’s so impressive that I’m mostly distracted from the pressure of the belt bearing down on my bladder as we thump and jerk through rural Haiti.
By the time we reach Port Salut—over 4 hours to travel 100miles—I practically run under my friend’s outstretched arms to the toilet.
As we catch-up over tea, I discuss the unexpected journey here, and discover that the unexpected is typical in Haiti; just yesterday, there was a prison break. “Soooo. . since violent criminals are at large, how about we stay here? The beach is gorgeous!”
Gorgeous is right! We arrive to a sublime expanse of powder-white sand, cyan sea, and rich green palms, empty but for ghost crabs scuttling and burrowing. As the waves lap and warm sand soothes the skin, we chat about boys (frustrating), work (exhausting), and local beer (delicious). We praise ourselves for taking this time to relax – “yeah! Like a reset!”—and plan a yoga retreat soon. “Yup! We love our resets!,” Emily says, clinking my bottle.
I sit up, pushing red-rimmed sunglasses onto my head. “How come we need so many resets?”
Emily props up on her arms. ‘Oh Gahd.’ She takes a giant gulp of beer. ‘We need to change the way we’re living, don’t we?”
“You know,” she went on, “we’re here trying to improve all these countries, but I think they really have it figured out in a lot of ways. There’s something in this poze thing.”
“Ah! Poze! I heard that yesterday! What does it mean?”
A Creole word used to describe a feeling of relaxedness or peacefulness, if a Haitian tells you they are “poze,” you know that they’re feeling fit and fine. Optimal. They’ll also say “poze! poze!” if you seem stressed, to remind you that the way to achieve what you want is to chill out a bit. That’s because Haitians tend to believe that peace is a productive state, and that being poze amplifies personal power, making you equal to the challenges you face. And my goodness, do they know about facing challenges. After winning a war against France to become the first country to abolish slavery, they’ve dealt with innumerable hurricanes, earthquakes, typhoons, tornados, cyclones, tropical storms, floods, wars, coups, dictatorships, disease outbreaks, contested elections, economic collapses, and gang takeovers.
“And you know what? It’s proven – apparently, brain function actually improves in poze mode,” Emily adds.
“Man. Imagine that?” I say, “reaching the end of an assignment without looking like you’ve stuck your fingers in a socket?”
“Yeah! And doing a better job of it!” Emily laughs.
At that moment, worn out and weary, I don’t mind about professional performance. I mind only that the beer tastes rich like malty biscuits; that a pelican cruises into view, flapping briefly, then gliding effortlessly; that a small boat with tattered sails is bobbing gently on a sea sparkling like diamonds. I care that the world’s beauty reveals itself to the mind peaceful enough to notice it, and that, in my poze state, I have opened the door to this treasure.