Silent Night - the third verse is actually the most important

The most exciting thing that happened to me over Christmas break was that I started speaking Creole. Yes! Me! Creole! I still can’t quite believe it. Granted I am using the term “speaking” very loosely here; something along the lines of “I understand more than 50% of what people are saying to me, and occasionally I can respond in complete, vaguely grammatical sentences.” Doesn’t sound so impressive, but really this is huge, as anyone who’s ever tried living in the midst of a totally foreign language can attest. At one point in late December I noticed that I had started to make jokes with a few of the nannies. This is significant because jokes generally rely on comedic timing; a quick response that doesn’t allow for slow English to Creole mental translation or consulting a dictionary. So this was a much needed confidence boost. Another key factor in kicking my language butt into gear was that I was the only American here over the Christmas holidays. So it was either have conversations in Creole, or not have any conversations more significant than “Hi, how are you?” for two weeks. And you know what I realized once I started trying? That the girls had been using less and less English in conversations with me for quite a while already, and for the most part were speaking to me totally in Creole. It had been such a gradual transition I hadn’t realized how well I understood the language!

I also realized that I’ve been learning Creole in a totally different way than I learned Spanish in school. Then I learned through exercises, conjugations, and memorization, and eventually gained the ability to mentally translate what I wanted to say from English to Spanish. Here, I have had zero worksheets, there aren’t any conjugations, and memorization has been pretty minimal (I have a stack of flashcards, but I honestly didn’t use them much). Instead I’ve been absorbing the language more…organically? I guess more similar to the way a child acquires language. So the result is that I don’t find myself thinking of a sentence in English and then speaking it in Creole, I’m just speaking the Creole, and vice versa; when someone is speaking to me, I’m hearing what they say and understanding (or not, as the case may be) without consciously translating it to English. This may not be interesting to anyone but my friends who study linguistics, but it was totally unexpected and exciting to me.

A few days before Christmas we all went up to Dr. B’s house in Tomasin. It was so nice to get up in the mountains where the air is just cleaner. Now that it’s the dry season, a permanent dust/smog/cloud/haze has settled over the city and I cannot wait until March when it starts to rain every night. I spent lots of time with the babies in the next-door orphanage, especially with one precious 2-month old boy to whom I sang every Christmas song I could possibly think of because he was a very listless and withdrawn baby, but when he heard singing he would perk up, wiggle, laugh, and make chirpy baby noises like he was trying to sing along, just like a healthy baby should.

On Christmas Eve we packed up and headed back home in two shifts. As usual, not enough people went on the first run so the second was a little crowded, to say the least. I would say that the back of our tap-tap (a flatbed truck with a roof and benches) sits 12-14 people comfortably. After a lot of shoving, squishing, rearranging, and of course the prolonged shouting at ear-splitting levels required for any Haitian undertaking involving more than 5 people, we managed to fit 27 of us in the back, along with several sacks of fruits and vegetables and our backpacks and duffel bags, and off we went. We arrived back at the orphanage to find that the all the kids already back had, with our amazing cooks, worked up a feast and decorated the courtyard. We had a great party with all the kids, all the orphanage staff and some of their families, and Dr. Bernard and his wife Claudette. As the Christmas presents were given out, I had a funny conversation with the kids about Santa Claus. “In America Santa comes down the chimney, yes? Well, in Haiti there are no chimneys. So, problem.”

After the party I was up in my room wondering if I would manage to stay awake until midnight like the girls assured me the rest of the country would. The girls had cleared the desks out of a classroom and had a rocking dance party going on, but two of the girls slipped away to my room instead. One was our youngest, who had just turned fourteen. She doesn’t speak any English at all, but despite that she spends a lot of time hanging out with me and I feel like I know her really well. Sometimes she’s like my little shadow. This particular Christmas Eve she just needed to be loved, and she curled up next to me with her head in my lap. The other girl is one of our oldest, and I could tell that she came to check on me because she knew I might be a little lonely without my family on Christmas Eve. After a little bit of talking we fell silent, and Kattia heard me humming Silent night and started to sing. She has an incredibly beautiful voice and knows the words to more English worship songs than I do.

Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace

That night the words seemed terribly out of place. Outside it sounded like every person in Port-au-Prince besides us was out on the street shouting, dancing, and getting more and more crazy and drunk. Our neighborhood was not silent, was not holy, was not calm, and the power was out, so it wasn’t bright either. Heavenly peace seemed far out of reach with the sound of gunshots being exchanged between two gangs further up the hill. I sat there with tears in my eyes, stroking Nelcia’s hair as she fell asleep wrapped up in my big sweater with her head in my lap, thinking about how utterly different Christmas Eve is for these girls compared to my childhood. And yet I know they understood something I didn’t truly realize until I was 19 and in Italy by myself on Christmas Eve: that Christmas isn’t just about celebrating the lovely story of Jesus’ birth. It’s about celebrating with true joy the momentous arrival of the Savior of the world, the Prince of Peace, the reason we have hope even though the world is so messed up, the one whose arrival changes everything. 

Silent night, holy night
Son of God, love's pure light
Radiant beams from Thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth