LUMIÈRE

Returning from the Christmas break to the reality of Ciné Institute, I found that the fixtures and elements of my Haitian experience had been shifted and rearranged. For one, my moto, which was stored along with another moto in a tent near the 2½ metre stone wall of the compound, was burglarised – its carburetor removed and replaced with another one from an entirely different make and model – the bike was rendered unusable especially since the gas tank was emptied and the choke cable ripped out. Don’t know why the vandal went to the trouble of installing it – perhaps to hide the fact by filling the visual gap left by the removal of the first carburetor? or to placate his feelings of guilt? – will never understand this thief’s logic. It had to be an inside job – certainly, he knew me or of me, knew the bike, where it was kept, was willing to chance capture during the rounds of the security men and he brought the right tools. At first, I thought it might have been an act of retribution by some disgruntled student because of a low mark or a perceived insult I had given but I was told that no students came to the campus over the holidays and somehow the act of replacing a good part with a bogus part didn’t fit the psychological profile I had of any of my students. And so the incident has been left uninvestigated and unsolved. Returning also to my morning ruminations on the cliff overlooking the sea, I noticed how much the light had changed – the angle of the sun shifting northward and its early beams filtering through an unfamiliar configuration of trees on the promontory to the east. The sunlight too had changed – no longer the soft warm hues of autumn I remember as resembling the hanging impressionist light of Provençe – but rather a harder light, more direct, predictive of the burning hot days around the corner in March. As for the sea, it has refused to calm down since the November storms – the rocky cove below our bungalows has become a massive cauldron of froth and bubbling, seemingly stirred up by giants. Our January has begun – change is in the air along with uncertainty, its constant companion.

Now our classes change from theory to practice – it is hoped that the “how-to” lessons of the first term with their accompanying inspirational content and their cause-and-effect exercises can now be forged into moving images with sense and purpose. But here in Haiti, art always imitates life – often darkly. On reviewing the test scenarios of the first-year students, I could detect the experienced or perceived realities of their upbringing including crime, domestic violence, revenge and death. One student, half in jest, submitted a story of love where three of the four characters were killed off in a jealous rage. Another more lighthearted story recounted how a thief was tricked into stealing the wrong (empty) wallet. Although innocently put to paper and containing the necessary conflict and tension for dramatic storytelling in any culture, the authors laid bare the irony and poignancy of their lives – at least I couldn’t help but read into them that way. On a day when a group of students presented their soon-to-be-produced scripts in front of the class, a mature female student began to describe the plotline of a young doctor who travelled from abroad to be with his fiancé in Haiti – but she broke down halfway through; physically collapsing and weeping uncontrollably. I was told later that it was indeed her story and that during the holidays she was to be reunited with the young doctor after a long absence – but when he arrived in Port-au-Prince, he was shot dead in an act of random violence.