Pearls of the Caribbean
Haiti is one of the most beautiful islands of the Caribbean. In colonial times, Haiti was not only beautiful but also very rich and earned the nickname “Pearl of the Caribbean”.
Jeremie reflects Haiti’s nickname, “Pearl of the Caribbean”, with its rich culture, spirited community, white sandy beaches, green rolling landscapes and plethora of mountain vistas.
Jeremie is often called “the city of the poets” because of the numerous writers, poets, and historians born there, e.g. Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, father of Alexander Dumas, (author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo), Etzer Vilare and Emile Roumer.
Not surprisingly, Jeremie has inspired some of our volunteers to write their own poetry. Please enjoy our “Pearls”.
Haitian Hues
3 Nov. 2017
See blue/gray mountains emerge once the morning haze relents.
Listen to the conversations at Saint Antoine’s Hospital about the
woman with a black breast.
Touch the empty red coffins stacked and ready for this week’s children.
All this happens while yellow flowers bloom by the cobbled path to breakfast.
- D. Scoppetta
Dignity
10 Nov. 2017
An operation is completed.
We retreat to the confines of the instrument room.
But it is crowded this day.
In this room at its center sits the woman with a black breast.
Others converse around her, she sits naked above the waist.
Her face speaks of a struggle, of fatigue, and despair; the despair
of inevitability, the fatal advancing march of breast cancer.
Not confined to her bosselated breast but spreading to the skin of her back.
Her axilla and her supraclavicular fossa laden by bulky lymph
nodes abduct her swollen arm away from her left side.
But her posture as she sits, speaks of a quiet dignity.
Her life’s efforts as a Haitian woman, a mother, a neighbor,
a friend deserves; demands, that dignity.
She is examined as she sits there.
I ask: “Can she cover herself now?”
As I touch her shoulder.
The diagnosis is certain, her fate is sealed.
As surgeons we can offer no relief. We are fortunate to have
palliative care to offer her; pain control, comfort, and wound care
through the hands of the Sisters of Charity.
Chapter One draws to a close with a renovated OR suite.
Reaching from Mathilde to the woman with a black breast.
How many more shoulders must I touch?
Onward…
- D. Scoppetta
Beatrice
13 Nov. 2018
An 18-year-old girl dies,
A mother cries,
Haiti sighs,
A dream fulfilled, her end denies.
- K. Sayre