So, last Wednesday, all of my “boss carpenters” hopped into the big white L’Arche truck and we drove five hours to get to the capital city. Only one of the carpenters, André, had visited Port-au-Prince since the events of last January 12. In fact, André was living in the big city when it all happened. His life was transformed by it – the event gave him a reason to go back to living in the country, near his mother and his roots.

You can therefore imagine the conversations and the questions that took place in the car during our trip north! Boss Antoine, Boss Jean, were wondering what the National Palace would look like. André went one step further – no more governmental offices, no more Palace, no more little alleys that create (or used to create) the charm of a capital like Port-au-Prince.

An air of destruction, greyness, nothingness seeped into the air of the truck.

Seated in the middle of these streams of speech, Jean-Ville, Boss Janvil, who is deaf and mute, keeps on smiling. The idea came to me then. A simple idea but which, I’m afraid, speaks loudly to communications in the country, and to the importance we assign to people who have handicaps (in this case, a handicap related to hearing.)

Does Jean-Ville know that an earthquake has taken place?

I spoke to the others about it. The gray and dull air suddenly turned into laughter bursting from every mouth.

- Jonatan, Janvil sour, epi li bèbè. Mèm si nou te vle èsplike'l, li pa tap konprann!

“My dear Jonathan,” they said in a solemn tone. “Jean-Ville is deaf, and mute as well. Even if we wanted to explain it to him, he wouldn’t understand.”

Note that they said “even if”; the desire to do it is not there either. He is deaf (and not considering his slight intellectual disability); he will not understand. Period. In Haiti, the two most significant sources of information are the radio and word-of-mouth. So, if one of our senses is impaired, we may thus miss out on most communication and transfer of information in our society.

Janvil lives with his mother. No one thinks that he would be able to understand the idea of an earthquake destroying a part of the capital, killing in its wake hundreds of thousands of people At least, that’s what we say. But in truth, I think it is the communication system that is lacking. After all, how to explain to a man who is deaf and mute, almost blind, intellectually disabled, that the earth might shake to such a point that concrete walls return to the sand and dust from which they were made. Our own inability to communicate we often blame on others.

Strange.

So, there we are on the road. On the way to Port-au-Prince, headed directly for the IOM, to talk about this much-talked-about contract.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, we have been awarded this contract. Thanks to the IOM for this gesture of confidence toward L’Arche. Toward people affected by an intellectual disability.

Before leaving again, I pointed the community’s white truck toward the National Palace. For the first time on this trip, the bosses didn’t have anything to say. Sometimes, the heaviness in the air leaves us all mute.

Jean-Ville understood it all when we passed in front of the camps of white tents on the Champ-de-Mars. He even commented that the rain would have quickly filled the improvised houses. He was right; I often went there to see friends. I’ll tell you about it some day. Janvil, the mute, to whom there was no point explaining the how and why of the scene, understand with his eyes that something serious had happened to the country. He’s only missing the notion of time, a way to understand that the earthquake hadn’t happened just a week or two ago. Otherwise, there was nothing in the atmosphere of the city that would have helped him understand that more than nine months have passed since the city, the people, the spirits were struck by the earthquake.

I would like to help him understand that my adopted country has changed dramatically, since I arrived there in May 2009. But I can’t do it. I don’t have the tools to help him understand my world. So I talk to the others, who have stayed quiet, about it. But it’s about my difficulty in expressing myself to Janvil, that’s what I would like to tell you about.

- Ou mèt ékri'l, Janvil konn li.

At these words, I smiled quietly at “Boss” Jean. He had just reminded me that Jean-Ville knows how to read …

PS I took these photos at the United Nations camp at Minustah when we arrived in Port-au-Prince. The Bosses were so impressed that they are still talking about this base and its thousand vehicles.