A Tribute to Him

It all started the day my big brother was born. February 6th, 1987, I believe. Through the years my mother has told me the story over and over again of how my father took one look at the tiny new human, my brother, and immediately went out and bought life insurance. It never gets old. Perhaps he should have thought of that sooner, some might say he was unprepared. But for me that story is the first image I have of my dad and the perfect example of how he’s loved us ever since.

The rains have come.

As I passed the open kitchen door I noticed a difference in the sky. Usually the afternoon storm-clouds roll in deep and dark, puffing up all their supposed fury and blowing themselves out in a matter of minutes.

Under A Blistering Sun

After two hours of bone-jarring, nausea-inducing travel the small village of Duclas emerges from around a corner. Located along the Artibonite River, Duclas is a dusty village of roughly 4,500 people, most of whom are rice farmers. It’s a landscape of intense contrast. You travel for a long time through a scorched barren landscape, turn a corner and are in the middle of lush fields. It’s confusing until a Haitian explains that the locals have created an irrigation system, which allows them to flood parts of the land for farming. Speckled along the route are men hacking away at the earth, tilling the ground under a blistering sun.