A Merry Heart....

A Merry Heart

The universality of humor is really quite amazing.  I see people of a different language, a strange culture, and a completely opposite lifestyle to what I am accustomed going through a really rough life; and through it all there seems to be a deep desire to have fun.  It would seem that the environment is almost irrelevant to how God made His people; they are surprisingly the same.

Andre is an interesting character.  He is probably in his early forties, not well educated but a hard worker.  Even though Andre does not speak English he is quick to laugh.  Now I’m not talking a courteous laugh like someone chiming in to a funny comment or joke to be polite, but I mean a double over belly laugh that comes from the heart.  I think Proverbs calls it a merry heart, and Andre seems to have that.  Here in Haiti we tend to great one another with a fist butt and a smile.  I usually try to tell Andre, Bonjour, and he instantly breaks into a wide smile and says it right back with a giggle that seems like something from a Charlie Chaplain movie….the speaking kind.  Of course, Andre is like others.  He sometimes gets angry when someone won’t listen to him and can respond with a flurry of Creole epithets I’m sure would make a sailor blush if one could understand what he was saying.  But deep down I think Andre is a man with a good heart.

Kiki is more stoic than Andre.  I finally found a way to make him laugh, too.  It seems he enjoys the absurd.  As the driver for my jaunt to Port au Prince last week he and I had a fun discussion via our interpreter, Jean.  He was relaying how he heard a message one time where the pastor used a funny story about Americans.  When greeted they always seem to respond to the question, “how are you?” with the standard response of ‘fine’.  He said it was funny to him that they say that whether they are having a good day or a bad day, it is always, ‘fine’.  So I made it our standard greeting with Kiki and Jean that whenever we see each other we ask ‘how are you doing?’ … and with a hearty laugh he says, ‘fine’, just fine!

Mono, his real name is Manual, is quiet.  His English is quite good, but thick with an accent.  He always calls me ‘Sir’, and is quite polite with his answers.  Mono doesn’t smile a whole lot, perhaps because he is soft spoken.  He was my interpreter the first few days when I was working in the river bed.  We chatted quite a bit and developed an informal friendship.  Mono also likes to laugh at how ridiculous some things can be.  When in the river bed a couple of weeks ago he and I were waiting for the dump trucks to return from delivering a load.  A quarter mile upstream some Haitians were loading a triaxle dump truck by hand and had it pulled up to the river bank to make it easier.  As we watched he told me that they were going to get stuck.  I agreed.  Thirty minutes later as I was loading a truck Mono flagged me down and with a smile on his face pointed and laughed upstream at the truck.  Yes, it was stuck.  A few minutes later another loader pushed them out but Mono thought that was funny.  Now we poke fun at each other when a stupid situation arises; the kind we can’t do anything about but just enjoy ribbing each other over.

Pastor Ev is a proper man for his role.  He dresses well, always smiles and reaches out for a hand shake or fist butt.  He is also quiet and listens.  Today we moved the safe from the tent to the new offices that Bob and Paul have been so diligently been working on.  The safe was heavy and was a tight fit into the little closet they built.  Pastor Ev and two other Haitians managed to squeeze into that tiny doorway as they vainly tried to push the safe to the back of the closet.  Finally, in desperation, Pastor Ev sat on the floor in his nice clothes, and pushed with his feet on the safe.  With the other two pushing it slipped in.  He had a smile on his face, I reached for his hand to pull him up and almost fell over because I was off balance.  He laughed, I laughed, I yelled, ‘fat man down’, and it just cascaded after that.  He made a difficult task into something humorous.

I think the outward appearances that we see in people hides the possibility that all men want to have a good time.  A frowning face, a stoic look, a proper stance are just outward appearances that the Haitians give up front.  But once past the veneer I believe these people are as real, funny, and full of life as much as any others I have run across.