“Who is willing to talk about their experience in Haiti at the kite festival tonight?” Meg, our project leader, asked us again. Her piercing gaze swept the dining room like a vulture searching for a fresh kill. I shifted uncomfortably in my wooden rocking chair and lowered my eyes. Though I was thoroughly enjoying my time in Haiti, I had little desire to profess my impressions in front of hundreds of people. Besides, my muscles were still aching from the morning’s laborious task of helping build the stage for the night’s festivities. Tonight should be about relaxing, meeting local Haitians and becoming better acquainted with my fellow volunteers. However, Piervvey, one of the group’s Haitian guides and a good friend of mine, had other plans for me. Yanking my arm skyward he cried, “Heather will do it!”

Everyone turned abruptly towards me and stared.

“Piervvey!” I hissed, “I don’t want…”

“Excellent, thank you, Heather.” Meg replied, nodding crisply and then adjourning the meeting before I could protest further.

As the other volunteers drifted back to their rooms, I turned to face Piervvey. Wire thin and barely five-foot-three with a large, luminous grin continuously plastered across his face, he reminded me of the mischievous little brother I never had. His boyish antics usually amused me but not at the moment. Hot, angry words boiled on the tip of my tongue; I was prepared to give him the verbal lashing of his life.

Just as I was about to begin my oral smack down, he turned to me and in an earnest voice told me not to worry. “You’ll do fine. You always have such good things to say. I think that the people of La Vallee need to hear them from you.”  His large brown eyes shown with genuine faith, and his soft, rolling islander accent decimated my anger instantly and replaced it with fear.

“But Piervvey I can’t do it. What if I say something wrong? What if I can’t think of anything to say? What if I get stage fright?”  I sputtered, my voice growing higher with anxiety with each sentence.

“Oh, it’s nothing to worry about!” Piervvey responded brightly. “My grandfather was a voodoo priest and he told me if I ever need good luck, I should drink the blood of a freshly killed goat mixed with some rum. This always works for me! I will go to the market and then make this medicine for you. Se bon baguy! It’s a good thing!”

I felt my stomach convulse at the very idea of goat’s blood. “That’s okay, you don’t have to….” But once more, before I could formulate a contrary sentence, Piervvey was off and running towards the market, eager to show off his knowledge of the ancient religion.

I sighed and sank back into the rocking chair, cradling my head in hands. What was I going to say? How could I find the right words to describe what Haiti had taught me, or how at home I felt here? I pondered which words I could use to communicate these thoughts and feelings.  Peering out of the crevices that separate my fingers I saw the palm tree leaves shimming in the gentle breeze. School had just let out and I could hear children shrieking jubilantly in the distance. Everything and everyone seemed so alive here.

My thoughts were interrupted by a displeased bark that could only belong to Doug, a fellow volunteer. “No food?! Man, I’m starving! Lolo, why do Haitians only eat twice a day?!” Doug howled indignantly.

Lolo, another of our Haitian guides, did not bother to glance up from his phone and shrugged unsympathetically to Doug’s hungry plight. When I first met him, Doug’s five-foot-five stature and medium build had struck me as someone who would have a quiet personality. However, he was anything but quiet. A twenty-five-year-old, tougher than steel, ex-military combat soldier with a jocular, boisterous personality, Doug let his presence be known wherever he went. His idea of salutations and pleasantries had been to challenge me to a game to see which one of us could devour a stick of sugar cane the fastest and to teach me the most unsavory words in Haitian Creole.  Despite his somewhat unruly personality, I enjoyed his company.

Briefly disheartened, Doug flopped down in the chair beside me. “So Heather,” he said smirking while leaning back and clasping his hands behind his head, “I hear you are giving a speech tonight.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to….could you do it instead? You like to talk a lot,” I begged, more pathetically than I meant to.

He burst out laughing, “Yeah right! I wouldn’t do it if you paid me! But really it’s not a big deal. I mean what’s the worst that could happen?”

We both lapsed into a pensive silence, disturbed only by the soft thudding coming from Lolo’s headphones. 
After a moment, Doug scratched his unshaven stubble and spoke. “You know, I think that if you say something in Creole, just a few sentences, it would probably have a lot more impact than if you ramble on in English and use a translator.”

“But my accent…”

“Is fine,” Doug finished declaratively.

“But I can’t…”

“Tough luck, princess, just ask Lolo if you have questions about words. I have to go find some food before I kneel over,” Lolo snapped to attention and ripped out his ear buds,

“What are you saying?” he asked as Doug stood up to leave.

“You just agreed to help Heather learn some more Creole and wash my laundry for the next two weeks.”
“No way man! I don’t wash clothes!” Lolo hollered as Doug exited the dining room and sauntered towards the dormitories. “But I will help you, Heather. What do you want to know?”

Together, Lolo and I crafted a well thought out paragraph in English and then translated it into Creole. Though only a mere seven sentences, it was laborious task. Occasionally, Lolo would say my pronunciation was correct and then change his mind. Several times he exclaimed “Be careful when you say this word because if you pronounce it wrong it will turn into a bad expression!” Needless to say, these outbursts did nothing to help my anxiety. After an hour, I was exasperated and more worried than I had been before. Lolo, however, was quite pleased--“Tonight, when all of the people of La Vallee hear you speak in Creole I can say it was me who taught you!”

Later, as the sun began to draw its shades, all of the volunteers and Haitian guides gathered outside the hotel to begin the long hike up the mountain to Festikap (the Kite Festival) together.

At the last minute, Pierrvey returned from the market out of breath and, fortunately for me, with no good-luck concoction. “I’m so, so sorry,” he panted, “the man at the market said to me that the only goat he had was killed yesterday. I told him that it was not good enough, so I bought a lot of Chiclets instead.” (Chiclets is the most popular brand of Haitian gum.) His pockets were overflowing with his bounty and he cheerfully offered me a handful.

Everyone was in high spirits. Our laughter echoed off the mountains as we struggled up the nearly vertical incline. “It is like using a StairMaster machine only with obstacles,” one volunteer remarked after she slipped on some loose stones and nearly tumbled down the mountain. Though I attempted to laugh along, I did a poor job of masking the tension that lay just below the surface. Tamara, a fellow volunteer, patted my shoulder and reassured me. “Do not worry, Heather! You’ll do great. Besides, there might not even be that many people here tonight.”

I smiled, perhaps she would be right.

However, she was not. Even before we reached the summit, the stage was barely visible. A sea of hundreds, possibly a thousand, people stretched as far as I could see, with more pouring in from all sides of the mountain. Adults yelled greetings to each other, while children squealed with joy as they watched their kites soar high into the air.

Pierrvey came bounding up behind me and said happily, “Oh, look how many people came to hear you speak!”
I was about to retort with a sharp remark but Pierrot, the director of Festikap, came rushing over with a panic-stricken look. Tall, angular, with an easy smile, Pierrot was always calm, cool, and collected. If he was stressed, then there was something terribly wrong.

“Ou yo an reta! Quick, Heather, you are so late! You must make your speech right now!” He exclaimed, and pulled me towards the stage.

We raced through the crowd as quickly as we could. Pierrot squeezed my shoulders and propelled me forward. I acted as a shield for him from the elbows of the jostling mass of people though he most likely was trying to prevent me from making an escape. “Pi vit, pi vit. Faster, faster,” he muttered. As we drew closer to the stage my heart began to pound, slowly at first then fast and faster with each approaching step. Soon, the thunderous noise of the crowd faded into a dull murmur and all I could hear was the dum-da-dum rhythm of my heartbeat and my short, sharp intakes of breath.

Despite my shaking, aching arms I managed to hoist myself onto the backstage. I stood up and my quivering legs nearly gave way beneath me. What am I going to do if I can’t even stand up straight?  I thought desperately to myself. My stomach twisted and turned into a painful knot. The announcer began explaining about the organization with which I was volunteering. My speech was only seconds away.

“Pierrot, I don’t think I can do this.” I said, tears beginning to sting my eyes. “Pierrot?” I looked around. He was nowhere to found.

  Just then, I felt a soft touch on my shoulder. I turned to see an elderly woman beaming at me. Her nearly toothless grin radiated joyfulness and I felt as if her deep brown eyes could see right through to my soul. Clasping my trembling hand in hers, she peered into my tear pricked eyes and spoke in soft, melodic Creole that I could barely hear over the announcer’s booming voice, “Sè m 'yo, Ayiti se lakay ou. Ou pa gen yo dwe pè. Paran ou pral tèlman fyè. My sister, Haiti is your home; you don’t have to be scared. Your parents will be so proud.” Her kind words were exactly what I needed to hear.

This small gesture of compassion reminded me of the text my father had sent me shortly before I boarded my flight for Haiti. His words had deeply moved me at the time, and for some reason the benevolence of this old woman reminded me of them. “You truly begin to live life when you stop living in fear. I am so proud of you,” he had written.

“You truly begin to live life when you stop living in fear.” Though I had read and understood them before, these words took on a new and philosophical meaning for me. Here I was in Haiti, and I wasted a half a day being afraid. I nearly laughed at my own absurdity. I may never have an opportunity to do this again, and I had nearly squandered my only chance in fear.  Then another, even more profound epiphany came. I realized I should not have feared the “what ifs” of giving this speech, but rather the “could haves, should haves, and would haves” of missing the opportunity to do so. All of the tension and anxiety melted away and was replaced with a bubble of joy that rose from my abdomen. I nearly giggled with the sudden exhilaration of this new feeling, this new sense of freedom.

Moments later when the announcer introduced me, I expected the heavy weight of dread to descend upon me again. However, as I strode towards the front of the stage and gingerly took the microphone, I still felt the same elation. Surveying the crowd, I no longer saw a sea of harsh critics there to scrutinize my every word, but a community of people joined together in celebration. Hundreds of bright, white smiles glowed in the twilight. I could not help but grin back at them and taking an easy, deep breath I began to speak.