Jerry's Subs

It seems that I am involved nightly in plans to get the needed resources to Haiti. The USN Comfort is in need of doctors and nurses, the surgical teams are winding up and need people to provide post-op care and follow-up, and we are going to need thousands of new prosthetics, wheelchairs and walkers. Until we find out about shipping, our stocked warehouses cannot be unloaded. It's frustrating because so many people have called wanting to do something to help. We don't have any more room in our warehouses despite the need to get things to Haiti, and we don't have any place to store things if we ship them. We are working on sorting these things out, meanwhile people are getting sick from communicable diseases in the camps, and there are still fights over food and water distribution. I for one, am hopeful that this earthquake will quite literally be the shock that Haiti needed to realize that changes needed to be made-- big changes. If not, I foresaw mass death due to starvation and overpopulation in twenty years. It seems that the corruption in government was too entrenched in Haiti and no one despite his/her best intentions could change the status quo. Well now is your chance! The young members of the Haitian diaspora, the educated people who live in Haiti, need to unite and form a new vision for this country. This opportunity could be Haiti's last chance. I am uploading a short story I wrote a few years ago about how changes can be made in one's life, the lives of others and possibly even the life of a country. Haiti has wonderful, talented individuals.... they just need to start working together with an eye toward the future.

Jerry's Subs

He unlocked the door and swung it open to meet the dust and the first rays of the steaming morning sun. Soon the sun would begin its crawl up the sidewalk and onto the tile floor of his shop at the corner of Rue de l’Enterrement and Rue Tristesse on the edge of the Champ de Mars. Jerry knew it would be another slow day for his sandwich and pizza parlor. The OAS had called for another embargo and the UN troops, missionaries, medical teams and all the other optimistic saviors of the third world who used to come to Jerry’s Subs for “manje amerikan” had been withdrawn or evacuated two months ago.
It was the first week of July, and as he felt the early sunlight lick like flames at his feet, he knew that in a few hours the heat would be suffocating. He cursed under his breath and wondered if he could afford the diesel to run both the air conditioner and the refrigerator. Two months ago Jerry’s Subs was busy every lunch and until ten o’clock on weekends. He kicked at the dust on the broken cement that was once a sidewalk. Ten years of tropical rains followed by burning sun “te boule tet mwan tou” (has burnt up my brain too). He turned and looked down la Rue Tristesse towards the Champ de Mars. The forlorn taxis were just starting the morning rush delivering school children in matching uniforms of white shirts and blue or plaid skirts and pants to the schools around the Champ. Jerry himself had gone to one of the better primary and secondary schools in Port-au-Prince, L’Ecole Gerard Armand Joseph. It was not far from Jerry’s Subs on Avenue Charles Sumner, named after the abolitionist US Senator. Senator Sumner was beaten with a cane in the Senate Chamber by a southern colleague who disagreed with his views on the slavery question.
Jerry left Haiti when he was twenty to go to college in the States. He started at Miami-Dade Community College but never finished. Too many parties, too many girls who loved his accent, his green eyes, and his caramel-colored skin. He started an import business which worked for a few years, but then he got arrested for smuggling ti boules of cocaine and did 18 months. When he got out he found he couldn’t make a profit importing just salad bowls and bad reproductions of Haitian art. All at once he was in his thirties and his parents weren’t interested in supporting him anymore. When his father’s cousin who was the head of the Schnieder family suggested he return to Haiti and run the shop on the corner, Jerry had reluctantly agreed. When your uncle is one of the ten most powerful men in Haiti, one of three businessmen who brokered the return of President Jean Bertrand Aristide, you consider his suggestions carefully.
So he returned to Haiti, whose dirt he had sworn would never again lie in the cracks of his sandals when he left ten years ago. He kicked at the dust again and scowled. Where was Jean Baptiste? He was supposed to be the first to report to Jerry’s Subs in the morning to sweep the broken sidewalk in front of the store. He supposed Jean Baptiste had begun to neglect his duties because each week there were less and less duties to perform.
Since the embargo began he had come to detest the sun. Even in rainy season it was relentless. In dry season he had seen Haitians who had never known anything but the heat of the tropics, crumple and faint in the streets under the weight of the sun’s oppression.

to be continued.