Dear Tam

Dear Tam,

Tre’cot, Haiti

At twenty-six years, I became a man, though the same age, you had lived twice my span.

The dust of Haiti was unlike that of home, depleted of nutrients, rainfall unknown.

Infested with scorpions, tarantulas, and mites, scourging heat, and cursed with a blight.

Thatched huts by a creek down the mountainside flowed. Living water through gravity bestowed.

In buckets, we carried sand a one-mile climb. I sweated and cursed your horrid clime.

Picking and digging a mountainside slope, I leveled the ground to concrete a floor. Why am I here? Never again, nevermore.

I was Creole befuddled and language impaired, scared pale white, no one cared.

Women were topless, unaware of the hex that breasts were only and all about sex.

Survival the goal, one day at a time, as Haitians, on average, lived three decades at best.

With bare hands, I leveled the ground, unaware of a danger lurking around.

A shadow hovered behind me, a shovel aimed for my head, you my dear friend, smashed a scorpion dead.

Gray like the soil, I had not seen, the intent of the creature to deliver its sting.

You laughed at my fright and taught me new truths. Li oke nonm, aleje moute. *

A friendship erupted, and I gave you my watch, an icon of importance, to you of great worth.

Baby Doc escaped, and your world went to hell, yet you smiled and laughed to live your life well.

In sixty-four years of living on earth, I’ve yet to catch up to your jolly and mirth.

To you, my friend who died half my age, you accepted your world and accepted your place.

You taught others to live one day at a time. I can never forget your name, Tam, and I hope you won’t mine.

Forever grateful our two ships crossed, my life was changed by an old young man who altered my flaws.

Sincerely, your dear friend,

Scott

*It’s okay man, lighten up. (Translation from Creole)

***

In 1986 I was part of a mission project to Haiti to help build a sustainable economy in the village of Tre'cot. The village is in the mountains, one hundred and twenty miles north of Porta-Au-Prince. I was a young, arrogant man off to change the world until the reality of the world changed me.

Tam, a young Haitian, befriended me, saved me from a gruesome injury, and broke down my barriers to his culture. My barrier was fear. While we were in the mountains, Baby Doc Duvalier, Haiti's brutal dictator, fled the country, and chaos erupted. On our return to Port-Au-Prince for our scheduled exit, we learned that no flight had arrived or departed in ten days.

The following morning, we arrived at the airport. We witnessed thousands of stranded passengers like us, seeking to escape the mayhem of violence and outright murder raging in the streets. An Eastern Airlines official stood on a desk with a bullhorn and announced all flights had been canceled again.

The eighteen Americans on our team were in shock that we were stranded. Suitcases lined the walls as the dejected passengers flowed from the gray concrete terminal. Our leader instructed us to sit on our bags to avoid the mass exit of humanity.

Twenty minutes later, the four hundred yards long building was emptied except for a few hundred travelers like us. We did not know what to do. I thought of Tam and the lessons I learned and said, "it's okay man, lighten up," in very poor Creole, and the group laughed.

Thirty minutes later, a Haitian Army contingent marched into the terminal, fully armed with assault weapons at the ready. A pair of soldiers detached at each of the fourteen entrances, chained the doors shut from the inside and stood guard. We were trapped.

Ten minutes passed, and the Eastern Airlines official reappeared and announced a special Eastern Airlines flight of a L1011 had just departed Miami and would arrive in Port-Au-Prince in two hours. Reservations were being taken on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Our leader was the third person in line. We were escorted across the tarmac three hours later to the waiting plane. Masses of people outside the airport attempted to climb the hurricane fence to rush the aircraft in desperation but were held off by the Army. It was the last flight to enter or leave Haiti for six weeks.

When the wheels retracted after takeoff, a cheer went up from the passengers, but all I thought of was my friend Tam in the mountains of Tre'cot. I prayed for his future and barely recognized at the time how much he had changed mine. I attempted to get Tam to migrate to the United States, but he refused and wrote me that he was where he belonged.

Tam, the same birth year as I, died at thirty-six in the village of Tre'cot in 1996 of what was considered natural causes. He was the village chief, an old man by Haitian standards. His actions, words, convictions, and life have impacted me to this day, and I'm forever grateful for him.

I can still see his infectious smile and laugh when I thought he would bash in my head. I arrived in Haiti as a naïve boy, but because of Tam, I was a man when I departed.