Friends.
I live and work in Northern Haiti, but I grew up in the Haitian bubble of South Florida and in Port-au-Prince. I have heard from all my loved ones in the capital and can only be extremely grateful for the fact that there have only been relatively minor scrapes and bruises.
In other words: we are alive, but still in great pain.
People in Toronto are celebrating culture, work, and working-class culture with MayWorks festival. In Haiti, the city dubbed our national cultural capital is shaking off the dust, shoving a wide-enough path in the rubble to dance down the street to celebrate its patron saint day - bonne fête Jacmel!
It has been a year since I started this - I'll admit, very timid - blog. And Haiti, rarely out of the international spotlight these last 20-odd years, has been thrust forward again in the most painful circumstances in our history.
Nou pran kou tout bon vre.
After missing its initial runs in Port-au-Prince in 2003 (two sold out shows - both with standing ovations) and a showing in Miami an 2006, I finally lucked out this summer and got to see Florence Jean-Louis Dupuy's Haitian adaptation of the Vagina Monologues - or rather, Pawòl Chouchoun (a common Haitian Creole euphemism for, you know, down there).
Kreyòl Pale will be the the semi-regular mini-post about some of my favorite rare, funny or funky Haitian Creole words and phrases. And we launch with...
Tokay!
Two people are tokay when they share the same first name. As in: "Se tokay mwen." (They're my tokay). I have met very few tokay (only two as far I remember), and its precisely the first one I met that reminded me of the word.
Now, why Haitian Creole needs a word for something so specific is one of the Great Mysteries of the Universe...
