Pawòl Tafia! A Drunken promise (haitian folktale)
A Haitian family had a “ restavék ” who never seemed to find time to do the dishes after dinner. She always piled up dirty dishes under her mistress’ living room table overnight to wash the next morning. The dirty dishes attracted a clever mouse named Mélen to the house. Melen loved feasting on food scraps, so he decided to settle in a hole behind the living room wall of the family’s kounouk (shanty house). Every day at dusk, Melen would leave his cozy hole to forage for food. Cautious, he would stand in front of his hole before venturing out. He would look around and say, “I like living here!” What he really loved was that the roof of the Kounouk was freshly topped with green vetiver ( vetiver: roofing grass) that river rocks wall that kept the kounouk cool (natural building material keep Haitian houses cool) in the sweltering rainforest heat. And, of course, there was the abundance of food scraps…. The family living in the kounouk spent th...