Eritaj Kreòl

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...

Once upon a time a little girl lived in a small village in Haiti.  She lost her mother and then her father when she was seven years old.  Not having any family living close by, she was sent to live with her godmother, who did not have any children.  The godmother was bitter and cruel because she did not have kids of her own; so she became enraged when she learned she was to take care of her newly orphaned goddaughter.  As soon as the child began living with her, the godmother decided the child was burden and she would get rid of her. The little girl was very “chetif” (small) for her age for her age.  Still her godmother made her fetch water from a source located three miles away from the village.   She made her cook, clean, and fetch firewood too. The godmother was so mean she only fed the child the leftover scraps from what everyone else had eaten.   When the little girl made “ sòs pwa ” (bean soup) the godmother onl...