Graduating to Haitian

“Bonjou everybody!”

“Hello Everybody!”

“I am so proud of you.”

A thunder of claps came from the crowd and I waited for it to tame down before I continued.

“Wooh!”

“You have made it to the final rung of this climb and here we are at our graduation day.”

More claps came from the audience and it made me more excited to speak.

“You are part of the sum that inspired me to here.”

“I grew up with an eclectic fusion of diverse cultures circulating through my veins. I am part of an amazing ethnonational group of royal warriors.”

“When I say warriors, I mean, I carry an arsenal of weapons inside of my beautiful temple. For one, my blood which has splattered all over the terrain just to reach me.”

“I have been Haitian even before the obstetrician put the transducer on my mother’s belly. In fact, during my mom’s 20-week ultrasound, Dr Octagaon saw tattooed to one of the chambers of my heart, Haiti’s coat of arms, and he said, “another Haitian palmer line warrior queen.”

Laughter erupted intermingled with electric claps.

“Ha! Ha! Ha!”

“What does that mean you say? I mean it sounds a little crazy right? LOL! “

“A Haitian palmer line warrior queen?”

“It meant that royalty was about to blossom from her roots, and the female child would come bursting with colors, as polychromatic as Thelonious Monk’s fingers tickling the piano keys. It meant that an overlapping culture had been anchored into my song and dance."

"And although I am proud of my roots, it is no bolero.”

“The interesting thing about all those words is that, a person might be born with the cultural blood in their system but you must graduate from the school of Truth to actually be considered as a real Haitian.”

“Here we are at this moment of claiming our culture, in truth.”

“Today is that day and I am proud to say that I have walked the walk and I am ready for what is ahead.”

“Class! Class of a long, arduous journey to get here.”

The crowd responded with, “Yes! Yes!”

“Lend me your ears so that I might speak my Kreyol and hopefully you will understand what the heck I am saying.”

“We are a colloquial expression of exotic tongues.”

“For me, Kreyol has been spoken to me ever since my dad planted his seed. And ever since, my mom has been singing her favorite hymns to me as her own personal audience in her belly; in Kreyol, of course .”

“My mother was always talking to my dad in Kreyol. Especially when she was in the kitchen putting her foot into one of the best of Haitian concoctions that she could make.”

“The pungent aromas of the fragrant spices from her kizin always did have my mouth watering.”

“While in her kitchen, my mother tends to use an arsenal of herbs from her Jardin to make the flavors fascinating. There is nothing more satisfying and delicious than the diversity of Haitian cuisine that a garden can create; especially when she uses them to make the meals that come out of her cooking oasis alive. My mom has the magical power to touch any food item with her hands and turn it into an exhilarating meal.”

“She’d cook and then scream my name from the kitchen. ‘Nikol,’ and start talking to me in Kreyol.”

“I still have vivid mental imagery of all the good times we shared sitting at the dinner table to eat as a family. We sat together on a mahogany table in the center of a room painted pink, clad in family photos and a portrait of the Massif de la Selle mountain range painted by Eugune Poteau.”

“The table was always spread with a melange of different foods to water your palette. Rice and beans or diri avek pwa, as you would say it in Kreyol would be there on one of the trivets over her crisply ironed tablecloth.”

“We’d eat, talk, and rock the table like a steady drum rhythm that repeated every night in a harmonious way. Listening to them talk would always leave me feeling spiritually uplifted by their wisdom and words. They’d share stories from when palm leaves used to rustle under their feet in their daily comings and goings during their upbringings in that beautiful island of Ayiti where every day for them was a symphony of beauty. And every intoxicating anecdote they’d share would stir up a smile of nostalgia. So, I found myself asking a barrage of questions purposely, so that I could give them a reason to smile and to also gain some insight on the historical footnotes of their lives; even though sometimes I did not understand the Kreyol phrases they’d use.”

“Can you relate class?”

Everybody started screaming and chatting to the person sitting next to them and I waited again til the noise grew dim.

“Yes!”

“Their speaking to us in Kreyol as we grew up was a bridge connecting our generations.”

“Graduating class. We are the future!”

“If you don’t understand something, ask.”

“If they share their culture with you, love it while you can.”

“Ask questions while you can. In their brains holds a library crammed with books on shelves that span from the floor to the ceiling. Their stories are the background symphonies to the walks we walk through life.”

“I wish that when they spoke in Kreyol, the words out of their mouths would have featured real-time speech balloons with English subtitles written on them, so I could have understood what they said more fully, which would have led to me learning to speak it better.”

Laughter seeped from the mouths of the people in the audience.”

“LOL! Ha!”

“But without asking them to explain what they said, their words would just be passing words and I’d never be able to have a full conversation with my living ancestors that only spoke my parent’s native language.”

“I tried to repeat some of the words and phrases they spoke while I was growing up and was always told to speak English because my Kreyol was terrible. In my opinion, learning a language is like decoding a hidden message.”

“Every language has its own set of esoteric symbols that only insiders know unless they share it. And if you don’t believe me, try learning a foreign language on Duolingo.”

“Yup!” I heard a voice scream out as I continued.

“Sure you get the basics.”

“Oui ou apran yon nouvo bagay. Yes, you learn something new.”

“But, if you have a bare minimum familiarity with the language, you might get mad because some of the phrases they will try to teach you bear a veil of artifice on it.”

“We are fierce warriors and you know it.”

“Today is our day of advancement.”

“Still the idea of calling myself a true Haitian leaves me with questions.”

“Is it the ability to speak a tongue that makes you able to claim a cultural heritage?”

“I can say for a fact that I know it definitely is not in the way that one looks.”

“Haitians come in a wide range of colors and finishes.

You might never be able to tell if a person is of Haitian descent just by looking at them. I have some family members who are as dark as midnight and some as light as untethered snow after it falls fresh on the ground. The elements of our design are complex and almost as individual as a molded piece of clay. It’s the reason why some might experience colorism. Color complexions definitely do exist and it is no singular look that defines our culture. “

“Each Haitian person whether by origin or descent has their own sparkling ornaments that makes them unique. My epidermis is scarred with traces of my ancestry like a tattoo of a past love and the denigrations that have existed even before my great-grandparents, whom I never met, were born."

"We are graduating to true Haitians indeed,"

"But, it was neither just the biases nor was it the false myths that altered the world’s views about what it means to be Haitian that lead us to this ceremony of leveling up.”

“It is neither just the knowledge of our people’s palette or the love of the funky sounds and rhythms that our ancestors tapped out with their bare feet on the crowded patches of grass and mud.”

“It wasn’t even just the mere ability to speak Kreyol, French, or having the desire to learn it fluently.”

“Kreyol for all my life was what I thought to be the official language of Haiti. If I told anyone my parents were from there, they would ask me if I spoke Kreyol. Finding out that French was the actual official language of Haiti caught me off-guard."

"I found out that French is the lingua franca of the silk-stocking districts, and it was bound by certain rules that were always corrected when I tried to speak it.

Kreyol was regarded as the miseducated people’s French. Kreyol was the at-home conversations and the more common means of communication of the general public. Kreyol was the liberty of language with no brilliant translations."

"Yet, Kreyol is part of our DNA.”

"It is part of our arsenal of tools that make us who we are."

"It is part of our beautiful stories."

“My parent’s unique blend of Kreyol and English was planted in our ears and it blossomed in us for the purpose of dialect continuum.”

“It unifies us as a people. It highlights our ancestor’s personal stories and acknowledges our own cultural pride.”

“The wonders of our collected journeys to this moment still echo on. We can recant the flood of memories of the moments we experienced with vivid details that lead us to this very day.”

“We can boom with laughter for all the falls that it took us to rise to the challenges that we faced and overcame to get to the finish line.”

“And here we are, basking in this moment of celebration.”

“We are worthy of the accolades, the rewards of the titles we will bear, and the experience of momentous joy for finally being able to accomplish saying the words, “I did it.”

“Yes, you did. Mwen dakò.”

“Yes, you did, I agree.”

So here is to our future. We are graduates of the test. We are Haitian, not because it is inherently in our blood but because we chose to pursue the love for the red and the blue, the culture, and the traditions for the country we have gained through our arterial flow.

Congratulations graduating class of Real Haitians.

Screams erupted from the graduates sitting in the rows of foldable metal chairs sitting before the podium from where I was reciting my speech.

I couldn’t help but to contain my joy.

This was my class. These were my distant relatives. These were my people.

“You may now move your tassel from right to left."

I smiled with excitement as I moved my own tassel to the side that said graduate.

As the class released their roars of joy, I lead them in taking off their hats and throwing it up in the air.

It was our moment.

We were finally considered, “true Haitians.”

All I could think of saying to the crowd was, “sak pase!”

And the crowd roared, “N’ap Boule.”

"Thank you for choosing me as your valedictorian."

I moved away from the podium and continued my uninhibited celebration of the festivities with my fellow graduates.

What a fantastic day.