The Leopard of Ti Morne - Part 1
Gonaïves

Izzy Goldstein felt in his heart that he was really Haitian, although no one who knew him understood why he felt that way.

"Izzy, you’re Jewish,” his mother would say with sorrow showing on her brow as she examined the Vodou artifacts displayed in his Miami Beach apartment. He had a particular affection for Damballah, the snake spirit, and there were steel sculptures, beaded flags, and bright acrylic-on-masonite paintings of snakes. He had thought of getting a terrarium and keeping actual snakes, but then there would be the responsibility of feeding them.

His original connection with Damballah began when he became convinced the spirit was Jewish. True, he was a lwa of Haitian Vodou and of African origin, but when not a snake he was often portrayed as Moses, and there were several richly colored chromolithographs of Moses holding the Ten Commandments on Izzy’s wall that he had bought in Little Haiti. This was little comfort to his mother since Moses was shown with horns. But even worse, from his mother’s point of view, was the other Damballah poster in which he was depicted as St. Patrick dressed like a Catholic cardinal with a Celtic cross and snakes at his feet.

Izzy argued that the name Damballah ended with an “h” and that Creole words never have a final “h.” Hebrew words, on the other hand, frequently do. His mother did not find this argument convincing. He also had an ason, a gourd covered with a net of snake vertebrae, that he had bought in Little Haiti too, and had the habit of shaking it when making a particular point, to the general annoyance of friends and family.

Also in his apartment was a picture of an admiral. This was in fact Agwe, who Goldstein tried to consult regularly because he was in charge of the sea. The sea was important in Izzy’s life. He had learned to sail in small boats handling a mainsail and a jib across Biscayne Bay, running to a causeway just so he could go beating in the wind to the other end of the bay. He tried to get away from the sea by going to college in Wisconsin, but after three semesters he dropped out and joined the merchant marines and spent five years on freighters across the Atlantic.

Five years of that was enough, and he was back in Miami trying to find a direction for his life.

Damballah offered fertility, rain, and wisdom . Yet it was only the last of these that interested Izzy Goldstein. Back in Miami he kept reading about Haiti. Then he started to go to Little Haiti, eat griyo, fried pork, and  bannann peze in the restaurants and learn about Vodou. He even started going to ceremonies late at night. He wanted to be possessed by a lwa. He wanted Damballah but would have accepted whichever one took him. Only it reminded him of that period before his bar mitzvah when he would wrap himself in his tallis, close his eyes, and bob his body up in down in rhythmic rapture as he recited ancient Hebrew and Aramaic, languages-to be honest-he understood even less than he did Haitian Creole. But no matter how hard he had tried, the Hebrew God did not stir within him, and now, neither did the lwas.

At the lunches in the little restaurants, at the late-night ceremonies, at the clubs where groups played konpa and merengue and the people danced so perfectly while hardly moving at all, he asked,What can I do for Haiti?

No idea came to him. There was no wisdom from Damballah. The lwas were as silent as Yahweh. Until one day…

A 110-foot rusted Honduran freighter was for sale for so cheap that he could buy it with the money he had saved from the merchant marines, with enough left over for the repairs. The engine only needed a little work, which he could do himself, the shaft was straight, the screw was almost new, and he only had to spend a small amount on scraping and repairing the hull. A forward pump needed a little work. And then Izzy Goldstein was captain of a freighter.
He was going to name it Damballah, but then a better idea came to him in Little Haiti on a block of two-story yellow buildings shining hot in the Florida sun. He could form an organization that brought relief to Haiti on his freighter. What kind of relief? Doctors? Medicine? Food? Tools? What should he bring them? He went to the Jeremie, a little bar where he could find his friend DeeDee.

DeeDee, whose real name was Dieudonné, was a light-skinned Haitian with graying hair. He kept moving to Haiti and then back to Miami, back and forth as regimes changed and he was in or out of favor. DeeDee took him to a lawyer in a gleaming white office on Brickell Avenue. The lawyer’s name was Smith. He was tall and lean and had his hair slicked back in that way that had become fashionable for men with that kind of straight hair. He was from the rare group known in Miami as Anglos. This was a negative grouping. If you did not speak Spanish and you weren’t black and you weren’t Haitian and you weren’t Jewish, you were an Anglo. Smith wore powder blue-striped seersucker and this worried Izzy. He never trusted men who wore seersucker suits. Izzy was surprised that a lawyer who specialized in Haitian clients would have such a luxurious office,  but whatever reservations he had about the lawyer were laid to rest when he told Izzy that he was not going to charge him. “I’ll just do it for Haiti.”

Wasn’t that wonderful? The lawyer showed him how to establish a nonprofit organization with tax-exempt status and a fund-raising program. Izzy called his organization National Assistance for a New Haiti and had the letters  NANH  painted on the hull of his freighter. Haitians pronounced it like the Creole word  nen , which means  dwarf  and made them laugh, but Izzy Goldstein didn’t know anything about that.

What did he know was that thousands of dollars from concerned Americans were contributed to NANH, and with that money DeeDee loaded the freighter at night. He said it was too hot during the day. When they were set to leave, Izzy was surprised to see his deck stacked high with used cars, bicycles, and even a few Coca-Cola vending machines.

“I don’t know, DeeDee. Is this the kind of stuff they need in Haiti?”

“They need everything in Haiti,” the man replied with a big sweep of his arms. “Even bicycles.”

“But shouldn’t we bring medicine?”

“We are gonna do that too. But you have to be careful with medicine.”

“How do you mean?”

“Not everybody is happy to see white people come with medicine.” Izzy looked worried; he didn’t like being reminded of his color. “We will go to Ti Morne Joli and Madame Dumas will explain everything, man,” added DeeDee with a reassuring smile. The lawyer had talked about Madame Dumas too. She was going to be important for NANH.

They pulled up the anchor and made their way around the curve of the Miami River into the bay Izzy had always loved, and set a course for Gonaïves, Haiti. In the pilothouse, Izzy Goldstein was too excited to sleep. Help for Haiti was on the way.

*****

When Haitians die, it is Agwe’s  work to carry them across the ocean back to Africa. But Agwe didn’t always have to do this work. In ancient times, when Haiti was still connected to Africa, life was much easier for Agwe and, in fact, for all the old lwas. In those days, all the lwas and all the animals of Africa could easily walk to and from Haiti. Haiti had lions and elephants and tigers and giraffes and leopards.The forests were thick with vegetation and the tree branches were heavy with every kind of fruit. But that was in the old days.