Happy New Year! First blog post and podcast episode of the year! This is the year of me staying consistent! You can help me reach my goal by supporting the podcast at patreon.com/dcolin. Thank you for reading and listening!
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The first full week of the year is already gone. I spent New Year's Day in the house I grew up in gathered around a table having soup joumou with my parents and husband. It's tradition for Haitians to bring in the new year with soup joumou to celebrate Haiti's independence day, January 1, 1804. Two-hundred and twenty years later, the scent of squash soup wafts upstairs in the early morning and I think about the Haiti I remember, the one my parents carried with them in their hearts and made me fall in love with. That Haiti feels far away separated by more than ocean water.
Last week I read an article in the New York Times with a headline that read, "Massacre Upon Massacre: Haiti's Spiral into a Failed State." It's no secret that Haiti is struggling. What is overwhelming is the magnitude of history since the Haitian Revolution that led to this point in time. Every time I watch a YouTube video about what's happening right now, I search for a Port-au-Prince I remember. My eyes tell me it's gone. My heart doesn't want to believe what I see. The Port-au-Prince I remember was bustling in a year-round hot sun, people carrying goods on their heads and hailing tap-taps to get to their next destination, children in blue and khaki pressed uniforms on their way to and from school and fans gathered around a television waiting for Brazil to score the next goal while holding a small flag and a pattie in their hands. Now the streets are bare in wait for the sound of gunfire.
Yet, we sit around the table and have soup joumou. The other day, I got off of the bus and asked the bus driver who I know is Haitian if he made or had any soup joumou. With a shrug and voice that sounds like Haiti, he said no. I asked why not and the space between his disappointed shoulders and my feet stepping down from the bus was full of an elephant we don't know how to get rid of.
I read the article and one of the first things it says is, "Back-to-back massacres that killed more than 300 people, followed by a Christmas Eve assault on Haiti’s largest public hospital have underscored the Haitian government’s increasing lack of control over the nation’s deepening crisis." I know it's going to be a tough read, one that'll break my heart a little more but I tell myself, it's worse to not know so I keep reading. There's a brief recap about the assassination of Haiti's president, Jovenel Moise in 2021 for anyone who didn't know and then more reporting about death tolls. "The hospital shooting followed two massacres in separate parts of the country that killed more than 350 people and have shined a harsh spotlight on the failures and shortcomings of local authorities and an international security force deployed to protect innocent civilians." it says. "One of the massacres unfolded last month in an impoverished, sprawling, gang-controlled Port-au-Prince neighborhood where a lack of any police presence meant that for three days older people were dismembered and thrown to the sea without the authorities finding out." When I get to this part, I am holding my hand over my mouth and stop to take a breath.
How important is a two-hundred and twenty year tradition when this is happening? The story goes that Marie Claire Heureuse Felicite Bonheur Dessalines, the first empress of Haiti, served soup joumou on January 1, 1804. It's significant because the white French enslavers were the only ones permitted to eat it while the Africans they enslaved were the ones who prepared it. The squash serves as the base of the soup with humble ingredients but it is a celebration of independence and a soup made of reclamation. It's no fireworks but a symbol of my ancestors' fight, and a tasty one at that.
Today is January 12th. Fourteen years ago today, the world witnessed as Haiti endured a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that took the lives of over 200,000 people and displaced many more. I remember watching the news and watching people still dance, still sing in the streets. I thought if Haitians could survive this…then anything is possible. But since then, there have been hurricanes, a cholera outbreak caused by UN peacekeepers, a presidential assassination and a mafia scale grip on the country by well-armed gangs. Now I ask how much more can Haitians survive?
I brought leftover soup joumou back with me. I ate it for three days. In 2019, I performed a one-woman show that I wrote called Simone. It's about a Haitian immigrant earthquake survivor fighting to stay in the United States after threats of losing her temporary protected status or TPS. There's a part in the play when Simone makes soup joumou on January 1st. It's her way of remembering and resisting.
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Let's see, I need
half a cup of olive oil,
scallion, cabbage,
two potatoes, two yamn,
joumou of course,
turnips, celery, carrots,
one package of spaghetti
and gnou ti kal pesi...
and epise! Can’t forget to flavor.
Black pepper, thyme,
two je chalot, some Goya,
some maggi and garlic.
No one ever told me soup joumou's story
A bowl of rebellion simmering since 1804
All my life I celebrated the first of the year
this way, these two things:
the new year and Independence day.
Now, January 1st reminds me of the distance,
a calm from before I dream about.
I make this to remember my home
to remember what freedom tastes like.
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With threats of deportation lingering in the air as Inauguration Day approaches, I worry about what Haiti people would be returning to. With all that is happening in the world, I think about how fragile safety can be. But I hope at all costs, we never forget what freedom tastes like and fight for it. Maybe a start would be the estimated 20 billion dollars France should pay in reparations. In the words of Leslie Voltaire, “The time has come to rewrite our economic history just as our ancestors wrote the history of our freedom.” On January 1st of this month, Voltaire, current president of the interim council in power, delivered a speech sharing that elections would finally be held this year and calling for reparations from France. It would be a different kind of reclamation. One that might make eating soup joumou feel like hope again. Increasingly, it is difficult to eat symbols that taste like the air of a distant memory.
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D. Colin
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Works Cited
New York Times. "Haiti's Gang Massacres and Instability." The New York Times, 6 Jan. 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/06/world/americas/haiti-gang-massacres-murders-instability.html.
Quinn, Allison Keyes. "Haiti’s Beloved Soup Joumou Serves Up Freedom in Every Bowl." Smithsonian Magazine, 30 Dec. 2021, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/haitis-beloved-soup-joumou-serves-up-freedom-in-every-bowl-180981378/.
Caribbean Life. "Haitian President Demands Reparations from France." Caribbean Life, 8 Oct. 2021, https://www.caribbeanlife.com/haitian-president-demands-reparations-from-france/.
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