Part 4 (Katriyèm): COLLABORATORS
Safety First
Radio Protestant, Carrefour
Kevin spends the next week preparing for his excursion to Mount Boeffe in Southern Haiti. It’s one of the highest peaks on a mountain range that begins near Miragoane and then bisects Haiti’s Southern arm with Cayes to the south and Jeremie to the north of its spine. This strategic location is perfect to receive FM signals from the main Radio Protestant tower near the international airport. With line of sight to all of southern Haiti, the Mount Boeffe tower can then relay signals for retransmission by AM transmitters in communities that can’t receive a signal directly from Port-au-Prince. With his ear for French and Creole words developing, Kevin somehow hears the name of the peak as “Mount Buff”. The Haitians think this is hilarious and have met him partway, with their own version of his mistake, filtered through yet another translation layer, everyone now refers to the location as “Mount Beef”.
It’s a busy week. Kevin also moves in with Jè as planned. It’s an easy move, since it only involves Kevin’s backpack, the footlocker from Mother Mary’s, and some used furniture Jè has collected from friends. They’ve worked together since Kevin arrived. Jè has excellent English and French language skills. While Kevin is still learning Creole, Jè has been teaching him about local customs and how to be a less clumsy blan. They’ve commiserated about their shared problems with housing and life as single men in Haiti. Kevin’s real estate broker will only show him large four-bedroom, two bathroom houses. Every time Kevin insists that he doesn’t need that much room, the agent just smiles and says, “You need a Haitian wife!” Jè’s family all live up north, so he’s been staying with friends saves up for a security deposit. Kevin has cash but no contacts. They agree to combine their resources. Jè has a few conversations with the right people and now they share a two-bedroom house within walking distance of the station.
Jè emerges from a large closet in the engineering team’s work area. He’s dressed impeccably, as usual. “Jè ” is actually one of the bank-shot Creole-ish nicknames that are so common as cultures mix in Haiti. His given last name is Jeanty, a very common Haitian name that means roughly “God is gracious”. But because he always seems so confident, Kevin thinks it’s a nickname for “jaunty”. But because he’s not sure, he slurs the last name as the letter “J”. Like he would a teacher whose last name was too hard to pronounce, like “Mrs. J” instead of Jankowski. Kevin starts referring to “Technician J”. The Haitians pick up on this. But they think Kevin thinks that the name is “Jay”. They flip the joke on Kevin again and now everyone refers to Technician Jeanty as “Jè” the Creole-ish spelling of the name “Jay”. And no one even remembers his real first name at this point, but it doesn’t matter because even Jè is now referring to himself as, “Jè”.
Jè is looking worse for wear today; his brown forehead beaded in sweat. He’s pulling two large canvas bags behind him and places them in the center of the room. Kevin joins him and they start pulling things out of the canvas bags and arranging them on the floor. Jè asks Kevin, “Are you sure those priests are going to be able to help? This is a lot to drag up the side of Mount Beef. Last time I helped a team up that mountain, the Cayes pastors sent a dozen locals to carry everything and make sure the blans didn’t fall down a crevice or something. It took two weeks of negotiations just to get all of them ready at the bottom of the mountain!”
Kevin doesn’t look up as he disentangles a multi-meter’s prongs from a rat’s nest of cables and electrical leads. “And then they left this mess behind for the next guy. I mean, how can the priests possibly do a worse job than this?” Jè laughs, “Like your dad always says; Measure twice. Cut once!” Kevin grins back, “Right! When I was supposed to be learning how to fix things and wasn’t paying attention, Dad would ask me for the next step. Guess what he’d say if I didn’t have a good idea…” Jè thinks for a moment and then starts to laugh. “Let me guess. He told you to ‘stop guessing’. That sounds familiar!” Jè and Kevin roar in laughter as they both realize that’s ALL they do. The last engineering team had not bothered to update any maintenance logs before disappearing back to Alabama or wherever they came from. It’s been years since anyone has even seen the schematic circuit diagrams for the elaborate web of transmission equipment needed to run a national radio station across Haiti’s mountainous and far-flung provinces.
Kevin shakes a portable radio battery out of the canvas bag. The brick-sized gray battery is covered in that white dust that shows a battery has leaked its chemicals. Its connection terminals are corroded badly and the salt air from the marshy area around the station has turned an entire box of batteries into a brick of rust and who knows what else. Kevin shakes his head in disgust before coughing and continuing, “My dad was also an old deer hunter. His other famous saying was, ‘Treat every machine like a loaded gun. Disconnect the power yourself!”