When I arrived in the neighborhood of Delmas 60, Haiti, in September 2020, there was no library. It was in the middle of a pandemic. The time was one of uncertainty, chaos. Everything for survival and against Covid-19. The dream was suspicious, forbidden. But I would have been thought to be insensitive to culture if I had been reluctant to enter a temple of knowledge…
The news was not good. We were like lost in the depths of a labyrinth. Young people, left to their own devices. Yet they had access to games of chance, dominoes, cards. And the days of confinement were spent telling jokes, sitting on a low wall. No library, so no reading and no books. Daily cultural journalist Le Nouvelliste and eager to read, I had the feeling that a library was sorely lacking in the neighborhood. During the months that followed my installation, an excessive pain gnawed at me from the inside. She was visible in my eyes. In my gestures, and sometimes in my silence.
Offer the treasure of reading
I read alone in my room. With no one to discuss my readings. It was a major problem. I was suffering from the disease of the solitary reader. I started talking to myself. Read aloud to get a neighbor’s attention. Lugging my books around with me, sticking them prominently under my armpit in hopes someone would notice. I wondered with each ticking of the time how to pass the books to the idle young people of the neighborhood. It was an emergency during the lockdown. Urgency and opportunity to help young people discover the treasures hidden in books. In fact, it was enough to open them.
“I wondered with each ticking of the time how to pass the books to the unemployed young people in the neighborhood. It was an emergency during the lockdown. »
In this tiny apartment where I live, I have for a few years almost all the books of the big names in literature thanks to Haiti Solidarity Books, a social bookstore in Pétion-Ville that sells almost new books for a pittance. At home, there are books everywhere: in the kitchen, on the bed, on my table, in the shower and even sometimes on the shelves where I put the kitchen utensils. It’s my only treasure, my only luxury. How can I offer it to my neighbours? How to praise the imagination in this popular district of Delmas? This question haunted me.
Invitation to dreams
After a few months of hesitation, I ended up inviting a few young people to my home. Yes, like one invites someone to a party. With great politeness and enthusiasm. I remember it like it was yesterday. They were three in number: Wood-Kendy, Doundy and Richard. When they arrived home, I offered them books of children’s literature for coffee and I put all my personal library on the table of our friendship. We had an unforgettable moment there. We put that back.
The news spread like wildfire in the area. My personal library has become a public library. Since then, on my bed or on the floor, my apartment is crowded with young people. Some never made it past the first chapter, but I’m delighted today to have several insiders with whom I can have fun recreating the characters that enchant me. And, icing on the cake, we discuss almost everything: politics, ecology, migration, urbanization, human rights, journalism…
A library to change the vision of the community
Now, in my library, there are loan services, acquisition requests, etc. There are of course a few of all writers: from Ernesto Sabato to José Saramago, via Lyonel Trouillot, Yanick Lahens, or Albert Camus. We have all the Gabriel Garcia Marquez and all the Romain Gary. It is our greatest pride: these two writers have fed our imagination. We spent hours talking about Love in the Time of Cholera », a masterpiece of world literature. They liked it very much The promise of dawn ” Also.
Thanks to this initiative, I have become an emblematic figure in the area. Like what the job ofinfluencer was not born with social networks! A library is a platform as valid as Facebook. Sometimes I spend hours and hours discussing books with my readers. They are mostly schoolchildren, students and actors. These young people dream of becoming a writer, lawyer or journalist. They are already writing small chronicles, poems and imaginary love letters. Wood-Kendy became an actor out of love for Beckett and Ionesco, Emilie Marcellin is a feminist and coordinates the activities of the organization Women’s arms, and Doundy has not finished conversing with books. She speaks aloud while reading, like a football fan shouting at the players behind his TV screen. It is always with great enthusiasm that we receive a new member every week. It’s free. Just read, leaf through the pages, question the world around us…
“I am happy like Ulysses to have contributed to changing the vision of young people in my little neighborhood, thanks to books. »
Books are lights. They can change lives. They can help us reflect and understand our role here on earth. My library is an ideal refuge for reading, dreaming and traveling the world. I am happy like Ulysses to have contributed to changing the vision of young people in my little neighborhood, thanks to books.