Pataje

During the three years that I lived in New Orleans after my first experience in Haiti and before I returned, I would sometimes attend the Haitian Creole liturgy.  There is a relatively small but growing community of Haitian individuals and families who attend.  They are very welcoming and kind.  At first, my goal was to attend once a month, a strategy to help me to not forget the language I had worked so hard to learn.  I found the liturgy energizing, and a way of maintaining at least in some small way a connection to the culture I had grown to love.  Gradually during those three years, I started attending more frequently, probably to the point that maybe only one Sunday a month on average would I not attend the Haitian mass.  Now when I am in New Orleans, it is the Sunday liturgy I most often attend, yes even when I am here on vacation.  Actually, a higher percentage of the typical mass is in Haitian Creole than many of the liturgies I typically attend in Cap-Haitian (liturgies at the orphanage and those planned by the sisters tend to be mostly in French.) There are songs that I learned while attending the Creole mass in New Orleans.  When we sing those same songs in Haiti the faces of individuals who attend the liturgy in New Orleans come to my mind, bring a smile to my face and I pray for the Haitian community of the greater New Orleans area. 

Last Sunday at the Haitian liturgy here, we sang a song that I had learned in Haiti; one we have sung frequently during mass at the orphanage.  That particular song is French, but I understand the chorus and get the general gist of some of the verses.  It is a song about sharing (share is patarger in French which is  pataje in Creole.)  While we sang that particular song on Sunday evening I thought of the children at the orphanage their faces coming into my mind, bringing a smile to my face and so I prayed for them.  I especially smiled recalling more than one incident when during play therapy I said something about sharing, encouraging the children to "pataje" and they broke into song, filling the play therapy room with that hymn.  As we sang that song on Sunday, I realized how much I miss the children.  I hope that they are doing well and enjoying their time with their families.