The Haitians Hang Up Their Laundry and Chase Chickens

Close to my window at the back is a clothes line. Close to my road is a house occupied by 2 large Haitian men. They mostly keep to themselves, but they are a presence, and they do walk back and forth by my door and window, sometimes silently, startling me, and sometimes chattering loudly. They usually do their laundry at the pipe by my door, and hang it up on the line at my back window (2 feet away). It is a minor disturbance. This Sunday morning the Haitian men were doing their laundry, at the pipe, and using the bench I had built outside my door, and hanging up their socks and underwear right at the window (which, by the way, also blocks the light). Sono fussed and muttered about it, as he usually does whenever they are about. I agreed it was strange, but not worth doing anything about. He was watching them from the window. Finally when the last pair of boxer shorts went up he leapt into voluble action. French and patois are his first language, so he let them have it…I gather he told them to go hang their underwear elsewhere, not right in the Lady’s (that would be me) direct line of vision. “ C’est pas bien! It is disrespectful.” I think I caught, “Put up a line by your house. Why do you come here and bother the Lady?” The laundry came down quickly and disappeared around the corner.

To complicate things further with my Haitian neighbours…

I am taming a wild rooster and his two hens. They come every evening at the same time for food, just before they roost for the night in a tree. One of the hens has been sitting on a nest of eggs in the shrubbery outside my door. It takes three weeks for the eggs to incubate, and I figured that we were at about week two and a half. So yesterday, the day after the laundry incident, I caught the Haitian man stalking the setting hen. I flew at him, squawking, arms flapping and French flying just like a mother hen. Again Sono let him have it in patois. Today we were rewarded by the black hen bringing her two little chicks, one black, one blond, for a feed!

By the way, you don't hear the term chicken used very often. They are reffered to as 'fowl' pronounced 'foal'.

Also, by the way, I have spoken more French in the past week than I have in the past 5 years. I had no idea how much I knew.