Haiti's cultural community looks to uncertain future 2

In Haiti, Jessica Geneus is a familiar face. The star of five locally produced feature films. But today she has a different job: ferrying staff from NGOs around the ruined streets of Port-au-Prince. With cultural life low on the country’s list of priorities, she knows it could be a very long time before she’s back in the spotlight. Even before the earthquake we were fighting to get projects off the ground, so now it’s going to be even more difficult. When they talk about reconstruction, everything’s going to get preference over culture. Saying that you’re an actress isn’t normal at the moment. It’s a title I hang on to so I still feel alive. The quake has left some artists struggling to find their muse. Haitian poet, Dominique Battraville, was due to receive an award last month here at the French cultural center as part of a literary festival, but it never happened. I was one of 13 laureates. As an author I was in a fortunate position and then suddenly the quake hit Haiti. And it hit me. I say “me” because it was like I suddenly got Alzheimer’s. To paraphrase Rimbaud, I was in the rhythm of death. And I haven’t recovered. In a literary sense, I became sterile. But January’s quake hasn’t put cultural life completely on hold. Some have even managed to draw inspiration from the disaster. Proof that many within Haiti’s artistic community ... are determined to hold up a mirror to the country even as it suffers.