Decolonization is the ongoing revolutionary process of returning land to the indigenous people to whom the land belongs. It is, in actuality a near impossibility. Decolonization also is the multi-generational restoration of the body to its proper owner through the cultivation of personal sovereignty. It is also a near impossibility to achieve. With everything so possible these days, the impossible is the only thing that seems worth doing! Success is seeing the body outside the lens of the colonized value system as “cuerpo supremus”, the sovereign body.

Mango trees look rich. The bark is dark, textured like old leather. The leaves are thick, deep green with a polished sheen. The tree is generous, secure in its wealth. It was familiar to me as large buildings are to a city dweller. There were four in my yard. One of them had its branches reaching the porch like a bridge. I would cross it and enter the tree after a day at school where my bullies had been particularly aware of my existence. I would climb up a couple more branches until I found the curved seat that the tree had made for me.  Hours were spent reading and healing. It was a botanical angel, hiding me in its leafy wings. It horrified me when my little cousin climbed it when he was visiting from the states. His skin exploded into welts. He wailed in agony. Mango is a cousin to poison ivy. Everything has its shadow.

It’s time to shred a t-shirt, stretch your gouyad muscles, buy some ear plugs and oil your limbs. There is no party like Carnival in Haiti. Nowhere. You are not the everyday you, struggling for a couple gourdes to rub together for the tap tap or the everyday you, so wealthy you vacation daily. You become a gyrating, nearly deaf from the music, sweaty, nasty mess of complete joy. Carnival is chaos. Carnival is connection. Carnival is celebration.

There are no memories before soup joumou. There is no marker in the mind for when this food was introduced to my body. As long as I’ve been collecting the trinkets of my days as souvenirs in my mind, there has been pumpkin soup.