Getting to Know the Aldors

My hosting family was Monsieur and Madam Aldor and their 5 kids—3 of whom were actually theirs, and the other 2 belonging to a sister or cousin or something- it wasn’t totally clear.
The Aldors farm for a living, and have plants, crops, and fruit trees scattered throughout the hillside. They also have relatives scattered throughout the hillside- they told me that basically everyone in their little community is related. The family pointed out the papaya and mango trees on their property, and Monsieur let me swing his machete and plant some seeds.

One afternoon, Monsieur and one of his sons taught my fellow traveler, John, and me a card game. They pulled out this beat up, raggedy deck of cards (I have around 6 brand new decks of cards in a drawer at home) and John and I gamely tried to catch on to the rules despite us speaking English and our hosts speaking Creole. Every time I made some points, I slammed my cards down on the table like I had observed the son do, and this made for some great fun and laughter no matter what language we spoke.




Indeed, with dozens of pairs of children’s eyes watching me at all times, I found that really all you have to do is smile, pat them, and occasionally shake your booty in order for them to think you are the most hilarious person in the world. I don’t do a lot of booty shaking in San Francisco, but I figured give the people what they want. Here are some of my local followers.






Our last evening together, I showed the family two postcards of San Francisco- one of the Golden Gate Bridge, and one of the downtown buildings. They really liked the Golden Gate Bridge. I also showed them a photo of my family, and they wanted to know exactly who everyone in the photo was- sister, brother, mother, nephew, niece…..

After us visitors had showed off a few photos of our families, Madam brought out a treasured photo album, and we went through the album page by page, with Madam Aldor pointing out and naming every single relative in each and every photo. It took a while, but I couldn’t help but note that when an American pulls out photos to show strangers, they preface it with “oh, you don’t want to see all these photos… it’s boring.” Whereas, family is so important to Haitians that they were proud to identify everyone and happy to share their extended family with us.

Even after only a few days with them, I felt a real bond with the Aldors, and certainly a lot of admiration for them. Make no mistake about it- they are poor and they struggle to put food on the table. But they welcomed strangers into their home, they sacrificed their own comfort and probably some of their own meager resources to house and feed us, and hopefully they enjoyed us as much as we enjoyed them.