Day 55 - Crystal Pitcher (Give) and Happy Haitian Independence Day!

Melissa is on a roll with the crystal, apparently.  Today she decided to give a crystal pitcher to Kate. 

Kate and Storly (our friends from Haiti who are responsible for getting this ball rolling in the first place) invited us over today.  They were having friends in throughout the day for pumpkin soup - a traditional January 1st meal in Haiti.  (It tastes so much better than it sounds - believe me!) 

I say "January 1st" on purpose because the soup is not really a celebration of New Year's Day as such - it is served in recognition of Haiti's Independence Day. 

January 1st, 1804, marked the official proclamation of the end of slavery in Haiti and the beginning of a new republic.  A slave rebellion, begun in 1791 and stretching into late 1803, had successfully overthrown the French masters and sent them scurrying back to Europe.  Slavery had been established on the island (mostly to harvest sugar cane) not long after Christopher Columbus 'discovered' Hispaniola (as they called it then) in 1492.  (The indigenous peoples died off as a result of the diseases that were brought from Europe.) 

Storly explained to us this evening that pumpkin soup had been a dish which only graced the masters' tables throughout the years of slavery.  The slaves were "fed like dogs" and never allowed to have the soup.  So the eating of the soup on Independence Day is a way for Haitians to assert their equality and celebrate their freedom.

I think that's an awesome tradition!

By the way, I've done some reading recently on the history of the relationship between Haiti and the U.S. and it's not at all pretty - neither recently nor way back.  For example, speaking of celebrating Haitian Independence, guess which slave-holding nation to Haiti's north was not at all thrilled in 1804 to see a republic in its own backyard founded through a successful and violent slave revolt??  (We didn't even recognize Haiti as a nation until 1862.)

But America did gain quite a bit indirectly from the rebellion in Haiti.  Napolean was prompted to sell "Louisiana" to Thomas Jefferson because of the loss of France's most profitable colony.  Jefferson had originally only expressed interest in buying the city of New Orleans.