After a longer-than-expected hiatus in Jamaica, film student Zaka has returned to his native Jacmel.
"I'm trying to enjoy Haiti," he told me last week. "I'm happy to be back. I really missed Haiti."
Since April, Zaka had been filming a group of Haitian artists as part of an international residency program put on by ROKTOWA, an artists' collective in downtown Kingston, Jamaica. Final touches are still being put on the film, which charts the artists' journey from Haiti to Jamaica, where their art production was temporarily interrupted by the drug war that erupted in downtown Kingston at the outset of the summer.
"That was really hard," Zaka reminisced. "I had some problems with the police …," he said, noting that having his dreadlocks (which he removed in order to get a Haitian passport after a lawyer told him he looked too much like a criminal) would have helped him rather than hindering him in Jamaica.
In spite of that hitch, the trip – which included Zaka's first ever airplane ride – was a success.
"I'm happy. I learned lots of stuff. Before that I was naïve. Now I understand how to travel, how to deal with people, how to be professional," he said.
He'll need all of that to overcome his next challenge.
For well over a year, Zaka has slowly been formulating plans to get some post-secondary education abroad. Before the earthquake claimed the life of his best friend and mentor Flo McGarrell, Zaka was considering study at a university in eastern Canada as well as a possible residency term at Vermont Studio Centre, where he could connect with other artists, mentor types and improve his filmmaking skills. In spite of Flo's death, those wheels are still turning, if slowly.
The Vermont residency – where he'll meet many of Flo's friends and family – is next on his list. But to get there, he has to first secure a visa at the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince. Doing so will be no small feat. The instability created by the earthquake seems to have made it more difficult than ever for Haitian students to get U.S. travel visas approved. In Zaka's case, there's no telling what could happen.
Cross your fingers for him (everyone in Vermont has … complete with bitten nails). In a couple of weeks, we'll have a verdict.
(Facebook pic of Roktowa artists; Zaka is fifth from the left, wearing a hat.)
Photo above: Claudel Zaka Chery takes a moment to look around and remember working with friends at the now destroyed FOSAJ art centre where he once worked in Jacmel, Haiti. (Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail)
