Tante Rose comes to visit us in the summer but never stays for long. She does not like that we have remained in Beau Jour when we could be living in Port-au-Prince.

When Tante Rose was my age, she left the mountains and went to live with a family in the capital. After a few months the family threw her out, so she went to live in an orphanage. The people who ran the orphanage sent her to school. She studied hard and became a nurse.

Papa used to brag a lot about Tante Rose. If anyone asked about Tante Rose—people who still remembered her from when she was a girl—Papa would answer, “My sister is working at the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince, curing the sick.”

When the men who used to work with Papa in the fields wanted to tease him, they would say, “Victor, you do not look like you have a sister who is a nurse. You are a peasant. You have big dusty toes. Why would you stay here and live like this when you have a sister in the city?”

People never understand why anyone would choose to stay in the mountains when they could be living in the city.

I can see many advantages myself to living in the mountains as opposed to the city. For one, there are fewer people here. When Manman, Moy, and I go to the capital, I always feel like I am being pushed and shoved by crowds of people. Even when we are in a taxi with Tante Rose, there are always people surrounding the taxi.

“People get lost in the city,” Manman says. Not lost in the same way people usually get lost when they are looking for a place they cannot find. People in the city, Manman says, know where they are going, but they still feel lost, as though they are looking for themselves.

No, the mountain does not have an advanced school yet. Moy has to go to Léogâne to attend his tailoring classes. But all in all, like Manman and Papa, I love these mountains, the vetiver and citronella plants along the trails, the rain tapping on the tin roof, even the fog that shifts from place to place in the afternoons.

I love the rainbows during sun showers. I love the shortcuts through the cornfields, the smell of pinewood burning, the golden-brown sap dripping into the fire. I love sleeping on a sisal mat on the clay floor in Granmè Melina and Granpè Nozial’s one-room house, and eating in their yard while listening to Granpè Nozial’s stories.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28

We walked down the mountain to Léogâne and found a camion that was just filling up. There’s a hibiscus garden painted on the sides of the camion and a red flamingo in the middle of the garden. I wanted to ask Moy what he thought of them, but he seemed far away in his thoughts. He must be thinking about Port-au-Prince and all the things he will do once he gets there. Moy loves the city. When he is there, he looks at everything as though with new eyes.