Laura Wagner
Haitian Creole Team
“Working with Respond has allowed me to make a whole crew of new friends (most of whom I haven’t yet had the privilege of meeting in person!), both on the big Respond team and on the Kreyòl team. It has also given me the opportunity to assist some organizations whose work I’ve long admired.”
What do you do professionally/ what is your professional title (when you’re not volunteering with Respond)?
Right now, I am Respond’s Haitian Creole team lead. Beyond that, I’m a freelance writer and researcher. By training, I have a PhD in cultural anthropology, and my research focused on the 2010 Haiti earthquake and its aftermath, including the displacement crisis and the international humanitarian response. From 2015 to 2019, I was the project archivist for the Radio Haiti Archive at Duke University’s Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, creating a trilingual (Haitian Creole, French, and English), publicly-accessible digital archive of Haiti’s first independent radio station, Radio Haïti-Inter. I’ve also written a YA novel about the earthquake called Hold Tight, Don’t Let Go. Now, among other projects, I’m working on a manuscript that interweaves the stories of Radio Haiti and the earthquake.
What language(s) do you translate?
Mainly Haitian Creole (Kreyòl), both English to Kreyòl and Kreyòl to English. I also occasionally translate documents from Spanish to Creole and French to English.
How did you learn about Respond?
A member of the Respond team (Esther) reached out to me via email in March 2020, because I had done some voluntary interpretation work for RAICES and Al Otro Lado in the past.
What motivates you to be a part of Respond?
As a writer and erstwhile academic, it’s gratifying to have a concrete, direct, useful skill to offer people who need it urgently.
On a personal note: I was living in Haiti when the earthquake struck in 2010, and two gentlemen who worked for my landlady dug me out of the rubble. I owe my life to them, and I owe a great deal to many other people in Haiti who have shared their homes, stories, and lives with me through the years. Translating for Haitian asylum-seekers and the organizations that serve them is one small way of paying it forward.
How has volunteer work had an impact on your life?
Working with Respond has allowed me to make a whole crew of new friends (most of whom I haven’t yet had the privilege of meeting in person!), both on the big Respond team and on the Kreyòl team. It has also given me the opportunity to assist some organizations whose work I’ve long admired.
Can you share a fun or little-known fact about yourself?
I grew up with a lot of pets: cats, snakes, geckos, iguanas, rats, frogs, toads, axolotls, parakeets, rabbits -- but I’ve never had a pet dog. I’m allergic to mango, which is a small source of grief, especially in Haiti, which is a land of marvelous mangos.
Favorite word in any language?
There are so many good words and expressions in Kreyòl. It’s a language of metaphors and proverbs. I really like the word “degi,” which means a little bonus. If you’re buying dry rice or beans from a woman in the market, the degi is the little extra bit she puts on top. If you’re buying a dozen konparèt – little ginger-coconut cakes from the town of Jérémie – the degi is an extra miniature konparèt they give you on the side. When I was working on the Radio Haiti project, listening to all these interviews from the past, I learned that “degi” comes from the Fon language of West Africa, where it means pretty much the same thing.
I like “kokennchenn” which means something like “humongous” – it’s a really fun word to say.
I also appreciate the terms “peze-souse” (literally “to press and squeeze,” figuratively “to exploit”) and “kraze-brize” (which is two ways of saying “to break,” but when you put them together it means “to ravage” or “to demolish”). I can’t say those are my favorite words because they are expressions of suffering and destruction, but they are powerful ways that Haitian people describe the forces that oppress them.
