CHICAGO — Corniki Bornds sits on the sofa in her living room, where reminders of her son, her only child, adorn the walls and shelves. Just around the corner is his room, a place she couldn’t enter for six months after he went to play basketball with his friends and never came home.
Mennonite Central Committee
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — On my first visit to Ramon St. Hilaire’s workshop, in a narrow alley in Port-au-Prince, I remember it smelled of fragrant, fresh-cut wood. Sawdust sparkled in the tropical air. Outside, stacks of wood from the obeche tree cured in the sun, waiting to be shaped into elegant bowls. During this visit, St. Hilaire showed me a newly sanded platter. I took it and turned it over in my hands, feeling something familiar in the smoothness of its form.