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An explanation [1]

['Chitown Kev', 'Alan Singer', 'Nanny Ogg', 'Belinda Ridgewood']

Date: 2026-07-23  

I know I’ve mentioned here and there how I got to where I am today but I feel some deserve a longer explanation.

As I’ve said before my mother got cancer over 20 years ago, and I took care of her, but I also took on all the bills, I had a good job at the time for Haiti and I managed relatively well, but over 200K is still over 200K, I took on debt to pay the hospital and arranged with the surgeon for a monthly pay. I was making around 3.5k a month which is a good salary in Haiti. I managed to pay most of it off, but then the 2010 earthquake happened and the Surgeon perished in the quake, his family let me off the hook for the balance.

Then in 2011 I got pregnant at 44 and my body (which I had been told would never carry a child) got sort of wrecked. My old job had been destroyed by the earthquake and people weren’t interested in advertising when Haiti was trying to survive, soon thereafter it closed.

I found some good jobs after that one at another agency that did audio novellas, and after that at a bank, none paid me the same after all I had 25+ years in my old job, where the boss’s daughter is Nate’s godmother and I was new in these jobs, but still for Haiti good paying jobs. So I could keep up and I could take care of my community needs (the kids).

I was working at the bank when in 2018 I fell sick. I had a raging infection that could not be located, I was throwing up, sweating, diarrhea, peeing constantly, I couldn’t even keep water down. The doctor said whatever was in my body was trying to exit through every hole in my body, at one point they even thought I was poisoned. For 4 months I was hospitalized with a couple of days break when they sent me home thinking I was doing better, but I would start throwing up again so back I was within a few days.

So I lost my job. I went back home finally for good, but was weak as a kitten, couldn’t eat anything but oranges, everything tasted like dirt. My sister-in-law took us to her house where I spent 6 months getting back on my feet.

This illness has left me with some consequences, one of which is severe vertigo, and digestive problems (the infection I think must have been there). Anyways as I can’t stand up for more than 5 minutes without getting dizzy, it was a problem finding a job since even a shower is a challenge. Then Covid hit, then the riots in Haiti, and on top of all that dealing with Nate’s ever increasing asthma attacks due to gas and smoke in the air… so we left Haiti.

I have several home jobs: I take notes at zoom meetings for a company and that pays me 500 bucks a month. I set up sessions for an online school but that’s only 3 months out of the year and it’s 400$, I do evaluations of AI translations for a client each eval is 15$ so that depends on the amount I get per month and the last job is the one where again I do admin duties for a company online that deals with travel docs to the UAE and that has been disturb by the war the pay is % based and used to fluctuate between 1k and 1,250$ a month. So while I still needed some help back then, I could handle the heavy stuff on my own. Now I can’t. so that’s it.

I’m not lazy or grifting, the day of my c-section I was finishing a project with my laptop on my stomach for my boss. I used to stay at work till 9 pm from 7 am. I just ran out of steam.

#TheAmericanHaitianPoet Muriel Vieux – July 23rd, 2026 – ©All rights reserved

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