ON “THIS TOO SHALL PASS”
Listen to Edwidge Danticat In Haiti, “we have a concept called konbit: a gathering with a shared goal. Members of a community come together to accomplish something that benefits the entire community, or a single person in need. Konbits initially began in agriculture. “Today I work your field, tomorrow you work mine,” the Haitian novelist Jacques Roumain wrote of konbits. . . . How do we define community in a time of crisis, which is in many ways what community is for? We don’t need our neighbors as much when we are healthy and wealthy and can pay for all the assistance we require.”