“Nou bouke. Nou bouke. Nou bouke. Leve kanpe.”
The woman yelling these words in Creole was captured on camera during a protest under the hot, midday sun, somewhere in Haiti, in mid-July: “We are tired. We are exhausted. We have had it. It’s time to rise up.”
Her cry was followed by another, and then another, from the swell of upset, shaking bodies, all crying out that Haitians could no longer accept the country’s constant state of crisis. Each shout ended with a passionate call-to-action: “Leve kanpe!” or “Rise up!” The teledjol, or gossip mill, being what it is in Haiti, the short video quickly went viral.