About this Archive
The initial form of this archive is mainly the joint effort of Bryant Freeman and Kiran Jayaram. From some of his first trips to Haiti in the 1950s, Bryant began taking note of sayings that he heard, eventually transferring them to library cards. These entries were a mix of handwritten and typed, and indicated that he went through them over different periods to provide details or minor changes to orthography, interpretation, or source. Eventually, these over 5,500 cards filled three library card shelves. He held them until well after his retirement in 2007, when Kiran returned to Lawrence to teach part-time while finishing his dissertation. At one of several of their meetings at the Dillon's grocery store on 23rd Street in Lawrence, Bryant gifted them to Kiran with his ideas on how they might be put into print. While Kiran continues to bring those ideas to fruition, he asked and received approval from Bryant to create a more publicly accessible, digital product. This archive is the result.
As initially stated, it is mainly the effort of those two people. However, others have spent hours employed to bring this project to where it is now, and it is important to recognize their contribution. While a graduate student at the University of Kansas, Rachel XYZ worked on part of the database in the early phases. Cindy Arias, then an undergraduate student, completed most of the data entry work under Kiran’s supervision. She deserves singular recognition not only for her contribution to this project but additionally for her commitment to Haitian Creole as a Dominican American woman of color. As Galeano reminded us, long live the time of that immense map without borders when our legs were the only passport required. More recently, Trudy Kwok, a Computer Science major at the University of South Florida, helped put together the wiki version of this data.
This is not the final form. We invite people to submit proverbs, interpretations, and comments. The goal is to have this archive be something that can benefit the world while serving as a part of linguistic cultural heritage for Haitian Creole speakers in Haiti and beyond.