Haiti: Back in "the day"

One week shy of seven years ago, I made my first trip to the developing world with then-new employer, Compassion International. First tour? Haiti. Ten days on the ground, filming and documenting life there, forever altered my outlook on life.

A year later, during the 2004 overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, I finally got my thoughts together enough to journal about it. It's a long read, but it'll give you an idea of what life was like there...before the earthquake, and even as recently as two years ago.

Looking back at Haiti: From my journal, 2004

It’s been exactly one year since Haiti hit me like a brick wall.

From the frenzied exit out of the Toussaint L’Ouverture International Airport, which bears a strong resemblance to a huge warehouse with sparsely equipped stations, to spewing from my mental vault the phrase, “Non, merci, non, merci” as many times as I could dish it out till we could get to the car—it was sheer madness.

The minute we were in the car, our host firmly commanded us, “Lock your doors! Lock your doors now!”

That was just the beginning.

Nothing I’d ever experienced had prepared me for the next several days, when I learned how hard life is on a normal day in a developing country—let alone during the uprisings of recent days in Haiti, our neighbor to the south, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation.

There’s no order to anything in this tiny Caribbean nation, home to 8 million poor and largely unemployed (80%) people and island-mate with the more prosperous, more developed Dominican Republic in the eastern half of Hispaniola.

I thought the chaos—the yelling, the frantic horn-honking, the labyrinthine drive down every potholed street—was just characteristic of Port-au-Prince (PAP), the capital city. But we found the same was true of the northern coast, which rebels who today are calling for Aristide’s ouster now have blocked off from the rest of the country and from critical food and medical supplies.

Even on Haiti’s largest offshore island, La Gonave—looked down upon as “home of the hillbillies” by equally poor and jobless city dwellers—roads are impassable by anything short of a four-wheel drive vehicle. Graffiti both for and against Aristide and neighboring nations—not to mention any names—adorn the ubiquitous cinder-block walls that provide security to most operational buildings. The broken bottle shards coming out of the top keep wall-jumpers out.

Anything of value = survival

And, just like in PAP, people lined the streets selling anything from scavenged rolls of toilet paper to fist-sized pouches of water from Culligan. The Haitian gourde has devalued so much that, purchasing much more water than that is cost-prohibitive.

(One day I tipped one of the housekeeping staff in our PAP home-away-from-home, Hotel Montana—the hotel-of-choice for foreign diplomats, aid workers and media. The US$2 tip made her face light up with joy. This was, after all, about two months’ wages. There are high-ranking, well paying jobs and there’s everything else. She fell in the “everything else” group.)

Fortunately, the French I’d spent so many years learning came in handy (thank God for language immersion and my summer “studies” in Nice). I talked with people (I’ve been praying for them ever since…why didn’t I pray with them then??) who most of the time were trying to sell me something.

There's always dignity

I could tell hardly anyone had looked them in the eye or treated them with respect. At the end of our hotel’s road were roadside vendors selling anything from jewelry boxes to original oil paintings. As I haggled with them, I assured them I wouldn’t take advantage of them, and when I said I’d return to a specific vendor, I did. It seemed to make a great deal to them that we didn’t avoid them. Haitians seem well aware that dignity is almost all that remains in their possession, and they fight hard to keep it.

 One gentleman along the coast just south of St. Marc, where the anti-Aristide rebellion started in early February, told me how it was becoming difficult to sell his jewelry. Not only were tourists not coming to Haiti, they weren’t coming to the north coast, which has a couple of eerily vacant resorts, including what was a Club Med just a couple of years ago. He told me how difficult and expensive it was for him to buy supplies like mere metal clasps that would provide closures for the typical island-motif necklaces he had made.

Meltdown

I had my first meltdown while we were interviewing one young man at one of the locations where we serve a few hundred of the 40,000 Haitian children in our program. The interview didn’t go that well, but in the sweltering heat and dust of this largely un-arable land, out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a little baby—about 9 months old, I guessed—sitting outside, playing.

It’s how she was playing that broke me: she only had a shirt on, no pants, no panties. She sat there, her bare bum soaking in a puddle that was likely laden with bacteria. No protection from anything. That’s how it is there. There’s no buffer from poverty—not for adults, or for children.

As if that weren’t enough.

The smells of Haiti are distinct. You can tell when Haitians are firing up their makeshift stoves—rusted-out steel barrels in many cases—for cooking. The smell of charcoal fills the air, the bay outside PAP fills with smoke, and by afternoon it’s whisked away by wind currents.

In some parts, a persistent, dank smell hangs in the air. It’s the aroma of dumpsites everywhere—what we might call landfills—that also serve as outhouses. Dumps seem to be a “given” in countries where [civic services] like running water, electricity and trash pickup are virtually nonexistent or cost more than most earn in a month. So when new “deliveries” arrive at the dumps, many rush to the site for salvageable items that could fortify their homes.

Oh. How could I forget the homes? My second meltdown came on our return trip to Miami: more about that in a moment.

Half-buildings are the norm

I’m guessing the average Haitian’s home ranges in size from about 100 (yes, 100) to 500 square feet and gives shelter as many as eight or 10 adults and children. Made of tin, wood or cardboard, most homes have no roof, unless as squatters, people have been able to pirate space from buildings left vacant by builders or on-the-run drug lords.

When we returned to the States via Miami, the Florida coast’s aerial view was dotted with brightly colored homes—definitely Caribbean style. But these weren’t the half-buildings we had just witnessed seen in Haiti. These had rooftops, walls that were joined and that provided protection from the elements.

I lost it again. The contrast was so great, and the distance so little. Why did it have to be this way?

 

The pain of remembering; the hope of rebuilding

Now, a year later, the words flow as I reflect on my first visit to Haiti. But writing about it is like re-living it. It’s painful. Grim. Agonizing. My heart is breaking all over again, and all I want to do is return with an army of people willing to serve and work—hard.

There are certainly many things in short supply there: jobs, money, food, medicine, opportunities to be educated. And right up there with the “tangibles” are trust, peace and hope. They’re there, even if hanging by a thread. By God’s grace and through our steadfast prayer and support, surely the mustard-seed faith of one man, woman or child can turn this island nation into something great. I believe it will happen.

*2004. Many updates since: Haiti's population today is 9+ million.
Compassion now serves 65,000+ Haitian children through 230 local church partners.

 

Comments

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Thanks for sharing this Nydia. It's great to see real perspective on Haiti rather than just media reaction.

I'm greatfull for your big heart!

Kris