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.
