I've Been Thinking

I just finished reading a book Chris gave me on the history of Haiti called Paradise Lost, by Philippe Girard. The excerpt below is the first paragraph in the introduction of the book. It has been a few years since his account and Haiti has been improving slowly...very slowly. However, he paints a very vivid picture and articulates many of the things I experienced when I arrived here.

"I first visited Haiti in June and July of 2001. I was born in the Caribbean, spoke French fluently, and had visited several poor countries before; but I was strikingly unprepared for the heady mix of pride, decadence, misery, culture, and energy that defines Haiti. The dirt, destitution, and bustling activity of Port-au-Prince were straight out of Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris, complete with begging lepers. Some crossroads had traffic lights, but it took me three weeks before I saw one function. The potholes were so deep many reached the sewers five feet below. They were filled with garbage that no one picked up; homeless orphans filled used plastic bottles with the trickle of water making its way through the waste. Piles of garbage also lined the streets, with the occasional man scavenging through them. Nondescript dogs, all bones and skin, wandered around; they were not the hungriest living beings to be found. Downtown streets were choked full with vendors, pedestrians, the SUVs of well-connected businessmen with windows shut tight, the overloaded tap taps (shared taxis) and publiques (public buses) that serve as public transportation, and the antediluvian trucks spewing black smoke that mixed with the acrid smell of burning garbage. Sweating men pulled wooden carts stacked high with tires and water jugs. The city’s prodigious activity matched that of an anthill, but one whose inhabitants roamed with chaotic freedom rather than heeding the whims of some all-powerful queen.”

Part of the City

A Truck Crammed Full of Passengers

Market in Port-au-Prince

When I arrived in Haiti I realized that life here was very different from anything I had experienced before. I remember Chris telling me over the phone about a guy who came to volunteer for three months with Clean Water for Haiti. After three days, he was back on a plane, leaving for home. I told myself that no matter what the conditions were, no matter what I experienced, I was going to stay in Haiti for six months. Maybe it was because I knew that I wasn’t leaving for six months, maybe it was the shock of moving to a third-world country, maybe it was leaving my community of family and friends behind…whatever it was, I quickly longed for the comforts and safety of home. I thought immediately whether I could do this for six months.

I was talking to Leslie the other day about how things were going. I said that in the U.S. I kinda prided myself on living as simply as possible and I thought I was pretty flexible with life in general. But I soon found out that living simply in the U.S. is still extremely comfortable compared to living in Haiti. Even here in Haiti I live pretty well compared to most of the general population, but it has still been a shock. I didn’t think the transition to life here would be as difficult as it has been.

Thoughts went through my head like, maybe I can just make it through the six months and then go back home and continue life as normal. But the more I think about this option, the more it is unsettling. I think we all know something is wrong with a world that has people starving, child slavery, an AIDS epidemic, etc. I believe most of us, deep down, long to see these issues change; long to help those who need it most. When you read that excerpt above, doesn’t something inside you say, this isn’t how life was meant to be lived….this isn’t the way things are supposed to be.

Why was I born to a middle-class white family in America? Why did I have everything provided for me? Water, food, shelter, clothing, schooling, and even non-essential items that served to make my life more comfortable. Is it random? I don’t know. I do know that something doesn’t sit right with me to come here, see and experience the poverty, desperation, even hope, and then simply go home. I think a lot of times it is easy to dismiss what happens outside America because I’ve never had to see the people that are affected face-to-face. They become an impersonal statistic and not a person that is very similar to me in numerous ways.

Isn’t there more to life than looking out for myself? Isn’t there more than trying to plan out my entire life, more than saving up money so I can retire comfortably, more than trying to eliminate any risks so I don’t have to trust anyone else? I understand that not everyone feels this way, that people have other circumstances that complicate things, that some may not have the means to travel to another country and experience something like this. But I look at my situation and see how everything has been so convenient for me my entire life and how I’ve been given this opportunity to see another world. I don’t think I have any excuse to say that I can’t help in some way.

Something I think about often is having to give an account of my life. I don’t want to say, “Sure God…I saw people that needed help and I helped them for six months, but that was kinda hard so I decided to go back home and live my comfortable life again. Oh, you care about those people that were dying just like you care about me? Well, that’s noble, but you didn’t really expect me to give up the American dream and help them my entire life….right?”

I’m not saying the only way to serve people is to go to another country and devote your life to living in poverty. And I’m not making a money plea, saying people have to support every missionary they come across. However, there are people all around us that need help and are trying to make it through one more day. Shouldn’t I have some sort of desire to at least help my neighbor….whatever that looks like?

What does all this mean? Do I stay in Haiti? Do I move somewhere else? Do I take a job back home and serve people there? Do I need more training or schooling? I’m not sure yet. I just know that something is stirring in me and it may not be the most comfortable thing, but it feels like I’m heading in the right direction.