Haiti- a composite

Haiti- a composite 

It’s December and the temperature was in the mid-90s everyday in Haiti. There is no air conditioning, there are few glass windows, and there are no screens. Most concrete construction homes and buildings have decorative-looking concrete blocks where we would expect windows that allow a breeze to blow through. 

There is so little infrastructure in Haiti it is alarming. There is trash everywhere you look. Piles and piles of trash line certain parts of the streets, but trash debris is ever present in Haiti. We stayed at the orphanage, where rainwater is collected in cisterns and then filtered for drinking and cooking, where there is a well that provides water for bathing and cleaning, where there is a generator powering lightbulbs and a refrigerator. But the power goes out a lot. They turn it off at night. Bugs fly in and out of the jalousie windows that are permanently open. Americans sleep under mosquito nets like princesses. Well, if they can sleep. Between the roosters and the dogs who loudly complain all night, and the announcements being made in kreyol by a man with a megaphone driving through the packed dirt roads of the community in the dead of night, sleep can be fleeting for our dainty overloaded senses. 

Despite all of this, Haiti is beautiful, not the least of which being stark contrasts of azul-blue coasts and red-brown hillsides, giant rubber trees growing from the dust, and children walking to school in perfectly pressed uniforms over the rocky terrain. One of the buzzwords around disaster relief currently is resilience. Haitians don’t need any patronizing lessons in resiliency; they are the most resourceful and resilient people living on a land with precious few resources. Where there is no way, they make do and keep surviving. Which is not to say they are thriving and don’t know any different. No, they know they are painfully poor, they feel it in their empty bellies regularly. They know there is better out there and they want it for their children and themselves. You see this through the pride in school uniforms. How mothers and children living in stick and mud huts with no running water can daily produce perfectly pressed school uniforms is beyond my comprehension, but it is the rule not the exception in Haiti. 

The vast majority of people in Haiti have no voice, no way of telling their story, no way of changing their lot in life. NGOs and missionaries come to Haiti to help and often waste money and resources, and force assistance that only hurts the communities and fledgling economy. So if you talk to adults in the community, if you ask them questions, if you ask if you can take their picture and share what they say, most jump at the chance. They want the world to know their story and the real Haiti. They want help. Because they are human and humans have an intrinsic need to be seen and heard and known. They are resilient, but only because they have to be all the time.