Why I fell in love with Haiti

// March 26th, 2010 // Story

I was 19 years old and scared. I attended High School in a suburb of Detroit and the Mountains of Salt Lake City. I was about to spend the next 21 months in a country only 700 miles from the US boarder, but it might as well have been another planet. I had studied Haitian Creole as best I could for the prior 2 months, however, I was lucky if I could say my name and ask someone to pass the salt.
My American Airlines jet was unlike any other flight I had ever been on. First it was loud. This flight full of Haitians speaking this strange language I thought, up until that moment that I knew. Second it was crowded. These people didn’t just travel with their luggage, but the were flying with their luggage, and brooms, and food, and other basic items that I would have normally picked up in a grocery store. They were taking all these things to their families in Haiti.
I was riveted. I strained to understand this language. It was faster and seemingly more complex than I could have ever imagined.
After an hour or so our flight landed in Haiti. I looked out the window and noticed old broken down planes along the runway, and grass growing through the Tarmac. The plane came to a stop and the door opened, a wave of hot, humid air quickly over took the cool air conditioned air in the plane. I was instantly sweaty.
I lived in an area of Port-au-Prince called Carrerfour Feuilles. It was in the southern part of Port-au-Prince, and mostly built on a mountain side. Even in a densely populated place like Port-au-Prince news of a “Blan” moving into the neighborhood spread like wildfire.
The children of Haiti first won a place in my heart. I would turn around after walking to the market and see a dozen children chasing behind me calling my name, trying to hold my hand, eager to try out their limited English.
These children amazed me. I was a kid who always wanted the newest, latest and greatest toy, GI Joe, or Nintendo, and here were these children with nothing, and they were happy. I have never met a happier group of children anywhere. They would play soccer in make shift fields of dirt, with 2 cinder blocks as goals, and bound up plastic bags as a ball. They would take rims from old bicycles and roll them down the road chasing after them, laughing all the way.
When it was time to work, they worked hard, and their work was hard. As soon as a child is able to lift a gallon of water, their expected to go to the nearest water source sometimes miles away, a well, a river, a broken water line, and fetch the water for the family. They would make several trips a day hauling this needed water for their family. While they were carrying this water they smiled, they laughed, sometimes they even sang.
If they were lucky, their family could afford to send them to school. Early in the morning children would emerge from their small and dirty homes, dressed in impeccably clean and pressed school uniforms. I remembered watching these kids in the morning as I thought about what I wore to high school, usually ripped jeans, a wrinkled T-shirt. These kids coming from the most extreme poverty dressed 10 times better than I ever did for school.
Originally it was these children who made me fall in love with Haiti. These incredible children always smiling, always laughing, happy, and with nothing.