Haiti: people and places

by Ruth Anne Olson

School children at St. Patrick’s Episcopal School in Léogâne, Haiti, play games during recess. (Photo by Ruth Anne Olson)

November 26, 2007
I suspect we’ve all been told that Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. More than 20 percent of all Haitian children die before age 5, the country’s illiteracy rate approaches 80 percent, and Haiti has one doctor per 10,000 people. One short week in this astounding country showed me that Haiti is much more than its poverty. I mainly learned to look not at poverty, but instead to see people.

Haiti is the young woman who struck up a conversation with me in Miami before we boarded the plane for Port au Prince. Studying to become a nurse, she and her new husband were on their way home for a visit—having not seen her parents and siblings for seven years. In her excitement and anxiety, laughter and tears lay close to the surface. Yet after we landed, she insisted on waiting till all my bags were off the luggage carousel—among the last dozen or so from the jumbo jet of 273 passengers, as it happened—in case there was a problem for which I might need an interpreter.

Haiti is Carmel—a nurse who for 28 years has taken mobile health clinics to 15 communities—who accepted with gratitude and dignity the $1,400 worth of children’s vitamins from my own St. James Episcopal Church and other Twin Cities donors. Frankly, I was sick and tired of schlepping through airports my two 50-pound bags of vitamins. When I’d hefted them (for the 15th time) onto and off various carts, scales and carousels, I’d grumbled to myself that I was too old for this — that if I ever returned to Haiti I’d only bring one bag of vitamins. Carmel helped us unpack the suitcases onto shelves where only four bottles of children’s vitamins remained from previous donors, and with a wave of certainty I knew I’d always take the full allotment.

Haiti is the man walking down the road holding out a telephone for someone to buy; the woman carrying small bundles of fabric on her head; the dozens of people offering shoes, cans of soda, bed frames, canes of raw sugar, used tires, gallon bottles of gasoline, mangoes and fried bananas, pine bookcases, make-up, CDs and more. How long will the man sit in front of the tires before someone comes along needing those particular sizes? What kind of resigned resolve is required to face near-impossible odds of a sale when this is your only hope of acquiring cash income—a tiny bit of money for food, medicine or maybe tuition that your child might be among the relatively few who can go to school?

Haiti is 95 percent Catholic, 5 percent Protestant and 100 percent voo-doo, they say. Whatever the objects of worship, it’s clear that fate seems always to have the upper hand in Haiti. The lives of millions of Haitians are at the mercy of tumbling mountains, hurricane surges that flood thousands of homes, political forces that sometimes it seems they can neither choose nor influence. They’re shaped by the random choice of a traveler to buy a trinket from one vendor instead of dozens of others nearby or to select one man to heft suitcases out of a truck instead of any of 30 others clamoring for the work and its accompanying tip. Believing in the random irrationality of fate may be the only way to save one’s sanity.

Haiti is Père Deravil, the Episcopal priest with whom Barb and I stayed during our two days in Léogâne. As one of the 30 Episcopal priests in Haiti who serve 98 congregations, he’s a busy man. One day, though, he had time for a long conversation. The grounds were still flooded from the previous week’s hurricane, and sandbags still lay where they’d been placed to protect the backup generators. We talked of the evening, of the hurricane, of our families. Most of his family now lives in the United States. “Do you ever think of moving to the United States,” I asked. “No,” he answered. “I visit them but,” with hesitation, “I sick. How do you say this in English? I get homesick. I have to come home to Haiti.”

And come home he does. To the hospitals, schools and churches—to the people—he loves and serves, knowing that, while he’s far too small to save all of Haiti, he can and will make life better for some.

The Episcopal Diocese of Haiti, grounded in indigenous leadership, is the largest diocese in the Episcopal Church. American and Haitian churches relate to one another primarily through partnerships structured for mutual benefit. As part of the St. Alban’s (Edina) partnership with St. Patrick’s (Tomb Gateau in Haiti), our days were spent visiting the school, exploring options for school construction, thinking about how to fund and build desks for 200 students, and assessing repair of a critical but non-functioning electrical generator.

Haiti is the dozens of people who gave Barb and me beds to sleep in, made sure we were safe (and gently reprimanded us when we stepped into places they deemed potentially dangerous), introduced us and translated for us—all out of trust that we care about them and that both we and they will gain from our friendship.