St. James Haiti Outreach

What have we learned about Haiti?

After returning from a trip to Haiti in November 2008, Ruth Anne Olson and Louise Robinson wrote a series of essays to share their observations with us. This is the fifth of eight essays. See complete list here.

5. Impressions of Life in Haiti

This installment written by Ruth Anne.

Imagine eliminating every interstate highway in the Twin Cities and dramatically decreasing the number of cars. Increase the number of buses by a factor of thirty, decorate each with bright colors and cautionary sayings, and add many trucks. Throw away 90% of all buildings and tumble all the people, goods and services onto the streets. Add tropical heat, humidity and hours of heavy rain and learn how to carry most everything, large and small, on your head. Cancel 95% of all trash services and eliminate every recycling system and waste treatment plant. Now you know something about Haitian cities.

Street Scene

Haiti is also mountains—mountains beyond mountains, as they say. Houses step up hillsides as the road twists and turns back upon itself. Small market centers dot the route where food and other goods for sale are brought via donkey, bus or by foot to sell to buyers within walking distance, measured by hours not blocks. Soon the pavement ends. Sometimes a riverbed serves as the road; other times you’ll find yourself on a surface of rock or mud that you’re convinced is totally impassable—a judgment proved wrong by the skilled determination of others to get you where they know you want to go.

Eventually the road becomes a network of trails leading to tiny homes sparsely scattered across the mountains and hollows. Clusters of trees spread across the otherwise vast denuded landscape. It is lovely.

If you’re poor you’ll live in a one room home made of scavenged wood or metal. You’ll have a dirt floor, and will be dangerously vulnerable to the extremes of Caribbean weather. If you’re middle class your two or three room home and small porch likely will be made of cinder block, some walls brightly painted. You’ll have a cement floor and a roof sufficiently strong to shield you from most but the truly violent storms. But the middle class is small and vulnerable: one doctor per 10,000 people, schools for less than half the children, and professionals of all stripes who often go two, three, even six months without pay when their communities run out of money. Whether in a tiny village or a sprawling city all your cooking, laundry, bathing, socializing, shopping and relaxing will be done out doors.

It’s said that Haiti is 95% Catholic, 5% Protestant and 100% voo-doo. Whatever the objects of worship, fate seems often to have the upper hand with Haitians who live at the mercy of tumbling mountains, hurricane surges that flood thousands of homes, and political forces that people often can neither choose nor influence. The few with electricity live with the constant awareness that it will come and go without warning. So too does the access to water.

Put it all together and one sees a people who know that survival depends on hard work, moderate expectations of physical comforts and a measure of luck. We met many people determined to meet each challenge with faith, joy and a sense of community. As we face uncertainty in our own lives, Haitians can teach us much.

Making Peanut Butter

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