Gesu Mission Team Visit to Haiti - June 2 - 11, 2003
The first day our group
was in Haiti, on our way from
one site to another we passed the city's largest cemetery. The road in
front of it was a mess with mud and standing water going across the
entire street.
The remarkable thing was that people were climbing up onto the wall of
the cemetery to avoid walking through the mud. On the last day of the
trip, when we had to summarize our experience into one word or image, I
thought of this one.
The Haitians are life clinging to death, a people who
have such pride and who place so much importance on appearance that
they would inch along a wall to avoid the mud.
They do this in a country of death where slums dominate the city and
mountains are stripped to the rock by logging and erosion. On this
island where Christopher Columbus began the first permanent European
settlement 13% of children die before age 5, at least 60% of Haitians
can't read, 7 out of 10 adults don't have a regular occupation, and
more than half of Haitian children don't go to school.
But these people also comprise a country where life is very
present. A place where the children who do go to school, go every day
with spotless clothes and the girls with bright ribbons in their tidy
hair. They live with pride in the only country where their ancestors
overthrew their slavery and in the world's first black republic. They
live in a culture that places an exclamation mark on life through
elaborate weddings, funerals and celebrations that alleviate them from
their poverty for a while. Even though they suffer greatly for it, most
of the people of Haiti embrace their democratic president for his
vision despite his problems in producing progress. They continue in
their support of the Aristide's mission despite the withholding of
massive international aid from infighting on election results by
opposition parties and the US who would rather have a candidate closer
to their tastes.
From my short time in Haiti I know that my job is not to build
a sidewalk for the Haitians who inch along the wall or to rebuild their
streets, but to offer a hand as they move along a path that is
unmistakably theirs, and through my visit to walk with them for a while
and tell others about the lives they proudly lead.
- Jay Langhurst
