Healing in Haiti

I’ve traveled to several developing countries and the truth is that with the exception of the Philippines, I haven’t had great experiences. India was the absolute worst. I don’t even talk about what happened there, except to say that after a week I left there with severe post-traumatic stress syndrome that I recovered from by sitting in a guest house garden in Katmandu for a week.

When I’ve traveled to developing countries, I’ve been prepared for the fact that they will be poor, that there will be people asking me for money, and there will be sad things to see and experience. I accept those realities. But what I’ve never been able to accept is the cheating, lying, scamming, stealing, and the constant feeling that everyone sees me only as a walking ATM machine, everyone is trying to get one over on me, or everyone is trying to befriend me just to get something from me. In those countries I feel like I can’t trust anyone.

Haiti wasn’t like that. In my 8 days of traveling Haiti, only about 2 people asked me for money—and they didn’t really even ask—they just pointed to their stomachs and said they were hungry. I never felt pounced upon or unsafe in Haiti (except for maybe seeing all the U.N. soldiers with automatic weapons resting on their knees). And the Beyond Borders staff brokered all the relationships, so I never felt like anyone was trying to shake me down or get something out of me.

So the disturbing things that have happened to me in other developing countries didn’t happen to me in Haiti. But Mother Ayiti took it a step further—she healed me.

On my final day with my rural hosting family on La Gonave, our group had to leave unexpectedly to catch a boat across the water before a bad storm hit. At my hosting family’s house I quickly packed my backpack, said reluctant goodbye’s, and slung my backpack over my shoulder to walk back to the truck. After a minute I heard a child yelling “Mel-a-nie! Mel-a-nie!” One of the children from my house ran down the trail with my shoes in his hand. Someone had put them outside the door of the house, and when I packed I didn’t notice they were gone.

I can’t describe how healing that moment was for me. I was profoundly touched. Any other country I had been in, the person finding my shoes would have probably thought “that damn American has other shoes. I’m keeping these.” But in Haiti- the poorest country in the Western hemisphere-- this beautiful child knocked himself out to return my stupid, old, beat up shoes (that I was planning on leaving in Haiti anyway).

It's easy to ascertain from my vague narrative above that I carry some heavy emotional baggage from past travels. Fully aware of this, in the months leading up to my departure for Haiti I had been filling up a flip chart on my living room wall with prayers for me, my fellow travelers, and for Haiti. Here’s what I had written in one corner:
How’s that for an answer to prayer?