Last week I finally completed my official trip report for work, one month late, specifying the objectives and results achieved on my recent trip to Haiti in December. I appended my official schedule, and outlined all the meetings I attended, the issues and challenges raised, and specific items for follow-up.
But this is the report I wanted to write:
When I travel, it's the moon that grounds me. I look up and see that it is the same moon that I see at home, or in Paris or in South Africa or any of the places I've been to.
The sky, the stars and the moon: These are constant.
When I look up, I don't see the crowded and ramshackle housing, the smoke rising from kitchen fires, the broken streets, the traffic, the schools without walls, the streets teeming with people selling everything and anything they can lay their hands on -- toilet paper, bananas, tires, clothing, dishes, artwork. Life happens outside here, by nature, by necessity.
I didn't see any begging, except for one lady with a baby at one street corner. There are few people from whom to beg -- the rich, the Westerners, the diplomats, the elite, the NGO workers -- they all drive around in armoured cars or SUVs, protected by tinted windows and bodyguards. We aren't allowed to walk around, to explore the streets on foot, or to take taxis or public transportation. No one wants to be a consular case. And so, there is no begging.
People warned me, and now that I'm back they ask if I am shocked at what I saw. Yes, and no. Of course, to see such levels of poverty, in this hemisphere, in this day and age, is shocking. But it is not only here. I have seen it elsewhere -- Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Mozambique, the Philippines, India, Cambodia... and not that long ago. I know, also, that poverty exists in my own country: on First Nations reserves, in pockets of rural communities, on the streets of Ottawa.
I visited a village where latrines for each home were only recently built, and yes, there, I was shocked. My grandfather, who spent decades as a missionary in Latin America in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, would say that the poor didn't need proselytizing; they needed schools and latrines. So yes, I was shocked to discover that in this day and age, only 1000 km away from mainland USA, people were still defecating outdoors. We held a meeting with a group of village leaders to discuss the project. We sat outside, in a circle underneath the trees. Everyone present wore clean and decent clothing. My colleague asked them: "What impact has the project had on the community?" At first I felt embarrassed at the question. The leader spoke clearly, unfazed: "It means we no longer have to defecate outdoors." Behind him, a young man was ironing the day's wash. In the trees, corn hung to dry. The December breeze was cool.
I left feeling quite inadequate: who am I to think I have anything to offer here? In what manner can I serve that will truly change the course of a single life, let alone of a country?
In his book, Letters to Jesus, my grandfather wrote: "Each new experience rekindles the fire that cannot be extinguished. One day, I heard the song of a peasant as he worked: 'The spirit and the flesh are in a fierce struggle; the flesh pulls downward, and the spirit toward the heights.'"
When I look up to the heights, I see the same moon, the same stars, the same sky as do those people whom I met, and I am reminded that we occupy the same planet. I have no inherent right to the things that I have, to the life that I live, and neither do they have an inherent obligation to live as they do.
Perhaps all I can offer is to bear witness to their fierce struggle.
