Haiti

I cannot believe it, but it has been more than a quarter of a century since I visited Haiti.  My brother and I had the  honor to go there at the tender ages of 10 (him) and 8 (me) when my parents were chaperoning a high school youth group mission trip.  My life has never been the same.  I don't know why, but I feel a distinct tug on my heart to write about Haiti tonight.  I haven't been back since, though I've thought of it often.  I'd love to go again, but not because it is beautiful or fun or enriching in a traditional sense.

We went to work on building the second story for a school at a mission.  The first impression I had of Haiti, though I doubt I could have articulated it at the time, was that it felt oppressive.  Not the heat or the stench.  But spiritually, it felt heavy.  If my heart could suddenly be wrapped in weighted belts, that was Haiti.  I remember seeing a 5-year-old little girl taking care of her younger brother, who was naked with a swollen belly.  I recall seeing the exuberant joy on the faces of children, ages 2 -16, when they received small tokens and toys, like jacks, jumpropes, and balls with which to play.  These trinkets cost paltry amounts of money for Americans but were treated like prized possessions there, which they likely were.

I remember the poverty, the tattered clothes, the dirt everywhere.  Dirt outside (not grass.)  Dirt roads.  Dirt floors.  It just was brown.  We worked hard there.  It was hot and sticky and dusty.  (I actually came back so tanned, someone asked me if I was black or white!)  I remember seeing men cut the grass (what little there was) with machetes, bent over in backbreaking work, because the mower was broken.  I remember walking through a very crowded, loud, and intimidating open-air market one day.  People were shouting, vying for our attention and American money.  I wanted a doll as a souvenir.  There were lots of stalls selling them, but my mother kept saying no, I couldn't have one of those dolls, but we'd find one.  The dolls she kept telling me no to were, in fact, voodoo dolls.  (We did eventually find a beautiful, non-voodoo doll, that I believe we still have.) 

One of the things that sticks out heavily in my mind was the very powerful, very real, presence of voodoo.  It isn't just mumbo-jumbo made up in a movie for a plot twist.  The belief and faith in this dark practice was palpable.  One of my clearest memories is from the nights there in Haiti.  We'd lie in our beds at the mission and, almost every night, drumming would start.  It wasn't partying.  It was voodoo drums, their rhythms flowing down the mountain, subtly filling the air.  They weren't loud.  I never heard chanting.  But unmistakable drumming.  I love music and percussions.  But this drumming chilled me to the bone in a very not-good way.

I was so impacted by the spiritual magnitude of this place that I asked my dad for a very big thing.  I was originally slated to be baptized with two of my cousins later that summer.  I asked my dad to baptize me there, in Haiti.  We had a good discussion of what baptism meant and why I wanted it then and there.  The day we went to the beach, I was baptized by my father in the Caribbean. 

When you're in a place like Haiti, there is no longer a question of "is there good and evil?"  It is obvious!  So much spiritual darkness hangs like a heavy veil over that small country.  Yet those who have been told about and accepted Christ have such joy!  Their lives were not instantly changed in manners of wealth, health, or freedom from a corrupt government.  But their outlooks, their peace, their pursuit of holiness did change their lives.  I felt so honored that my spiritual life would, in a small way, be tied to that country and to other believers who might get baptized along the beach.

I guess I would sum up my experience like this.  If you wonder, if you question, if you doubt, go to Haiti.  It isn't a bad place.  The people are not unkind.  But the weight of Haiti, the "feel" of Haiti is almost proof that there is evil.  That there is a Hell.  And that there is a devil.  But there's redemption to that oppressive feeling.  For if there is evil, there must be pure love.  If there is a Hell, there must be a Heaven.  And if there's a devil, there must be a God. 

I can see God in a flower, a rainstorm, a waterfall.  But for those who cannot, go to Haiti.  Then tell me there isn't a God.